Note to Self

I recently found these notes that Cat wrote back when we were writing Valentine's notes to each other.   

Apparently, piano is bad for your sensers...

Eliza and The Destruction of Government Property

Eliza has transitioned to quiet time very well.  She still naps when she feels like it, but otherwise stays in her bed and peruses the 25 or so books she insists on keeping in there.  (I'm not exaggerating.)  But about 2 or 3 weeks ago, she didn't want to just stay in her bed looking at books, so she climbed out of the crib, found a pair of scissors Cat had stashed somewhere, and got into Cat's piggy bank.  She then destroyed a $1 bill and a $5 bill.

When Cat saw what Eliza had done to her money, she retaliated by cutting up Eliza's favorite blanket, then she broke the scissors.  But she was later remorseful and asked me to teach her how to sew the holes closed.

I decided that they were both to blame: Eliza for using scissors without supervision AND for climbing out of her bed during quiet time, Cat for having scissors in the bedroom AND not keeping her money in the safe place - the top dresser drawer - which she's been told to do many times.  So I gave Cat $3 out of Eliza's money from grandparents for her birthday and Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately, though, the cutting didn't end there.  During Eliza's fateful quiet time that day, she also cut the title page of one of our favorite picture books in half.  And Cat found this lovely bunch of blonde hair in Eliza's crib that afternoon:

Most of the hair she cut off came from the section by her left ear.  Below, you can see where I tried to get a good picture of it, but it was tough.  She was really upset with me while I was trying to take this picture.  I don't know if it was because she was embarrassed by what she'd done and felt bad about it or just because I was forcing her to take a picture when she didn't want to.

I didn't think the cut hair was bad enough to require a new haircut (though she needed one anyway, I admit) but after several days I could see it wasn't blending in and we needed to do what we could to make it look better.  So, we sought professional help.  And this time, Eliza was all smiles.

Eliza has been more of a troublemaker the last few months than she was in the past.  Her recent escapades include dumping a bag of cereal onto the counter, coloring in books, squeezing toothpaste into a bathroom drawer, stabbing cherry tomatoes with a fork, scattering dirt in the kitchen when we were planting wheatgrass, drawing on her skin and socks with a marker, and more that I think I've blocked from my memory.  

She has also started departing from the truth quite a bit.  When she's done something she shouldn't do, she almost always blames Jack.  One day Ben saw where she had cut slits in the the pages of another picture book and asked her about it.  She blamed Jack, and when Ben said that Jack hadn't done it, she went into an elaborate story about how Allie (a girl down the street who is in nursery with Eliza) had come in and cut the pages while Eliza was sleeping.  Eliza also likes to take things that Cat tells us about from school and tell her own rendition, as it happened to her.

Is this the Terrible Threes?

The problem with seeking comfort from comfort food...

This poor guy was playing on the playground last week when he lost his grip on some stairs.  He fell and ended up biting his tongue pretty badly.  He was bleeding a lot and chose to sit with me instead of playing with all of his friends for about 15 minutes.  Once the bleeding slowed down and we got him cleaned up and he had a chance to recover, he went back to playing, but I knew the bite was probably bad enough to affect his eating for the next couple of days.

When we went home that night, we could see that the bite was even worse than I thought - it went all the way through his tongue.  But he didn't seem very bothered by the wound.  He even (reluctantly) ate the red beans and rice I'd made for dinner, but begged and begged for some tomatoes.  Once he'd eaten several bites of beans and rice, we agreed to let him have a handful of grape tomatoes.  He started to eat the first one, but quickly screamed and burst into tears as the acid from the tomato started to burn his wounded tongue.  He was completely distraught at the thought of not being able to eat his beloved tuh-nay-doze, and comforted himself by just carrying around his little handful of tomatoes for the next 15 minutes.  It was pitiful.

He survived mostly on smoothies and milk for the next few days, and he was quite relieved to find that he could eat tomatoes again about 3 days after he hurt himself.  Yeah!  Life is good again.

Reading and Role-Play

Some dear friends in Georgia gave us the box set of "Little House" books before they moved to Italy.  I tried to get Cat interested in these books, and she tried on her own once or twice, but she just never took to them.  Then a couple of weeks ago, she needed another chapter book to read during reading time so I said, "just read this for a couple of days and maybe you'll like it." It only took one day.  This time, she was hooked.

She is now reading the second book in the series, and has spent a good bit of time role-playing as a pioneer.  After school last Friday she asked me if we had any pioneer clothes she could wear?  I told her that I didn't have a dress or anything in her size, but that she could try to wear my pioneer skirt.  We got it on her and tried our best to rig it to stay up, then she wore a peasant style top I made her a while ago with a bright pink cowgirl shawl from the dress-up box.  When she played outside with her friends that afternoon, she had them milking cows and feeding chickens, and referred to herself as "Ma."

Indoor Fun

The alternative to going outside in the cold is, of course, staying inside in the cold.  We've done plenty of that, too.  Here are some of our more fun indoor activities...

Marble run from toilet paper and paper towel tubes.

Eliza destroyed the lower portion the first day, so we modified it the next day.

Hopscotch on the carpet using masking tape.

Painting bread with colored milk.  (Idea from here.)

Jack and Eliza loved this.  We need to do it again.

Planting wheatgrass in preparation for Easter.

This went very well, until I began putting away the planted containers (in the office, which has lots of windows).  I came back to find that Eliza had been stirring hers so vigorously (which isn't even necessary with wheatgrass) that there was dirt on the floor all around her.  I didn't try to fix her container, I just told her it might not grow since the seeds are just supposed to be laid on top of the dirt.  Of course, it's growing just fine.

Color the Snow

I'm so happy to report that as I write this, the snow is mostly melted, the temperature is in the high 40s, and I am planning to take the kids to a playground when I pick Cat and Jack up from school this afternoon.  My sweet older neighbor began predicting an early spring weeks before Punxsutawney Phil, noting the early presence of birds.  So whether it's the lack of a rodent seeing its shadow or birds arriving earlier than normal, I'm just happy to have some above freezing weather.  (We've gotten so used to the cold that when it was in the low 40s one day in February Cat said it felt like summer and asked if we could go swimming.)

But we had a couple of fun snow things we did in the back yard that I wanted to share.  I'm even more happy to do so now that the snow is mostly gone, hopefully for good.

After we tried spraying the snow with colored water and it didn't go so well, I decided to buy a few squeeze bottles, you know, like the ones restaurants use for condiments.  Ben took the kids outside to squeeze colored water on to the snow and it worked much better than spraying.  It's kind of hard to see here, but there really are streaks of color in the snow.

This idea came from here.  Fill water balloons with colored water, freeze, peel off the balloons,

then decorate the yard.  The filling part was the hardest.  The balloons were too small to fit over

any of my faucets, so I finally ended up using the squeeze bottles I mentioned above.

The "decorating" fun didn't last as long as I thought it would, but Jack and Eliza still thought

it was cool.  And I enjoyed seeing the colors on the back deck until they melted away.

(Which I also enjoyed seeing...)

Everyday Stuff - Feb 2013 Edition

Jack and Eliza were playing with this cool race track Grammy gave Jack for Christmas, which came with cars that climb up inclines pretty well.  Eliza wondered if the cars would drive over her?  Then Jack tried it out, laying the track over his neck.

Cat has been playing tons of Uno lately, mostly with Dad.

They even came up with their own rules and specific method of playing,

then they devised a whole new game.  Jack and Eliza have been trying to learn too.

"Mommy, I got all the stickers.  That's a lot of stickers."

We had the bright idea to use our passes to go to a family fun center the afternoon of President's Day.

Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the pass holders in Utah and Salt Lake Counties had the same idea.

All of the free-for-pass-holders attractions had ridiculous lines, so we let our kids play in the (free) play area for a little while and enjoy the surrounding arcade games (which we also didn't pay for...).  15 minutes later we were on our way to their favorite place on earth, a McDonald's with a two-story play place, which was much less crowded and much less noisy.

One day in mid-February the temperature reached a balmy 36 degrees, so we celebrated by going outside to draw with sidewalk chalk.  Here is Eliza working on a self-portrait.

Jack drew a spider (right beside him) and a web.

Sunday quiet time.

I'm a little embarrassed about how proud I was that there was a day this month when I not only got myself and my children dressed... I also clothed every single baby doll in the playroom.  A new record!

I was outside with the kids one afternoon and burst out laughing when I looked up to see this.

Cat and I went to see the ballet of Sleeping Beauty at BYU, with Cat's friend from 1st grade and her mother.  I thought the ballet was very well done, though much longer than I expected.  Tchaikovsky's original score was beautifully performed by a full orchestra, and I was surprised that I recognized one whole song from the Disney movie (the theme for "Once Upon a Dream") and at least one other little bit that was in the movie.

The girls danced and twirled through intermission, then danced and twirled to the car when the ballet was over.  When I asked Cat, who hasn't expressed a bit of regret for quitting ballet after one recital last year, if she'd like to take ballet again, she smiled and said, with a twinkle in her eye, "Maybe."

Powdered sugar shaker dispenser.

Sometimes one of the most difficult things about having to walk Jack in and out of school

every day is that Jack doesn't want to leave.  Other times, Eliza is the one who wants to stay..

Another reason why Ben is so awesome.

Eliza likes Asiago cheese, apparently.

Cat found some old maps and left them out, so J & E had fun playing with them

one day.  "I found our house!" Jack said to Eliza while she looked at a Florida map

and he looked at an oversized Cars coloring page.

Jack is still establishing the habit of using a napkin.

Any guesses what we had for dinner? 

I've never been in a post office with a mounted TV playing "Popeye" to an empty bench, but I was eager for Jack and Eliza to take advantage of it when I saw the length of the line.

The kids had dentist appointments last week, and Eliza was a model patient.

She was obedient and still and easy for the hygienist to take care of.

Jack screamed and wailed and it took me holding him down so that the hygienist could spend 3 minutes on his teeth.  (There ended up being an insurance issue for Cat, so we'll have to take her back another day.)  They were all rewarded with a quarter-sized token, which Jack used on a pony ride outside the entrance.  He was kind enough to share the ride with Cat and Eliza.

On the day the librarian at the Orem library helped us find FOUR awesome picture books about construction, Jack had a hard time sitting through lunch.  Normally, I'd insist that he stay in his seat until he's finished, but I let it slide that day.

P.S.  I love librarians.  They are very special people.