Valentines and potatoes.

Having trouble keeping up online these days, but I wanted to share these.

Almost two weeks ago now (gulp) we made valentines. I cut out hundreds of valentines (my scissors had to be sharpened) and set out glue sticks. It was a mad house and the two girls created the cutest valentines.

At first Ainsley's had more glue than hearts, but then she realized that it wouldn't stick to her if she covered the glue completely with hearts. And you wondered why I needed to cut out hundreds. (Or, if you're a mom, you didn't wonder for even a second.)


Then labeling the hearts.




After I made a heart flower for Hannah, both girls tried it out. Hannah made one and Ainsley went crazy making them. We have at least ten taped on our bedroom walls.


This one didn't make it to the wall.


A few days after that, we went to a library story time where they let the girls make foam hearts. Hannah made hers "extra bumpy because I'm going to give this one to Grandpa Rex and he needs to feel how much I love him". Grandpa Rex can't see very well.

It was an extra bumpy heart, so it needed a special envelope. She wrote his name on it herself and even wrote "I love you I love you" above his name. She'd just learned that "I (heart) you" means "I love you", so she wrote that. In a manner of speaking writing.


A few days later when I had scrap pieces of rope from making a baby hammock, they wanted to use them to make yet more valentines.


And valentine necklaces, of course.


Then Daddy sent them flowers for the day itself.





Love Day, indeed.


And this is what happens when you're taking pictures and Daddy walks in the door.


Random pictures, but they make me smile... While doing laundry, I heard a thumping noise. When I came out to investigate, I found this -


She was teaching Grayson how to throw potatoes down the hallway. He was a quick study.


Ignore all the buckets. I was organizing food storage.

We call him Hansel.

He would never get lost in the woods if he had a candy trail to follow. (Hannah had just had Hansel and Gretel read to her and was worried about him not finding his way to the living room. She was amenable when I suggested using crackers next time.)

Also, I've added links to Snapshot Sunday participators on that post, but didn't want you guys to miss them - all of them made me smile this week. Great photos.

Sunnymama and Joxy have joined us this week!

Steph's up also!

Snapshot Sunday

How it began.

Duffs are up!

Sunnymama and Joxy (her first picture made me laugh out loud) have joined us today!

Steph's up also!

The best way to clean a house.

Look for something very small that you need *right now*. Decluttering with a large trash can beside you springs spontaneously from this.

Little things...

about the little ones.

Why is it that when you are trying to buckle in an infant that should be easy to physically manipulate, you can't get their arm in the second shoulder strap without them slipping out of the first? Yet when you go to unbuckle them, you can't get their arm out of the second strap without their other arm going back into the first strap? I don't understand.

Note to my two year old: When you are two rooms away from the bathroom and you realize that you urgently need to go potty, you'll get there faster if you leave your pants up, run to the bathroom and *then* pull your pants down. Pulling them down and then waddling at top speed takes a tad longer. Not that you're not hilariously cute when you do it, I'm just trying to help out.

Bats bats bats

Hannah was flipping through one of our encyclopedias a month or so ago and came across the entry for bats. She asked me to read some of it to her. We learned about echolocation and for the next three days our house was filled with screeching echolocation. I tried explaining to her that we humans actually couldn't hear most bats' calls because they were too 'high', but that just made her echolocate at a higher pitch.

Our next trip to the library saw me getting several bat books for her (including this one that will be the jumping off point for a whole 'nother post) and several for me so that I could answer more of her questions. Word of warning - don't go learning to much about bats. You'll lose all fear of them and want to get actively involved in saving them.

One of Hannah's books had this picture in it -



I still can't look at that picture without giggling. He makes me happy. His cheeks are full of fruit.

And check out this artwork Hannah did while in the throes of bat love.


It's a picture of two bats.


The tape is the flowers that they're about to land on to eat.


Little circles of tape. 3-D art. How 'bout that.

For more on bats check out Bat Conservation International.

These books were ones that I got that I really enjoyed:
The Moon by Whale Light (in which I also learn about how very ancient crocodiles are)
Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (in which I learn that opossums don't pretend to be dead when they're scared, they actually get so scared that their body goes in to a trance like state - a bit like fainting goats)
Darkwing - a novel by Kenneth Oppel about the first bats, way back when dinosaurs were dying off - very well written

I can't recommend any of the 'kids bat books' that we got for Hannah because they were all pretty bland and generic, nothing that really grabbed her and fascinated her as much as the encyclopedia entry had.

Would you?

Breastfeed someone else's child?

I would. I totally would. In fact, I have. Wouldn't have seen me doing that ten years ago.

Independent play.

Stepping back and allowing independent play without adult guidance can lead to some really fun discoveries. In this case, I walked in to find Ains making a track out of the animal dominoes for her animals to walk on. Totally engrossed, she was. I don't think she even noticed me there with the camera.

















I am not obsessed with chubby toddler hands. Don't say that. But just look at how cute they are!

Letters.

The letter obsession continues. 'Hannah' is being written everywhere. She knows the first letter of everyone's name and uses the initial to address letters and pictures.

I made her a 'letter book' for her to take with her wherever she needs to - it's amazing where you need a letter book, you know. I used these - printed out from the PDF page, four to a sheet of cardstock, cut apart, and tied together with a ribbon. It's cute and very useful.

I also made her a letter poster for our living room for when she didn't have time to flip through the letter book. This was becoming an issue. The poster works well. It's also fun for her to grill her sister. ("Do you see a xylophone Ainser? A xylophone? Good job! Do you see a nightgown Ains?" - especially hilarious since I can't remember the last time we talked to her like that.)

Now that the girls have their own computer, Hannah likes to have me put up the 'letter page' (word processing program) and she types away. Recipes, letters, books, shopping lists, notes, and letter practice. Letter practice is something she made up. First, she types in a letter, with her sister looking on.



Then they both go over to look for that letter on the poster.



It really doesn't get much cuter than that.

Then after they find it...



they have to go back to the computer and start the process over again.

Ignore Ainser's hair. I can't do anything with it.

Sugar Shacks

Mid-January we made sugar shacks.

When I was growing up, my mom would have us make graham cracker houses in February around Valentine's Day instead of in December. We used lots of red and white and pink candy. It was the only time of year that we were allowed free access to candy - don't even ask about Halloween. BUT the free access only lasted for the few hours that it took to do the houses and then the extra candy was taken away and we were only allowed to eat the candy on our houses.

I was smart. I made a garden and frosting trees stuck through with candy and fences and gates and chimneys and so much candy decorating the house that I would have candy for at least a week. Heh.

But somehow my brothers, who did all the smart things I did and ate through their candy twice as fast always had candy long after I did. It wasn't until I was eight years old that I caught on to what they were doing. They were making their house walls, filling them up with candy, and then putting a second story of graham crackers on to hide their first floor so my mom wouldn't confiscate it.

So this was a tradition I really wanted to carry on. For obvious reasons. Heh.

Problem was, my family has tons of traditions (mostly centered around Christmas, but still...) and my husband's family has, well, one - at least only one that my husband or any of his siblings that I've grilled can think of - and that tradition is graham cracker houses at Christmas time. It's really not exciting to do graham cracker houses twice a year. So I was stuck. I didn't want to give up my cool, fun, sugar-memory-laden tradition, but I wasn't about to throw my husband's one solitary tradition out in favor of mine.

Then I saw Steph's sugar shacks and thought we'd give it a try. It's a perfect replacement and it has the added benefit of being a perfect craft for tiny, chubby two year old hands. They can handle and manipulate those sugar cubes so much easier than graham crackers. Ains actually worked really hard putting her cubes just where she wanted and building her walls.



She had little interest in her roof, so as I made her roof and Hannah's roof, Hannah decorated them...



though she ended up not needing a roof herself since her shack ended up being all garden and tree.



I've learned that the best way for me to keep my interpretations, 'helpful suggestions', and controlling tendencies out of their creative processes is to do my own project to the side of theirs and only help them when asked. I did an igloo to the side. It was a really simple one with not much embellishment until the next day when Hannah and Ains got out their watercolors and went to town on it - I thought you'd like this, Steph.



Pretty cool, huh? And I would have never thought of doing that.

Helping in the kitchen.

I walked into the kitchen one afternoon and saw this...



She'd filled up the sinks and was washing and rinsing the dishes all by herself. I was told that she was 'very busy. Too busy for pictures, Mother.'

Another day found us making carrot cake. I pulled it out and stuck it on the stove to cool. About fifteen minutes later I walked by and saw this...





It had been tested in the center by Ains and decorated with all of their farm and garden popsicle stick sticker puppets. They were very pleased with it - it was stunning. I like their initiative.

Honeycomb 'candy'.

I found a recipe for Honeycomb Candy online somewhere. Can't remember where now, but it's just as well. It was a horrid recipe. I was really disappointed because the type of candy it was supposed to be was so yummy in Ireland. So I found this one. We'll try it. Later. After the memories of this one have faded from our taste buds. It was that bad. But the foaming and the air pockets were cool.

Daddy helping measure out the ingredients.



Ains sprayed the pan for us. That candy ain't sticking.



Hannah watching the temperature on the candy thermometer.



After it's heated up, you add the baking soda. When you do that, it foams up so fast that you have to be ready to pour it immediately. It will overflow the pan. It's very impressive.

It cooled quickly, so the girls could use their fingers to feel it go from soft to brittle.



We tried it. It was foul. So the girls got to go after it with vegetable peelers. That was fun.



So if you try the recipe I linked to, let me know how it turned out. I'm not going to get brave again for awhile.

Catching up.

It's been a busy few weeks, but I've been held up on posting some pictures, so here they are - weeks worth of pictures narrowed down to a few different posts with pictures that I couldn't just skip over.

Snapshot Sunday

How it began.

Steph's up!

Duffs are up!

Because it's so cold here,

and it's so hot there.

Check out the heat in Australia.

Swimsuits and Bubble Painting on the Prairie

So the day after the swimsuit request was, naturally, beach day. Food was eaten on towels near the bathtub, and the girls lived in the bathroom splashing and laughing all day. And there was much peace.

The last two days, however, have seen them forget completely about swimsuits as Hannah has, out-of-the-blue, decided that the 'Mary books' are back in. On Tuesday morning she declared "Mother, I'm into the Mary books again. Can we start reading?" I asked her if she wanted to start over with Little House in the Big Woods, which is her favorite, or start up where we left off, partway through On the Banks of Plum Creek. "The Plum Creek one." So we started there.

For two days, she has been Mary. She relates more to Mary than to Laura. Ainsley has been told she's Laura (though she's been quite insistent that she is, in fact, a horsey), I have been Ma, and their father has been Pa. That leaves Grayson. Poor Grayson. Baby Carrie is the only character left. "OH!", says Hannah, "I have an Uncle Kerry! Gray will be Baby Kerry." So Baby Kerry he has been.

Lots of looking at animals on our favorite animal website - swans first, then following intriguing suggestions on the website and in her mammal encyclopedia. The basking shark was a huge (literally) hit. And we found images and even a video of triops, which she has (hopefully hatching) in a tank.

Ains is rarely to be found without her magnifying glass in hand, looking for footprints, elephants, Grayson, or her ponies. "A - HA!!!" is not heard often, but when it is, it's very triumphant.

She's also very good at goading Gray into playing with her. Today she had him crawling in a three foot diameter circle, lapping him seven times for every one of his circles. Every time she passed him, he would giggle hysterically as if he thought he was almost going to catch her.

Remember the bubble painting? Hannah and I tried a suggested improvement - using a small amount of tempera paint (in place of food coloring) stirred in before the bubbles are blown. It makes much more vibrant art. I wouldn't do it with a little one though who might forget that she can't *suck* on the straws and might do so.

Swimsuit season.

My girls are on a daddy-daughter outing to the city to go to 'the fish restaurant'. A big, big deal.

Gray and I are here playing alone.

I got a phone call about thirty minutes ago and was informed that my girl wanted to negotiate with me. Apparently they'd stopped to pick up some stuff at a store.

"Mother?"
Yes?
"You know, I like to take baths."
Yes, you do.
"You know, sometimes I like to wear my swimsuit in the bath. It's fun. It reminds me of summer."
Yes. I know.
"You know, I haven't been able to wear my swimsuit in the bathtub because it's too tight and then I can't swim and that's no fun and then I'm cranky and then I fight with my sister and then she's not happy and then there's no peace and Barack Obama said peace."
Where are you, Hannah?
"We're in the two year old swimsuit section. But none of these fit me. I need the five year old section."
I see. Do you want a new swimsuit that fits?
"Oh, yes. And they're only $10 and Ainsley is giggling, but we have to get two, Mother. One for me and one for her. We share really good, Mother, but we can't share swimsuits. So can I get one?"
Yes, sweetie, you can get one.
"Can Ainsley get one?"
Yes.
"Oh, you're the best Mother ever!"
Well, that was easy.

That child makes me smile.

Snapshot Sunday

This card was sent to me by a dear friend. It is by my favorite modern artist.

Stephanie's up!

Check out Stuff about the Duffs!

Ains count!

Hide and go seek is a favorite game around here these days. Hours on end, which is surprising given the age of the younger player. The other day I hid behind the laundry pile and Hannah couldn't find me. I need to work on that pile, maybe. Anyway, the pattern is predictable - a parent counts and seeks, then Hannah counts and seeks, and then Ainsley declares that it's her turn.

"Ains count!" and she throws herself up against a wall with her arms over her eyes. "One, two, three, four, eight, sixteen, COME!!!!" And then she runs to find. If she finds you in the first thirty seconds, you're good. If not, you'd better come out because it's likely she's found an intriguing toy, or decided to cook in her kitchen, or has inexplicably decided that hiding is more fun.

"Barack Obama said peace."

Hannah watched the inauguration with me and, while she thought Rick Warren's prayer was 'silly' (I'll say that I agreed with her. In fact I muted the man after about twenty seconds of his shouting and gesticulating.), and she colored through most of the part we watched, she listened more carefully than I thought to Obama's speech. And I didn't think she listened at all - she is, after all, four years old.

Since that day, I have heard "Barack Obama said peace" more times than I care to remember. No raised voices allowed around her. When we were in the car today, she was very quiet so I asked if she was asleep. "No, Mother. I'm fustated with Ainser but Barack Obama said peace so I'm breathing like you do when you get fustated." Okay, then. When she and Ains were playing in the bathtub last night and Ains got upset with Hannah for taking her starfish, Hannah jumped in with "Barack Obama said peace, Ains. Be peace." Ains thought she'd be peace just fine when Hannah gave back her starfish, thank you very much.

I *am* wondering what else Hannah picked up out of that speech that I didn't even think she was listening to...