Alan found a woolly bear in the garage and the kids adopted it. They are excited for the crysalis stage, but it will be awhile. Did you know that woolly bears hibernate during the winter? It will hibernate and then wake in the spring, eat more, then begin transforming. The kids both have monarch caterpillars at school. Lex’s class got to watch the butterfly emerge and they set it free on Friday. They have one more cacoon, I think, and Eve’s class still has two caterpillars.
I am taking the kids out for awhile and there is a chance… a chance… that the flooring may be down in the mudroom when we return. How exciting is that!?!
Our mudroom will have a heated floor! How cool is that?! I think we’ll spend the winter in the mudroom. :)
Somebody loves her daddy!
Our little blue table met it’s untimely demise this afternoon. After surviving two generations and six years of a third it fell to a 65lb force atop it. Sigh. Eve proposed we just build a new one, paint it blue, and write “all the stuff on the bottom.” She insists it would be just the same. Somehow I doubt it.
Since the blue table is no more I decided to give our grown-up coffee table another shot. It takes up a lot of space in our narrow living room. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Have you ever read the story Pancakes, Pancakes!, by Eric Carle? It’s one of our favorites in this house. I am forever grateful that we do not have to harvest our own wheat and grind our own flour in order to have pancakes. Jack is a very ambitious boy! Tonight we decided to make Jack’s pancakes for dinner. We talk about doing it when we read the story but this is the first time we’ve actually remembered at a meal time. Lex was thrilled and did much of the work himself. The recipe is as follows:
Put one cup of flour into a large bowl. Mix in one egg. Pour in one cup of milk and stir until smooth. Heat a pan over the fire (Lex conceded that our stovetop would suffice). Melt a pat of butter in the pan. Ladle a scoop of batter in and cook until golden. Flip. He said it would be ok if I used a spatula instead of flipping it into the air as Jack’s mother does. Serve with strawberry jam.
He was feeling brave and decided to put the batter on the pan.
Guess what’s baking at 425° in the oven?
Eve says I’ll have the big one, please!
Eve put apple butter on hers and rolled it up like a crepe. It was tasty.
Lex gives Jack’s Pancakes two thumbs up. I think they are just so-so. Pretty dense. Not very sweet.
Pie! Eve and I made apple pie this afternoon from the apples she picked at the orchard yesterday. Pancakes for dinner and pie for dessert! I’m the awesomest mom ever! :) (Really the pie was too hot for the kids to eat tonight. They will get some tomorrow.)
I’m going to take advantage of Alan being out in the garage late (our mudroom is really coming along!) to do one more blog post. One I’ve been thinking about for awhile but haven’t found the time to write. One about lunch boxes.
When Lex started kindergarten I sent him to school with a great bento box from Laptoplunches.com. Within a few short weeks I learned the lunch process and realized I needed to get him a carrier as well. Once we had the carrier, the lunch box, and the water bottle all was well. He brought it all to school. Brought it all home. Took the front, small container out for his snack each day and returned it to the case afterwards. I used to write little notes for him, or jokes. Sometimes I’d write “Today’s Menu” and list out what was in his lunch box. He loved it and I got several comments from teachers, staff, and other students about how fun it was. All was good.
I assumed things would be the same when Eve started school as well. I got them both new boxes and I got her a carrier. I packed up nice little lunches for them both.
First day of school lunches. Eve requested that I write her little notes like I often wrote for Lex.
I quickly discovered that she does not operate quite the same way he does. She takes whatever cup she wants for snack, which isn’t awful but isn’t ideal. She doesn’t put the containers back. The very first day she chewed on the water bottle top, causing it to leak all through her backpack and causing me to have to get her another bottle top! She has already left her cloth napkin at school twice. Her lunches come home looking like this.
There are pine needles in her lunch box! How does that even happen!?
It’s also difficult coming up with notes to write when she can’t really read much. I need to put more effort into that. I found some funny jokes that I put in their lunches sometimes. When I do, I read Eve’s to her in the morning. It’s not a cute surprise at lunch, but at least she knows what it says and she says she tells the joke to the other kids at her lunch table.
In her defense, she does seem to be trying. She seems to be making more of an effort to get all of the containers back into the lunch box and she says she is taking the snack container out for snack. She hasn’t chewed on her bottle again and we’ll keep working on the napkin thing.
It’s interesting having two kids. You think you have things figured out with the first and then, surprise, the second child is totally different! :) They keep you on your toes, that’s for sure!
One of the benefits of having no kids at home is I can volunteer to chaperone more often. Today I had the good fortune to go apple picking with Eve’s class. It’s actually the same place I went with her pre-k class last year. :)
This year a friend (another mother to one of Eve’s classmates) and I drove together and got to do some chatting and catching up with one another. It’s amazing how fast the days go by when everyone has kids and activities and whatnot. Not like the old playgroup days where naps were the only deciding factors. We met the class at the orchard and each parent was assigned a few kids to watch. Eve was THRILLED that she was assigned to me. :)
We followed the owner around, stopping to pick some raspberries, learn about the trees, see a fake apple that’s designed to attract bad bugs (Eve even remembered that from last year) and finally, finally, they got to pick some apples! They were very patient and very eager for that part.
The kids were allowed to sample a few golden raspberries. They were so delicious we had to pull the kids away. :)
Eve picking raspberries.
I got some good back-of-head shots today. :) It was a beautiful afternoon.
Each kid got a bag to fill. Eve filled hers with Honey Crisps, which are delicious! She wanted to make a pie this afternoon, but when the time came we ended up wrestling and playing with trains and just being silly for the afternoon. No baking happened. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe we’ll just eat the delicious apples!
Just a quick update for my own purposes. We went to the eye doctor yesterday for Eve’s checkup. She is doing great! She has 20/20 with the glasses on. The doctor said her prescription changed a smidgen, but recommended we not bother getting new glasses until it changes more or until they break or something. Eve chews on the ear pieces sometimes, but otherwise she’s doing great with them and the glasses are holding up well. Lex came with us and had his first experience at the eye doctors. He didn’t get his eyes checked though. The doctor recommended he get them checked next year when I bring her back in. He was pretty interested in the equipment and I was tempted to ask if she could just do it right then, but I didn’t ask and I doubt he would have cooperated. Maybe next year. Maybe not. At least I know Eve is a rockstar at the eye doctor now! :)
The kids had open house at school last night. It was pouring rain outside and crowded inside, but we had fun. We started in Eve’s classroom where she showed me all the options for “choice time” and showed me the play kitchen. Lex plopped right down to read a few books. They both ended up playing with these shape pieces and I had to drag them away so we could get to Lex’s room before the end of the night.
In Lex’s room he showed me some projects his class is working on, including raising mealworms as part of the life-cycle unit. He has his own mealworm named Squirmy.
Lex’s hopes and dreams involve learning more about mealworms. He cracks me up! :)
On the way out we stopped at the school counselors table to make emotion faces. Lex actually chose to run around in the gym for awhile, but Eve wanted to make a face. She decided to make a sad face. They were supposed to leave them at school, but she asked if she could take hers home and of course the counselor said ok.
Do you know why he’s sad? (picture Eve with her authoritative way of saying things and her little head bop) Because he’s sick and because he has staples in his head! She cracks me up! :) Her counselors got a good laugh too.
Then we read a fun book in the art room and headed home after the principal announced over the loudspeakers that it was getting late and the teachers were all tired and needed to go home and go to bed.
I am so spaced out lately. So tired! Alan has been working in the garage until late every night which means we’ve been going to bed past 11pm for over a week now. Not that I couldn’t go to bed without him, but I don’t. I could also go out and help him, but I’m so spaced out lately that I end up just puttering around, mindlessly checking email and tidying. Sigh. I wasted away the entire weekend and was looking forward to have time/energy to get things done during the week but suddenly my week is packed as well. So much for lots of free time with the kids in school! I manage to fill it fast. :)
