Beginnings

January 20th wasn't just Inauguration Day. It was also The Bug's first day of toddler school. She could not wait to get there!

When we got to school she wanted me to carry her from the car to the classroom (which is standard procedure when we drop Sweet Pea off) and whimpered a little when I gave her a hug and a kiss and let her down onto her feet. She clung to my leg for about half a second, then looked around while Slipshod and I were talking to her teacher (Slipshod was home on Inauguration Day so we could watch the footage together, etc., so dropping The Bug off at school was a whole family affair). While we chatted with The Bug's teacher, The Bug wandered into her classroom, and that was it! Then we took Sweet Pea down the hall and chatted with her until her class started (though Slipshod and Sweet Pea both snuck back to The Bug's classroom to peek through the window and check on her before Sweet pea went into her own classroom), and home Slipshod and I went to watch the Inauguration.

When we picked The Bug up from school later she was very happy to see us, of course. Her teacher said she had done wonderfully on her first day, and it was as if she had always been part of the class. On her second day The Bug gave Sweet Pea and I hugs and kisses and walked right into her classroom without looking back. Last week, on her third day of class, The Bug reminded me on the way to the classroom that she would be going in "without you, Mommy!" Just in case I forgot, I guess. ha ha! She missed her fourth day (last Thursday) because she was sick, but she is very much looking forward to going back tomorrow. We're taking snack for her class tomorrow, too, though I don't know how exciting that will be in the toddler room (probably not as exciting as it is for Sweet Pea in her class of older kids). I asked some of the other moms how many children are in there and they said that those kids hardly ever eat the snack, so it'd be fine if I just packed enough food for five kids. ha ha!

You might be wondering how I am enjoying having a couple hours free two days a week. And I am wondering right along with you, because that hasn't really happened yet. Since The Bug's first day of school was Inauguration Day, Slipshod and I sat at home and watched TV, as I said. It was nice to be able to do that, but that was not a normal day around here and I've had these visions of having nearly 2 hours to actually work on cleaning house, preparing dinner, etc. so that I can have more time to play with the kids after school. Maybe next week? On The Bug's second day of school I spent the entire afternoon AT the school. Slipshod came to meet me and we observed in all of the Lower Elementary classrooms to get an idea for what they're like and where we might want to ask to have Sweet Pea placed next year (though they will not necessarily put her where we request, since they have to balance the classes). On The Bug's third day of school I spent a full hour chatting with a mom friend in the parking lot before going home and then spending my remaining 45 minutes of "free time" fighting with Evite to create an invitation for my sister's baby shower (I didn't even get lunch that day!). Then, on her fourth day of school, as I said, she was home sick with me.

So, I am hoping that tomorrow will be my first day of normal time for me while both girls are in school. And I already know that I will spend the entire time cleaning (assuming I get lunch before taking the girls to school; otherwise I'll have to start my time eating), because we're having one of Sweet Pea's friends over on Thursday for a play date. This friend has never been here and we don't even know the family all that well, but the two of them met at the park one day after school and became fast friends instantly. We found out that the other girl goes to the same school and will be moving up to Lower Elementary next year too, so her mom and I are talking about trying to have our girls placed together.

In all the anticipation before the play date I have been cleaning like crazy so that 1) I can regain some sanity, because I abhor living in a clutter pit, and 2) our newish friends don't think we're total slobs. Spurred on by my desire to live in a clean house, the impending play date, and my attempt to break the cleaning down into smaller projects, I have made a beginning of my own, which will be my first to share with you.

Remember my Plant Window O' Clutter?

Well, check it out now!

Can you see the light beams shining down? Can you hear the angels singing? I can every time I stand at the sink and look in front of me. Ahhh, sweet peace. The orchid is even blooming! And now you can actually see the glass pieces I've put on display; I even moved a couple of the pumpkins to the living room and brought in different ones for a change of scenery.

You really should click on the picture to see the glasswork. One of our friends made the visually delicious pumpkins, one of his friends made the glass cupcake on the lower right, I made the little blue teapot on the lower left (out of clay, not glass), and the gloriously bright yellow pitcher with blue handle in the middle top is from Blenko Glass Company (from my childhood home state of West Virginia) which, to my horror, had to shut down production last week.

The drastic improvement of my clean windowsill, the continued impending play date, and my desire to live in a peaceful, clean environment are all keeping me very inspired to keep up the good work. So I need to go now, to clean up the kitchen and hopefully sort through some papers.

The Journey

Last weekend I took the opportunity to attend a very enlightening event offered to parents by Sweet Pea's Montessori school, and I'm so glad I went. Apparently a number of Montessori schools around the country are starting to offer this event (that's the only word I can think of to describe it; it's not a class or a seminar) as a way to teach parents more about the way their children are learning in these schools.

The Journey (at least the one offered at our school) is based on a three-part lesson wherein the student is shown whatever it is they'll learn about, told what it is/how it works/etc. and then the student speaks about what s/he has learned.

Our Journey began last Friday night after dinner. We parents who had signed up went to the school and spent most of our 2 hours there silently observing each level of classroom: Toddler (ages 18mos - 3yrs), Primary (ages 3-5yrs), Lower Elementary (ages 6-8yrs), Upper Elementary (ages 9-11) and Middle School (ages 12-14). We were encouraged to get down to what would be eye level for the ages of children who attend school in each room and we were not allowed to touch anything.

At this point I should probably give a quick primer on some ways that Montessori is different than what most of us grew up with in regular schools. Each class level, as you no doubt noted above, includes children of three different ages. Maria Montessori's belief (in *very* short) was that self-directed learning allows children to really internalize what they're interested in because they can choose it themselves and be given time to focus on their interests. Instead of rows of desks, identical learning materials handed out at the teacher's discretion and the students all doing the same thing at the same time, the classrooms here are divided into sections by subject (language, math, art, practical life, etc.), each section containing a number of different "works" pertaining to that subject. The sections of the classrooms are partitioned off by low shelves which contain the works mentioned above, and tables and chairs are here and there around the room. In each room there is also a large rug are where the children can take works to explore/do them. During the childrens' work time they move around the room at will and do whatever works interest them. They can also do them alone or in groups, whichever way the children choose.

The reason for putting different ages together in the same classroom is that children can sometimes be each other's best teachers. Also, if a child who is the oldest in his/her family comes into a class at the youngest age, s/he gets a taste of what it's like to be taught by an older child - something s/he never experiences at home. The same is true for middle and youngest children: As they move through three years in the same classroom, they get to experience learning in different age positions than they're used to occupying at home.

I have seen the inside of Sweet Pea's Primary classroom many times since this is her second year at the school and we have had a number of potlucks in there (on normal school days, though, parents do not enter the room; we drop our kids at the door and that's it - so I always jokingly call Sweet Pea's classroom the "inner sanctum") and I had been in one Toddler room when Sweet Pea's after-school Yoga class met there a couple times last year. But I had never looked very closely at the Toddler room or seen any of the classrooms for the older children, so being able to explore the classrooms without children in them was very interesting. I came home and told Slipshod, "now I feel bad that The Bug isn't in the Toddler program. She would have SO MUCH FUN in there!"

On Saturday the other attending parents and I returned at 8:30am and spent half the day going back through the classrooms, but this time we could talk and touch the works, work together if we wanted, as the children might, and even get a lesson from a teacher if we wished. We were encouraged again to see the classrooms and materials as the children who use the classrooms do, which was pretty funny sometimes in the Toddler and Primary classrooms.

While all the classrooms were exciting to me I had the most interest in seeing and experiencing the Lower Elementary classroom, since that's the level Sweet Pea will be moving up to next year. The first night when we were only observing I came away with the impression that Sweet Pea might actually be scared when school first starts in August, since the space and some of the materials are so different than what she has had in the Primary room last year and this year. However, after doing works in the rooms (the Lower Elementary class area we visited had two adjoining rooms with no door, just an open doorway, between them) I became so excited for her.

There are so many new things there for her to explore, and much of what she will learn will really appeal to her sense of wonder and scientific curiosity. She will be *thrilled* if the room she moves to has a big space poster on the wall. There are books all about space and other wonderful things in the Science area. There is a chore chart and each week each child is responsible for a specific job. Starting in Lower Elementary the children have academic assignments to accomplish each week, and each child makes out her/his own schedule (which they will obviously have help with when they first start) for how s/he will accomplish those tasks in the time given. Sweet Pea's reading ability really does seem to improve each and every day, but I can see how as it continues to improve over the next three years she will be able to learn more and more on her own in the classrooms. And I can totally see how the materials in the Lower Elementary rooms will keep her raptly learning for three years.

The Upper Elementary area has three rooms joined by windowed walls as well as open doorways. These learning spaces, and the materials available to the students, really drew us parents in and I was one of the many people heard afterward saying, "if I had been allowed to learn like this growing up, there is no doubt in my mind that I could have learned math!" They have actual physical objects they can use to learn math. Fractions of circles that you can touch and put together and move around. Sticks and curves that you can stick together with brads to make shapes and angles. Imagine!!

The Middle School has four rooms for the students. We took a short writing lesson in one of them and did a science lab assignment in another.

My experience of The Journey left me wanting to go back to school. From the beginning. I thought regular school worked pretty well for me in most subjects; I got mostly good grades and was able to roll with the style in which I was taught (except, as noted, in math). But given this Montessori type of learning environment I think I could have come out ready to rule the world (with love and compassion and room for others' differing views, even)!

While I do think that Sweet Pea will have a little (hopefully only a little) trouble making the transition to a new classroom, level, and time schedule (she'll be going to school all day for the first time; she's only doing 1/2 day kindergarten this year in the Primary level) next year, I think that once she settles in she will have a fantastic time exploring all the new learning materials available to her.

As for The Bug... What started as a joke between Sweet Pea's current teacher and me ("Since Sweet Pea is leaving me next year," she said, "you're going to need to give me The Bug in my class.") went from being a laughing matter to a thought process and then to a decision to enroll The Bug in the Primary program next year. That was before I took The Journey. Now? Well, yesterday after we dropped Sweet Pea off at her classroom, The Bug and I observed a Toddler class (that's where the parent sits quietly in a chair by the door while the child gets to check out anything and everything in the room for 20 minutes or so). And she'll be starting in that class 2 days per week (for 2 hours) as soon as I get the paperwork filled out. :o)

New and Interesting

Isn't it funny how, as life moves along, you often discover that you're moving from one phase to the next without really noticing? It's kinda cool, really. The beginnings of very new phases, such as school, are often difficult in one way or another (even if the child isn't upset, the parent may have a hard time with the transition), but then you find new things melting in alongside the old things and morphing the experience into something new.

For example, last year Sweet Pea just went to school. 2 1/2 hours every weekday afternoon, with no extras. I thought that after-school activities sounded like too much and would make our day much more difficult, and possibly make her overtired. I did offer her the chance to go to book club after school one day per week at the tail end of last school year, but she didn't want to go. However, this year, as soon as school started, Sweet Pea started up with the book club. One hour every Thursday after school. No big deal; I'd pick her up from her classroom at the usual time, she and The Bug and I would go sit in the car in the parking lot and have drinks and snacks, then half an hour later The Bug and I would take Sweet Pea back to her classroom and then we'd have an hour at the park together, just the two of us, which was a lot of fun.

One of Sweet Pea's classmates who was also in book club was going to child care during the first two sessions, just for that half hour between the end of school and beginning of book club. She told Sweet Pea about the wonders of child care, and since then Sweet Pea has been all but begging to go to child care! The other classmate's mother and I laugh and shake our heads - we thought we were doing the children such a favor by staying home with them, yet they can't wait to go to child care!

Well, today Sweet Pea started her third session of Book Club, and this time, since it's most often too cold for The Bug and I to go to the park, and also because Sweet Pea's other classmate is in book club again, Slipshod and I consented to let Sweet Pea go to child care for the half hour every Thursday. Sweet Pea's glowing account of child care today began with being allowed to go upstairs for the first time ever at school, and included getting to open a rabbit cage in the room and pet the bunny, and making a jingly bracelet. She can't wait to go back next week! ha ha!

Watching Sweet Pea thoroughly enjoy her first year of school last year and come out of her shell so much more this year, along with the facts that The Bug has never been shy or quiet, really really enjoys being social, and already thinks that she goes to Sweet Pea's school, have all contributed to my feeling now that The Bug is completely ready to start preschool next Fall and will LOVE it there. And there it is again: Even though The Bug hasn't started school yet, we've made a plan, and here we are moving forward again, into yet another stage of our lives. I know that the girls are really enjoying the new things they get to do as they grow. I, too, am enjoying watching them bloom along the way.

Notes To Self

1) 2-year-olds: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!

2) Winter? Not the season for play dates in the park.

3) Cats? Put a cork in 'em!

The puddles of puke are appearing more regularly recently, including one delivered hot to the blanket over my legs in the wee hours of this morning. I am hoping that having vacuumed the entire house today will help with the problem. I remember friends saying their cats liked to eat & puke up Christmas tree needles. I have now cleared our house of those for another 11 months.

Bear With Me

Hear me out, okay? Here's my thing: Every day I am beyond overwhelmed by my house. Specifically by all the STUFF in it. My brain works better in a physically clean environment. Really. I actually think I'm not the only person who has this particular affliction; I remember in college when lots of people had large assignments due on the same day, that's when there would be a sign up sheet in the dorm for who gets to use the vacuum cleaner next. Seriously. The night before big papers, etc. were due, suddenly EVERYONE had to clean their dorm room.

Anyway - unfortunately I am not an organized person. This fact about myself is beyond frustrating, because I REALLY REALLY WANT to be organized. I HATE having to stay up late or rush around at the last minute to get things done on time. But that is almost always what happens, even when I make lists and plan and do things the night or even the week before.

Part of my problem is that my perfectionism has very strong kung fu; it can, and very often does, stop me in my tracks and keep me from accomplishing anything at all. For instance - there's no way I can clean the house in one day, so why even start? Common sense does not live here. I am most often unable to see large things in parts or break activities into baby steps. Thus, I am staggeringly overwhelmed all at once by EVERYTHING that needs to be done.

In an effort to move myself along, it occurred to me that perhaps if I take pictures of some of the parts of the problems and could see them alone, disembodied from the rest of the house, that would help me focus on just one area at a time. Below are some pictures of a few places in the house where mess collects without me even remembering putting anything there. And while these places bother me, when I am cleaning it seems they are invisible to me, I think because they are relatively out of the way in terms of usage. If the kitchen sink is a mess, I have to clean that up before I can cook, but if the windowsill is a mess, oh well. The windowsill doesn't get in my way so I don't look at it except while I'm washing the dishes. But I'll bet our company sees it when they come over!

Everybody loves a good post-makeover photo comparison, right? I know I do. So as I clean up these messes, I will post the before picture and an after picture of each area lovely and clutter-free. I make no guesses or guarantees as to when each mess will be tackled and conquered, but it'll sure be fun to see results! :o)

Exhibit 1: The Kitchen Windowsill.

I have already removed three dead plants from this plant window, yet there is a fourth that needs to go. See the blue cup on the top shelf? That's where we planted the pumpkin seed that sprouted up out of the downstairs half-bath sink drain. No, really. But we didn't keep watering the poor thing. The red cup on the same shelf is full of seeds from many of the pieces of fruit Sweet Pea has eaten over the past year or so. She intends to plant them all at some point. It'll be great - we'll have apples, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, tangerines, and on and on and on. There must be a better place to keep those seeds, though. I could go on and on but I won't. What I really want to see in this windowsill is the art glass. There are glass pumpkins and a beautiful yellow glass pitcher with a cobalt blue handle on the top shelf. They look gorgeous in the sun. Can you see them in the picture? The yellow pitcher, yes, but not its handle, and the pumpkins are hidden behind things. And I want the actual tile part of the windowsill, atop the sink's backsplash, to be clutter-free enough to actually wash. Yech.

Exhibit 2: The End of the Kitchen Counter Nearest the Table.

This bit of counter is the first thing you see as you come in the front door, when you look all the way to the back of the house. It really makes a visual difference coming in the front door if this area is dirty or clean. Obviously the fruit bowl and basket full of cloth napkins will stay there, but all the rest of the little odds and ends? Away with them!

Exhibit 3: The Top of the Cabinets on the Upstairs Landing.
This is the weird thing about all these places. I don't remember putting most of this stuff there. It must have accrued over a very long period of time. I can tell that at the time those things were left there I didn't know what to do with most of them. Others were meant to rest there only for a while until I had time to put them away in a different room, and then that never happened. I walk by this area zillions of times per day. It would make me feel so much happier to see it clean!

Beyond just wanting to live in a clean house, I really want to teach my daughters good habits. For that reason I feel a very pressing need to find a useful way to keep up with our house and our lives in general while still having fun with my family, instead of constantly being stressed about cleaning like I am now. The most obvious way is to determine what is clutter to us and what is useful, and remove the clutter from our lives, which I do from time to time by leaving things out for charities on pick-up days and freecycling other stuff. I need to crank up the sorting and get back to giving away what we can and trying to sell what we can.

I am really going to try to start again with Flylady's baby steps (and her encouragement to just do something for 15 minutes and then quit, because getting 15 minutes of work done per day is way better than getting nothing done per day!). While I have made some of her practices part of my everyday life, I have FAR to go to get a system down, and my biggest problem in following her plan is the perfectionism. I want to do one baby step per day, and if I fail at that, I quit. :o( But I am going to try again and again, because if I can just incorporate small new practices into my life, everything and everyone around here will benefit.

How do you keep your life/house sorted? I'd love to hear about it!

Change is Coming!

I have created a new blog. There is work to be done. Stay tuned. :o)

The Butterflies

For January 3rd (I did at least get the pictures off the camera before midnight) I bring you (thanks again to my 4-photo limit) a three-part post of our day. In these entries the information about each photo will be under the photos.

There they are! The monarchs! See the orange cluster in the middle of the picture? Click on the picture to see it larger. Slipshod will have better photos than this, what with his fancy big camera and lenses and whatnot. But this is what I have from my camera, so I hope it'll do. From all the pictures I've seen of the Monarch stopover along the coast I expected multiple trees to be coated with butterflies, but there were only a couple clusters that I could see. It was warm enough for the butterflies to fly, though, so they were flitting about between the trees, which was neat to see.

The girls, who had been excitedly yelling all day about seeing the butterflies, took a couple looks and then found more exciting things to play with on the ground.

At the end of the trail there was a bigger area of boardwalk where we met a family hanging out, letting their girls run off some steam. Sweet Pea and The Bug joined in and made new friends. On our way back up the boardwalk one of the kids (I think it was Sweet Pea) spotted something off to the side. What's all the fuss?

This poor little creature. At first we just thought we were looking at a butterfly that came down to ground level to see what was going on, but as we watched and saw it slowly flapping we realized that it had only its left wing! All four of the girls in the photo above felt such empathy for the crippled butterfly, it was so sweet to hear them saying how sad they were for it and how they wished they could take it home and care for it, etc.

The Hike

Then we continued up the trail past the butterfly grove for a hike.

There was tree climbing

and uneasy tree sitting (she wanted to get up there, pushed my hand away when I tried to hold her steady, and then started whimpering when I let go and stepped away to take a picture)

and of course, playing in the dirt.

The Beach

See? See? Look! I told you I got the pictures off the camera before midnight - I even managed to get these four posted before then! It says January 3rd right up there above the title.

We didn't know where the trail we were following would take us. It ended at the beach, which I suppose isn't surprising, since we drove along the water to get to the park, and Natural Bridges is a State Beach. Check out that natural bridge out there in the water.

We had talked about not going swimming in the ocean on our drive there, but somehow when we actually got to the beach my better judgement failed me (possibly because there were so many other people - children and adults - running around barefoot in the surf). The girls had a really good time for a while. The Bug, however, was ambushed by a wave that came up further than anyone expected, and got knocked on her butt, so she got cold first (though it took quite a long time to occur to her).

Sweet Pea had so much fun running down toward the ocean and then running away when the waves came up - she squealed and giggled the whole time we were there, I think!

The beach portion of this day ended with two very wet, very cold little girls, who we took back to the car and changed into dry clothes, puffy jackets and mittens, which we had brought along. Then we went in search of dinner, and after we had eaten we drove home, being hounded THE WHOLE WAY by questions from the back seat about "why did that butterfly only have one wing? How do you think it lost its other wing? Will it grow another one? Will it be okay? Can it get back up into the tree with its friends?" and on and on and on. Sweet girls, they are.

Rewind a Couple Weeks

I just want you to know that you can thank Jenny for inspiring me to get back here and dust off the cobwebs and post again. Do you know what she did? She posted on her blog EVERY DAY of 2008! I am in awe, and vowed to see if I could post here two days in a row. Check me out! I'm posting right before midnight, but I'm here! :o) By the way, if you don't already read Jenny's blog, I highly recommend it. She is hilarious, goofy, foxy and crafty! I met Jenny and her best friend Jennie the first night at Blogher last summer. I love them! Go visit their blogs!

Speaking of Jenny, once when I mentioned on either Twitter or Facebook (I can't keep up) that the girls and I had made salt dough ornaments, she encouraged me to post pictures. I got the recipe over at kaboose.com and let me tell you, this recipe came out the perfect consistency. We will be making it again in the future just as homemade play dough, and also to use to make hand print plaques for Father's Day. I was using a different recipe for the plaques in the past, but now that I've discovered this one I like it way better. Anyhoo - I didn't actually take any photos during the mixing, rolling out, cutting and baking phases of our salt dough ornament project, but oh have I got painting pictures for you.

Here we see The Bug, painting everything uniformly muddy pink. She was just happy to be painting.

Meanwhile, Sweet Pea went with a more traditional approach.

The ornament painting inevitably became self painting. Here you see The Bug refocused on a piece of paper that I stuck in front of her, hoping the distraction would curb any clothes or face painting.

Sweet Pea turned to finger painting as well. The way she's holding her hand is how she makes a "hand kitty." She's holding up her middle finger because it's the kitty's head. That hand kitty is walking all over the paper, making painty footprints.

We did, in fact, take the girls to see The Tale of Despereaux today, and all of us enjoyed the movie. It's not as good as Cars, but is any movie? Despereaux was a very enjoyable tale and we had a great time having a rare day out just for fun, together as a family. Our plans are still on for the trip to Natural Bridges tomorrow to see the butterflies. This is fun!

Just to let you know, I have ideas a-brewing in my head and will be back here much more often. Due to the maddening 4-photo limit on this blog I am seriously considering starting a new blog where I can post as many damned photos as I want. Thoughts are percolating through my brain about ways I can do things a little differently on the next blog, or just themes I can revisit from time to time. Stay tuned!

Aaaaand, She Slides in at the Last Minute...

to report on the New Year's Day happenings.

Which today, for the rest of my family, involved simply eating

and sleeping.

Oh, and play. Of course there was play, too. Lots of play. Play-Doh, in fact. All over the place.

For me, New Year's Day was spent in a cleaning frenzy. I want to have everything ready for next week, and I want to start back to "life as usual" with a clean house, if at all possible. To that end, I folded and put away 5 or more loads of laundry today, washed at least 4 more and then folded and put them away, replaced hardware on and rehung a shower door, scrubbed a different shower, washed the dirty dishes that have been piling up in the kitchen for a couple days, fed my family at the appropriate times, and finally got that infernal holiday card list finalized.

My day was complicated by The Bug, who really needs naps, not napping, while Sweet Pea, who hasn't napped in nearly 2 years, did nap. The result wasn't too bad with The Bug, which was nice (most days when she misses her nap she's miserable for the afternoon & evening), but Sweet Pea, unsurprisingly, could not get to sleep tonight. After trying to get to sleep for 45 minutes or so she cried and wanted me to snuggle with her and I kept asking if she was tired, figuring that if she wasn't, she could come downstairs with us for a while. She seemed to want to stay in bed, however, but finally she said she'd like to come downstairs with me if I were leaving the room, so she came down and helped me put the return address labels on our New Years card envelopes before Slipshod took her back to bed an hour later. While we were working, she told me and Slipshod that she was really enjoying having some time with just the two of us, since she doesn't get that very often and she misses it. Cutie pie.

The girls don't know it yet but we are planning to take them to see Despereaux tomorrow. Then on Saturday if everyone seems up for it, we may go to Natural Bridges State Beach to see the Monarch butterflies and then to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to ride the carousel and whatever other little kid rides they have. Should be a hoot!

How did you start 2009?

Disneyland Notes

Slipshod and I have come up with some fantastic ideas for Disneyland:

1) (mine) - When a guest enters the park they should be handed a temporary tattoo of the Disneyland park map.
We had at least two maps with our group at all times but were constantly searching our bags for them.
2) (Slipshod's) - Strollers at Disneyland should have a park map attached to them (really, how hard would that be?) OR, his preference, a GPS.

Our visit to Disneyland and California Adventure was fantastic. We had tons of fun every day we went and it was so nice to be in a place where so many of the rides do not have a height limit. Neither of the girls liked Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because of the hell scene at the end (if I had remembered that part of the ride I never would have taken them in), but The Bug still agreed to pose for a picture in the car outside.


Thanks to Boopa, Sweet Pea became obsessed with finding as many "hidden Mickeys" as possible, though when you only go on rides in a couple parts of the park, you're not going to be in the right places to see most of them. Thanks to the book (yes, we cheated), she and I did find a hidden Mickey in the Sun Fountain Plaza in California Adventure.

I really liked the fantastically decorated Christmas trees in Toon Town. Most of the ornaments were bigger than my head!

Monday night Slipshod and I went to dinner by ourselves at the Blue Bayou restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The girls stayed with their grandparents and since we had to run to get to the restaurant on time as soon as we got off the tram after returning to the park after naptime, The Bug cried hard and was completely miserable as we ran off after hugging her and Sweet Pea goodbye. Grandma figured she'd introduce The Bug, age 2, to SHOPPING THERAPY. Thanks so much, Grandma. The Bug was not the least bit swayed until she saw a certain pair of shoes. The rest of the evening she was completely fine.

We had a really fun time seeing our So. Cal. - dwelling friends; two families at the parks on Saturday and one family at their home on Sunday (when we also visited the Griffith Observatory, which Sweet Pea and her grandpa really really enjoyed - grandpa even said that the planetarium show there was the best he's ever seen, and he's seen a lot of 'em so that's high praise).

Unfortunately, The Bug never got comfortable with all the change on our trip, and now that we're home she's having trouble settling back in too. She is grumpy often these days, which is not normal for her, and I feel pretty awful when she gets really upset because I know she's probably just discombobulated and there's nothing that'll fix that but time. We're back on our usual routine as of today but one day isn't going to settle her in so she was still very out of sorts tonight and bedtime was a horror which resulted in The Bug screaming herself to sleep in the guest room and Slipshod accidentally falling asleep with Sweet Pea, who didn't want to be alone after The Bug was evicted from their room for the night. Normally I probably would have snuggled The Bug to sleep but for some reason tonight I just wanted to get out of there and I couldn't get her to settle down so as I walked down the stairs she opened their bedroom door (a new skill she seems to have only in times of extreme unhappiness) and screamed her head off. Slipshod took over from there.

Really the trip went very well over all, but I feel like next time we do this The Bug will probably be old enough to take all the change more in stride. And not nearly break her mother by wanting to be carried through Disneyland all day long.

My apologies if any of these sentences do not make sense; all I want to do is escape into a TV show right now, but I wanted to post a few pictures and a little rundown of our trip. Slipshod took most of the photos on the trip and I haven't even seen most of them yet, so there will be more later when he gets 'em all downloaded! :o)

News!

Three things:

1) Sweet Pea's school picture is SO COMPLETELY ADORABLE!

2) Last night Sweet Pea had to sleep in the guest room with nobody snuggling her to sleep, etc. I know this is not a good thing, but earlier in the day when she didn't beat the timer getting dressed I had told her she would have to sleep in a different room by herself that night so I had to stick with the prescribed punishment. Even though it was something I shouldn't have used as a punishment because it's something I do want her to learn to do ANYway, as a growing kid. I thought she was going to beat the timer. And I couldn't think of a better idea at the moment that I uttered what the punishment would be.

ANYway, this morning after she woke up, Sweet Pea bounded into our room and happily proclaimed, "that was fun! I like sleeping by myself in my own high bed (the guest bed is on a frame; the kid bed in our room is not) in a different room!"

WOW! That was cool. The girls currently sleep together on a full sized mattress on the master bedroom floor (although The Bug wakes up almost every night and climbs into the "big bed" with Slipshod and me) and while I actually like having the kids in our room, I do hope that some day they will both want to move out and into their own room. All the things I read about co-sleeping when Sweet Pea was a baby said that if kids are allowed to sleep in a family bed they will ask to move out of the bed and out of the room when they're ready, which they say usually happens between... oh, now I can't remember the ages. But 5 is about right, so there you go! It really does work!

Of course, we don't have a bed frame for Sweet Pea and she also wants to sleep alone, not with her sister anymore, so we've got a little shopping and a lot of rearranging to do, but this is exciting! I don't know if The Bug will want to move to a different room with her sister, but it doesn't matter. Since Sweet Pea is ready for her own bed we'll get another twin sized bed for The Bug and put it in whichever room she wants to sleep in. My feeling is that she will want to keep her bed in the master bedroom but she is missing her sister from their bed (Sweet Pea is sleeping in the guest room alone again tonight) so who knows, maybe she will want to move rooms too! We shall see.

3) In case I haven't been reporting this well enough, which I probably haven't, Sweet Pea's reading skills seem to be increasing daily. She is one motivated learning reader and is really really enjoying her successes. We do read with our kids every day, and work with Sweet Pea to teach her to read, but she is so interested in learning right now that we have found other ways to encourage her to keep learning even when we can't sit with her ourselves.

Since watching a number of episodes of The Electric Company (yeah, Netflix!) she completely understands the concept of the silent E and while she doesn't know yet which words have a silent E and which don't, if she is struggling to say a word and I tell her "silent E," she can immediately say it; she knows exactly what each vowel should sound like in that situation. I think it's really cool how easily she learned that and how well she knows the vowels' different sounds. The Electric company has also taught Sweet Pea how to read words with 's or 've or 'd, etc. at the end. She doesn't yet fully understand possessive uses of apostrophes, but she totally gets that "doesn't" is a contraction of the words "does not." It is incredible how easily she picks up some of this language stuff!

She's also at that really fun stage where she wants to read everything she sees. While we drive she reads words on trucks, buildings, you name it. When we walk on sidewalks she wants to read every street sign we pass. Oh, and she enjoys reading license plates as well, even though most of them are only a jumble of numbers and letters.

We also got Sweet Pea Leapfrog's replacement for the Leapdesk (her great aunt & uncle got her one a couple years ago for Christmas and she loved it but it fizzled out recently and since they don't make it anymore I don't think we can get it fixed & they've stopped making the books for it). The new product is called the Tag Reading System (which was out for trial at BlogHer in July but I couldn't get near it, it was so popular with the moms!) and it has a talking pen to which you can download up to 5 books at a time. The books are softback and hardback story books, but with the pen they are much more than a storybook because they contain games you can play with the pen, the kid can use the pen to read one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one page at a time, or the whole book (with a little sound to let you know when to turn the page). The games include questions that teach reading comprehension, and some questions send the child back into the story to find characters or other things. It is really amazing how detailed this teaching tool is. I thought the same thing about the Leapdesk. I guess this is why Leapfrog is in business: They're good at what they do!

After your child has been playing with the pen & books for a while you can hook the pen up to your computer (it comes with a USB cable) and sign into your account on Leapfrog's website and you can see what skills your child is learning by playing with the pen/books. Sweet Pea loves to show us what the pen & book can do together and when she plays with them we can hear what she's working on and learning - she's already learning about compound words (among other things) through the Ozzie Otter book.

Honestly Slipshod and I were a little skeptical at first about how much Sweet Pea could learn from a computerized pen but she really enjoys playing with the Tag system by herself sometimes and later that night she'll read us a book before bedtime! She is so interested in learning to read right now that she is soaking up every related activity she can get her hands on.

Now The Bug is pretending she can read as well. She will point to words, one at a time in order, and say something completely different - unless what she's pointing at is a book she's got memorized, in which case she's spot on. ha ha!

And now on to more immediate ponderings...
Tonight I should be doing things, but I just want to sit here. Mom is coming over tomorrow to play with the kids while I make soap, so I really need to make sure I've got all my ingredients and gear in one place, but man, when do I get a day off? I just want to rest for a while!

On Friday we have our first parent-teacher conference of the year. Sweet Pea's progress report was positively glowing. Being a returning student has given her a lot of confidence and she is branching out this year and being more social and speaking more audibly (last year she was so shy nobody could hear her when she spoke at school). She loves being at school and even though she has already been sick a couple times, she has only missed one day of school, I think.

The worst days of these colds have been on weekends so far, and I'm also sending her back sooner this time. Last year I think I may have kept her home longer than necessary - or maybe this year I'm sending her back too soon - but I'm sending her when she's got her energy and hasn't had a fever for 24+ hours, etc. It's all good. I'm hoping for a better winter but it looks like she will probably get the diagnosis this winter of mild asthma. The last pediatrician we saw (last week - not her doctor - we had to see whoever had an open appointment that morning) pretty much said it sounds like she's mildly asthmatic.

Right now we're treating Sweet Pea for a very bad ear infection (the pediatrician said that it was so bad her eardrum might break but I don't think it did - but her hearing is still not back to normal) AND she's got a whole bunch of stuff in her lungs. The pediatrician said it sounded "bronchitis-like." She is still coughing up stuff a couple times per day but she only missed school last Friday. I think we've still got 5 days' worth of antibiotics to give her.

Wow, that last paragraph sounded like Sweet Pea is in awful shape, but she isn't. She was miserable last Friday - the ear infection hit her around 4am Friday morning and we couldn't get her to the doctor until 9:15 - but since then, even though she had a bit of a fever Saturday afternoon, she has had lots of energy and is acting like her regular self.

Okay I'd better go wake up Slipshod. He must have fallen asleep getting The Bug to bed. A very long time ago.

Yes We Did!

As always, if you want to see more detail click the pictures to enlarge them.

Yes, I voted on every other item on the ballot as well. :o)

Electioneen

No I did not carve this freehand, but thanks for wondering. I printed a "Progress" poster off the internet & traced through it with a little poky wheel thing onto the pumpkin, then carved the lines with a knife to get the picture & then used little saws & clay sculpting tools to carve/shave. It took a really long time. AND, lest you give me more credit than I deserve, I was inspired by this website.

Halloween 2008

NOTE: I have not been updating my blog because I have become so very annoyed with my Blogger limitation of 4 photos per post. I have looked up the problem in "known problems" but there does not seem to be a solution. Yet, I have heard from many other bloggers on Blogger that they do not have this problem. There must be something else (besides reporting in the "known problems" log) I can do to try to get the problem rectified. At any rate, I have finally decided to put up as many 4-photo posts as it takes to catch you up on all our doings around here during the month of October. So keep scrolling... there are 5 new posts - that means 20 new pictures! The first/bottom of this collection of posts is entitled "October 12th."

If you're on Twitter or have been watching my tweets go by on my blog, you know that I worked all week long to make the girls their Halloween costumes. Here, finally, are the results of all that sewing!

I just noticed that I forgot to have the girls hold up their tails, but if you look to the left of The Bug's legs in the last picture you'll see her tail hanging down, with a little ball of fluff on the end. My sister's first thought upon seeing Sweet Pea in her dress the other day was that she looked like Cindy Lou Who. ha ha! I thought the ears and tail might change that a little, but I can totally see what she's saying.

Sweet Pea only just made it out to trick-or-treat tonight. As I mentioned in the previous post, she started having cold symptoms a week ago. It has a been a very runny-nose type of cold, and for the past few days she has had a cough as well. Because of all the lung problems she had last winter after colds I've been listening but thought her cough still sounded like it was in her head and had not descended to her lungs. She's been going to school as normal this week and last night the two of us got to go back after dinner and enjoy Moms Night together in her classroom. She showed me around and taught me how to do some of the "works" she enjoys during school time. We had a really fun evening together.

Last night around 3:44am, however, she crawled into bed next to me and said, "My ear really hurts, Mom. It has hurt since Daddy left the room at bedtime." She seemed to be in a lot of pain but I didn't know what to do at that hour. I could hear Slipshod coming up the stairs (yes, he was up that late - AUGH!) and as soon as he got into the room I asked him to get Sweet Pea some Tylenol. She was able to get back to sleep but 4 hours later, on the dot, she woke up and was in even more pain. I got up and called the pediatrician's office just after 8am and they said one of the doctors could see her at 9:15 so I got myself and the girls ready and dragged Sweet Pea's leaden hiney in there. The Bug was all chipper and went wearing her entire costume down to the black cat trick-or-treat bucket, but Sweet Pea was in no mood - which was WEIRD for her. When I checked her in at the pediatrician's office the receptionist admired The Bug in her costume and said to Sweet Pea, "where's your costume" I said, "that's how bad she feels - she didn't care about it at all this morning."

By the time we got to the doctor's office Sweet Pea was starting to feel really hot and before they called us in she said she was starting to feel as if she might throw up. She didn't, but when I got her to the exam room she just wanted to lie down on the table. The doctor had a look and said, "yep, she's got a raging, bulging ear infection in that ear It might break; don't be surprised if you see fluid and blood coming out." I said, "Uh, you mean her eardrum might break? And I shouldn't be concerned about that?!" He said, "that's right. If it breaks it'll grow back together in an hour or so." He prescribed a heavy dose of antibiotics as well as some numbing drops to put into her ears and we've also had her on Motrin and Tylenol all day since we got back home from our jaunt to see the pediatrician.

She perked up enough to eat and drink after we'd been home for a bit and then returned almost to her normal self for most of the afternoon, though she turned back into a puddle on the floor when the pain medications wore off. But an hour before trick-or-treating time I gave her more Motrin and then we ate dinner and she was able to walk around the neighborhood feeling pretty good. After all the anticipation and preparation it would have been a real shame for her to have missed this fun night out, so I'm glad we were able to pull it off. And I hope she feels a whole lot better when she wakes up in the morning.