Insect Update

The caterpillars grew and grew and grew...  it seemed like we could look at them, and 5 minutes later they'd seem bigger!

Two of them moved into the chrysalis stage while we were at church Sunday morning, and the rest followed behind within a day.  Casey moved them to the mesh butterfly habitat.  So now we wait, and really, really hope that they decide to come out before we leave for a couple days over spring break.  Otherwise we may have to pack them along on our trip!

So Sweet

Esther loves to write notes, make cards, draw pictures...  especially for other people.  The other night while I was gone and Casey was bathing Miriam, she made this.  She's such a good big sister (most of the time)!

Lunch time conversation

Me (in a sarcastic voice):  So, I think I'm just going to take a nap this afternoon and you guys can clean the house.

Esther:  Yeah, that's not gonna happen Mom.

Peter:  I think you and Daddy are going to clean the house tonight after we're in bed.

Esther (in a condescending voice):  Peter, Daddy never cleans the house.  Right Mom?

Me:  No comment.

Rockin' Peter

Insects in the Mail!

Imagine the excitement that occurred today when #1, not only did the FedEx truck stop at our house, but #2, it delivered a box with the above label on it!

We've decided to try our hand at hatching some butterflies....it should be a fun experiment for the kids. We'll be sure to add some pictures over the next few weeks. We're starting out with five little caterpillars.

Our only worry (other than Miriam getting her hands on this and introducing herself to these poor fellas) is that they may "hatch" while we are gone for a couple of days over spring break. But, I'm sure we could bring them over to Grandma K's for safe keeping......

Spring!

We are loving this spring weather... playing outside a lot and taking many bike rides.  Miriam is having lots of fun on the big wheel bike because of course she has to ride a bike since Esther and Peter do.  This morning Esther had a play date at a friend's house, so Peter said he wanted to go to the Meijer Gardens while she was there.  It was a gorgeous, sunny morning, so the butterflies were very active.  Then we headed out to the children's garden for a while and enjoyed the lovely day! 

Homework Fun

Last week, Esther's homework was to make homemade playdough.  This week her assignment was to make lots of snakes with the playdough and then form the numerals from zero the hero to 9.  Here she is showing off her work...

Paci Update

After 4 days of not falling asleep at nap time, Miriam finally slept today at nap time for the first time without her beloved pacifier!  Hopefully naps are not gone forever like the paci is...

Weather People

This morning somehow Esther and I got into a conversation about weather reporters.  It went something like this:

E:  Why are the weather people always right about the weather?

Me:  Um, well they're not always right.  Sometimes they say we're going to get a big snowstorm and then we hardly get any snow.  Or they say it's going to rain and then it's sunny.  They just have to make a good guess based on what their computers say.

E:  Well maybe sometimes God changes his mind, so they tell us what he was planning on originally, but then he changes his mind so they're wrong.

Me:  Hmmmm......

How do kids think of this stuff?!

No More Paci Girl!

I really wish I had a picture to go along with post, but I don't... and really this post might be quite boring to most of you, but it's really for our own recollection later...

I've been teasing Miriam lately about throwing her last pacifier away.  I'd say things like, "You don't need that paci anymore; we should just throw it away!"  Then she'd say "NO!" and then we'd laugh.  It was our little joke.  She's been weaned down to only using at naptime and at night for quite a while, but recently she has taken to going into her room for some "quiet time" to look at books and suck on her paci.

Sunday morning this little conversation happened again while getting ready for church.  A little while later she started walking out of her room with the beloved paci so I reminded her that we were leaving for church and she needed to put it away.  She replied, "No, throw paci away!"

At this point I realized that I wasn't sure if I was really ready for this.  I've known that no more paci would probably mean no more naps.  However, I wasn't going to argue with her, so downstairs we went and she promptly threw her paci in the trash.  We all clapped and really played it up with her and told her we were proud of her, etc...

Fastforwad to naptime.  This is when she (and I) really regretted the whole throwing away the paci thing.  She didn't sleep and screamed for quite a while and just seemed heartbroken!  Bedtime was not much better and she woke up several times during the night.

Each night has been better and she's now going to bed happily and sleeping well all night again.  However, she has not napped since Saturday.  Fortunately she's done pretty well and hasn't been too crabby overall.  We're still putting her in her crib every day in hopes that she'll continue to at least have some "quiet time" and maybe fall asleep if she needs to.  Once we get to summer break I'll probably like the freedom of her not needing to nap so that we have more flexibility in our day, but right now Esther, Peter and I really enjoy our quiet reading and game time while she's upstairs!

We're hoping that her next big decision will be to throw away her diapers and potty train herself!

Homemade Playdough

Esther's homework this week was to make homemade playdough (good practice with measuring).  Her teacher recommended a kool-aid recipe, so that's what we decided to try, and it was definitely a success!  It was fun to make, smelled good (grape flavored kool-aid), made a huge batch, and Esther and Peter played with it for a long time!  Peter made a lot of hot dogs and worms.  Esther made handprints, wrote her name in it, and did other more "civilized" things with her dough.  Gotta love the difference between boys and girls!

Here is the recipe for anyone who is interested:

2-1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup salt

2 packages unsweetened kool-aid powdered drink mix

3 tablespoons oil

2 cups boiling water

1. Mix flour, salt, kool-aid and oil until blended

2. Add boiling water, mix with spoon until cool enough to knead

3. Continue kneading until color is blended

4. Store in air tight bag or container in fridge

How to melt a mother's heart

Esther made this after dinner tonight.  No prompting or suggesting... she was just dancing around with Peter and then suddenly told me that she needed to whisper something in my ear.  She told me that she was going to make Peter a special card, but it was a secret.  So precious. 

At bedtime I told her that it was really sweet of her to make that card for Peter.  She said, "I just wanted him to know that I love him!"  Awww....

Would it be bad to whip this out next time they are fighting?