Spicy

Though they were less than pleased with the first attempt, I got the idea for hanging these inside the cabinets from SJ's parents. I am very happy to have my spice racks back!

(In case you're wondering, the hanging of the spice racks involved nails...so Kansas Dad did the work. Also, lest you discredit him unfairly, these cabinets haven't been painted yet.)

A Recommendation with a Warning

We've been receiving and reading a few fun science books lately from a series called See How They Grow. So far we have the Frog, Calf, Owl and Penguin books, all from PaperBackSwap.com.

Each page shows a few pictures of the animal at a specified age, progressing with time through the book. The frog one is particulary interesting as it shows the tadpole changing into a frog. I think First Son could really understand and see the different stages of growth. (I'm hoping we can find a frog outside soon so I can bring up this book in casual conversation.) The books have just a few words per page, so they're great for early readers (though we don't have any of those in the house yet).

The calf one depicts a dairy calf, so no worries about heading off to slaughter. I guess that's a part of farm life most people don't want to share while snuggling on the sofa with the kids. (As a side note, I was surprised and oddly amused to learn recently that E.B. White promptly slaughtered his pig after writing Charlotte's Web. Come to think of it, I guess that's a book we'll probably avoid in the fall if we do decide to raise a couple of pigs next year.)

Now, the warning: The newer paperback versions come with stickers. If your kids are anything like mine, you will quickly find them throughout the house.



Oh well, at least there's only one page of stickers per book, and the kids did enjoy them!

Dreading the Morrow

It's horrible of me to even think it, but I'm dreading mass tomorrow. Last week, we visited a church near our new home. There were maybe a hundred people at mass, all of whom had to know we were new simply because they didn't know us. I really wanted to make a good impression...

First Daughter chattered incessantly during almost the entire mass.

"Mama hair wet." (repeat five to ten times)

"Mama earring, Mama earring, Mama necklace." (repeat five to ten times)

"I want to be all done." (repeat five to ten times)

"I want my Grammy." (repeat five to ten times)

"Where Dada and baby [sister]? I want my dada!" (repeat five to ten times) (Kansas Dad was walking the baby, of course.)

It went on and on. I'm trying to shush her and pay at least some minimum of attention to the mass without drawing more attention to our pew. I think I failed, on both counts.

At one point, she kicked her shoe off and it rolled under the pew in front of us to land right between the feet of the people kneeling there. I had to wait for a pause in the mass to ask them to hand it back to us while she wailed (really wailed), "Where is my shoe? I need my shoe! I need my shoe!" (I don't know if they couldn't understand her or if she really wasn't as loud as she seemed. I expected them to turn around on their own, but they didn't.)

She was quiet for the last five minutes or so. I thought she was just sitting quietly on the kneeler, but I should have known better; she had taken off her shoes and socks and then proceeded to dance barefoot (thankfully not on the pew). Lovely, just lovely.

So I think I am justified at least a little bit in my lack of exuberance for mass tomorrow. We've decided to attend our parish church, which is even smaller. (We didn't go there last week because they just lost their parish priest and, since we're likely to be the only newcomers there, thought we'd give them another week to grieve without onlookers.) Tomorrow, though, we go, and this will be our one and only first impression.

Mary, pray for us.

Feats of Climbing

Today we visited the park in the nearest town. (I tried to mail some packages, but the post office -- we do have one! -- is only open from 8 to 9:30 am. Needless to say, we didn't make it in time.) The kids enjoyed the park, though. We've been before, but today was the first time any other kids showed up.

First Daughter climbed up the tires a number of times. I read through the blog from when First Son was two to see if this sort of feat is normal (you know, normal for our family at least), but I couldn't find any references to climbing. Perhaps it's only because he turned two in December so there weren't any trips to the park to show off his climbing skills, but it might also be because First Daughter is watching him and learning at a much younger age to push her limits.


I'm a little nervous...not so much that she'll fall. I think I'm nervous she'll start climbing everything at home and find all the chocolate cleaning products I've put out of reach.

Guessing Game

Guess what hit 100,000 today!

I'll wait while you think.


Page views on this blog? No, I think there are only five people that read this blog every day (and two of them are me and Kansas Dad).


Our retirement savings? Um, no. Guess again.


Our savings account? Ha ha ha ha! No, that's pretty much in the house right now. Guess again.


Number of spiders and insects in our house? Hmmm...that one's a possibility, but not the topic of this post.


The mileage on our van! We bought both our car and our van from my dad. The van was originally my grandfather's, so it's been around a bit even though it's not that old. Since I'm pretty sure the car is well over 130,000, we now own two vehicles with a lot of experience, shall we say.

Jumping Jehosephat!

First Daughter can jump, really jump, two feet in the air at the same time and everything! We're pretty amazed and startled at this feat. First Son was almost three before he could jump and here she is hopping away at barely past two. I'll have to try to catch it on video.

I wonder if this means she can get into even more trouble.

Our First Two Duckies

I had some time today while holding Second Daughter to scope out our old pictures. There were not nearly as many ducky bath towel pictures as I remembered -- I guess I was thinking of all those nights we gave baths and didn't take pictures! Anyway, I did find a few. First Son:


First Daughter:

Lights and Action

I thought you might like to see some of the fruits of Kansas Dad's labors.

Here's what our ceiling used to look like. It's hard to tell in the picture, but when we bought this house, the ceiling fan had been removed and just wires were hanging here.


We picked out a nice one from the local home improvement store. It took Kansas Dad about a week and three trips back to the store to finally get it installed. (He couldn't work on it every night and a trip to the store means waiting at least another day since it's almost an hour round-trip.)


But doesn't it look beautiful? We actually bought another one just like it for the other side of the living room, but now we think it's too big for that side. We haven't decided if we're going to return it or install it in the office. (Both the office and the kids' room have ceiling fans that were not made for slanted ceilings, so they don't work very well.)

It's so nice to have light in the living room! Second Daughter, too, is a particular fan of watching the blades rotate.

Mommy Days

Today was one of those days I dreamed about when I was working full-time. The kids and I drove into the city to meet another mom and her kids at the zoo. We visited together, snacked together and had a generally great time. (I meant to take pictures and even had the camera out once, but with five kids between the two of us I found my arms full of coats, snacks or kids whenever I thought about taking a picture.)

My friend Hilary will be pleased to know I carried First Daughter (all 28 pounds of her) in the carrier she made very successfully for the long walk back to the zoo exit. She loved it! (I stopped using it with her long ago after a foot injury and just never started up again so she doesn't remember it at all.) I couldn't believe how comfortable it was.

After the zoo, the kids and I visited Grammy's house for lunch, naps, quiet time, snacks and a video before a fun trip to a superstore with her. I even snagged a great deal on some photo albums on clearance. The kids snacked (again!) on crackers for the quiet drive home and Kansas Dad got the older two to bed in record time without any major hassles. He even had time to start the grand dishwasher installation tonight before we got home, which has me understandably thrilled. (He finished installing the ceiling fan in the living room last night. Busy guy, that Kansas Dad.)

Now, a few dishes and then perhaps a peek at that DVD we got from Netflix today.

Down with Disposables

Recently, we started the switch to cloth diapers. We've been buying different kinds to try them out on our diaper-wearing girls (and even received some homemade ones as gifts from you-guessed-who). We still have disposables, though. I like to have them on hand for Grammy so she doesn't have to fuss with the cloth ones and we usually keep them in the diaper bag since I like to keep it stocked and we don't have enough cloth to spare. In fact, we don't have enough cloth for both girls to go two whole days...yet. We'll get there, though, because Second Daughter has blown disposable diapers three times in the past five days (twice today), nearly every time she's had one on -- and they aren't even the super-cheap ones! (I apologize again to the two kind souls who were holding her for two of those not-so-fun experiences.)

So, a proper review of the fun cloth diapers we have is on the way. I'm just waiting on a few fitteds I ordered that haven't yet arrived so I can include them, but suffice it to say here, I'm losing my patience with the disposables.