Our local children’s museum had a library day today: free admission to anyone with a library card, crafts at tables set up in every room, and a reading and book signing by children’s author Matthew McElligott.
Most of the crafts and activities had a general reading theme, including lots of tables to make bookmarks and one featuring Curious George. Since Matt McElligott’s two most popular books are about Backbeard the Pirate, several of the tables had a pirate theme. At the first table, just inside the doors, the kids could make pirate flags by putting fun foam stickers onto pieces of felt. JediBoy chose to make his a pirate ghost flag.
In another room was a fantastic activity. The library staff had photocopied black and white pictures of Backbeard, and brought along a whole bin full of fabric scraps (from a librarian’s personal quilting stash) so the kids […]
Original post by piseco
I live in a house full of bibliophibians.
This week, the local branch of a large publishing company is holding its annual warehouse sale. It turns out that our community is full of bibliophibians.
Yes, I need more practice on adjusting-one’s-camera-settings-in-the-dark. But the photo above shows a small portion of the line of traffic waiting to get in to the warehouse.
Once we got in, we were greeted by piles and piles of empty boxes waiting to be filled, and rows and rows of remaindered, overstocked and returned books piled on pallets.
Books with a cover price of $9.99 or less are $1 after tax. From $10-$14.99, the books are $2, up to $24.99 are $3, and so on. Nearly half the sale is kids’ books - paperbacks, hardbacks and board books, DK readers, DK Eyewitness, Caldecotts and Newberrys and more. We restrained ourselves greatly and only bought two […]
Original post by piseco
…so have you, you, you. You came too, too, too. You’ve been to the zoo, zoo, zoo.
At least you can imagine you were there!
Today was BabyGirl’s second birthday, and we celebrated by meeting friends at a zoo between our homes - about an hour’s drive for each of us.
We did the entire zoo twice, had lunch, watched all kinds of animals, ran and played and wore ourselves out. We were at the zoo for almost 6 hours. It was a great treat, and the kids loved seeing all the “elimals” (it sounds like a cross between Elmo and animal). Especially the monkeys, the “elimunts” (you can figure that one out!) and the penguins. Oh, the penguins.
JediBoy was the first to figure out, by accident, that if he walked along the glass holding a graham cracker, one particular penguin would follow him, trying to get […]
Original post by piseco
We had a late start today after staying up to watch and celebrate the election results. I spent the morning singing Si, Se Puede and then Everybody Rejoice (thanks to PisecoSis - this is the one that is now lodged firmly in my brain!). I’m tingly with hope.
Things felt smooth and happy - coincidence, or because of my good mood? Whatever the reason, we found a good balance today between together and alone, noisy and quiet, clean and messy, studious and fluff.
We danced to Laurie Berkner songs on BabyGirl’s new rough-and-tumble cd player. We finished the last lesson of Math U See Beta. We read a pile of books, some aloud, some silently, in a tangle on the floor. We sorted through boxes my Dad brought last weekend, including trying to put together a dozen wooden dinosaur models. We did some worksheets from […]
Original post by piseco
JediBoy could just as easily be called KnightBoy because he continues to be fascinated with knights and castles. Do you remember his bliss in July, when we got to see a reenactor speak at our library? Last night we went out to see the same knight speak again.
William the Defender spoke with the same depth of information and humor as he did the last time we saw him. I won’t repeat it here, but if you’re interested, I tried to cover at least a little of what we learned in my post from July. PisecoDad was seeing him for the first time, and especially liked his dry wit and breadth of knowledge.
JediBoy loved seeing the weapons, and the armor, and trying on the helmets. BabyGirl enjoyed people watching and playing with the boy about her age three seats down. The presentation lasted for two hours, and […]
Original post by piseco
We had a lovely, informative, organized-by-someone-else homeschool field trip today, and I was thrilled! About 140 homeschoolers (including younger siblings and parents) gathered at the fire station for a series of activities.
JediBoy liked examining all the equipment close-up.
BabyGirl was thrilled to have inherited her brother’s fleece fireman’s hat!
The firefighters taught the kids about fire safety and equipment. The K-1st group had a little lesson and then took turns “sleeping” on a cot, hearing the smoke detector, crawling to the door, feeling the knob, opening the door and crawling to safety. The 2nd-4th group went on a fire scavenger hunt in three different rooms, and the 5th-and-up group had a lesson on the history of firefighting and equipment. The kids were given a pizza lunch and a chance to explore the trucks, and the firefighters even demonstrated their jaws of life and popped the roof off a […]
Original post by piseco
That’s my little boy. Tonight he had the chance to walk on the field with the local university soccer team and their opponent and stand with them during the national anthem. Real soccer players. Real big ones. He was thrilled beyond measure. I can’t believe that one day he’ll be that big, but I know his dreams already are.
Original post by piseco
We had a marvelous time - JediBoy’s naturally dour expression aside - at the opera today! It was a wonderful experience, a short 40-minute program full of laughter and song. There were enough speaking parts that the kids could easily follow the story, and some wonderfully funny moments of Pig-and-Wolf drama set to familiar passages from Mozart operas. The kids all seemed to enjoy it, and BabyGirl was held absolutely spellbound, sitting perfectly still on my lap to watch the entire performance. She seemed to be able to recognize a bit of the Three Little Pigs story we’ve been telling all week.
The kids even got to chat with - and post with - the four-person cast after the show.
After the opera, JediBoy asked to go out to eat, since we were all dressed up anyway. What’s better than an opera and some ice cream? […]
Original post by piseco
A 3-hour park date with him…
can make her feel like this…
We spent 3 hours at one of our favorite playgrounds with Uncle M and Cousin C this morning, and the kids had a blast. Cousin C took a tumble down the tallest twisty slide - like a rock in the dryer, he was, poor thing! But he seemed no worse for wear a bit later. After her swing-nap, BabyGirl wanted to try the same slide, but I wasn’t about to let her go down alone.
This insulted her BabyGirl independence and she tried to climb off my lap as we were sliding. Her shoe caught a bit on the edge of the slide (though we were going slowly enough that I stopped us and fixed the problem right away) and her hip seemed to bother her after that.
So our afternoon at home was a quiet and as-still-as-possible […]
Original post by piseco
We are home.
The three days spent focused on Great-Aunt Mel’s funeral passed without any extra trouble. BabyGirl was happy to stay at camp with Aunt Robin and JediBoy was good as gold during the service, paying attention and asking suitably thoughtful questions.
The rest of the week, my kids turned to the lake for endless entertainment.
JediBoy loved the paddleboat, now that he can reach the pedals himself. He was a water-boy, an explorer, more outgoing and independent than ever before. He made an eight-year-old friend four camps up the lake and spent large parts of Saturday and Sunday out with him, roaming the land and shore between our two camps (all the camps in between are either family or friends). Another night, he went over to talk to the fifteen-year-old girl at the campfire next door, and stayed with her for an hour an a half, roasting […]
Original post by piseco
12 hours.
5 kids.
1 van.
1 zoo.
30 kinds of animals.
3 parks.
4 carousels.
6 happy meals.
2 sheet pizzas.
16 balloons.
196 photographs.
1 happy 4 year old.
That’s how we spent our day. It was lovely. Happy birthday, Anna!
Original post by piseco
Ever since the day I saw these sand molds on My Mom Shops, I knew we had to have them. The problem was that mymomshops herself thought these were only available from French store FNAC. I did a few quick searches that night before bed, trying to find them in the US, but I struck out. So I sent out a quick email at 9:30 asking PisecoSis for help, she put the word out on her LJ, and by 10:35 I had an email reply with the website for Discount School Supply. And I ordered these darling, marvelous molds.
Sand molds of an Egyptian pyramid, the Acropolis, a Mayan step pyramid, the Coliseum, and the Taj Mahal. Too cool!
They arrived today, and JediBoy and I took them up the hill to the park with the BIG sand box.
The Taj Mahal and the step pyramid were […]
Original post by piseco
Poor BabyGirl.
She’s the right size, just slimy enough and close enough to non-verbal so that immediately upon leaving the theater where we had just watched The Clone Wars, we all started calling her “Stinky the Huttlet.”
I never thought I’d call any Hutt cute, but Stinky was cute in that big-eyed-baby-Ewok way. Well, a big-eyed-slimy-green-larva-baby way.
We all enjoyed our afternoon out. Of course, we’ll go for anything in the Star Wars universe! I thought the movie was entertaining, even if the clone-on-droid-on-clone battle scenes did get monotonous. The film, for me, lacked a certain spark - but I think that’s bound to happen when you try to squeeze a feature film in between the events of two already fleshed-out films. The CGI was fun. I liked that they included Ahsoka, a young female Jedi padawan who is constantly fighting against people treating her differently because she […]
Original post by piseco
We went for a hike this evening… although I suppose I should call it a nature walk, or perhaps just an outing, because a hike seems to imply some form of strenuous, heart-pounding movement. We ambled. We poked. We stopped at every little thing: each mushroom, each daddy long-legs, each hole or possible hole. We made it maybe 150 yards up the trail before deciding to turn around and amble our way back. We spent a long time listening to some type of hawk family above us. We investigated a big rotten log, chipping off bits of bark to see who lived inside. My curious son found every chewed nut and broken twig and worked to interpret those as signs of animal activity. My charming daughter decided it would be a good idea to stop and smell the mushrooms. It was […]
Original post by piseco
What a good knight we had today…
Our local library brought in a man who is something of a medieval expert (though he says it makes him feel old to be called An Expert) with his arms & armor.
JediBoy was in heaven.
The knight started out dressed simply, something like this.
Then he had one of the older boys come up from the audience to be his squire, and help him get dressed. The knight told lively stories and demonstrated things as he added each piece to his outfit. He explained all about how chain mail is made, and why they made it that way, and demonstrated how swords don’t cut or pierce it and regular arrows can’t pierce it either. As he brought out each piece of armor, helmet or weapon, he described it, explained how it came to be developed, and what it was good for. By […]
Original post by piseco
A day full of sticky.
Mostly because of this:
JediBoy dashed through our day’s work in his excitement to spend the afternoon with Aunt R. First we went to a children’s concert at the library, then - because it had rained and the parks were soggy - to the air-conditioned glory of Chuck E. Cheese. That’s where BabyGirl got the ice pop. She LOVED it, all the way down to the very bottom. JediBoy just loved all the attention from Aunt R.
We made a second library stop, across the river, this evening to see a magic act which pleased JediBoy, and he even got to pet the rabbit, which made his face light up like this:
Any day that makes my two kids look that happy is a big ol’ success in my book.
Original post by piseco
Today finally feels like a real summer day to me. Not because of the heat (we’ve had lots of that) or the sun (we’ve had our fair share of that too) but from some indescribable quality. Maybe it’s because this is the first full week the public schools are out and so all the places - the library, the parks, the stores and restaurants - have switched into it’s-summer-cater-to-the-kids mode. Or because we spent the late morning with friends who we don’t see often enough during the year but try to catch up with in the summer. Whatever the reason, it feels like full-blown summer today.
Before we got into the van, we noticed that one small area (two square feet?) of dirt and plants near our steps was teeming with these neat little red bugs. I haven’t looked them up yet - do you know […]
Original post by piseco
If Friday was the day of exploring nature and taking nature photographs, Saturday was officially The Day of The Babies. Even though Andrew couldn’t make it because he was sick and Colin wasn’t feeling well (teething, we hope, was all that was behind it), the three babies had a blast.
The adults had two jobs to do: putting in our small (three-section) dock, and putting in the cradle for the end of the big dock. JediBoy was in the water with them (yes, I stayed on shore both times) splashing about and offering his very best advice. No one was seriously injured, though now that we’re all thirtysomethings instead of college hardbodies (cough, cough), everyone who helped was stiff and sore the next day, and Uncle Mark’s finger got just a tiny bit smooshed at one point. But just a little.
Besides that, we did what we do […]
Original post by piseco
A three-hour drive doesn’t seem so long, until you have to (a) cram the back of a mini-van completely full of food for meals, food for snacks, food for snacks to eat in the van before we get there, clothes for three days, clothes for kids for three days (figure one extra outfit per day), clothes for kids at the lake for three days (figure three extra outfits per day), shoes, shoes for when the first shoes are soaking wet, diapers, overnight diapers, swimmy diapers, regular medicine, just-in-case medicine and bandaids and ointment and bug spray and extra sunblock, cameras, c-pap, books and toys for the ride, and ten thousand other things you’ve forgotten and (b) take your oldest child to a t-ball game from 6-7pm, cheer him on for three innings in which he gets one hit (off the pitcher, not the tee, which makes a huge difference to […]
Original post by piseco
We had a wonderful trip to Cleveland!
I know I won’t have time to post about it all at once, so I’m starting with Friday.
We were, miraculously, packed and ready on Friday morning and left the driveway at 9:04 (we were shooting for 9 am, that’s close enough!).
The kids rode okay in the van. It took us about six hours to drive. BabyGirl took a couple of gigantic naps, and JediBoy was thrilled to find a new-to-him Pokemon Ruby cartridge in the bag I packed for him.
We stopped a little more than halfway to have lunch, and got to our hotel about 4:30. JediBoy was especially tickled to be staying in a hotel for only the third time in his life, and BabyGirl had made a GuateTot friend before we even left the lobby. Both kids liked the elevators and the luggage carts.
We brought our luggage in, […]
Original post by piseco
Even though JediBoy is still not feeling himself, and coughs terribly, the doctors assured us that he’s not contagious and so we felt okay about taking the kids to the zoo this afternoon. After being a bit down yesterday because I’ve been letting our illnesses slow us down, I was determined to enjoy life at our own pace today.
We had gorgeous sunshine and a wonderful time at the zoo. It was the first time we’d taken BabyGirl, and she loved all the animals. We spent almost an hour in the lower zoo watching the goats and lemurs. And then the goats again. And some lemurs. And back to the goats. And, hey! There are the lemurs! Watching BabyGirl explore the zoo on foot was priceless. She didn’t want to head up the hill to the upper zoo, and kept running […]
Original post by piseco
I fully intended to get some decluttering and basic cleaning done today, since my dad and his wife are arriving tomorrow for a visit. Instead, I found myself pulled down two delightful rabbit trails.
This morning, JediBoy wanted me to sit and watch the birds with him. He added a few treats to the feeders and then got out our Celebrate Urban Birds clipboard and took the data himself! It was midmorning and not the best time for birds at our feeders - local traffic was high - so the only species he saw from our checklist was the American Crow, but he also saw several Juncos and a White-Throated Sparrow.
I had never heard about the polymorphism of the White-Throated Sparrow before, but JediBoy and I found it fascinating. Basically, in the spring, two color varieties of the white-throated sparrow appear - as in the picture […]
Original post by piseco
It is wonderfully springtime here - warm but not hot, sunny with a breeze. We love to be outside! This week the local schools have spring break, so we had a date at the park with some of our friends who go to public school or preschool. It was a fantastic way to spend the day.
Original post by piseco
Don’t blink! We spent yesterday afternoon enjoying the sunshine at a playground with Leigh and her kids. But the sunshine is fleeting and this morning it’s already raining again, and will be gloomy for the rest of the weekend.
Don’t blink! The kids had so much fun flitting from one thing to another at the playground, especially loving the twisting, spinning dizzy-makers and the rocking motorcycle. They played together in various groupings and thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon outing. But their groupings were fleeting, so this one picture of the five of them in one frame was the only way to capture the whole group.
Don’t blink! When we got back to Leigh’s house, JediBoy came in for a popsicle and casually said, “Oh, look, Mom, my other tooth came out.” He handed me his second baby tooth to save for the tooth fairy and wandered […]
Original post by piseco
We’ve had our Celebrate Urban Birds packets for two whole days, and this morning JediBoy was bursting to get out and record some birds “for the scientists.” He loves the idea of participating in real research by doing one of his favorite things - birdwatching.
Although I explained to him that it’s perfectly okay to watch birds in our own yard, he was adamant that our first data come from somewhere else. He chose his favorite park, which has a playground and then a long grassy, lightly-wooded area next to a stream. We hadn’t been there over the winter so he was very excited to get there. It was gray and drizzling during our ten minute watch so we didn’t see any birds in our selected area, but “Zero Means a Lot” - to quote one of the study’s slogans. The researchers are interested both […]
Original post by piseco
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