Evidence

My younger sister has given hats to all my kids. She knit a pumpkin hat for Cakes, which I think was one of her first knitting attemps. Cakes has worn that hat quite a lot, and it gets lots of dress-up use. Then this same sister gave Silly a strawberry hat. One of her fellow Waldorf teachers made a bunch and brought them to school to give away. She thought the strawberry one was cute, brought it home, and Silly claimed it. He wears it for all sorts of things, including many turns as the innkeeper in the Nativity story. She had us for Christmas and decided Bubba needed a fruit hat too, so she knit him a green apple hat. It took him a while to wear it, but lately he's started to like it, he can put it on by himself, and sometimes even asks for his hat after he gets his jacket on. And now I finally have some pictures to prove it.



getting ready to run away







Climbing in

 And while I'm looking at this picture, can someone please tell me why, when just about all minivans have two sliding doors now, do all of my children insist on entering and exiting the vehicle through the door that is the most inconvenient for the most people?

Hunting for Jewels

I have this conversation several times a day:

C or S: Can I watch some shows?
Me: No.
C or S: Can I play some video games?
M: No.
C or S: But there's nothing to do! This is so boring! etc...
30 seconds - 3 minutes later...
C or S: Can I go outside?
M: Yes
Alternate ending - approximately 2 minutes later I hear/see them having fun together in the house.

Here's what Silly and Bubba ended up doing yesterday morning:

They found my silicone muffin cups and pretended they were jewels. I have regular and mini cups in lots of colors and they spread them all over the house then went on a treasure hunt. They stayed busy for at least 30 minutes just spreading out and then collecting muffin cups.

Unexpected Pajama Day Issue

Yesterday was Pajama Day at Silly's preschool. He was pretty excited about not getting dressed in the morning and we didn't even comb his hair so it would be more authentic. :-)

I came into his classroom to help out and before they ate their snack-breakfast, the teacher did a survey with the kids. They had a choice to try hot chocolate and tea then vote for their favorite. She has several children with allergies and there was something in the hot chocolate they couldn't have so they tested fruit snacks - green v. red. I went over to Silly and quietly told him we don't drink tea. I'm pretty sure that had never come up for him before, and I never imagined it would come up in his preschool class. He started to get upset, eyes filling up with tears and said, "I didn't know it was tea." It told him it was OK, the teacher hadn't even started pouring any yet. I quietly told her we don't drink tea. She said something along the lines of "not even chamomile?" I just said "we don't drink tea" again. Silly tested the fruit snacks instead. When it was time to vote, no one voted for tea as their favorite. Whose 4yo drinks tea? I just thought that the whole thing was very odd. Silly probably would have tried it if I hadn't been there, and he may or may not have ever told me about it and either way it wouldn't have been the end of the world. But now I'm wondering, do I need to put "no coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco" on their school forms from now on just in case a teacher decides to offer them someday? I only ever imagined those issues coming up with friends and in other people's homes, not school.

(For my non-LDS friends, we follow something called the Word of Wisdom which tells us to eat a healthy, balanced diet and avoid coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs.)

Anyway, other than that little snag, PJ Day was fun. One mom sent in these cute and yummy pop-tarts on a stick made with pastry dough and strawberries. I'm gonna have to give those a try. The kids ate pancakes and fruit. It was nice to see that most of the kids really like fruit (there were grapes, strawberries and bluberries) just about all of them wanted some and lots asked for seconds.

The boys and I stayed in our PJs until 3:00 when I had to get dressed, drop them off with friends, and go look at some houses. The house huting was actually a little funny, because there were so many little things I noticed and thought, "What would Silly do with that?" Things like bedrooms with little doors to tiny attic spaces; this can't be Silly's room, he'd never stay out of that; columns - Silly would tie something to that; staircase with a landing - how soon before that wall has a hole in it from Silly racing something off the steps?; house next to a dried up lake - Silly would never stay out of that, but he'd get lots of use out of his boots. Some of these thoughts I was saying out loud and I was giving the impression that Silly is a terror. He's not a terror at all, just busy.

Can't

My struggles with Cakes continue. I decided several weeks ago to let her develop and demonstrate self-discipline. One unexpected thing happened - her handwriting has miraculously and drastically improved! She's perfectly capable of writing neatly, but doesn't care to take the time. I pestered her about it a lot in the past and she's had it on a goal chart for a good long time. I haven't said a word about it in weeks and suddenly everything she wrote last week was perfect. She put more stickers on her chart last week than she had in two months (and it's not that big a chart). I've only been checking her homework for completeness, not accuracy, and haven't lingered around offering help with homework or piano unless she asks for help.

Thursday after gymnastics she told me her coach asked her to do 10 push ups every night this week. She didn't have to tell me that, I never would have known any different, but she told me. The first night she tried there was lots of crying, "I can't" and "It's too hard." For some reason she thinks those are magic words that make unpleasant things disappear. But then Saturday she told Grandaddy all about how she's been working on push ups and demonstrated some very nice ones for him. Last night we did push ups as a family.

Friday I got another email from her piano teacher saying Cakes absolutely refused to even discuss the Spring Recital, said she's not going to do it and doesn't care that it's required. I should have thought to warn her about that. Cakes will do it, but she's not going to like it or be happy about it and there will probably be lots of tears involved.

Last night we were cleaning up the family room so we could play some family games. In the process I saw that she had not done her math homework at all. She came home from school yesterday, went out to the backyard with her backpack and then about 20 minutes later she came to ask what she could do next, leaving me to assume she'd done her homework. I told her she could practice piano, which she did for about 5 minutes. I assumed she'd been doing her homework outside. My immediate response after seeing her untouched math worksheet was "no friends tomorrow." We then told her she'd have to finish cleaning up then she'd miss out on game time while she finished her homework. She of course walked away wailing and crying and saying how mean I am and how unfair her miserable life his.

That made me mad (it usually does) so I called her back into the family room and yelled at her saying she has no right to call me mean because she made a bad decision. I trusted her to finish her work. I did not do or say anything mean to her, if she wanted to be mad at someone she ought to be mad at herself because she was the one that did something wrong not me. She's always telling Scott that I'm so mean to her, even says that I hate her and I'm pretty tired of hearing that and being blamed for every speck of unhappiness in her life.

She went back to her homework and we started playing Mouse Trap (a rather disastrous attempt I might add, with Bubba trying to help out). She eventually finished her math after wailing and crying and asking for help and saying she doesn't know what to do. The girl needs to learn to read and follow directions. She did manage to join us for some of the game and the we pigged out on leftover ice cream and brownies dropped off by our home teacher. (The remaining ice cream went in the trash.)

I was impressed this morning when she asked me to check her math worksheet and didn't lose it when I told her what was wrong and talked her through the solutions.

But then I was cleaning up this morning and went to put her piano notebook away. She told me she only had assignments in one of her four books this week, and I believed her and hadn't looked because I was letting her figure things out. She has assignments in all four of her books! And not just one page, but several!

Looks like we'll be having a talk when she gets home from school...