Bounce Time, Watercolors & Volleyball

It was a gray gloomy day this past Thursday here in the suburbs of Chicago so we headed for a favorite place - the bounce gym at the McCook Athletic Expo.  My friend met us there with her newly two year old son and one month old baby girl.  I told the kids ahead of time I really couldn't be jumping around and sliding down the slides this time. I really needed to rest. They ALWAYS want me to play tiger and chase them around. While it's ok to do that for while, they really, really wear me out.

Thankfully, they just asked a few times and seemed ok with me saying no. I actually was able to talk quite a bit with my friend, in between kids coming up and asking questions, getting out food, and so on.

After leaving the bounce gym, we dropped off some videos and headed to the LaGrange Library. Jared wanted to check out yet another Batman book, and I found a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We started to read the book last week after checking it out the week before, but I had to return it because it was on hold for someone. I was so glad this library had it. As of today, we read through chapter 15. It was slow going with the kids, and I was actually going to stop because they didn't seem that interested in it, but once Charlie found the Golden Ticket, they really seemed to get into it much more - wanting me to read at least three chapters at a time. The book was one of my very favorites as a kid, and I adore the older movie, so I was so hoping they'd love it too.

We came home, and the kids watched a few episodes of Time Warp Trio - a really cute animated series where three kids go back in time and meet the Vikings, African Tribes, and other historical groups.

Later in the afternoon, there was also some watercolor painting at our house. Lately, Alexa has been very interested in painting again, but only if it's watercolors. I've loved the new pictures I can hang up on the walls. They seem to go in and out of interests at times. Do your kids do that, too?

Jared mixed his painting with a huge globs of glue, which he said was a web, and then sprinkled glitter over the whole thing. Oh, and the black things jutting out of the top and bottom are the hands of the dragon.

Some other things we've enjoyed doing the last part of this week have been .....

Jared tying up and taping up his Batman figure in any way can. He has this obsession lately with trying to make sure his Batman can't escape.

They've rediscovered bathtub crayons again. I don't think they've done this for at least six months.

Wonderful dress-up. I don't know if it's clear in the picture but Jared  has on his Spider-Man ear muffs, winter hat, and the camera case with all his figures slung over his shoulder.

More Lego creations...

...and creative uses of the box that holds the remotes. Jared grabbed the box, turned it over on its side, and suddenly it became the perfect Batcave. When we were eating lunch, Jared looked down at the olive juice on his plate and said, "Look! It's a Bataxe!"  And, doggone it, it DID look like a Bataxe. That boy sees Batman in just about everything.

Yesterday, in the afternoon, Steve's parents took the kids to Proksa Park for a few hours, and I was able to work on this blog. I guess Jared saw a boy wearing a Spiderman mask and was glued to him the entire time. Then when they were in the car, Jared said he wanted a Spiderman mask, too. When they pulled up to the house, Jared cried and cried and refused at first to get out of the car because he thought they were going to take him to get a mask.

Later that evening, we went to see Granddad and Grandma (Steve's parents) play volleyball at the church gym. They play in a fun league, but they really did quite well, even though they did lose two of their three games. The kids had never seen any type of organized game in person before, so it was fun to see their little faces light up, although they became very squirmy towards the end.

Afterwards, we got a sundae from McDonald's, and the kids played in the PlayLand. Jared learned a valuable lesson that evening. McDonald's WILL mix both carmel and chocolate together in the same sundae.

Another Peek into One of Our Days - Adler Planetarium

So, for the second week in a row, here's a detailed peek into one of our days. Be prepared. It's a long read!

7:20  I wake up this morning and drag myself out of bed. I tell myself I need to get better about not reading so late at night so I'll get up earlier. I'm actually surprised Alexa isn't up yet. She usually gets up between 6:30 and 7:00. I pour myself a bowl of cereal, and sit down at the computer. I want to write down directions to the Adler Planetarium. I've driven down there before, but never my myself with just the kids. I've actually never been downtown alone with the kids before, so this will be a scary first for me. I check a few e-mails and then Alexa walks into the kitchen followed by Jared ten minutes later. They both talk with Steve for a little while as he gets ready for work, and Jared works on tying up his Batman figure. We kiss Steve goodbye.

8:00 a.m.  I've got a lot to do this morning if I'm going to get us out the door at a halfway decent time, so I pour the kids some cereal and give Jared his medicine. I start defrosting the spare ribs in the microwave, and go into the kids' room to pick out clothes for the day. Alexa asks me to open her new Lego set she received for her birthday, and I pretend to be Alfred for Jared as he wants to play Batman for awhile. We continue our pretend game as I dress them both and fix Alexa's hair.

9:00 a.m. I want to jump in the shower right away, but Alexa really wants me to help her build a Lego car. At first I say no, but then I watch her with the instructions, how she has found the right pieces and has really made surprisingly good progress on her own, so I sit down on the floor and help her. We're both proud of the car when we're finished. It's actually the first time I've ever built anything with Legos before.

Jared has tied Batman up the umbrella again. Remembering yesterday's lesson, I left Batman dangling right where he was.

After putting the car together, I put on PBS (the last 10 minutes of Dinosaur Train is on) and jump in the shower. 

10.00 a.m. Steve calls, so we talk for a little while, and I try to race through dressing, drying my hair and fixing my makeup. Meanwhile the kids watch Sesame Street. Here's a little aside. On the show, Elmo asks the kids which school they thought he should go to today. He talks about going to a school where there's a lot of animals. Then he yells out, "That's right. We're going to farm school today."  Huh?  How about we're just going to visit a farm? I hate how almost every PBS show portrays school as this place where you're almost always going on field trips or doing fun, hands-on things that you always love to do, and there are only four or five other kids in your class. Talk about indoctrination. 

Anyhow, when I finsh getting myself ready, and I pack us a lunch, put the cameras in the bag, and water the plants. I also pour more sugar water on the flower inside the butterfly pavilion. We all take a quick bathroom break, put on our jackets and head out the door.

11:00 a.m. We make good time and get downtown in about twenty minutes. After letting Steve know I actually got us downtown safely, we run into the building and find a place to eat. At first they say we can only eat in the cafeteria where we'd have to buy our own food, but then a lady says we can see if there's room in the classrooms where the school groups eat lunch. We find a table in the corner, and it all works out. I feel sad, though, seeing so many kids crammed into that room. Jared decides to make a sandwich out of the bread, roast beef and string cheese I brought. He always wants to eat each item separately, so this was a first. He is very proud of himself.

12:00 p.m. We take a bathroom break and head to the new exhibit geared towards 2-8 year olds. It's called Planet Explorers.

Jared loves wearing this space outfit. Thank God he was wearing it after what happens a few minutes later.

I just love this picture of Jared on a space toilet.

The first part of our visit is ok, but then it seems all hell breaks loose. The school kids are finished with their lunch, and they come hurdling through the exhibit, picking up play rocks and whipping them at each other as hard as they can. To get away,  we enter a room in the exhibit where it is pitch black, to simulate being in space. Jared stands right in front of me, and I'm about to take his hand, when a horde of kids push us from behind, almost knocking us to the ground. Jared gets away from me, and I can't see or feel him in the room. I've never been so scared before in my life. I can just imagine him being trampled. It's such a small room, and by now there are probably 25 kids in there all screaming and shoving. Thank God I feel Jared's space backpack in the dark and grab him. We press our backs against the wall and wait until they've left and it's quiet again. We make our way to the front where we can no longer see any other groups and play there for while.

1:00 p.m.  We take another bathroom break and head downstairs to check out those exhibits. The kids find some parts of the new telescope exhibit interesting, but after a short while they ask to go upstairs to look at the Mars Rover.

2:00 p.m. We're all getting a little tired, but they are reluctant to go. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I lure them away with a promise of a scoop of ice cream at home. I'm still not feeling the greatest since the ER trip. I give Steve a quick call in the car, and we drive home. Jared has fallen asleep in the car (the expressway was really backed up so it took almost twice as long to get home), so I lay him on the couch. Alexa and I check on our butterflies. Three more have hatched since we've been gone. We sit at the kitchen table and share some cherry almond shortbread cookies. Alexa wants to build more with Legos, so we take out the box.

3:00 p.m. We work on building a Lego house and have just finished when Jared wakes up in a crabby mood. He always wakes up crabby if he happens to fall asleep in the car. He settles down quickly, though, when I share one of our cookies with him.

4:00 p.m. We go onto the Amazon.com site and look up some more Lego sets, dreaming of the next one we want to get. Jared falls in love with the Batmobile set. I run across an awesome free site called freelegoinstructions.com. It has thousands of instructions for previously made Lego sets. So I suppose if you have lots of random Lego pieces, you might be able to use the instructions to build something. Or just use your wonderful imagination. Jared decides he wants to ride his bike outside, and Alexa starts drawing on the porch with sidewalk chalk.  I check on our butterflies and am so excited to see one actually coming out of its chrysalis. I call the kids in and we watch for while. They grow tired of it and go back outside to draw. They soon call me out to see the words and letters they've drawn on the asphalt. They tire of this and decide to make "sea water" - a blend of water, grass, sand and dirt. Meanwhile, I work on straightening the house.

5:00 p.m. While I straighten, the kids come back in the house and strip naked. For some reason, at least once a day, they feel the need to strip naked. They smear glitter lip gloss on their chests, and after I ask them to wipe it off, they do flips off the couches. Jared does this naked, except for his Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle mask and shell I made for him. Today he is calling it his Mean Skeleton costume. Steve calls, and I mix flour and water together for the gravy and drop some corn on the cob in a pot full of water to boil. This entire time I've also had to play Batgirl, too. Steve walks in the door, and the kids talk to him while I finish making the gravy, make some toast and cut up fruit.

6:00 p.m. We eat hurriedly because Steve needs to leave for worship team practice tonight by 6:35. He plays guitar every other week. The kids talk over each other, telling him about our day and showing him the Lego car and house. Steve gets his stuff together while I start cleaning the kitchen. He leaves, and I finish cleaning the kitchen while I play Batgirl.

7:00 p.m. I get the kids in the bath, and quickly put the dishes away, sweep the floor and give the butterflies more sugar water. Then I give the kids their bath and dress them. I've promised them that tonight they can watch half of the Little Mermaid II ( I think they've watched that about a dozen times already). We start the show at 7:40. I continue to straighten the house, bring in the plants from outside and check e-mails.

8:00 p.m. I work on posting to this blog until 8:25 when the movie is over. Then I read Jared a Batman book called Birthday Bash (it's a Scholastic Step 3 book), while we halfway watch American Idol. We usually watch the show together as a family. As tonight is just results night, I mute the show and just turn it up when they start to announce who will be kicked off the show this week. Alexa's book request for this evening is TinkerBell and the Lost Treasure - another Step 3 Step into Reading Book. My friend calls about going to a bounce place tomorrow, and when I've finished that call I notice Alexa has fallen asleep on the couch. I lay her down in bed.

9:00 p.m. I work on another blog post, while Jared sits on the couch, flipping through his Batman books and making up stories. Steve calls at 9:20 and is on his way home. We talk for 5 minutes. Jared follows Steve in the bedroom while he changes when he gets home. They both go outside for a while to look at the lightening. Then Steve carries him into our bedroom and makes up a Batman story for him. I finish posting to my blog.

10:00 p.m. Jared finally drifts off to sleep at 10:20. I make a cup of hot chocolate and read for awhile from my Elizabeth Peters book - He Shall Thunder in the Sky- (It's the 13th book in the Amelia Peabody series, about a armature Egyptologist who also solves crimes) - while Steve enters receipts into the budget. We watch the last 20 minutes of Law and Order together, and then we get ready for bed. I read some more in bed until about 11:15.

The Farm, Butterflies & Batman's All Tied Up

We woke up Tuesday the 11th to gray skies. The kids knew that probably meant no pony ride today at the farm, something they were really looking forward to. But I think they brightened up some when they saw the fluffy one-week old baby chicks. They looked just like the stereotypical Easter chicks you see in the pictures. The kids sat around a small table and pet their chicks while Ms. Kay talked about why chicks and ducks have different types of feet.

We grabbed our umbrellas and headed to the barn. Although we didn't go in the pigpen this week, I still had to include a picture of this cute little guy. We spent most of the time in the barn in the goat pen, feeling the mama goat side and hoping she'd have her babies in the next two weeks so we could see them before the end of this program. It was also fun to check out the stables and go inside the horse's stall.

Before we left, we took some tiny duckling out of the incubator and held them. I almost forgot. In the barn, the hens had laid three eggs, so Ms. Kay took one of the hens and put her in a separate area. She had all the kids carry handfuls of hay and make a nest for the eggs, and then she put the eggs inside the nest. Next week we're going to see if the hen actually sat on the eggs and will hatch them. 

We stopped by my mom's house afterwards for lunch, and so I could work on this blog for a while. The kids always love to feed Teddy, my mom's dog, her Cherrio treats. They like watching her perform her tricks. The kids and my mom went to their library, where they checked out some new books, and then came back for an ice cream cone treat. My mom left for work, and the kids played store with my grandma. She was the customer and they were the shopkeepers.

We we arrived at home, we were SO excited to see two more of our butterflies had hatched. As I said in the last post, as of this date they all have hatched, so we have 9 total. The kids asked to feed them this time. We sprinkle sugar water over a flower, and I also soak a paper towel in sugar water, too.

Before Steve came home for dinner, we had some pretend Batman play. Lately, Jared's taken to tying up his Batman with string and hanging him from the umbrella. Later that evening, he wanted me to play Batgirl. He showed me how he had tied Batman up. I though he wanted me to rescue him. Apparently not. After I untied Batman from the umbrella and showed Jared, he burst out into the most sorrowful sounding cry I'd ever heard from him and ran upstairs, where he wouldn't be consoled. Now I know. With Batman play, you must do it exactly how he wants, my own thoughts and ideas are not required, thank you very much. Kind of reminds me of this book I received for Mother's Day :)

A Birthday, Mother's Day, Butterflies & Builders

This post will be a hodgepodge of days from the 7th through the 9th of May. My mother-in-law is over now, playing with the kids, so I'm going to try to get up all the posts through today. I might actually, in over a year that I've been blogging regularly, actually be up-to-date with my posts.

So, last Saturday on the 8th we went to my sister's house to celebrate her birthday. Her actual birthday is the 1st, but that was the day we celebrated the kid's birthday with the family. It was a really busy day that day with cleaning up the house in the morning after a bacon and pancake breakfast.  We did grocery shopping for the next two weeks, stopped at Khols' to pick up a gift card, at the theater for another gift card, and hurried home for lunch and to put the groceries away before driving the 40 minutes to my sister's house.

It was pretty relaxing for me there. The kids spent quite some time playing with my brother. First, playing some indoor badminton, and then they had loads of fun jumping all over their uncle.

My brother-in-law made a fantastic meal of BBQ and teriyaki chicken, pork and beef, and corn on the cob. After some more play and talking, Amy opened her presents, and Alexa read aloud her cards.

We had a fabulous ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. The kids fell asleep in the car, and actually laid down right away when we got home. Ahhh. Both kids sound asleep at 8:30. Now that's something that doesn't happen every day.

The next day, Mother's Day, was much more sane, but still felt busy. We went to church in the morning, and all mother's received a plant on the way out the door. Alexa was very proud to present my bougainvillea to me.

Then, Steve asked if I'd like a little brunch, since we'd be eating lunch later, so we stopped at Connies. It was CROWDED! Thankfully, we were able to get a booth, but after being there an hour, the kid's patience had long been used up. They liked their waffles with cream, pancakes and bacon, and I really enjoyed my strawberry crepes and Steve his omelette, but we were ready to go. After cleaning up three spilt drinks and listening to crying children, I think it's fair to say the wait staff was as equally glad to see us go, too.

At home, we rushed to get mother's day presents wrapped, cards filled out, and online tickets printed (my parents are going to see the Million Dollar Quartet). Then the twins gave me their gift, a Topsy Turvy hanging strawberry plant (YEAH!) and Steve gave me his, a book I really looked forward to reading, John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction. I'm just halfway through, but I HIGHLY recommend it.

We drove to Steve's sister's house in Chicago, about 40 minutes away. She had worked hard to prepare a awesome lunch of baked BBQ chicken and veggies, focaccia bread, and had bought an incredible chocolate cake. In fact, I'm going to try making it for dinner in the next month.

Shortly after dinner, we gave the mothers their presents. I bought my grandmother two African violets. I always remember my grandmother having African violets in her home. My mom and dad were pleased with their tickets, and I think Steve's mom really loved the movie tickets, too. (I have to say sometimes I'm a little jealous that our parents have all this time to do lots of fun things with each other whenever they want too, but I am so in love with being with my children every day, and Steve and I are creative in finding pockets of time for each other. We really do need to make more time for ourselves, though. I think my recent trip to the ER proved that.)

Jared absolutely loved the laundry shoot in their home. He'd pretend he was Batman and throw down something that would trap the person on the bottom. Or I'd pretend to be Commissioner Gordon, and he'd peek his head down at me and I'd give him his next mission.

I thought for sure they'd both go to sleep when we got home, because it was later, but Jared was wide awake. He stayed up for another hour or so building things with his magnet set. He wanted me to take picture after picture whenever he'd add a new element to his creation. I'll just post three of those pictures here.

He really loves building things, and lately he's putting much more thought into his creations, instead of just seeing how high or wide something can be made. Although it drives me crazy, he'd been on a kick now where he drags all the tupperware out and builds with it. Here his is at the beginning of one of his projects.

He still loves lining up his figures. Although sometimes he does so in places I'd rather he didn't, like the toilet lid.

The other big thing that happened in the past few days is our butterflies started to hatch. The kids seemed interested, but I was by far the most excited to see it happen. We saw one struggling to hatch from his chrysalis, but unfortunately he didn't make it. The kids really questioned that, so it was a chance to talk about how many times things just randomly die in nature. I don't have a great picture of the butterflies, but I'll get a good one before we release them, although it's been so cold that I'm afraid they will spend their whole life in the pavilion unless it warms up.