Say Cheese!

Smiling baby is the best!  I could stare at her all day if all she did was smile.

Preschool Science Experiment - I is for Ice

Whenever I have an unusually shaped plastic form to throw out, I fill it with water and freeze it. Sometimes we do something specific with the weird ice block, but most of the time I just hand it to the kids and say, "Go outside and play with this." Even now, they still love it.

Recently, we had a package of cookies and the plastic tray had three long columns. I froze it and decided to use it as a language/science experiment for Natalie - who is rapidly adding to the number of letters she knows.

First we made an I with the pieces and I told her ice begins with I.  She knows i because it is in her name, but she is somehow very attached to lowercase letters and doesn't know very many uppercase ones.

Then we began the science part.  (We built our I in the shade.)

The top block is our control, it has nothing on it.  The middle block is covered in salt.  The bottom block is covered with red sugar.  Natalie is pointing to the one she thinks will melt fastest.

10 minutes

15 minutes

20-25 minutes later - the salt block is gone!

The big kids - who have melted ice with salt countless times - were just excited to check the progress as she was.  I don't know what it is about ice melting, but it is a fascinating thing.

2 Months Old

Looks who's 2 months old! She would not smile for the camera, so we have:
Irene with her pacifier...

And Irene without her pacifier.

Milestones to note -
* she can hold her head up when placed on her tummy - for a few seconds
* she can support her head when held upright most of the time
* she rolled over - truly - twice last week - the first time we think was a fluke, but the 2nd was for real.
* she smiles :)  socially at least once a day

Irene loves bathtime best of all.  Other times of the day she gets very cranky!  I suppose we all do!  But not all of us can scream at the top of our lungs to let the frustration out.  Currently she's been sleeping about 6 hours for her first stretch at night and 3-4 on the 2nd.  Super Sleeper!  She is just covered with chub and has grown so fast!  It is hard to believe she was such a tiny little baby just 2 months ago.

Caleb turns Nine!

Caleb turned nine last week!  Which means my blog is almost nine as well.  It has been a very long time since Caleb has had a "friend party" for his birthday and that was his special request.  He wanted to have a Toothless cake, watch How to Train Your Dragon 2, and shoot our model rocket.

Unfortunately HTTYD2 doesn't come out on DVD until November, so he settled for watching the How to Train Your Dragon.

The cake was easy!

I have not seen HTTYD2, but in HTTYD1, Toothless shoots fire from his mouth like a normal dragon.  In the shorts, his main weapon is to shoot blue plasma, so we stuck a blue rock candy in his mouth - the toy actually shoots a little projectile, so there was a hole in his mouth.

Movie time :)

Somehow we did not get any pictures of the rocket launches!  The boys had so much fun :)  Two of C's friends brought their sisters, and the girls were less impressed, but they had fun playing Frozen and turning cartwheels.

On Caleb's real birthday we had the leftover pieces of the cake (I cut it up to fit it into a container).

We also went to the zoo.  He bought a camera with some birthday money.  I told him he should do a guest blog post about our visit.

My big boy is big help!

It is such a joyful thing to celebrate your own child's birth.  I am so thankful for Caleb. :)

Pirates and Donuts

Avast ye land lubbers!

Ready fer some tasty grub!

4 dozen!  (We donated 3 boxes to the PEP snack bar.)

"All the work I put into being cute and they didn't share!"

Yum!

How to Get Free Donuts - a Lot of Them - Tomorrow

Tomorrow - September 19 - is Talk Like a Pirate Day and Krispy Kreme is observing it by giving away free donuts.  If you ask for a donut "like a pirate", they'll give you one donut.  If you DRESS "like a pirate", they'll give you a dozen.  You may remember that we participated last year!  We came home with 4 dozen donuts, shared them with everyone we could find on our street and still had donuts to throw away in the end.

The dozen donut giveaway requires that you include at least 3 pirate-y items in your costume.  So here is a quick tutorial on how to quickly create a tricorn hat:

Dig through your trash to find thick enough paper to make a hatband.  I used a political advertisement.  Cut into strips and staple into a circle that fits your head.

Cut three hill shapes from the long side of  black, brown, or your favorite color construction paper.

Staple hill shapes around the circle.

Staple ends of hill shapes together.

Voila - you can stop here or...embellish!

For Caleb we glued on a skull and crossbones, but I like feathers.  To create a feather - cut a long tapered shape from construction paper and snip the edges to make look...well...feathery.

Be sure to leave the middle!

Staple feather into inside of hat - I cut one of the snips too deep and had to reinforce with a toothpick and tape.

Be Blackbeard - minus the beard...

or Captain Smollett.

Add an eye patch and a hoop earring and you've got yourself a dozen donuts!

Queen Irene

 Have I mentioned how fun/easier/awesome it is to have big kids?  They rock.  They are a huge help, plus they freak out when Natalie does something unsafe around the baby so I don't have to!

Apparently Irene things big kids are pretty great too.  She doesn't smile much yet, but she acts like she enjoys their attention (unless she really wants Mommy and only Mommy).  She likes to hear them sing and we make up new words for songs all the time.  I like to have a "how to spell your name song" for each of the kids, so I've been trying out tunes.  I'd like to find another one, but the one I made up most recently is in danger of sticking.  There was this Dolly Parton  song called Jolene and all I could remember of it was "Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene - I'm begging of you please don't take my man."   So I changed it to "Irene (x4) - Irene is spelled I-R-E-N-E" - the lyrics are fudged a little to fit.  I told the kids the song origin and now Natalie likes to sing "Irene, Irene!  Please don't take my man!"

I really want to find a different tune, but that just sticks in my head! 

First Day of PEP

2014

2013 - This is not a first day of PEP picture, because I didn't take one last year, but this picture was taken the first week in September.

2012

2011

2010

Excuse me while I wipe my eyes!

I cannot get over how much more grown up they look!  Natalie was super excited to have classes this year.  She loved her sewing class the best.  Annalise said she liked all her classes.  Caleb totally needs to learn what a "spoiler" is.  A girl in his Little House class commented on how sad it was that Jack died and Caleb told her not to worry because he wasn't really dead.  He said some of the class was mad because he told what was going to happen!  Irene slept through most of it and has the distinction of currently being the youngest baby at PEP.