Fillin' their little brains...

School has continued on even with the addition of a newborn.  We started back sooner than I thought we would.  Seems like learning is more an ingrained part of our days than I knew.  Here are some of the things we've been doing the past 3 weeks:


Dale has been memorizing the Beatitudes:

Alan did activities with the letter W:

Dale completed a mini-lapbook on Canada, in preparation for the Winter Olympics.


Alan read The Mitten (over and over and over again) and made his own giant mitten and story animals from Jan Brett's site.

Dale did experiments with a mirror.


Alan played his new mitten shape match game from Mimi.


Dale practiced his addition facts both orally and with math games from FunBrain.  Math baseball and Math-car are his favorites.


Alan made a fishbowl counting page to practice counting 1-5.  (I'd link to it, but I don't think I can ever find it again!)  


Dale was introduced to the concept of 'carrying'.  


Alan practiced cutting shapes with scissors.


Dale read more books than I can count.

Alan kept his nose in a book a good bit, too.  But he takes breaks to smile for the camera.  ;)

Dale and I played Scrabble for spelling practice.


Alan put together quite a few jigsaw puzzles.


We are in the middle of reading Beethoven's biography.


And we all spent time together cooking, cleaning, and taking care of Tyler.


Whew!  It's a good thing all this learning is so much fun! ;)

I need your help!

Dear Bloggy friends,


As I have mentioned before, I love food.  I love eating.


But lately, I have run up on a problem:  I hate food.  I miss good eating.


I don't have a lot of time these days for menu planning, or even extensive cooking, and I am quickly getting burnt out on our usual stand-bys.


You may know the ones: Peanut butter sandwiches.  Pancakes.  Cold cereal.  Bananas and apples.


This is where you come in.  I need new ideas!


What are your (and your family's) favorites?  Your go-to foods for snacks and meals?


Quick breakfasts?  Good lunches?  Fun or yummy snacks?  Fairly quick and easy and yet still taste good suppers?


Would you leave a comment with some of your favorites and 'old faithfuls'?  Or if you have lots of ideas and recipes, maybe even a link to a post on your blog?  


I'd be ever so thankful, friends. 


My tummy and I already thank you.  :)

Midnight meditations?

While I am certain it is normally a good thing to have scripture stuck in your head...


entering the second long hour with your restless newborn in the wee hours of the night is not the time to be meditating on Psalm 4:8 - 


"I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep..."


That's just torture, right there.

Baby days

Do you know how hard it is to compose a blog post while listening to a crying baby?!

I had some sort of clever thoughts to put here, but they are long gone.

Instead I'll say:

He's a good baby.

We had a good day.

He had a bath!

He is starting to smile!

He fusses a couple of hours every evening!

Including right now!

Enjoy the pictures!

Groundhog Day Stuff

Look what we're making today!  Details and more pics and projects later.  Meanwhile, you can go here to see where I got the idea.  


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There really is more to come on our fun & learning today, but I had to interrupt those thoughts to let y'all get on board my "Fortunately / Unfortunately" rollercoaster.  Did you ever play that game?  


Here is today's version:

Fortunately, we were able to use the same wonderful baby mobile for Dale and Alan.  They both loved it, and with both of them, I loved it too.


Unfortunately, when we packed it away after Alan outgrew it, there was a piece broken.


Fortunately, there are several handy people in my family, AND I am an eternal optimist, so I felt confident we could fix it.


Unfortunately, when assembling the mobile for Tyler today, #1 - I discovered it no longer turns, and #2, another piece broke.  A piece that seems less fixable.  Apparently mobiles do not last longer than 6 years or 3 children.  


But I don't want another mobile!  I want THIS mobile!

Fortunately, when I googled a picture of our mobile just for the purpose of telling you this sad little tale, one of them came up at walmart.com!  We were given a walmart gift card for Tyler for when he was born!  And haven't spent it!  Yay!


Unfortunately, upon further reading, I saw this item is "Not Available at this time".  :(


Fortunately, as previously mentioned, I can be optimistic to a fault... even if it means denial!  So I have hope that our mobile can be replaced.  It's just going to be finding a bargain that proves challenging.  


Fortunately, I'm up for it. :)


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Finally, I am sitting down to recap our G-hog day stuff.  The race is on to see if I can finish this post before Tyler wakes up to be fed.

Ready.... set.. GO!


The marshmallow snowmen weren't really groundhog day related, but they have been on our fun-stuff-to-do list for a couple of weeks.  The boys saw the marshmallows come in from the store yesterday and insisted we use them!


So we did.

Marshmallows.


Powdered sugar icing for glue.


Pretzels for arms and nose.


Chocolate chips for eyes.


Black gel icing for a smile.

Or uhhh... something like that. 

These happy looking fellows don't know they are moments from being eaten.


The snowmen, that is, not the boys.  ;)


And in more appropriately theme-related activity...

Groundhog puppets!


For playing, and for using with this song from abcteach.com.


Then a printout about groundhogs for Dale's science notebook.


A couple of groundhog coloring sheets, and we felt we had fully celebrated February 2nd!


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P.S. I typed one line after "ready, set, go" and Dale began demonstrating for Daddy what he learned on the piano today.  Something Tyler usually sleeps through, but this time did not.  


But given the right comfy chair, Tyler and I can multi-task juuuust fine.  :)


Burping, however, requires two hands.  


Happy Groundhog Day, friends!

Back-burner blogging

Tyler has decided it's ok for babies to cry some.  And demand to be held.  And eat every 1.75 hours during the day.  

Which is ok.

Until I decide I have other things I'd like to do too.  

Like eat.

Or clean out my refrigerator.

Or blog.

Or do a craft project with the big boys.

Or any number of other things from my ever-growing list.

Ah well... he's only 4 weeks old.  I originally imagined giving us at least 6 weeks before I tried to start jumping back into things too much.  If I look at in that light then we are doing great.  Even ahead of the 'schedule' I had pictured in my head.

I admit, I often feel torn.  There are lots of things I'd like to be doing....

but who can complain when you get to spend so much time holding something as precious as this?

Babies, books, your opinion, and more?

I learned this week that Alan thinks Tyler came out of my belly button.


I let him continue to believe it!

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I've been reading my first Beverly Lewis book.  She kept me guessing the whole way through how she would resolve the multiple story lines by the end.


I never would have guessed how.


Because she didn't.


Not one single thing is wrapped up, tied up, finished up by the end.


Genius plan.  Now I have to read book 2 in the seires!


Must. get. to. library.  Soon.

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What are your thoughts on the add-on blogging?  Do you check the end of previous posts to make sure you didn't miss anything?  Or do the last thoughts added on get left behind?

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Ever make your own egg noodles?  I thought I might try it for tonight's soup, but by the time i looked up a recipe, it was too late to let them sit out and dry a little bit.  I didn't know about that part.


For supper tonight I'll just make dumplings, but I sure have homemade noodles on my mind now.  


So... have you ever made noodles?