Friesencold

It’s official, I do believe, that Bauer has given up his afternoon naps. Now I feel like I need to be taking them instead, mainly because I’m having to get myself used to not having a protected chunk of time in the afternoon during which I knew both kids would be asleep. That makes me tired just thinking about it.

However, I’ve made a decision in the last few days to go to bed early, which for me is between 10 and 10:30, so I can get up a half hour before the kids and have some protected time then. I am spending the early morning time reading and journaling and praying for help for myself and others. What I’m reading is The Message Bible, just the New Testament right now, but I’m going from start to finish like it’s a book. I do enjoy books, so I thought that reading the Bible in a different translation like it’s a book would give me a fresh perspective. It was Frederick Buechner who inspired me to try this out by something he wrote in the June 15 reading from his book Listening to Your Life.

Buechner is giving some practical suggestions on reading the Bible and numbers 3, 4, and 5 really stood out to me.

3. If you have even as much as a nodding acquaintance with a foreign language, try reading the Bible in that. Then you stand a chance of hearing what the Bible is actually saying instead of what you assume it must be saying because it is the Bible…..

4. If you don’t know a foreign language, try some English version that you’ve never tried before – the New English Bible, Goodspeed’s translation, J. B. Phillips’s New Testament, or any other you can lay your hands on. The more far-out the better. Nothing could be farther out than the Bible itself….

5. It may sound like fortune-telling, but don’t let that worry you. Let the Bible fall open in your lap and start there. If you don’t find something that speaks to you, let it fall open to something else. Read it as though it were as exotic as the I Ching or the Tarot deck. Because it is.

Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, that’s the feeling I get almost every morning when I read what Buechner has to say in Listening to Your Life. I think getting up early and starting my day with Buechner, God, and myself is really going to help me listen to my life. And hopefully it will give me more time for writing in the afternoons. That’s my plan anyway. We’ll be launching a MealBaby blog very soon so I’m working on some posts for that as well.

Yesterday afternoon, when Bauer wasn’t napping, he helped me prepare a Peach-Blueberry-Cherry Crisp that we could have for dessert later that evening. I didn’t take a picture before we dug in, but here’s what was left last night.

While the crisp was cooking, we took a family outing to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things we needed, including some vanilla soy ice cream to go with the crisp. I thought I could buy just the vanilla kind, but realized I would have had to buy a mango-vanilla combo to get vanilla and I wasn’t in the mood to dig around the container to try and scoop out just vanilla for everyone. So I ended up buying this instead.

It’s like what you get at Red Mango. The pleasantly tart taste of plain vanilla yogurt with live cultures, and even though our family doesn’t consume cow’s-milk based products very often at all, I’ll have to say this yogurt was a good treat for all of us. Bauer just kept saying it tasted like yogurt (and he meant the non-frozen kind that he loves but rarely gets to eat).

Unfortunately our trip to Trader Joe’s led to the discovery that they no longer have the miniature shopping carts in the stores for the kids. Now that’s a fairly large bummer, and I’m a huge fan of Trader Joe’s to begin with. When we asked at customer service, they said a lot of people had complained about getting run into by kids with carts. I can see that, I guess, but they already took away the balloons and now the tiny carts, too? The cashier did give Bauer a row of stickers that was as tall as him, probably 47, and that was fun for the car ride home at least. But he’ll sure miss the carts and helping me shop that way.

At the moment (2:34 pm) Cash isn’t napping but he isn’t upset either. He’s been back in his crib entertaining himself and making all kinds of noise for an hour and a half (with a poopy break in the middle of that). He was so rubbing his eyes just after lunch so I figured he’d go right to sleep. I think I may have missed his tired window today. At least he’s happy back there, and Bauer is happy now too, as he’s just turned on the Woody Woodpecker DVD that I got him from the library for the Letter W. He finished his Quiet Reading Time a few minutes ago and is now enjoying some TV time while I finish this blog. If Cashie isn’t up by 3pm, I guess we’ll call it a day for naps and go on to something else.

Now for the something else you’ve been waiting for: The Letter V and all the fun we had with that.

Bauer used his body to make the letter V.

Then he used some craft supplies we bought at Michael’s to decorate the blue Visor he picked out.

Here you can see his finished Visor and the Vitamin Water he chose at Meijer in honor of the Letter V.

For an art project, Bauer cut out pictures of Vegetables from some old issues of Everyday Food Magazine.

Then for dinner a couple nights ago, I cut up a ton of Vegetables (I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I tried to start stirring these around in my big Wok)…

And we had Vegetable Ratatouille for dinner.

We read some good V books and Bauer LOVED Violet the Pilot.

He also loved making this little Volcano erupt using baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring.

I got this Volcano from the inside of a cereal box when I was a little girl. I’ve saved it all these years because I thought it was so cool, and I even knew where it was when I finally had a use for it!

For another art project, I helped Bauer make a Valentine for TJ. I’m still not sure why he put an extra A on the end of Dad, but he didn’t want help with spelling that word.

Bauer decided to make a Valentine monster on the back of the card, and after writing the letters EEKK, he asked me what it spelled, and so we named his monster “Eek!”

We finished off the Letter V with the V verse that Bauer learned last year when we were doing a verse for each letter of the alphabet. Usually I just write out the verse for the letter we are working on, and leave some letters or words out and have Bauer fill in the blanks with my help. But this time I decided to have Bauer illustrate the verse since it seemed pretty easy to do. He was quite hesitant to begin drawing, even after I’d written out each phrase and drawn the four blank boxes. So then I sat with him and we talked about what was happening in each phrase of the verse and how he could draw it. I was quite impressed. And just so you know, the solitary place where Jesus went to pray was the jungle.

And also just so you know, it’s 3pm and that little booger still isn’t asleep! Two hours and no nap! Oh well….I better go get him up, so I’m out of here.

(I love my tattoo too.)

We had a good 4th of July weekend with my mom in town visiting. I have a bunch of pictures besides these of Cash so hopefully I can post more this weekend.

It started on Friday when I went for the second round of color on my tattoo. I went primarily to have some work done on the greens throughout, but my tattoo artist is a major perfectionist so he went to work on everything, adding depth to the colors, touching up in places, and finishing off the color around the words at the bottom. That was another 3 hours of work, bringing the total to 11 hours! Look at the difference between the two.

This is before Friday….

And this is after….

On Saturday morning, we went to the Farmer’s Market, where I picked up the market basket I won from the previous week’s raffle that a local business called Monogram Madness sponsored to get the word out about their new store.

Later that day, we did some major cleaning out in the garage, but the funny thing is, it was mostly empty boxes weighing us down with clutter! TJ has an empty box fetish that he’s working on overcoming. It’s pretty cool, though, when you go to sell something on ebay to be able to say that you have the original packaging.

On Sunday, TJ took Bauer to a Kids Fishing Derby…

and Bauer caught his first fish, a 5 1/2″ blue gill. That was one happy boy (and one happy daddy).

We wrapped up the Letter O over the weekend, and the only picture I have to show are the O books we read. But here’s a funny story for O: I printed out a coloring page from Enchanted Learning’s website about President Obama and was teaching Bauer who he is and just telling him a few basic facts. Later in the day, we were reviewing who our President is, and Bauer said Barack Opossum.

And last, we are having a blast lately grilling out in our backyard. We got a grill for an early Father’s Day present so that we would have it on Memorial Day when friends came over for a cookout. It’s been great having lots of grilled veggies and eating outside at our picnic table.

It’s been really rainy here the past few days so we didn’t actually get to grill out over the weekend, but we’ll be starting back up this week. We decided to invite some friends over each Wednesday to grill out and hang out in the backyard. I’m looking forward to some fun (and crazy with the kids) Wednesday evenings this summer.

The same-old, same-old is that Bauer and Cash are eating snacks and being goofy in their carseats.

They were eating Nectarines recently as we are now on the Letter N.

Bauer also made this Noodle Necklace.

Then today we were on our way home from a picnic, and the kids said they were hungry – why don’t they eat at picnics instead of just play?? I told them they could eat the leftover veggies that I had taken, and soon after I turned around to see this.

I won’t even tell you what my hair looked like today after the picnic, during which it rained almost the entire time and it was so windy TJ got a plate of baked beans blown onto his shirt from across the table.

But before we left for the picnic, I had TJ take a few pictures of my new (different) haircut, which I got last Wednesday. I was going for something a little more edgy, which is why I also had some highlights done.

And here’s the tattoo in full force. The color has been on for almost a month now, but I’m actually going back again this week to get the green pepper and Swiss chard darkened to be more true-to-life-green-veggie-green. Nonetheless, isn’t it a great design?

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?

This was Cash’s hair after his nap one day recently. And this is Cash’s new weapon of choice (remember the ax?)

Today is a beautiful day. I think it’s supposed to be stormy later, but we were able to get our garden planted while the sun is shining. Or should I say, TJ and Bauer were able to get it planted. Cash was just messing around, and I signed up for weed duty so I took the time off. I also took pictures.

TJ finished up the planting while the boys ate their lunch nearby at their new used kiddie picnic table.

We had fun with the letter C the last few days. Below is a sampling of what we did:

Bauer made a letter C with his body.

I picked out a couple of our books to be the C books, including one of my all-time favorite children’s books: Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

TJ read the C books to the kids at breakfast one morning.

For a special C treat, we made Chocolate-Avocado Cupcakes.

Bauer wanted to put a candle in his, and I couldn’t say no since candle starts with C too!

Deli-C-ious!

Unrelated to C, I just wanted to share some pics of our dinner last night. These burgers were a big hit! I have made them before but Bauer wasn’t really into them. Last night, however, he loved them. With the burgers, we had a box of Lundberg Farms butternut squash risotto with chia gel added in (those are the little black seeds that you see); peas; and steamed kale. I thought it would be fun to take pictures of each of our plates before we ate last night.

First is Bauer’s plate. He didn’t finish all the peas, but he ate 2 burgers!

Next is Cash’s plate, minus the ketchup. He liked the risotto and the peas the best, but he also ate some veggies and about half of his burger.

TJ’s plate next!

And finally, my plate.

I actually ate a third burger too. I made the burgers a little smaller than the recipe I just linked to. I couldn’t remember whether to use 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup scoop to make the patties. I chose the smaller and ended up with 10 burgers instead of 7. There were plenty to go around and a couple left over for the kids to eat today.

For the letter B, Bauer helped me make Banana Ice Cream (ingredients: frozen bananas). The Champion Juicer is the b-b-b-b-b-bomb!

These next shots are from a couple nights ago at dinner. TJ was doing something across the table to crack Cash up, and of course then Bauer wanted in on the action. The ketchup on Cash’s plate was to dip homemade potato chips in (but Cash also likes to dip his cucumbers), and the pasta in Cash’s bowl is this.

Last, here’s a picture of the salad I had for lunch yesterday. It was the best salad I’ve made in a long time, thanks to the leftover roasted potato strips and green onions, which both added terrific flavor.

Here’s what’s in there: Organic mixed baby greens, organic spinach, broccoli, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, yellow pepper, celery, cucumber, green onion, avocado, sliced raw almonds, roasted potato strips, and Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard salad dressing.

I had a great visit with my friend Gretchen who lives in Texas. We first became friends when we both lived in Orlando several years ago. I went to visit Gretchen primarily so I could talk with her about homeschooling and see her and her boys, ages 6 1/2 and 4 1/2,  in action in the classroom. Well, that and because she is one of my favorite people in the world and I wanted to see her and celebrate her birthday with her like she did with me last summer.

At Gretchen’s house, they turned one of their bedrooms into a classroom and it’s lovely!

Besides general fun and catching up, Gretchen and I spent a good deal of time going through all the details of her homeschooling experience so far, including the different curricula she has chosen, how she lesson-plans, where to find materials and resources, how to be structured yet flexible, what a typical day of school at home looks like (and what the remaining hours of the day can look like), and what kinds of things to do with the younger sibling to keep him entertained, happy, and learning at his own level. I loved learning about all of this and Gretchen was a great sharer of information. My biggest thanks!

I came home super-excited to begin some things right away with Bauer. We are starting with something Gretchen did during this past school year with her younger son Jack who is Bauer’s age. They made a “My Alphabet Book” in a 3-ring binder, filled with various activities, games, pictures, etc, all pertaining to each letter of the alphabet.

We are off to a good start here with Bauer’s ABC Book. I emptied a 3-ring binder and yesterday afternoon Bauer decorated a page to slip in the front cover.

We made a colorful page for each letter of the alphabet with some simple supplies and now we are working on the letter A.

I plan to spend 3-4 days per letter, meaning we will finish in a few months’ time (hopefully by end of summer). I won’t push us to do it every day, just a few times a week as our schedule allows, and probably anywhere from 10-30 minutes/day will be adequate.

First thing this morning I spent a few minutes reading to Bauer two “A” books I got from the library last night: I Want to Be An Astronaut by Byron Barton and There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer. Then this afternoon, I helped Bauer look through a couple of old magazines for letter A’s and words starting with A (we found apples, almonds, and angel), which he then glued onto construction paper to put in his notebook.

After that, I made a little fill-in-the-blank exercise for Bauer to do using the “A” Bible verse that he learned last year when we were learning a verse for each letter. I thought it would be a good way for him to review all the verses and would give him practice writing a few simple words. I know it would be hard for him to write out an entire verse, so I wrote most of the words and just had him write in a few of the easy words and stick on number stickers for the reference. He seemed to really enjoy doing that and adding it to the A section in his notebook.

The only other alphabet-related thing we did today was talk here and there about what sound the letter A makes. I have not previously worked on this at all with Bauer, although I do think he knows most of the letter sounds from watching some of the LeapFrog DVDs we have checked out from the library over the past year.

My goal is to go through each letter like this: doing simple activities, playing games, taking pictures of objects or finding them in magazines, reading a couple books, practicing our Bible verses, eating special snacks that start with some of the letters (for A, we’ll do an Ant Hill made from crushed graham crackers for the mound of dirt and raisins for the ants – an idea taken from PreschoolExpress), talking about each letter’s sound, and maybe even doing some memory work (maybe a poem starting with one of the letters?). It may be mostly review for Bauer as I honestly don’t know what all he knows or what he has learned at the Parents Day Out program he attends a couple times a month, but at the very least it gives us something structured, yet fun, to do together on a regular basis (sort of like when we did all those Christmas activities and crafts last December). Once we complete A-Z, then I am thinking Bauer will be nice and ready for me to begin teaching him to read, which I’m very excited about. The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise is a great resource for knowing how to teach a 4 and 5 year old (not that it stops there). I can already tell this book is going to be a new best friend.

For now, I won’t officially say I’m going to homeschool, but I am definitely leaning in that direction. Over the next few months, the alphabet book is going to be a little experiment of sorts, to see how Bauer does with it and how I do. If yesterday and today are any indication, I must say mine and Bauer’s time together seemed to have brought out the best in both of us.

Or maybe it’s the tattoo.

I got this done a week and a half ago at a great tattoo shop called Tomato Tattoo. I go back in May to get the color done. I am very happy with how it’s looking and how it’s healing.

I think it’s healing me, in fact.

2 Tablespoons of the tiniest little alfalfa seeds turned into this, a big ole’ plate of alfalfa sprouts!

The buckwheat groats didn’t bulk up quite as much, due to the seeds being larger (and hence, less of them) to begin with.

I had to dump the sunflower seeds because they weren’t sprouting the way I thought they should and I was also worried they might be spoiling due to me not being able to get all the skins removed from the soaking water (that is what my instructions said to do).

The sprouted wheat berries didn’t have enough Wow Factor to dump them on a plate and snap a picture, but here’s my line-up in the fridge. This is after being sprouted from 10pm Tuesday night to 3pm Thursday afternoon, so what’s that? Not quite 47 hours.

From left to right, it’s alfalfa sprouts, buckwheat sprouts, and wheat sprouts or sprouted wheat berries – however you say that one.

Today for lunch I fixed myself a few pita pockets filled with shredded and chopped veggies and then overflowing with sprouts. They were just great!

This was just my first plate. I ate three more halves after this!

I spread hummus inside each pita first, then added shredded carrot and zucchini, followed by chopped cucumber and red pepper, and topped with the sprouts. I felt so cool eating my work!