We took a walk to the playground yesterday afternoon with the neighbors. When we got there Lex and Eve immediately started filling their pockets with acorns. There were a lot of acorns at the park! When I asked why they were doing this (silly thing to ask, I know!) Lex said, “so we can make an acorn tree.” Of course! I was super proud of the kids because they walked all the way to the playground and back. Maybe we won’t need the double stroller as much this summer. Anyway, when we got home the babysitter was just arriving. Date night! The kids showed her their pockets full of acorns and I told her she’s welcome to do an art project with them if she knows of any. We came home to find that Lex had, in fact, made an acorn tree :) He said the babysitter drew the outline and then they “used all the green crayons we could find to color the leaves and all the brown crayons to color the trunk.”

Lex was reading a Magic School Bus book about dinosaurs and acting out scenes with a toy dinosaur.

It is a beautiful day today. The kids are napping. Lex called in “tired” to school this morning and stayed home and played SUPER sweetly with Eve all morning. I’m pretty nauseous today and it was nice that they entertained each other so well. I think the time change may have affected him more that it has in the past. Or more that I remember it affecting him in the past anyway. They’ve been going to bed at about the same time each night, but he isn’t falling asleep until 9:30 or 10pm and then I have to wake him up for school every morning! Ugh. Last night it was 9:30 before he fell asleep, then when we went in to check on him at 11pm we discovered a wet bed. He threw a horrible tantrum in the middle of the night because he didn’t want to change his PJs and then continued the tantrum when he discovered I’d thrown his blanket into the wash. It was almost an hour before he was back to sleep. I decided then that he could skip school today and get caught up on his sleep. Guess what? Eve woke him at 6am anyway! But he wanted to stay home so I let him. It was nice. They entertained each other so nicely, playing “Mr. Tomato Head” and building a fort and throwing a party for pink baby. It’s always someone’s birthday around here! Lex even read books to Eve and helped her sound out words.

Now they are napping, the sun is shining, and I am working on my new hobby. Quilting! :) Baking makes me fat and knitting aggregates the carpal tunnel, so I thought I’d try quilting. After two days of trouble-shooting my sewing machine I’m finally on my way! I’m making a modified “around the world” pattern, under careful guidance from my friend who already knows how to quilt :) Basically it’s shades of white and purple squares, like a checkerboard. I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Valentine’s Day is coming up, did you know? I’m pretty bad at explaining these “lesser” holidays to the kids. Maybe I’m too cynical… or boring… or something. But I’ve been trying with this one because Lex is supposed to make Valentine’s Day cards for his class. So far he’s pretty uninterested, even going so far as to say “But Mom, I don’t love my classmates!” Hard to argue with that. I’ve learned in these four short years with him to choose my battles carefully, and this will not be one of them. However, I still have two weeks to discuss it with him :)

This afternoon we talked about Valentine’s Day and while the kids colored with their “new” crayons I got out construction paper and scissors and made some hearts. He was happy. Then I made him a Valentine and he was VERY happy! I told him that the kids in his class would also be very happy if he made them Valentines. We talked about a few different ways to make cards and whether or not he had to write “Happy Valentine’s Day” on each of them. That’s a lot of writing for a kid! I left a tray of hearts on the table next to his list of classmates and told him that he could do what he wanted with them, offering to help if he wanted help. We’ll see how it goes.

My Valentine to Lex. He liked it so much he glued it to paper and added his own orange touches.

Have you seen our new art wall?

We had a crafty afternoon today. Thankfully, because yesterday we had a crappy afternoon!! I finally got around to a project we’ve been talking about for months (years?!) Not sure why it takes me so long to get to such things, especially easy things like this, but it does. For awhile now we have been collecting old and broken crayons is a special “to be melted” box. Not sure the kids knew what that meant, but they were eager to help. Today we actually melted them and made little crayon cakes. It was a very easy project. Put muffin liners in the pan, sort the crayons by color (or not) into the liners, filling about half full. Bake in the oven at 250 for awhile. The instructions I read said 5 minutes, but ours took almost 20 minutes. Not sure why. The instructions also said to watch carefully because crayons are flammable?!?!?? We watched VERY carefully. The last thing I want in my oven is burnt crayon smell! But after about 20 minutes they were nicely melted and we took them out to cool. An hour or so later the kids had a blast coloring with their “new” crayons. I kept thinking how much they look like Reece’s Peanut Butter cups. Yum :)

So pretty

Crayon cakes

Eve makes pretty swirls with her crayons

Happy December!

We started the day by tearing a ring off the count-down chains. Each year I have grand ideas for making an advent calendar, but then December rolls around and I haven’t made it past the idea stage, so I end up throwing something silly together instead. This year we made count-down chains with construction paper, glue, and crayons. Each day they tear off a ring. I like that it shows them the concept of time as the chains get shorter and shorter.

Count-down Chains (this year's advent calendar)

Naked walls

We then did school and playdates in the morning, then cleaning in the afternoon! Yay! It was actually a really nice afternoon. I took down all of the artwork (going back over 2 1/2 years!) from our walls and, with help from the kids, divvied it up into piles to be dealt with appropriately. I’m happy that Lex was very ok with the whole process :) Then the kids played so sweetly together while I did some cleaning and made dinner, with dance breaks in between. We’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music the past few days and they LOVE it when I dance with them. By “dance with them” I mean hold them in my arms and bop around for an entire song. They laugh and laugh, which, of course, makes me laugh and laugh. :) This afternoon they played with babies together. Eve’s babies were sick, so Lex gave them some medicine (Lego meds) and then he made them a rattle (Lego rattle) and then he got a baby for himself and they proceeded to feed their babies and read to them and put them to sleep. At one point Lex came over and said, “Mom, I have everything I need to take care of a baby!” Ha! If only wooden pickles and watermelon, a Lego rattle and a few books were all it took! :) Then we had pancakes for dinner (I tried REALLY hard to just have salad but ended up finishing their leftover pancakes… sooooo yummy!) and bedtime. A very nice day to start this exciting month.

Playing with babies and puppies

Tell me if you get bored of these posts.  They amuse me, but I’m a little biased.  On second thought, I’m in charge here so if you’re bored feel free to click to the next link in your reader ;)

New piggy banks

Eve’s piggy bank sprang a leak last week (“Some of us are carrying over six dollars in change here!”) and so we finally got around to making new banks yesterday.  I had visions of fancy drawings on each side, but they did their own thing.  Lex decided to draw on the paper sideways (from what I had intended) and therefore lots of the underlying tissue box is showing.  Eve decided that glue was her friend, so I snipped up lots of little shapes and she went to town.  They both had a blast making the projects and moving the money from the sad old piggies to the fresh new boxes.  Lex counted his change and proudly announced that he has 65 coins!  That made me laugh because he lost is place several times and started over, so he really has way more than 65, but he was super proud of that number :)

New "piggy" banks (should I call them "tissue box banks"?)

Train

As I said in a previous post, Lex has been on a drawing mission lately.  He spends lots of time at the table drawing colors.  I started asking him if he could draw actual things, like trees and trains, and he went to work.  Last night’s drawing was a train.  Why I’m writing about it is because I’m impressed with the elements he starts with.  The first picture here is his first attempt.  He drew the track, then the smoke, then the wheels, and when he started to draw the train he decided there wasn’t enough room.  So he flipped the page over and tried again, this time without the track, still drawing the smoke first, then the wheels, and then the train.  Isn’t that an interesting way to draw?  Always adding his name at the end :)

Train tracks, by Lex, minus the train

A train, by Lex, minus tracks

Gobble, gobble

November FINALLY arrived and I FINALLY let him do the foam turkey project that I bought at the store many months ago.  He was very excited, but it turned out to be a pretty lame project.  You have to glue all of those “feathers” to the back of the round ball (the body) and of course they didn’t stay there.  The Elmer’s glue we have just smeared down and the feathers kept falling, as the ball slid in the glue underneath it and within moments we were all covered in glue.  Mommy to the rescue though!  I pulled out a box of sewing pins (which were fresh in my mind because I had only just yesterday wowed the kids with my amazing button-sewing-on skills!).  We glued the pieces together and then I stuck a few pins in to hold everything in place.  Eve LOVED the pins and was thrilled that I let her play with them.  We’re living dangerously here!  While Lex and I glued the feathers, she took the poor turkey’s head and filled it with sewing pins :)

Eve, putting sewing pins in a foam turkey head :)

Lex and the finished turkey. He was so happy :)

And then…
Then we moved on to painting…

A lovely fall painting

and beading…

Lex wrote me a message on his necklace. I was happy :)

with a little love note from mommy to finish off our crafty morning.

So I wrote him a (not so) secret love note and folded it up very small. He was happy. :)

Take a look at the artwork the kids brought home recently.  Lex made the green “Lex” at school and when it came home we hung it on the door.  Apparently he laid on the floor, the teacher traced him on green paper, he colored it in.  Cute, but a little scary to see out of the corner of your eye from the top of the stairs.

A week later Eve brought home her “Eve” tracing from daycare.  This one is scary, I think.  Her head is disproportionate to her body.  I’m not sure if they traced her body or just did standard kid-shaped cutouts for all of the kids.  The green hand prints are cute though.  I suggested she hang it on the door next to “Lex” but she thought on top of would be better.  I think the whole thing is a little weird… though I find myself debating between taking them down for the holidays or just putting construction paper Santa hats on them :)

Green Lex and photo-head Eve, weird... :)