Countdown to Four

Levi woke up on Friday, July 5, and announced, "it's 25 days until my birthday! Can we make a chain?"

Apparently he remembered our countdown to Christmas, because he remembers things like that. There wasn't an opportunity over the weekend, but this morning we finally made his chain. Exactly the same process as before: he cut the paper strips, made a pattern, numbered them, and applied glue as I chained them together.

Getting so much better at cutting on the line!

Owen got to help by holding the glue stick cap.

Great job taking a picture into the window, self.

Something about Levi's latest haircut has him looking older than ever. He's been in the living room for most of the day, narrating his pretend play with the trains (every exclamation is followed by "said Gordon" or "shouted Percy" or the like), mostly acting out variations on the books we read often. Tomorrow we're going to visit a prospective piano teacher. This kid is tugging at my heartstrings today. It's a good thing I have other babies to be babies, because this one is no baby anymore!

Comments

Vanilla and Snowflakes

You may remember from my Goin' Crunchy 2011 post that I started a batch of homemade vanilla back in May. It's all ready for use now, just in time for Christmas gifts! I bought these little bottles and a pack of winter-themed address labels on clearance at Target, dug through my craft boxes to find some old ribbon, and ended up with this: (You can't see it, but there is coordinating ribbon around the sugar jar, too.) As you can see, after I was done using my vanilla beans for extract, I cut them up into 2-inch pieces and covered them with white sugar in baby food jars: after about a week, the sugar is delightfully vanilla-flavored! I haven't used it yet, but hear it's great for sprinkling on baked goods or oatmeal, or stirring into coffee or tea. Packaged together in a little gift bag, they're making a nice small (and frugal!) gift for . . . those people who need nice, small, frugal gifts. :) In other news, I picked up a $1 sheet of snowfla...

More Pom-pom activities

That dollar or so I spent on a bag of fuzzy pom-poms might have been the most useful dollar ever. Both boys continue to be entertained by pushing them through the lid of an old peanut container , an activity I pull out whenever there is an emotional crisis mounting. I've been collecting toilet paper rolls in hopes of doing this stick-counting activity , but I have yet to gather enough suitable twigs. So I created my own conglomeration of several activities I've seen: Levi used small tongs to put the pom-poms in the tubes, counting to match the number on the tube. He recognizes the number words one, two, three, and six, so I opted to leave the numbers off and let him figure out which tube "said" which number. Like my lazy masking-tape construction? :) I belatedly remembered that we've done a similar activity before to practice colors: I've got a set of toilet paper tubes with colored paper around them! Not surprisingly -- that was six months ago -- ...

Bravery

If you've known me for any length of time, you've probably heard me (lovingly, semi-jokingly) refer to my children as "wimpy." If you picture my household of boys as the stereotypical group of climbing, rough-housing, dare-devil male monkeys, well . . . you're wrong. While Calvin is out to prove every word of this paragraph incorrect, my first four boys are, by and large, sitters: they love to draw, read, play board games and card games, build things out of LEGO and magnatiles, etc. With the exception of Levi's newfound interest in soccer last year, they are, for the most part, artists and intellectuals, and I've never felt the need to push them too hard in other areas. Until this summer, that is. We simply couldn't ignore their need to know how to swim any longer. (Actually, I personally don't care much, as I don't find swimming all that enjoyable. Give me a novel and a lounge chair in the shade, hands down, every time. But my husband and mo...

(And All My) Work Be Praise

Search This Blog