Eat, Sleep, Create

Showing off the big muscles he grew from eating his veggies

Sleeping princess (and her frogs)

First attempt at finger painting. She H-A-T-E-D it.

Little girl's first masterpiece... in crayon

Building Courage... and Houses

I have a confession I've not been able to write here yet. I am one of those moms. The ones who go overboard too often. I blame medical school for this. Med school is somewhat rigorous. When I finished it and started being a stay-at-home mom, I filled the void left by patient care and studying with obsessing over every aspect of parenting. Some of that has subsided with time (and a second child... oh, just LET her climb up the pantry shelves and fall on her head and get it over with). Some has not. One area that hasn't changed is my love of incessant "enrichment-type activities." I blame my degree in education for that one.

And so... you might as well know the truth about me... my son has a weekly "theme." We check out books from the library, do projects, occasionally take field trips and even make snacks all week long around the theme. This week we talked about building houses. We checked out the books:

• Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton This was a wonderful choice for my almost-4-year-old. It's a sweet story, complex enough to hold his attention but moved quickly enough not to lose it.
• The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton This was not strictly about construction, but since we talked mostly about building houses and it featured a house, and since it does deal with urbanization (and thereby indirectly with construction) and mostly because it isa classic and a Caldecott winner, we checked it out. It is a good story, but sad (with a happy ending). Luckily, the sadness was mostly above my son. He likes it because there's a train in it. So there you go.
• Building a House by Byron Barton Lots of bold, simple drawings like all of Barton's books. This book is probably a little simple for my son, however it was still a good description of the steps in the building process.
• Building with Dad by Carol Nevius This was a neat book that opened up instead of to the left. It features a child helping his dad build a new school... his new school. Theillustrations are life-like and drawn from different perspectives than most (from low down looking up, for example).
• Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson This is an illustrated version of Stevenson's poem from "A Child's Garden ofVerses." I loved it because it'sdifferent from most of what we read and again, it's aclassic. Though to be honest, it was my son's least favorite of the five.

Our activities for the week included:

• Making a blueprint. My son had a fantastic time painting the paper blue, but the concept of the floor plan wasprobably a little to complex for him. We followed the directions here: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2010/05/be-an-architect.html (As an aside, there will be a LOT of this website here because I love, LOVE, LOOOOVE it.)
• Making a house "H" (and "h"). Each week,we talk about a letter. At first we tied it to learning the names of uppercase letters, then lowercase letters, and then the sounds letters make. He knows all of those now, so now we are practicing writing them. The link is here:http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/category/lowercase-h We also did an uppercase H with no chimney, but a roof on top.
• Building a skyscraper. We also work on a number each week. Right now I think learning to write the alphabet is enough for him and numbers have never been as easy for him as letters are. So we still focus on recognizing the numbers (which he does, but only through "10") and counting. We based the skyscraper on this one: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2009/02/shapes-in-the-city.html, however instead of focusing on window shapes, we talked about "10" and put 10 windows on each side of the building. This was a great project because he's used it lots to play cars and trains with.
• Visiting a construction site. Luckily this was easy since there is a lot of construction in our neighborhood. After making our own blueprint and reading books about the steps in building a home, we talked about different homes in different stages of construction.
• Building houses out of his snacks. I gave him graham crackers and cantaloupe and apples cut in triangles and squares so he could use the crackers as houses, the triangles as roofs and the squares as windows.

We had a fantastic week-before-the-4th. We took a trip to Great Wolf Lodge, which I HIGHLY recommend as a family vacation. We made the trip with 3 other families and we all had a fantastic time. The place is a hotel/resort/water park. It does have some outdoor pools and slides, but most of it is indoors so it's open year-round. And while the water attractions (pools, slides, lazy river, gigantic fort with a 1,000 gallon bucket that dumps water every so often) are incredible, there is so much more. There's an arcade, a teen lounge with video games, story time in pajamas in front of the huge great room fireplace at night, and a fun game with magic wands that open chests and light up paintings all over the hotel. It was fun and will be even MORE fun when Miss I-Am-Not-Afraid-Of-Anything-And-Do-Not-Hold-My-Hand-In-the-Pool-Because-I-Can-Swim-ALL-BY-MYSELF (no she can't) is a little older.

After Great Wolf Lodge, we headed to Austin for a few days at a lake house with my in-laws. If they'd allowed me to, I would still be standing at the back window staring at the scenery. The Hill Country is so beautiful. The weather was relatively cool, we rented jet skis one day, swam in the lake lots and spent a lot of time relaxing. It was a welcome change from the routine.

It's always hard to come back to reality after a great vacation, but we've managed to have fun amidst sitting around sulking about not living at a water park or in a lake house with a phenomenal view. Yesterday, I set up an obstacle course for the kids in the living room. Such a simple thing, but I don't do things like that for them nearly enough. Much giggling ensued as they crawled through a tunnel, knocked down big cardboard blocks with a ball, jumped over (on in my daughter's case, tried not to fall over) "hurdles," and mostly jumped into a huge pile of pillows. Truth be told, they would have had just as much fun just jumping into the pillows over and over.

Today we took a trip to Barnes and Noble. We have tried a new chores/rewards method with my son which is working well. He has a small glass bowl and a plastic bag full of arts and crafts pom poms. He has a list of responsibilities, each earning different numbers of pom poms. When he does something on the list, he checks to see how many pom poms he gets and puts the correct number into the bowl. When the bowl fills up, he gets to choose a reward. Today he chose a trip to B&N to play with their train table (which is SO much better than his train table) and pick out a new train (Annie and Clarabel). Ok, ok. It's a reach. It's not as cool and using a magic wand to open treasure chests or riding a jet ski down the Colorado River. But he was having fun, she was having fun and so I had fun.

The Good, The Bad and The Silly

Pretty much describes every day in the life of a family with small kids.

Good things happen, generally just when you have finally decided that they never will. Just when you look at your chubby-thighed cherub of a 14-month-old and envision her graduating from high school without ever uttering a single word (and maybe, just maybe, as they hand her a diploma, she'll get so caught up in the emotion that she'll float momentarily out of sulky teen angst, look directly into my eyes and say, "Mama?" And there will be tears and rejoicing! )... Um... What was I saying? Right. Good things. In any case, just when I had given up on ever hearing my youngest speak, she did. We were in the car driving from somewhere in TX to somewhere else in TX and she was fussing, "mamamamamamamamaaaaaaaaaaa...." All of a sudden, you could almost her the lightbulb click on. She stopped, said, MAMA?!" and twisted around in her carseat to look right at me. She has since said, "Mama!" seven billion times, to which I always reply, "Yes, baby? Good Job! Yes, MAMA!" and smile. And she smiles back, satisfied and proud. So good.

And as much as you expect your child to never meet milestones you want them to meet, you also get totally taken by surprise when some sweet stage you hope never ends actually ends. This past week my son fell and bumped his head. He fussed, I held him close and kissed his bump. He pulled away, rubbing the offending spot and said, "Mommy, kissing doesn't help anymore." Ouch (ironically, a kiss would have helped MY owie).

Luckily, even though parenting (and scorpions) sometimes hurt, you can pretty much count on at least one good laugh a day. Last Saturday I was walking through the kitchen and stepped right on a scorpion. I have been wondering when this would happen since we've seen our fair share of the little hateful jerks in the past 2 years. I am only glad it was me and not one of the kids (though I would have been ok with it being my husband and not me). In any case, I sort of exclaimed loudly and everyone came running to see what happened. I cautioned my son not to get too close and he leaned over my mortally wounded opponent and exclaimed, "Oh. my. LORD. He is so cute! Can we keep him as a pet? Please, please, pretty please?" I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff. I also have no idea what made him think of Santa on a 95 degree day in July, but I did catch him peering up the chimney tonight calling, "Santa? Saaaaanta!" I asked if he thought Santa was up there and he said, "I dunno. Probably."

Good, bad and silly. Just another week.