Friesencold

This morning, I finished reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave and it ranks right up there with The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns (both by Khaled Hosseini). I loved the story of Little Bee so incredibly much. I loved it from beginning to end. My life stopped so I could read, read, read it. The book ended and I have been a bit out of sorts all day. I am really looking forward to reading Chris Cleave’s earlier book called Incendiary.

One reason I got to read so much over the last few days was that my mom came into town for a quick visit. It was a lot of fun and I always wish she could stay longer. At dinner tonight, which was after we had just taken Gigi back to the airport, Bauer and I talked about all the things we did with Gigi and I asked him what his favorite was.

Here’s what Bauer and I named that he got to do with Gigi while she was here:
-Went to Target
-Walked to downtown Naperville for dinner at Lou Malnati’s
-Went to Barnes and Noble
-Played in the backyard a lot
-Had numerous picnics in the backyard (at least 4 in 3 days)
-Played with cars
-Read books
-Played and jumped on the air mattress

Bauer said his favorite thing was going to Lou Malnati’s with Gigi (and the rest of us) to have pizza.

That picture is on TJ’s phone, but I have some others to share. We have been on the letter L for the past couple of days, which was perfect for Lou Malnati’s pizza on Friday night.

Here are the L books,

and here’s Gigi reading them to Bauer over breakfast one morning.

Another big hit for the letter L was the Lite Brite I recently bought for five bucks at a homeschool curriculum resale. I was unsure of what exactly I would be getting inside the taped-up box, but I figured for such a small price, it was worth the chance. Everything works, and there are plenty of the unused Lite Brite punch-through black pages for Bauer to do. A nice surprise!

Of course, his first pick was the train!

This is a great activity for eye-patching, too.

Before L was I, J, and K.

For I, we looked at igloos on Google Images and then made an igloo on construction paper.

Next Bauer made an igloo out of letter blocks.

Then we went to a nearby park and saw that the tiered climbing wall looked like an igloo.

If You Want to Read Some I Books….

Or you could play I Spy Bingo (fun times).

I had trouble deciding on J books. I had first gotten the Jellyfish one and a couple of books by Jan Brett to be our J books. But then I realized I really wanted to use the Jan Brett ones for N (Noah’s Ark) and T (Trouble with Trolls, which also includes a dog named Tuffi). So we went with these two shown below, and then on the last day of the letter J, Bauer was looking through the books on his bookshelf and pulled out A Big Bed for Jed and said that should have been a J book too. Oh well…

We went all around downtown Naperville looking for places starting with J to take pictures of. Our first stop was Jamba Juice, and Bauer (and Cash) got a smoothie from there for our J snack.

Ezra Jack Keats was featured for the letter K. We had checked out all of Keats’ books one time a while back from the library, so this time, I knew just which ones I wanted to get for Bauer. A Letter to Amy is the one he liked best.

We made a koala mask, which Bauer really enjoyed putting on and showing to Cash first, and then to TJ when he got home from work that day. I found the pattern on EnchantedLearning.com.

And last is our K snack: a kiwi shared by Bauer and Cash, who shared a dislike for the fruit as well (this picture was before Bauer had tasted it).

Oh, I just realized we’ll start M on Monday and Gigi bought Bauer some little packets of M&Ms for him to have on Memorial Day. That’s sweet!

The other day Bauer and Cash were mesmerized by the construction going on just outside our fence out back. I kept checking on them from inside where I was fixing lunch, but they weren’t budging from that spot until the workers packed up and went to lunch!

Now that it’s hot, we’ve gotten out the slip n’ slide, and Bauer’s having the time of his life. We invited our neighbor over to play yesterday afternoon.

I guess they were either resting or sun-bathing.

While Bauer plays in the water, this is the kind of stuff Cash is up to.

I do believe Bauer and Cash are starting to be good buddies.

Cash is growing up so fast it is hard to believe. Boy we love this little monkey who loves his little monkey!

I haven’t been reading that much at all lately and it’s kinda making me crazy.

I have come across a couple great quotes recently, though.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. -Gandhi

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next. -Mignon McLaughlin

I’m gonna have a whole bunch more quotes to read soon, and you can too – don’t miss out on (Miss)ion Amy K.R. this week!

I hardly ever quit a book halfway through, but I just quit one. I tried and tried to read Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, but I finally decided it’s okay for me to quit in order to pick up other books that I know I will like more. I am very happy to be reading Alexander McCall Smith’s newest installment of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, called The Double Comfort Safari Club. I hope it’s doubly comforting to me as I try and make my way out of the reading desert.

I did just finish a re-reading of Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr, and loved the chapter called “Ego and Soul.” If I tried to write what I liked from that chapter, I’d end up writing out the whole chapter, so I’ll spare you. But don’t spare yourself – if you need help letting go of control, this is a book to read.

I have a couple more books lined up that my mom happily mailed to me when I asked for book help. Of course, she sent the AMS one, but the other two are Little Bee by Chris Cleave and Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Which makes me think of Marisa de los Santos and wonder when she’s gonna come out with another awesome book like her last two.

Arts Hour has been replaced by MealBaby Two Hours. I’m not complaining because we don’t want to neglect our other child, but by the time I get in bed at 11:30 at night I’m too tired to read. And now I’m also starting to feel tired of not reading. Something must be done!

Going out into the backyard to sit in the sun and read a book until the kids wake up!

and their stuff!

These are some of the things Bauer has been carrying around lately, piling up in corners, bringing to the table at meals, wanting to take with him in the car, putting by his bed at night, or just generally loving.

The yo-yo TJ got for Bauer the day last week that he got a baby tooth pulled, and within 30 minutes, Bauer had broken the string while playing with the yo-yo on our playset in the backyard. Like I said, little boys.

The balloon was a take-home souvenir from a birthday party on Saturday, a very good souvenir evidently. Also considering that Trader Joe’s no longer gives out balloons so we rarely have them in the house anymore.

The blue die is what Bauer picked from the box of toys (which he loudly proclaimed was “junk”) at the dentist office after his appointment last week.

The ball on the string is from a birthday party last fall that I resigned to the “junk bag” in the top of Bauer’s closet (guess we all know why he called those toys in the dentist office junk) but that somehow recently found its way out and into Bauer’s world.

The key on the SeaWorld key chain is what Bauer calls the park key because it’s the key that our babysitter always used last summer when she took the kids to the park and would need a key to get back in the house.

The blue stuff in the little Zip-Loc bag is the remains of 3 or 4 “sticky feet” that Bauer has earned in Kids’ City at church on Sunday mornings. He doesn’t have to pick the sticky feet, but he always does. They also last for about 2 minutes before they are pulled in various parts. But Bauer likes to collect them in this bag, along with a few random seeds (I think apple and pumpkin, but honestly I can’t remember what seeds he has put in there), and keeps saying he plans to plant all of the bag’s contents this summer. I don’t know what he thinks the sticky feet will turn into.

Tucker speaks for himself and he says, “I love Bauer as much as he loves me.”

You remember the Miss(ion) Amy K.R. blog that I have written about before? And you remember when I went on the train ride back in March and wrote about my experience? Well, this week Amy has officially posted her video version of that day and I got a couple little seconds of fame toward the end. Just thought I’d share the fun blog post and video.

The quote at the end of the video is just about good enough to make me want another tattoo

I couldn’t think of an H snack, so we’ll call this Having Smoothies!

Cash is super Happy the minute he gets his smoothie in the morning.

H is for Kevin Henkes, one of our favorite children’s authors. Bauer loves A Weekend with Wendell and Chester’s Way. Of course I’m partial to Birds and My Garden.

H is also for Hula Hoop.

I had planned to look online for some hula hoop games, but ended up making up a game instead when one recent afternoon (before I had a chance to look online for ideas) we were out in the backyard and I realized we needed a structured activity to keep things fun for a few more minutes. Bauer enjoyed racing against the timer on my phone as he went from one side of our yard to the other while only stepping inside the hula hoops, which meant he had to keep moving the hoops from behind him to in front of him.

This post is not all-inclusive. We do more than read books and eat snacks for each letter, but those are two of the easiest and most consistent things to take pictures of as we work on Bauer’s ABC binder. So those two things are definitely included here. The rest is just a hodge-podge of whatever I thought to take pictures of. We are spending about 3 days on each letter so far. And it continues to be a great experience for Bauer and me both.

I couldn’t think of an E snack other than eggs and eggplant. Bauer is allergic to eggs and eggplants wouldn’t go over so well for snacking. Here’s the letter E that Bauer made from Smarties.

We read several E-E-Eric Carle books and Bauer especially enjoyed the surprise at the end of The Very Lonely Firefly.

And here are the F books I picked from the library. If you want to know my secret to finding books for each letter, well, there is no secret. I even asked the librarian if there was any sort of alphabetical list by title, but there isn’t. I was browsing the Easy Reader aisle when I happened to see these two books. Both were hits with Bauer.

For an F snack, Bauer got to enjoy 1/2 of my 1/2 price Frappacino from Starbucks on Sunday. I haven’t had a Frappacino in ages, ever since they stopped making them decaf. Just recently, Starbucks introduced a big summer campaign called “Create Your Own Frappacino” (meaning you can make it decaf!) and through 5/16, all Fraps are 1/2 price from 3-5 pm each day. Not the best time to get there, but we went on a Sunday afternoon, and although I didn’t find my decaf Caramel Frappacino to be as good as I remembered, Bauer really enjoyed his F treat.

We took along a few F activities to do while we were at Starbucks that day, although we had to move inside to keep our stuff from blowing away. Here is a simple matching game I made up for Bauer to review his F verse from last year.

And here’s another matching game for the letter F. This is from the Enchanted Learning website I mentioned in a previous post. Bauer has really liked doing simple worksheets like this.

How fitting! TJ gave me Flowers for Mother’s Day!

That same day on the Easy Reader aisle in the library, I saw these books and thought they’d be perfect for the letter G. I picked three that I thought would be of particular interest to Bauer based on their titles and we’ve found them to be sweet little stories.

I don’t normally buy Goldfish and I do normally buy grapes, but this was a special splurge as the grapes were $2.49 a pound (yikes!) and the Goldfish were not on sale either. Guess the grocery stores didn’t know I’d be on G this week. Bauer made G’s and then ate them.

Finally, here is what Bauer and I worked on this morning. I showed him how to cut paper to make grass, and he did almost the whole thing by himself. Then I gave him a choice of four G words to draw: Gift, Golf, Grapes, and Guitar. See which ones he picked!

Ready or not, H-H-Here we come!

A video we made for Mother’s Day (for the grandmothers) of Bauer reciting Bible verses from A-Z. Great memory!

Bauer’s A-Z Bible Verses from friesencold on Vimeo.

This is where my friend Gretchen lives in Texas.

And I really think she’ll like these shirts.

I got this one for Cash because they didn’t have Bauer’s size. I was tempted to buy it in every size they had, though, so my kids can always represent for the side of leafy greens.

And I got this one for Bauer. Who says the force can’t be vegetables?