Funny Photo Freitag (Friday)

We got an email from a friend called "Five Minute Chocolate Cake in a Mug"...it was a microwave recipe. Because E is so chocolate driven, I figured it would make a nice after dinner project. Well, the results were a little, um, strange, but she ate quite a bit of it! I thought it was a little chewy, and not in a good way. In my opinion, the picture says a lot about the quality of the product.

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Baby Greed

On the day before Easter, I invited a few tots over for an Easter egg hunt. Following my family's example, I color coded the eggs, so that each kid would have the exact same number in their basket at the end. I was tying to avoid the free-for-all, knock-em-down, greedy run for the money type hunt...the kind I participated in when I was about 4 years old.

I don't remember much, but Mom brought me to a shopping center of some kind, and there was a fenced off area in the parking lot. On the word 'go,' about a million other kids and I went a'running, with big dreams and baskets in hand. I remember seeing a little stuffed bunny, or some such thing, way far away. I ran past countless eggs to get there, only to lose it to a faster kid. I'm not sure whether my memory is accurate, but I believe I left with an empty basket.

I don't think I'll ever bring my kids to a 'survival of the fittest' egg hunt, at least not until they're old enough to process the competitive nature of the event. The capitol (in downtown Lansing) has a hunt on the lawn every year, and I read about it in the paper last week. One little girl left the hunt with just one egg, and her quote was, "Well, I guess it's better than none!" Sorry, little honey, I feel your pain. Next year you're invited to our house. We'll make sure you feel like a winner!

How Do You Spell Success? B-A-C-O-N

I have been trying to give blood since March 19, my sister's birthday. That day, my friend T met me at the Red Cross...she gave a pint, I gave a drop. I failed the iron test. This was not unexpected, because I had been borderline before. But darn it, I was taking a multi-vitamin with iron EVERY DAY for weeks leading up to this appointment. Needless to say, this was a big disappointment. I called M and asked him to meet me at Red Lobster, so I could load up on iron rich foods and try again the next day.

A big steak, five yummy shrimps, and a good night's sleep later, I went back for another try. Again, failure. Matter of fact, my iron level was even lower than it had been the day before! Fine. So home I went, to dig out the heavyweight iron pills that the doctor prescribed me after I had E. For a week and a half, I took them religiously...now mind you, these have, like, a hundred times more iron than the daily recommended dose.

I waltzed back into the Red Cross with confidence, but no luck. All of those pills had barely made any difference at all. I was close, but not close enough. This time the nurse not only gave me the list of iron rich foods, but she hand-wrote a note at the bottom of the sheet..."Wendy's bacon double cheeseburger with a side of chili. Eat for lunch the day of your next appointment."

So yesterday when I saw that there was a blood drive on campus, I went immediately to the cafeteria. Alas, I was too early for the hamburgers...so I settled on the next best thing. A make-your-own omelet with LOTS of bacon. Funny thing is, I didn't ask for extra bacon...the woman behind the counter just kept piling it on! When one container was empty, she even reached for some extra pieces out of the buffet! Maybe I looked pale. Then I grabbed an orange juice, because Vitamin C is supposed to help iron absorption.

After giving it a little time to work, I went over to the blood drive and BINGO! I passed with flying colors! I walked out a half hour later with my little "I gave blood today" sticker, and a date...56 days from now, on June 1, I can do it again. And this time I'm STARTING with bacon.

Unplugged - Illegal???

Oh, I hope we don't go to Federal prison for this...

A few weeks ago we took the kids to the post office to apply for their passports. We live in Michigan and need to keep our options open for travel through Canada to New England. We knew that it would take about 6 weeks for them to come in the mail, but E has been asking every time we go to the mailbox, "Is my new passfort here yet?"

So when I heard this week's theme, I decided to make the kids some fake passport books...JUST TO PLAY WITH. I took out some junky scrapbooking paper and very cheap stickers and attempted to make two books in about 20 minutes...the results were underwhelming, but fit the bill.
When the kids woke up from their naps, I showed them their passforts, and they were thrilled! E was really surprised to see her own picture in there. I set them at the kitchen table with stamps and ink pads, and we stamped the books while talking about life. It was quite cool, actually. I gave E the cow stamp, because we saw a cow decoration on a neighbor's house yesterday. Baby m got some fish and cars, two of the words he actually says pretty clearly. I was surprised how he really got into the stamping! Most of his "hits" were on the table, but it was washable ink. We all put our fingerprints in too...
I think we'll take these out in a few days and stamp them some more, and maybe I'll write a few notes about the things we did this week....for an older child, this might be a simple scrapbook project, or even a mini-diary. Ours will probably will be shredded by the time we start next week's project.

Oots

My babies are entertaining, to say the least. I've decided that some people have children just to listen to their cute little voices saying cute little things. E and Baby m cracked me up about a dozen times today. Let's see if I can recall a few...

Watching a commercial on Nick Jr., E declared, "Mommy, I want dat!" A few moments later, a little quieter..."Mommy? What IS dat?" Go ad geniuses. You have toddlers asking for plastic junk and they don't even know what it is!

Upon seeing a squirrel climb a tree, E said, "I wish I could climb a tree like that." To which Baby m replied, "Oots!" Makes perfect sense to me.

While pretending to be a doctor, E took out a plastic cleaver from her kitchen set and said, "Your leg is sick. I'm going to cut it off." When I told her that would hurt, she said, "Don't say ouch."

When we got back from our walk tonight, E walked in the door and took off every last piece of her clothes...even her socks. Then she ran around in circles through the kitchen and living room for 5 minutes. I could just see little flashes of her bottom zipping around here and there, and I could hear a constant giggle. Baby m chased her around, pointing like, "see that?"

After lunch, E asked, "Can I have some melted chick balls?" (Malted milk balls.)

Baby m is not a conversationalist yet, but he's getting there. He says fish, cookie, ball, car, mama, mo mo (more), gook (book) and of course, oots. I can't wait to hear what he thinks of this amazing world.

Unplugged Project - Long

I'm afraid our project did not turn out as long as I'd thought it would. My niece and I made a marble chute out of paper towel tubes, and attached it to the fridge with magnets. The cool part is you can adjust it up and down and change the angles. The not so cool part is that an actual marble is too heavy for this set up. As soon as the marble hit the second chute the magnets gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. We ended up using a little ball of dried clay instead.
Again, I think I can be accused of picking a project that is more appropriate for a 10 year old than a 3 year old, but E certainly did love the end product! Her face lit up when the ball landed in the Pringles can with a "Clang!" I'm excited to add more chutes...maybe we can run the entire length of the fridge! (By the way, notice the little girlie magnet from Unplugged "Old" looking on!)

Funny Photo Friday

June 2007, we took a trip to California with E, who was just 15 months old. It was a fantastic vacation, and we spent 4 days in Yosemite. On the last day we took a short hike and E found a sandpit to play in. This is a talent of hers....she did seem to be having fun shmearing the dust on her face! I'm sure that other visitors were taken aback by her appearance, and then by her screaming as I tried to clean her with baby wipes back at the car.

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