C is for COOKIE

So, I realize that if you've been reading the blog for any amount of time, it probably sounds like I do all the educational activities with Oscar and completely neglect Allen. Aaaaaaaaaand... it's sort of true.

The thing is, Allen is not the type of boy that likes to sit indoors and do brainy stuff. He spends hours outside every day, pushing things, watching birds, making mud puddles, chasing his siblings with sticks, pulling grass, throwing dirt-- you get the idea. And honestly, as long as he is doing something with that little mind of his, I am just fine with it not happening via textbooks. Children are hard-wired to always be experiencing and growing. Thanks to his outdoor sojourns, Allen knows much about the care of chickens, the habits of the black beetle, and the intricacies of gathering tree fruit and berries. He is learning tons about biology, meteorology, physics, and growing his vocabulary. So I have been totally fine with letting him learn through play and not stressing academic stuff too much, and directing those efforts towards Oscar, who completely thrives on complex mental work.

Which is why it is so exciting that Allen has finally started to show interest in literacy!

He started asking what various printed words say and rearranging our collection of magnetic felt letters to make up pretend words. That was my cue to start introducing the phonetic sounds to him again! We had gone through a few letters a few months ago, but the interest wasn't there, so I dropped it. We picked up again with C yesterday.

Today, we did a C activity... with cookies! We made a batch of sugar cookie dough (and, always having to mess up something in the recipe, I accidentally added twice the milk and had a very soupy dough for a while there).

Found another "C" object!

I cut long strips out of the rolled dough, and then Allen and I shaped them to form C's. My kids were never very big on sand/salt tray tracing, so I thought this would be a good alternate tactile way to form the letter.

I never did get any pictures of the finished, decorated cookies! Tuesday is my main music lesson teaching day, so we had an assortment of students filing in and out of the house throughout the day that got to help the baked goods disappear fast! At any rate, Allen had fun and got a little lesson out of it, so that was my big accomplishment for the day.

Happy Birthday, Allen!

Saturday was Allen's fourth birthday! Wow, I can't believe the little man is that old already.

All about Allen:

Height: 41 inches
Weight: 43 pounds
Shoe size: 12
Favorite activities: playing outside for hours, going to church, watching movies (I have to tell him "no" to shows many, many times a day), riding his balance bike. He and Oscar have worn a little tunnel system in a great row of lilac bushes at the edge of our yard, and they love to play and hide in there. He loves to pretend to give other people shots with any remotely needle-shaped object he finds. He loves trucks and tractors, and can name just about any type. He has really taken a shine to the piano lately- he's a real natural! He sits there and picks out chords and octaves by himself, and is very proud to know where all the D's are.
Favorite shows: Peter Pan, My Neighbor Totoro, Cars. Still loves Thomas the Tank Engine.
Funny things he's saying these days: "Cat church" (in reference to the Catholic Church that's right next-door to our church). "SNEEEEEEE!" (pretending to be Captain Hook calling for Smee) One day, when he saw me sit down at the piano, he started hollering, "STOP TEACHING LESSON!" For a while, Adam was getting on his case for randomly shouting "Nemo!" all the time. So of course, now Allen has evolved into randomly shouting, "Don't shouting Nemo!" He still mostly talks in fragments of sentences and gibberish... this past week, he started asking a bunch of "wh" (who, what, where) questions, which is cool. Still loves to say random things in funny voices like "Cashewwwwwww!" and "Dee dee dots!"
Favorite foods: any kind of fruit or berry! Last week, right after grocery shopping, I went for a run; when I came back a half hour later, an entire pound of blueberries was gone, and Allen had a purple mouth. He has been asking for watermelon ever since it hit the store shelves about a month ago!
Favorite books: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Caps for Sale, Otis the Tractor books, Dr. Seuss's ABC's, Sally Sutton's Construction series, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
Least favorite stuff: getting hair cuts, that pesky little sister Cici, avocado
Struggles: I can not get this kid to fully potty train for the life of me. I never thought I'd still be potty-training a kid at four years old, but here we are. I'd love to send him to VBS this summer, so hopefully things click with him before then. With Allen, he just takes a LOT of time learning skills- he didn't walk till 18 months- and no amount of pushing, praise, threats, encouragement, bribes, or punishment will move him along. The only thing that has consistently worked is time.
When he grows up he will be: probably in show business. :-D

On Sunday, we had a little birthday party for him. We invited my cousin's family, a young music student of mine, and a friend of Allen's from church (and their families, of course!), and had an outdoor hot dog cookout dinner. I'm glad we had the party at dinnertime as opposed to my original idea of two or three in the afternoon, because it turned out to be a sweltering day that peaked in the mid-90's! It was a bug-themed party, so Adam and Oscar made cupcakes with crushed Oreos for "dirt" and gummy worms on top.

We actually had a couple bug-themed party activities planned, but the kids and adults were having so much fun just playing and talking (especially after Adam turned on a sprinkler to cool the kids off!) that we ended up not doing them. Now I have a giant unused pin-the-legs-on-the-caterpillar poster that I'm not quite sure what to do with. Save it for next year's Allen party?

Next year's birthday party theme: Mud

How I told Adam about Baby #2

It is not news that I got knocked up a second time. In fact, it's such old news that I'm not even pregnant anymore, and the result is going on an adorable five months in a few days.

It was exactly one year ago today when I found out that Al was on his way. I had been feeling like I was on death's door with the most violent cough/fever combination I've ever had. In fact, it took me a good four weeks to get over it. Yuck! But one year ago today, on top of the usual symptoms, I started feeling a little sick. Hmmmm, weird. And then I suddenly realized that my monthly friend hadn't visited in about 7 weeks. Uh oh, something was definitely afoot.

So I took a pregnancy test, and the darn thing showed a big, fat positive almost instantly.

In between bouts of hacking, coughing, and lying down with the chills, I slapped that test in a hand-scribbled card and presented it to an unsuspecting husband. "I got you a very spoooooky card," I said.

He should have been suspicious right there-- a supposed Halloween card from the wife who may or may not wait to get his birthday card until a couple hours before he comes home from work on his birthday? Not that that's actually happened or anything. ;-)

This was about where the recognition dawned

Adam was super happy, of course, and pleasantly surprised. Frankenstein had nothin' on me that Halloween.

*Please note that we don't really think there is anything "worse" about having kids. It's an inside joke between us. :-P