It’s Official

Rick drove over to our Elementary School on his lunch hour today and filled out the paperwork for Kindergarten Sibling Priority Registration.

With an official, stamped letter in hand, four hours into the two week period of Priority Registration Kaitlyn took slot #57 for next year’s Kindergarten class at Fairview-Clifton.  She is VERY excited and cannot wait to turn 5 and go to school.

This school is VERY hard to get into.  Yes it is a public inner city school BUT it is rated Excellent and is truly an excellent school, we know, having/ or having had two of our others there.  The preschool will take 20 Kindergarten slots, then Sibling Priority will take most of the others.   A couple of years ago there were only about 10 slots left open to the public for which parents will camp out in line around the school for 5 days and nights, most of them just to get their child’s name on a waiting list.  This year there are 4 low achieving schools in the district who will get priority above the general public to register at excellent rated schools if they want to and will fill 33% of the remaining openings.  Then it will open for public registration finally.  We are very happy to have Kaitlyn all set for attending school here.  She is SO excited.

Anything & Everything Around September

Around September, anything can happen.  It has been said that my house must be chaotic all the time from 5 a.m. to midnight.  That may just be true.  I prefer to think of it as “controlled chaos”, at least MOST of the time because it IS busy, BUT I am expecting the business.  I deal with everything from “Toddler Tantrums” to “High School Woes”.  Ironically the High Schooler is the one keeping us up these days; up at 5 a.m. and home on weekends from social engagements or babysitting jobs by 11 p.m.   We have routines to assist us, we have schedules to help us deal but sometimes things do get a little bit and feel a little bit chaotic.  Here’s a peek at the past month since school started aside from all the other stuff posted.  Around September anything can happen and sometimes “anything” does!

I might wake up to find a pajama wearing fire breathing dragon in my house just waiting to chow down on double chocolate waffles first thing in the morning.  One never knows!

We may have to figure out how to share the bristle blocks so everyone has what they need for building.

Sometimes there might be another house in my living room courtesy of the four year old, whether it’s built of blocks or pillows and blankets or sometimes it’s just a Star Wars Spaceship built and flying around courtesy of my two year old.

There may be unexpected social events to attend or perhaps a surprise rain dance outside is found taking place.

There are skills to be learned; balloons to be balanced and bounced, cars to be built, letters to be written.

More things to build and imaginations to use.  Anything can happen.

Anyone can be a helper, anyone can be excited, everyone can have fun.

Rooms are magically cleaned up by unseen forces as a surprise, children learn to dress themselves in “secret combinations” and the grocery list can be written by a 4 year old.  Anytime is time to build skills.

There are adventures outdoors to be had and jelly bean monsters living on slides to run away from.

There are “anything goes” tales to tell… like when Kaitlyn suddenly developes an accent to tell the story of Farmer Jack who had a pig spring over his head during his lunchtime stint selling cabbages at the Farmer’s Market to the passers by.  Then the pig drove the tractor while the cow and her calf jumped over the moon to join all the other animals mixed together in the triangular farm yard that Nathan built.

Anything suddenly does happen sometimes.  Nathan tried to call his cousin, 4 a.m. HIS time and had a rather cute, yet imaginary, conversation with his cousin.  He was so distraught when I took the phone away.

After grabbing orange juice out of the fridge and trying to pour it by himself on the kitchen floor, Nathan ran to the next room to grab the camera and began taking his own set of pictures before running off and grabbing all the emergency flashlights out of the drawer and running around the house with them, all within 60 seconds or less.  Sometimes I can hardly keep up with this boy.

There were times where chaos was expected… playgroup every other Friday at the playground with friends.  Many new heights were at the very least attempted.

Kaitlyn and her friend Enoch had a wonderful time playing and talking on this crisp morning.

These two crawled through part of a cave on an outing.

They made some discoveries; some beautiful and some just for fun.

And through all of the chaos, controlled or not, you might just find yourself having a grand time.

Project “I Spy”

One rainy morning earlier this week we needed to do something different.  Nathan was in the kitchen getting the orange juice out of the fridge himself, taking pictures with the camera in the bedroom and pulling flashlights out of the drawer and throwing them in the Living room simultaneously it seemed.  As I was cleaning things up I found he’d dragged a chair to the phone and was having an imaginary in depth conversation with Porter, his cousin, AGAIN.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.  How much trouble can a two year old get into inside of 60 seconds flat?  Plenty!  Something different was in order so I headed down to the basement with the boy in my arms and brought up some supplies I’d been saving for just the right occasion.  On line I’ve seen stores selling some rather expensive “I Spy” bags which are clever and fun.  I’ve seen friends of mine sew their own renditions for a quiet time toy.  But I wanted something my children could participate in more, though this project is not  as portable as the sewn bags that I’ve seen. 

I had saved up some clear V-8 juice bottles and cleaned them out well.  Then we began using a funnel and filled each bottle part way with rice.  (Clear beads are a common content of eye spy bags but rice works for this as well and is much cheaper to come by).  Letting the kids scoop and pour the rice in themselves is very good practice with motor skills for young children but you will have to clean up a little afterwards.  The four year old had no trouble with this.  The two year old needed close attention from me but did remarkably well after I worked with him for a little bit.  Then I got out my “junk” bin.  Yes, it’s actually labeled “junk” (it’s not very big) because it’s good fun stuff for when your child, say, needs to build a Leprechaun Trap for a school project.  So this stuff is fun and quite useable but incredibly miscellaneous.  My kids had a good time digging out different beads, balls, shells, buttons, plastic jewelry, empty spools, pebbles, and whatnot to add to their bottle.  If you wanted you could do bottles with themed objects too.  Choosing and adding objects to the bottle was as exciting as sorting allowance money and sticking pennies in the piggy bank. 

Then we filled the bottles up with the rice to the bottleneck so there is still movement for the contents.

Nathan can pick his up despite its weight but I suggested sitting down with the bottles.  You  can lay them in your lap to search or roll them on the floor and have a peek at what emerges.  We had races to see who could find the baby first, or the ring first, or the safety pin.  It was quite interesting to see who could get the object to surface first and they had a good time with it.  Then we set them aside for me to finish them and I marked their initials on the lid of each bottle.

I made an alphabetical list of the specific objects in each child’s bottle, covered the cut out list with packaging tape (laminating would be nicer but…) and then I used the glue gun to fix the list to the bottle.

Then for safety purposes as well as the obvious cleanliness issue I put glue around the edge of the lid and fastened the lids onto each bottle.  I don’t want that much rice poured out of the bottle by my two year old and of course I don’t want anything to get swallowed from the bottle either.

Let the bottles stand up to dry and cool so the rice doesn’t get glued to the lid and in just a few minutes you have a fun game that the kids can play.  It’s not the most quiet game but they do have to sit down to do it and hopefully it holds their interest for a few minutes.  The children seemed to enjoy the time they spent helping to put these together.  And the project really helped to channel my two year olds energies.  Hooray for surviving a rainy morning at home!

The “Twirly Skirt”

I realized recently that I was really having an itch to do something creative… something other than being in my kitchen.  Sewing is something that I don’t consider myself very good at but I really enjoy it and I haven’t done much of it lately.  In fact, other than two baby blankets and baby towels for my sisters last year and a couple of Christmas mice for our cat family I haven’t done any sewing in two years.  Kaitlyn’s “big bed” quilt is still waiting for me to finish it from two years ago even.  You may blame this on the birth of my fifth child but that wouldn’t be entirely the reason actually.  Something else occurred to upset the entire household when that baby was only two weeks old and I’m still recovering from it unbelievably.  If you know us well then you know what happened over here and if you don’t then it’s best forgotten and put behind us anyway.  It’s not something we care to think a whole lot about… and yet we do still.  Anyway, over the past few weeks I’ve been getting my crafting area cleaned up once again and reorganized knowing how much I’ve missed having the space, time and organization to craft and how much my four year old would love to craft as well.  Yesterday came my opportunity.  My craft area of the basement was at least functional again and my daughter Lindsay informed me that she needed a “twirly” skirt within the day for her musical rehearsals at school.  It “had to be twirly” and it had to come about mid-calf.  Searching the costume box in the attic turned up nothing.  A glance through the closet of two girls also revealed nothing that fit this description.  So I turned to a set of instructions that I found on www.theprudenthomemaker.com under Heirloom Sewing.  (I really love this web site… so many inspiring things including her story).  If you then click on “sewing for less” you can scroll down and get sewing ideas for all sorts of things, including little girls.  I have a bigger girl and since there is no pattern at all I just did the math to make this for a bigger girl and it turned out super cute.  Kaitlyn wants one too.

Behold “The Twirly Skirt”!  I made this skirt out of not quite a yard of the horse fabric and a half yard of the brown dotted fabric.  Both pieces I had in my “stash” were remnants that I bought at JoAnnes liquidation for 75% off and it was JUST enough.  I’m sure I bought them thinking they would end up in a quilt or a tote bag or something but there is not a single scrap from this project.  This is a straight line project and Lindsay needed it all for the length.  And since it is straight lines I figured that when she is done with rehearsals I would just snip the stitches out and fold the pieces back up for later use.  It is fun, easy and took just a few hours.  It would go faster the second time around and if I hadn’t had to use the little scrap I did have left to lengthen the dotted hem once she tried it on when I discovered it was NOT mid-calf as directed for the musical rehearsals.  I also stuck some lace along the bottom of the skirt to try and give it the effect of being a little bit longer.  I think that the measurements given on the instructions make the skirt a little on the short side if you are wanting a modest length skirt, especially for an older girl.  I had already lengthened the main skirt with the horse pattern on my own so definitely add some length if you make this project.  I also made the length of the tie and bow longer at the waist, figuring I could trim it if I wanted it shorter.  This project was fun and I really enjoyed being creative again.  My time really flew.  Kaitlyn enjoyed the time as well, sitting across from me at the table stringing beads and doing as many math equations as she could think of with with the counters she was playing with.

Lindsay was thrilled with the outcome.  I’m not sure she’s going to give it back to me or that I’ll be snipping any stitches out of it.  Of course this girl loves horses so it’s a fun skirt for her.  I think it’s really cute on her and I love the skirt with her cowgirl boots.  I was really lucky to have exactly the right yardage of this fabric that turns out to go so well together for this project.  Lindsay liked this skirt so much that she decided to wear it as her outfit to school today too.  Usually she’s a jeans and t-shirt girl as much as I will let her be.

And this picture is taken at Lindsay’s request as she “ponders pinecones” for the benefit of realizing that Lindsay does in fact have hair.  The pictures above don’t show that fact very well.  Happy stage twirling… Brigadoon opens the first weekend in November.