CookKnitSew

30 Days of Happiness :: Making rainbow sticks

I have been taken aback at how thrilled Sizzles is to earn "Star Slips" in her new school.  Being a believer in a lot of the principles of a Montessori education, I had dismissed the notion of rewarding children with such trinkets and badges and instead allowing the reward to be simply the accomplishment of a difficult task.  It turns out that this kid is all about the visual recognition of a job well done.

This newly found knowledge, has also led me to consider that, other than verbal kudos, we don't do much to reward the girls for listening or making good choices.  So I came up with the idea of rainbow sticks.  Sizzles is, after all, a 5 year old girl and obsessed with coloring everything into a 'rainbow.' 

And guess who LOVES to help make rainbow sticks?  Sticky-Butt!

This has been a wonderful project for her and I to work on in between crying fits from Porkchop, laundry, and the litany of household chores that crowd our day.

Hip Hip Hooray for Rainbow Sticks!

30 Days of Happiness :: Brotherly love

She LOVES her new little brother.

The foodie grandparents

My parents were foodies before the word existed.  These folks had wine tastings at our house growing up, they maximized the mini-lobster season (we lived near the Florida Keys), and they prized the arrival of my grandmother's jarred tomatoes and pickles each year.

Even now, when they throw a party everyone knows that quality food will abound.  At Sizzles first birthday, they insisted on bringing a cooler of dry ice full of king crab they scored via their restaurant friend.  This weekend, while RVing in Linnville, North Carolina, they threw a shrimp boil outside their coach featuring gulf shrimp, kielbasa, corn and potatoes.

Is it a wonder then, between me and her grandparents, 

that Sizzles gave her first food critique this 

weekend?   

While tasting the several of the baker's choice cupcakes from the Atlanta Cupcake Factory this weekend, she declared that she liked the second cupcake (with a Nutella whipped frosting) better than the first cupcake (a chocolate cupcake topped with dark chocolate ganache and sprinkled with a hint of cayenne, ala Mexican hot chocolate) because, "The chocolate is lighter and not quite as spicy."

That's my girl.  

Getting there

The girls and I made muffins this week, for the first time in a while.  We are finding our rythm, or at least trying to create one. 

The day starts around 4am with a Porkchop feeding, which takes about an hour once he nurses and then has a supplemental bottle and new diaper.  I head downstairs and make Sizzles school lunch (okay this part has only been happening the last two days), turn off the lights that Brian has left on and head back to bed.

Brian gets up around 7am and wakes Sizzles up, gets her breakfast, dressed for school and out to the bus stop.  

Right around that time, Porkchop is back up and needs to be fed and changed again.  Soon after he is up, Sticky-Butt comes downstairs ( a late riser because she refuses to go to bed each night).  Brian leaves for work and we drift through the day.  Sometimes we accomplish a lot (Sticky-Butt is a big helper when it comes to unpacking books) and other days I doggie-paddle through with a crying baby and a temporarily insecure two-and-a-half year old.

And so we float along in this season of the newborn.  

And we make muffins.

How to deal with a colicky baby

Yesterday, after an entire day of screaming from Porkchop, Brian came downstairs and declared that we needed to get out of the house and take a walk.  I was preoccupied throwing the girls into time-outs right and left for ignoring my demands to pick up toys, or bathing suits, or crayons, or ANY of the various items they had strewn throughout the house.  Grouchy and exhausted, I pointed out that it was about to rain.  Brian declared we would bring umbrellas.  

We made it to the front porch and the rain commenced.

Apparently, shaking your heiny in the rain does a lot for a weary soul.

 

Unfortunately, it took Porchop a whole additional day to settle down.  

Apparently, it requires a romp in the rain AND a trip to Trader Joe's for peaches and random sundries.  

Note to self.  ;)

Puzzle Girl

Sticky Butt always amazes me.  This girl is sharp.  I realize that as her mama, I am a bit bias, but every couple of weeks she does something that compels me to pick up the phone and tell Brian.  

See this puzzle?  She did this completely alone.  I admit, she then lost interest and I finished it from here, but still.  She won't be three until October and this is a 100 piece puzzle that is targeted for kids 5+!

The flip side of her flying through her toddlerhood, is that she is referring to me as, "Mom."

This bugs the tar out of me.  I am refusing to respond.  If she refuses to act like a two year old, then I 

will.  ;

Porkchop takes a bath

Porkchop is the first of our offspring to enjoy the bathing process.  There wasn't one blood curdling scream to be had.  Instead, he just had wide open eyes and took in the water and his excitable sisters, each trying to get in the tub (while my back was turned they both stripped with the intent to climb in). 

If this boy has any tendency to be easily overstimulated, he will have to change his hardwiring in a jiffy because these girls can not resist the urge to pull his feet, grip his skull and smush their noses into his face. They are most certainly in love with their brother - a good thing, as long as I never leave him alone in their presence.  ;)

     

Waiting

Brian and Sticky-Butt waited on the front porch to greet Sizzles after her first day at kindergarten.

We had to wait even longer for her arrival, because when we stood at the open bus door she did not come out.

The bus driver was coaxing a kid in the front seat to disembark and join us.  But after little success, the driver asked one of us to climb on board and assure the kindergartner that this was in fact her stop.

I stepped up the large black stairs and poked my head over the seat to see that it wasn't Sizzles, proving that the little girl knew what her stop did and did not look like.   

The shocked driver called for Sizzles over the loud speaker, but blank faces were the only response.  Just as I was telling Brian that our child wasn't there and we needed to go fetch her at the school, a curly-haired boy shouted that maybe the sleeping girl was the missing kiddo.  

Thankfully, slumped over and drooling in the third row was our Sizzles.

Crisis averted.  

She will be allowed to ride the bus again.  ;) 

 

Change

Everything has changed.

• Sold the little house inside the perimeter
• Bought a big house in the burbs  
• Got a mini-van 

Sent Sizzles to kindergarten today 

AND 

• I made a person!    

  

• We like to call him, "Porkchop"

 Life is good.

Really, really GOOD.