7 Quick Takes About Miraculous Twins, Being a Crazy Stalker, and Other Stuff

Posted on May 23, 2014May 24, 2014 by Amy

Linking up with Conversion Diary, and actually making it on Friday this week.

1. Last weekend was Miss’s first piano recital. Doesn’t she look so tiny?? Her song was about ten seconds long, and I was nearly in tears when she was done, it was so cute. She went up in front of the audience like she owned the place. She was thrilled to play in front of a crowd. I had no idea she could be so cool under pressure.

2. Last weekend we also potty trained Sis. I like to use this 3-Day Potty Training method, which is horrid for three days and then awesome forever (except for a few days after I did the program with Miss, which were far, far from awesome).

It’s very strange to no longer be changing diapers! 3. Lass had her first haircut on Wednesday. Just as it was with Miss, her first cut came at 3.5 years old. She was so excited. And I am so mad at myself because I forgot to save a snip of it. All that beautiful hair, and I didn’t save any of it. I just want to cry every time I think about it. But she loves her haircut and has no idea that I messed up. Hopefully she won’t hate me when she’s 15 and realizes I saved hair from her sisters’ first haircuts but forgot hers. Or rather, hopefully she won’t hate me for that.

4. When we first got to the salon and the girls were climbing in the chairs to get started (Miss got her second haircut at the same time, so you can see they’ll be going for haircuts about as often as I do), I had an interesting exchange with the woman cutting Lass’s hair:

Her – “How old are they?”

Me – pointing at Lass, “She’s three,” and pointing at Miss, “and she’s five.”

Her – eyes bugging out, “Are they twins?”

Me – blinking. . . “Uh. Nooo?”

Her – “Woooowwww.”

I get asked all the time if they’re twins. But never quite like that.

An “After” photo of my not-twins: 5. It’s not uncommon for me to run into Super Friend when I’m out and about on any given day. We live in a not-huge town and we go to all the same places. The grocery store. The Catholic store. Target. We always laugh when we see each other as if it’s soooo craaaaazy that we’re running into each other again.

It was much the same thing on Tuesday when I pulled into the Target parking lot and saw her car there. I texted her real quick “Are you at Target???” She replied something like, “Yes! At Starbucks” (I’d like to take a moment to interject how amazing it is that there is a Starbucks in our Target store. Marketing genius, is what that is).

So I hopped out of my car and chuckled to myself all the way into the store, where I walked in to see her standing right near the entrance (since that’s where the Starbucks is). I laughed and said, “I swear, I’m not following you!” in cheesy reference to the fact that I had just seen her at the grocery store the day before.

Unfortunately I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings when I said this and was oblivious to the fact that my crazy-stalker-lady comment scared the crap out of the woman walking right in front of me. She jumped and looked quickly over her shoulder with an expression of terror, made worse by the fact that Super Friend and I were cracking up laughing at my stupidity. So then I said, “Oh, I’m not following you either!” as the woman rushed into the store to get far, far away from me. I hope she got a laugh out of it once the initial horror was gone. Maybe?

6. I recently bought the book “Feast! Real Food, Reflections, and Simple Living for the Christian Year” by Haley and Daniel Stewart to help me in my attempts at teaching my girls about the liturgical year and celebrating it as a family. It’s a wonderful book, and is full of delicious-looking (haven’t had a chance to make any of them yet) recipes for Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter seasons, as well as for many saints’ feast days.

So with the book you can read about a saint and make a meal that somehow represents that saint’s story (mostly by being a dish from the place where the saint lived, I think, though I haven’t looked through the whole book yet) on the saint’s feast day. History, religion, geography, and dinner, all in one! The book has lots of saints in it that I have never heard of, and recipes for foods I’ve never tried, so I can’t wait to make some of the dishes.

7. “Feast!” does not have a recipe for commemorating St. Rita’s feast day, which was yesterday. You may remember that St. Rita is the patroness of impossible cases, and I chose hers as my confirmation name.

So I took inspiration from the book and found my own recipe to celebrate her day. St. Rita is from Cascia, Italy, and I found a recipe for “Lentils with Sausages in the Style of Cascia” in this cookbook.

I cooked lentils once, a looong time ago, and they were awful. I didn’t get the texture right, and they had no flavor. At that time I told my husband that I would never, ever cook lentils again, but I couldn’t find any other traditional Cascian dishes, so I went for it anyway. Never say never, right? He actually remembered me saying that, and mentioned it to me yesterday.

Thankfully, this time the lentils were much better. These actually had very good flavor, and I think the texture was how lentils are supposed to be. I realized that I just don’t much like lentils, because their texture isn’t appealing to me. But this dish was pretty good. As my husband said, “Edible lentils! That’s an improvement.”

Also to celebrate St. Rita’s day the girls watched this video, we colored a picture of her, we looked up Italy on our world map, and we made a bee craft, since my girls were especially interested in the part of St. Rita’s story involving the bees. It was a great way to celebrate a special feast day, though maybe next year I’ll search harder for different recipe from Cascia, sans lentils.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and for more quick takes, check out Conversion Diary.

7 Quick Takes, Mostly About Wasting Time on the Internet

Posted on February 21, 2014February 21, 2014 by Amy

Linking up with Conversion Diary.

1. Here’s something I’ve learned about myself:

I do not like going to a salon for regular maintenance of any kind. This might be a somewhat new-ish development (maybe since having kids?), because I used to get my nails done every two weeks when I was in graduate school. But these days? Forget it. This is why I don’t color my hair. I even have a tiny bit of a mustache because I can’t be bothered to get it waxed on a regular basis.

This has never really been a problem for me. It wasn’t really too much of a big deal for me to regularly go at least six months between haircuts. But then I got bangs!

I did not foresee the problem of needing regular maintenance on bangs. They get long fast! I am not willing to go in for a $40 bang trim every three weeks of so. My solution? Cut them myself.

^^ See how long??

Well, now they’re short. Except I think I might have cut them a bit too short this last time. Good thing I invested in a few head bands for off hair days.

2. Speaking of learning things about myself, I am addicted to taking the ridiculous online “quizzes” everyone is posting on Facebook these days. I never seek them out, but when I see someone’s result from one of them on FB, like “I was meant to live in the 1950s. Which decade do you actually belong in?” or “I’m Burt! Which Sesame Street character are you?,” for some truly bizarre reason I can’t help but click on these just to see what I’ll get. Here’s what I’ve learned: I am a Hobbit Big Bird, who should have a career as a professor and live in Tennessee. Or Paris. In the 1920s.

See? Isn’t that interesting? Never mind the fact that my real answer to most of the items in these questionnaires is “None of these options,” or that I’m so unhip that the first time I took on of these quizzes (the one about “Which city should you actually live in?”) and it asked the question, “What’s your jam?,” the only one of the available responses that I had ever even heard of was “Sweet Child of Mine.” I must still be pretty glamorous though (see #1^^ for evidence of this), because I learned that I truly belong in Paris.

3. And speaking of silly internet wastes of time, my favorite of these quizzes was the one from the NY Times about “What does the way you speak say about where you’re from?” Unlike those in #2, this one was actually totally accurate. Calling the night before Halloween “Devil’s Night” and referring to a sugary carbonated beverage as “Pop” placed me squarely in Detroit, which really is the area where I did grow up.

One of the fun things about this particular quiz is that it showed the regional popularity of each individual answer given. Having lived in lots of states in the midwest and south, some of the things I say and ways I speak now no longer reflect my place of birth. Like “Frontage Road.” People don’t say that in Detroit, but I say it now. Fascinating.

4. Do these quick takes make me seem like all I ever do is waste time doing stupid stuff on the internet? Well, let me get all literary on you for a moment then. I recently came across a fun post (yes, on the internet) “What Your Book Crush Says About You.” My favorite literary gents from those included in the post are Gilbert Blythe and Rhett Butler. Though there’s nothing accurate in the post about what that actually says about me, it was still fun to read and think about some of my favorite male book characters. I wish she would have included Manly from the Little House books though. He’s a much better literary main man than Edward from Twilight, for pete’s sake.

So. I must know, which are your favorites?

5. I have discovered a love of the bento box for serving my kids lunch. I had gotten into such a lunch rut until I bought some of these containers and these silicone muffin things. Now it’s so much easier to get creative with lunch, and the girls seem to like it too. They refer to these as their “special” lunches.

^ Bacon, avocado, and lettuce, wrapped in a piece of turkey. In the muffin cup is some Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Nut Butter for dipping apple slices. They loved it!

It doesn’t really even seem to matter if they enjoy and eat what I put in these boxes for them. They almost never complain, because usually they have at least one thing in them that they like. Lunch is so much less of a drag.

And yes, I do realize that having a special box really isn’t necessary to serve lunch this way. But it seems more fun.

6. Miss started her piano lessons on Wednesday. Oh, the cuteness.

I wasn’t sure how it would go, but she loved it. And her teacher is a perfect fit for her. Now I just need to get a piano.

7. I said this before, but I’ll say it again. I am having a little bit of a hard time with five. All of a sudden my eldest is doing all sorts of super grown up stuff. She’s wielding scissors like a pro. She’s reading.

She no longer says, “lasterday” instead of “yesterday” or “with-about” instead of “without.” I don’t know exactly when she began pronouncing those words correctly (it’s probably been a while), but her sweet little mispronunciations are gone (except that Lass now says “lasterday”).

I’m not ready for her, for them, to be getting so big. Sis will be two next month. I don’t have a baby anymore!! I’m very near the point of no longer having anyone’s diaper to change and this makes me sad. Probably that makes me weird too, but obviously it’s not the diapers I’ll miss, it’s having a teeny baby. I need another baby 🙂

Check out more quick takes here.

Book Review and Giveaway – Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from My Six-Month-Old

Posted on December 4, 2013December 4, 2013 by Amy

Everything I Needed to Know I Learned From My Six-Month-Old: Awakening to Unconditional Self-Love in Motherhood by Kuwana Haulsey, is part memoir, part self-help book, part inspirational journey. It’s a story about a mother. A mother who is going through the trials of all new mothers and sharing them in a way we can all learn something from.

Kuwana Haulsey writes beautifully about the process of becoming a new mother, getting to know your baby, losing yourself, and then finding yourself again. This is, to my knowledge, a universal experience of new mothers.

New motherhood is something new and exhilarating and overwhelming. Beautiful and crushing. Kuwana Haulsey delves into this new stage of life with lovely insights into the process of becoming a mom.

It’s not the same for every mom, but I think the inevitable transformation after having a first baby often involves similar stages, such as Losing Self in Precious Baby, Losing Self in Deprivation (sleep, time, self-care), Losing Self in What? The? Hell? (i.e. how do I get dressed each day?, how do I stay an individual person when there is constantly a sweet yet oh-so-needy little person hanging from me?, how the heck does this carseat work?), then Finding Self in Purpose, Finding Self in Balance, Finding Self in Managing to Shower Every Day. And so on.

Kuwana Haulsey describes this process in a much more eloquent and in-depth way in her new book. She describes the Every-Mom process of losing-and-then-finding-self by documenting lessons she learned from her son. Each of the 15 chapters in her book consists of a lesson the author learned about herself and life from observing her newborn son through the first several months of his life. Lessons like:

“If You Are Irritated by Every Rub, How Will You Ever Be Polished?”: Choosing Harmony Over Resentment,

When It All Falls Apart: The Art of Joyous Failure, and

Love Is Like Musk – It Attracts Attention

Some of the observations she makes are just so “how-did-I-never-think-of-it-that-way?” wonderful. She writes with a beautiful mix of simplicity and complexity that leaves you pondering the lessons that our children have to teach us.

And that is the real point of this book. Over and over, Kuwana points out how her newborn son’s perspective on the world is an opportunity to learn to embrace life more fully, find the beauty in the hard moments, become open to change, and learn to love oneself for real.

A few of my favorite lines:

“A newborn baby is a living, breathing, screaming, pooping meditation.”

“This is how we evolve: by rubbing the sticks of truth and meaning together until something inside sparks.”

“In the adult world, thinking ahead makes us rational and responsible. You’re congratulated when you relinquish the art of being lost in the moment.”

This is a wonderfully written book. Although there are some parts where the dialogue gets a bit stilted, and I found myself feeling kind of jarred by it, the majority of the writing and the message of the book more than make up for these awkward passages.

The book provides many reminders of ways in which changing your perspective can change your heart. In the case of this book, the perspective taken is that of an infant. The journey is in realizing that so much of our world can be simplified and embraced by looking at it through the eyes of someone who hasn’t yet been burdened by the expectations and judgements of adulthood.

As a mom, I try to remember to look at things through my kids’ eyes and experience levels. I often fail in these attempts, but I do try. This book provided me with even more ways to do this and ways to think about bettering myself and appreciating myself more in the process. As the author says,

To embrace fear and anger and misgivings right along with my child allowed me to embrace myself too. Placing tender, nonjudgemental attention on the situation and staying in the moment . . . allowed something fresh and relevant to spring forth, what the old folks use to call mother’s intuition.

This is a recommended read for other moms or moms-to-be. It’s a highly enjoyable and even inspirational read.

Now, the best part of this post is that I get to tell you that I am able to give away one of these books to one of you. If you want a chance to win the book, simply leave a comment on this post and make sure you include a way to contact you. I will close the giveaway on Sunday night (12/8) at 9pm Central time. Good luck!

** I was given a free copy of this book (plus a copy to give to a reader) in exchange for my honest review**

The Top 101 Fictional Picture Books

Posted on December 3, 2013December 1, 2013 by Amy

I’ve mentioned before my enjoyment of the blog 101 Books. It’s written by a guy named Robert who is reading and blogging his way through Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Novels (since 1923, plus Ulysses).

I was thinking it would be great to have a list of the top 100 picture books. So I made one. Plus one. Just in time for the holidays. I wrote this originally as a guest post for 101 Books. The whole post, including how I came up with the list and my top 15, will be on Robert’s blog tomorrow. Make sure you check it out. For today, here’s the full 101:

The Top 101 Fictional Picture Books

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – Viorst
Are You a Horse? – Rash
Are You My Mother? – Eastman
Baby Danced the Polka – Beaumont
A Bad Case of Stripes – Shannon
Black Beauty – Lerner
Bread and Jam for Frances – Hoban
Can I Play Too? – Willems 
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – Martin
Click, Clack, Moo – Cronin
Clorinda – Kinerk
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Barrett
Corduroy – Freeman
The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash – Noble
Dear Zoo – Campbell
Diary of a Fly – Cronin
Do Like a Duck Does – Hindley
The Duckling Gets a Cookie?! – Willems
Dumpy La Rue – Winthrop
Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct – Willems
A Fish Out of Water – Palmer
Fox in Socks – Seuss
Frog and Toad Are Friends – Lobel
Gingerbread Baby – Brett
Giraffes Can’t Dance – Andreae
The Giving Tree – Silverstein
Glasswings – A Butterfly’s Story – Kleven
Go Away Big Green Monster – Emberley
Gossie – Dunrea
Green Eggs and Ham – Seuss
The Gruffalo – Donaldson
Harold and the Purple Crayon – Johnson
Hazel’s Amazing Mother – Wells
Hedgie’s Surprise – Brett
The Hello, Goodbye Window – Juster
Hey Al – Yorinks
Horton Hears a Who – Seuss
Horton Hatches the Egg – Seuss
I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More – Beaumont
I Love Monkey – Kaufman
I Love You No Matter What: A Prince Chirpio Story – Rutland
I Love You Stinky Face – McCourt
I Love You the Purplest – Joose
Imogene’s Antlers – Small
Interrupting Chicken – Stein (my all-time favorite)
Is Your Mama a Llama? – Guarino
Jamberry – Degan
Julius, the Baby of the World – Henkes
Jumanji – Van Allsburg
Kipper – Inkpen
Kitten’s First Full Moon – Henkes
Knuffle Bunny – Willems
The Library Lion – Knudsen
The Little Engine that Could – Piper
The Little House – Burton
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear – Wood
Llama, Llama Red Pajama – Dewdney
Madeline – Bemelmans
Max’s Words – Banks
Meet Me at the Moon – Marino
Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel – Burton
Millions of Cats – Gag
Mister Seahorse – Carle
Mouse Was Mad – Urban
Mossy – Brett
Mud Puddle – Munsch
My Friend is Sad – Willems
The Napping House – Wood
No, David! – Shannon
Not a Box – Portis
Officer Buckle and Gloria – Rathman
One Fine Day – Hogrogian
One Smile – McKinley
Owen – Henkes
Owl Babies – Waddell
The Paper Bag Princess – Munsch
The Pigeon Wants a Puppy – Willems
The Pout Pout Fish – Diesen
Room On the Broom – Donaldson
Seven Blind Mice – Young
Sheila Rae, the Brave – Henkes
Should I Share My Ice Cream? – Willems
A Sick Day for Amos McGee – Stead
The Snowy Day – Keats
Spoon – Rosenthal
A Squash and a Squeeze – Donaldson
Stellaluna – Cannon
Stephanie’s Ponytail – Munsch
The Story of Ferdinand – Leaf
A Story, a Story – Haley
Stuck – Jeffers
Swimmy – Lionni
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble – Steig
There’s a Nightmare in My Closet – Mayer
The Three Pigs – Wiesner
The Very Hungry Python – Carle
Time For Bed – Fox
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – Oxenbury
When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry – Bang
Where the Wild Things Are – Sendak
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears – Aardema

What’s on your list?

23 Picture Books About Horses

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Amy

We recently finished a unit on horses. My kids love horses, so this was a really fun one. If fact, we did this unit at their request.

As I always do, I got tons of picture books to read and talk about during our circle time. I found some really wonderful, beautiful horse books, and we had such a great time learning and imagining about these beautiful animals. As usual, I learned a lot while teaching it.

We read a total of 23 horse books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Here’s a list of what we read. The ones with links were our favorites.

Fiction:

Black Beauty retold by Sharon Lerner – This is such a classic story and this book has beautiful illustrations. My girls loved it. So did I.

The Wild Little Horse by Rita Gray – Sweet story of a little horse going off to explore.

Clip Clop by Nicola Smee – This was such a fun book to read with a really cute story about several animals taking a ride on a horse. My girls were laughing and asked to read it many times.

Are You a Horse? by Andy Rash – I LOVE this one. It’s a cute story about Roy, who gets a saddle for his birthday with the instructions: “1. Find a Horse, 2. Enjoy the Ride.” Roy doesn’t know what a horse is, so this is about his process of finding one. I love the twist at the end that had my girls (and me) surprised and laughing.

Where Horses Run Free: A Dream for the American Mustang by Joy Cowley – Gorgeous illustrations. My girls loved the main horse in this story.

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses by Paul Goble – Lovely story, beautiful illustrations. I loved this one, though my girls weren’t super impressed with it.

Hush, Little Horsie by Jane Yolen – A sweet book about mama horses watching over their babies.

The Story of Black Beauty retold by Susanna Davidson – Another great retelling of this classic. My girls just seemed to like the other one a little better.

Cowboy Ned and Andy by David Ezra Stein

A Blue Ribbom for Sugar by Elaine Clayton

Everything but the Horse by Holly Hobbie

Fiction and Nonfiction:

A Field full of Horses by Peter Hansard – I couldn’t categorize this as fiction or non. It has a little storytelling with lots of facts included.

Nonfiction:

Horses: Trotting! Prancing! Racing! by Patricia Hubbell – This book has catchy rhymes and good information about breeds of horses, caring for them, and different jobs horses do.

Horses (Naturebooks Farm Animals) by Mary Ann McDonald – This one had a bit more detailed information than (and wasn’t as fun to read as) “Trotting! Prancing! Racing!” but it wasn’t too wordy.

Horses by Sheri Doyle – Short and sweet.

I Love Horses and Ponies: Over 50 Breeds by Nicola Jane Swinney – This is a beautiful book that my mom just gave to the girls. It’s not one for sitting down and reading start to finish, at least not at their age, but they love to look at it and learn about all the different horse breeds.

Horses (Animals Animals) by Steven Otfinoski – This one was a little too wordy for my girls, though I skimmed over it and they still earned some cool new stuff. My favorite thing about this one is the photos. It goes beyond the standard photos of horses standing in a pasture or looking over a stable gate or carrying a rider… This book has photos of horses nibbling each other, making funny faces, showing their teeth and more.

Horses and Ponies by Anna Milbourne

Girls and Their Horses (American Girl Library) by Camela Decaire

Horses (Farm Animals) by Rachael Bell

Horses (Great Pets) by Gail Mack

Horses! by Gail Gibbons

Poetry:

Gallop O Gallop by Sandra Alonzo – I didn’t actually read this whole book for my girls. I just don’t enjoy reading them a book of poetry. A few poems is good, but not a whole book of this length.

What’s your favorite horse book?

4th of July Fun

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Amy

We’re having lots of 4th of July fun here. I love the 4th of July. It’s not my favorite holiday, but it’s up there. I like the patriotic songs and parades and the flag waving. I love the middle-of-summer-holiday barbecues or picnics, beach trips or family parties by the pool. And my favorite, of course is the fireworks. We are planning to take the big girls out to watch those tonight and hopefully catch some fireflies and make s’mores too.

They are already getting into the patriotic spirit.

I made these shirts with the girls yesterday:

I got the idea here. I think we’ll do them every year.

I didn’t think of it until after I totally failed in getting Sis’s handprint, but I should have used her footprint instead I think…

The girls were excited to wear the shirts that they made themselves.

And we’ve read several patriotic and 4th of July themed books today, like:

Hooray for the 4th of July! by Rick Brown

America the Beautiful (Love this one) by Katharine Lee Bates and Chris Gall

America the Beautiful: Together We Stand by Katharine Lee Bates, Brian Collier (et al.)

Happy 4th of July Jenny Sweeney! by Leslie Kimmelman

Red, White, and BOOM! by Lee Wardlaw and

Apple Pie 4th of July by Janet S. Wong

Last night I put together a red, white, and blue-themed scavenger hunt for them to do this morning.

I had several packs of small American flags from the Target dollar section, cut some craft foam into different shapes, and grabbed a few extra things from the dollar store this week (red, white, and blue batons, leis, and artificial flowers).

I was hoping that the girls would enjoy this activity, and they really did. Even more than I expected, I think.

Miss liked crossing off her items as we went.

Everyone got into finding cool stuff.

When we came in we got all decked out in our red,white, and blue stuff (picture leis, flowers in the hair, and lots of flags waving) and marched in a parade around the house, complete with Grandma singing “Yankee Doodle” at full volume.

Fireworks tonight. Hope you’re having a wonderful 4th too.

Some Miscellany – 7 Quick Takes Friday

Posted on June 21, 2013June 21, 2013 by Amy

— 1 —

I am kind of obsessed with reading the blog Conversion Diary right now. Is it possible to be “kind of obsessed”? Probably not. I think that’s an oxymoron. Whatev. I’m calling it “kind of obsessed.” It’s a blog about the author’s conversion from Atheist to Catholic, among other things. Love it.

Every Friday the blog’s author Jennifer writes a post called “7 Quick Takes Friday.” Then lots of other people write “7 Quick Takes” posts and link them to her blog. Fun, yes? I enjoy random thoughts on a Friday. So this week, I’m going to throw my hat in the 7 Quick Takes ring and see how it works out.

— 2 —

During the seemingly endless winter that we had here this past year I was desperately wishing summer would come. I was so eager to be able to take my kids outside to play without spending 3 hours getting them stuffed into several layers of clothing, snow pants, boots, coats, etc. And the mittens! Oh geez. I loathe mittens. Can’t anyone make mittens for toddlers/preschoolers that actually go on easily and stay on and keep their hands warm and dry?

Anyway, I don’t love the process of getting three kids under five ready to go out and play in the winter. So I was excited when spring arrived.

Except I had forgotten about sunscreen.

*Insert audible sigh here*

I think it takes at least as long to get sunscreen on them as to put on mittens. But sunscreen is messier. And they squirm and scream more during the process.

— 3 —

We have two butterflies in our little butterfly cage. Of six caterpillars that came in the mail, two of them successfully formed chrysalides and emerged as butterflies. There is one more chrysalis that may still successfully birth a butterfly, but the rest didn’t work out.

The girls are so excited about the two they’ve got. They are sure one is a girl and one is a boy.

I, on the other hand, am worrying because they don’t seem to be eating. I mixed the sugar water as instructed and even put a piece of fresh watermelon in the little butterfly house. I keep looking in there, “Come on little Painted Lady. Unroll that proboscis. Doesn’t that sugar water taste yummy when you step on it?” But I don’t think it’s happening.

In case you’re thinking me cruel, don’t worry. They’ve only been “hatched” for 1-2 days. We’ll be letting them go soon and they can find their own flowers and drink all the nectar they want.

My girls have even been scoping some out for them.

— 4 —

Miss completed Safety City this week. Yesterday I went to watch her graduation and she got to show off some of the stuff she learned. They had a karate instructor to teach the kids about “stranger danger.” He called Miss up to demonstrate what they are supposed to do if a seemingly nice stranger speaks to them, such as a little old lady asking for help finding her dog. Karate Man knelt down, imitated a sweet old lady voice, complete with sad face and “Can you please help my find my little lost dog?” Miss turned and ran and yelled, “NO THANK YOU I’M GOING TO GET MY MOM AND DAD!!!!” I was so proud. I almost started to cry.

— 5 —

In the past few weeks I have read three Awesome-with-a-capital-A books. Two of them were on my Summer Reading List.

“The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom has just gone straight to the top of my list of all-time favorite books.

And “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis has made the favorites list as well.

The third one wasn’t on my summer list but I had to read it anyway. “My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir” is an amazing book (and another favorite now).

From my summer list I’ve also read “On the Beach,” “The Sun Also Rises,” and “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” All enjoyable reads as well if you’re looking for a good book.

— 6 —

My hubby starts working nights tonight. I don’t love the weeks that he works nights.

I’ve been trying to plan ways for us to be out of the house next week during the day, but Miss has Wee Camp at the YMCA in the mornings, so we can’t take any big day trips to some of the fun places I’m wanting to visit this summer (See our Summer Fun List).

So far I’ve got grocery shopping and two play dates with Super Friend (God bless Super Friend) to help us get through the week. And one day I’m just punting to our babysitter to take Lass and Sis in the basement to play while Daddy sleeps. Throw in Church one day and a possible closing on some property another (I’ll post more about this if it happens, because I don’t want to count my chickens…) and I think we’re pretty well covered.

— 7 —

Speaking of our list of stuff to do this summer, I would like to note that I officially changed the name of it from “Summer Bucket List” to “Summer Fun List.” I did this after reflecting on the origin of the phrase “Bucket List” and realizing that the name came from the movie characters’ lists of things to do before “kicking the bucket.” Seemed a bit extreme for a list of fun things to do with my little girls before summer ends.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Cultivating Bug Love

Posted on June 7, 2013June 8, 2013 by Amy

My girls love being outside. They love getting dirty, wet, chalky, bubble-y.

They love the grass and flowers. The birds and animals.

They aren’t really huge fans of bugs though.

In fact, creepy crawlies are probably their least favorite things about being outside.

They like to explore and examine all sorts of things,

but bugs tend to freak them out.

That is, until we decided to study bugs in school.

I is for Insects.

Heck yeah.

Okay, she still looks a little freaked out in that picture, but that was at the very beginning of our unit. And she was holding a hornet. It was dead. But it was a hornet.

Anyway, we did all sorts of fun stuff with bugs.

We used bugs for counting and sorting and puzzling.

We studied bug life cycles.

We learned cool words: Metamorphosis. Chrysalis. Pupa. Thorax. Proboscis. Glossa.

We learned all about lots of different kinds of bugs and read tons of books, fiction and nonfiction, about them.

Books about ants.

Like:

Ant Cities (Dorros)

Bug Safari (Barner)

Ants (Stewart)

The Ant and the Grasshopper (White)

Books about bees.

Like:

Busy Buzzy Bee (Wallace)

Bees (Slade)

Honey Bees (Schaefer)

Bees! (Winchester/TIME for Kids)

Gran’s Bees (Thompson)

Crickets:

Old Cricket (Wheeler)

A Pocketful of Cricket (Caudill)

Crickets (Coughlan)

Mosquitoes:

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ear (Aardema)

Mosquitoes (Coughlan)

Butterflies:

Are You a Butterfly? (Allen)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle)

From Caterpillar to Butterfly (Heiligman)

Caterpillar to Butterfly (Marsh)

Glasswings – A Butterfly’s Story (Kleven)

My Oh My – A Butterfly! (Rabe)

Where Butterflies Grow (Ryder)

Speaking of which, look what came in the mail yesterday!

Grasshoppers:

The Ant and the Grasshopper (White, same book as above in the Ants section)

Grasshoppers (Coughlan)

Also:

Fireflies (Coughlan)

and

The Very Clumsy Click Beetle (Carle)

Even especially yucky, annoying bugs like termites and flies and fleas:

Roberto the Insect Architect (Laden)

Diary of a Fly (Cronin)

A Flea Story (Lionni)

And general bug books:

Insect Soup (Polisar)

Insects (Bernard)

How to Hide a Butterfly and Other Insects (Heller)

Insect Homes (Hopkins)

The Very Ugly Bug (Pichon)

Insect Detective (Voake)

The last book was especially great to read after we went to a local nature preserve yesterday to look for bugs. We went with some other homeschooling families and reserved time with a naturalist to look in the ponds and prairies for insects. Unfortunately, it was raining the whole time, so we didn’t even try the prairies and only got to scoop stuff out of the ponds. But the girls got to see dragonfly and damselfly nymphs (which I had never seen before) as well as lots of tiny tadpoles. They even saw one of the dragonfly nymphs start to eat one of the tadpoles!

Today we finished up with ladybugs:

The Grouchy Ladybug (Carle)

Starting Life Ladybug (Llewellyn)

Ladybug, Ladybug (Brown)

Ladybug Girl (Soman)

Lara Ladybug (Florie)

What the Ladybug Heard (Donaldson)

The freak-out factor with bugs has decreased significantly. They are much more likely now to say “cool!” when they see a bug than to be scared of it.

That’s not to say they’re totally loving bugs though. Miss lost her ever-loving mind yesterday when a mosquito got into the car as we were leaving the nature preserve.

But no one loves mosquitoes…

Summer Reading List

Posted on June 2, 2013June 3, 2013 by Amy

Recently I have signed up for my local library’s adult summer reading program. Each time I read 140 minutes I can enter my name in a weekly drawing for stuff like books, DVDs, etc. I have entered my name at least 10 times since the start date. That was Tuesday.

I read a lot. And they let me count the hours I read to my kids too. So I really read a lot.

I have been logging my kids reading time too for a couple of different summer reading programs, and I logged 100 minutes for them yesterday. That’s a bit more than usual maybe, but not too much. It’s nap time now and we’ve already read 40 minutes today…

Here are the kids’ programs we’re doing this summer:

You can do the Scholastic Summer Challenge and log minutes online, or the Half-Price Books Feed Your Brain Summer Reading Program, in which you keep track of minutes on a form you print out to earn “Bookworm Bucks.” I’m doing both of those for my kids plus the reading record for our local library. I think Chuck E. Cheese has a program too.

I have never kept track of the minutes/hours I read before, either for myself or my kids. It’s fun to see just how much time we do read in a day.

So all this thinking about how much we read has me thinking about what books I want to read this summer, and I thought I’d share a few that are on my list:

1. Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill – Historical fiction about the slave trade during the 18th century. I actually just finished this one. It was excellent.

2. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom – True memoir written by a woman who survived a concentration camp after being arrested for assisting Jews in Nazi-occupied Holland. I read this as a teenager and really liked it but wanted to read it again now that I am older and might appreciate it more. Plus Super Friend read it recently and I like discussing books with her (we have our own 2-person book club). I’m about halfway through it, and I am so glad I’m reading it again.

3. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis – I have read part of this already. I’m going through it a few chapters at time and discussing them with a friend.

4. The Screwtape Letters also by C.S. Lewis – The correspondence from the Devil to his nephew Wormwood, a “novice demon.” This one sounds kind of odd to me, but comes very highly recommended by Super Friend and I trust her taste in books, so I am up for it.

5. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce – I don’t know much about this book, but it’s the choice of my other book club for June, so it’s on my list.

6. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story by Donald Miller – This is the second memoir written by Miller, which describes what happened after his first highly successful memoir Blue Like Jazz was being made into a movie and he had to discuss his life with producers, realizing it wasn’t all that interesting. This is the June book for my Super Friend Book Club.

7. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – The classic novel about a group of expats in 1920s Paris and their adventures with bullfighting in Spain. I have wanted to read this for a long time, but especially since I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (a great read, historical fiction written from the point of view of EH’s first wife Hadley Richardson)

8. These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901 by Nancy Turner – Historical fiction, written as journal entries of a woman on the frontier in the Arizona Territories. July book for my other book club.

9. On the Beach by Nevil Chute – Classic doomsday book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time so I’m putting it here so I actually get it and read it.

10. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini – The newest book by one of my favorite authors. Can’t wait to read this one.

11. He Leadeth Me by Fr. Walter J. Ciszek – True story of Father Walter Ciszek who was captured by the Russian Army during WWII and imprisoned as a “Vatican spy” in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia for 23 years.

12. Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood by Karen Maezen Miller – A memoir of early motherhood as a spiritual journey.

13. The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary, Ph.D. – A “look in the mirror” approach to parenting.

14. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn – Because I just read Gone Girl and loved it. I’ll probably read Sharp Objects too.

That ought to get me at least through July.

What’s on your summer reading list?

I Think It’s Interesting!

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Amy

I went to the library yesterday and grabbed a bunch of stories by one of our new favorite children’s authors, Robert Munsch.

We just discovered this prolific author. His stories are cute, funny, and often feature clever protagonists. Some of our favorites are “The Paper Bag Princess,” “Mud Puddle,” and “We Share Everything!”

We read a new one yesterday called “Stephanie’s Ponytail.” It’s a witty tale of a little girl who wears a ponytail in different ways and gets copied by others in her class at school. The moral of the story is “don’t blindly follow people.” It’s a good book, and we all enjoyed it and laughed at her funny ponytails.

Today, Miss said she wanted one ponytail “coming right out the back” and two more on the sides. I gently suggested that perhaps she would like to have either a ponytail in the back or two on the sides. Her response?

“But Mo-om! I think it’s interesting!”

Well. Yes it is.

Interesting.

I love her independence.