Stepping Stones Together Literacy Program

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Over Valentine's week, Matthew was able to find the valentine that said, "To: Matthew, Love: Mommy" out of the valentine's we made for his cousins and friends at my mom's daycare. His word recognition is really coming along!

Matthew and I have been working on our Stepping Stones Together literacy program for a number of weeks now and we’ve just about finished up the first of our three book series - which will earn Matthew his first certificate! In all honesty, we could have finished it earlier, but Matthew’s holding up progress lately by wanting to read the same stories over and over. Although I try to encourage him to choose new stories so that we can put some stickers on our included progress chart, I feel like any reading practice is better than no reading practice at all -- so rather than discourage him from the books he enjoys enough to keep reading, we just continue to read Pal the Plane and My Dog Dylan almost everyday. If nothing else, the repetition can’t hurt. And it shows that the characters and content of the stories in the program are ones that really do keep kids wanting to come back each day.

Over the past two weeks it’s become more and more apparent that the program is really starting have an impact. He’s picked up on skills he’s learned from the program, but more importantly, he’s applying those skills outside of our morning routine with the program, too.

For instance, making predictions about the stories we read has become a normal part of our story time routine - even outside of the program. We’ve also gotten used to talking about the stories we read as soon as we’re finished, before we put it away. A lot of times, even if I’m not planning to take the time after a story to discuss it with him -- he won’t let me put it away without going over the stories events first and talking about our favorite parts. More often than not, he has to open to the story to his favorite page and even show me in the illustration what’s happening -- a habit he picked up through the program, by answering comprehension questions at the end of every Stepping Stones Together book.

He’s still working on pointing to each word individually as he “reads” rather than just scanning the entire sentence with his finger indiscriminately. However, when I do the pointing while he reads, he knows not to move on to the next word until I point it out, and I think that shows a reasonable amount of understanding. He’s also learning to make predictions about words he’s unsure of by sounding out some of the letters it’s made of, rather than by the illustration alone. He’s also learned to recognize his own name when he sees it written, and point out that other words that begin with the letter M are “just like” his name! I’m excited to see what kind milestones the next book series will lead us to.

Don't Hold My Hand

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I took him skating yesterday. This is what it sounded like.

“Mommy, wait for me.

No, don’t hold my hand.

Just walk with me.

Not slow. Walk regular.

Walk regular, but walk WITH me. Don’t walk slow.

Mommy, wait for me!

No! Don’t help me up!”


I know better than to help him up, but I always ask the first time… Just to make sure. It’s one of the few things I’m sure about with him. Not because I know this part so well, but because everything else about him right now is so confusing. He is not completely anything yet. Certainly not completely independent. He still relies very heavily on his stuffed puppy for comfort, his binky for a good night’s rest, and his nigh-light to fend off evil dinosaurs that raid his bedroom after dark. He’s old enough to know that ghosts don’t exist, but not so old that he’s completely fearless. If we forget to put it on, he’ll wake me up in the middle of the night to make me turn it on. Even though our bedroom is on another floor entirely and he knows how to flick the switch himself. I think it’s a matter of principal. But again, I’m not sure.

So I ride the wave. I come when he asks for me, I step back when I think he can do it on his own. I try to play it cool and figure out the next move before he tells me -- but I still need his cues.

When we were leaving the rink, I propped him up on the end of a bench in the food court to untie his skate. He glared at the kids behind him playing a video game at the other end of the table. A group of kids pushing 13 maybe. Two boys and a girl with a hoodie and black fingernails. Then he turned back to me and his voice got low.

“Mommy, those guys made fun of me.”

I had to play it cool. This was serious on a number of levels. This was our first brush with humiliation. He was old enough to care whether or not they heard him tell, but not so old that he minded me being the one he told. I didn’t want to mess this up. After all, I wasn’t going to have this privilege for long. And this was a vital learning opportunity.

On the one hand, I obviously wanted to punch someone. Not because the kids deserved it. It’s doubtful they even noticed his existence, much less laughed at anything he did. But whether they meant to or not, they made him feel small. And I’m pretty sure that kids have been punched by other moms for less. But this was a Don’t Hold My Hand moment if ever I saw one. So I had to choose my next move wisely.

I matched his low tone. I told him that I don’t think they meant to, but he assured me that, oh yes - they definitely did. This was an act of malice. These kids were mean, and my boy was insulted.

I asked him if there was anything he thought he could do to make it better. He shrugged. I patted his back as I finished up and we turned to take the skates back up to the counter. I got the sudden sense that he wasn’t following me anymore and sure enough, when I looked down, he wasn’t there. I looked back just in time.


This is what it sounded like:

“Did you laugh at me?”

He stood, barely tall enough to meet their eyes over the table. The girl raised her untamed eyebrows at him, looked at her friends and pursed her lips into a frown to hold down a smile.

“I heard you make fun of me.” He pointed a finger at the group of them. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

He turned on his heel, cool as a cucumber, and he walked next to me. I pretended not to lose stride. As inconspicuously as I could and without slowing down, I kept my arm by my side, and I flipped my hand out for a low five. But he held it instead.

Backyard Preschool: Week 5!

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Inspired Lesson: The Skeletal System
Science/Reading/Math (measurement and counting)

Sometime over the summer, Matthew and I read a great book called The Skeleton In The Closet by Alice Schertle. And ever since then, Matthew’s taken notice of his own bones. It started when he brushed his teeth and noticed that the skeleton in the story had teeth, too. Then, he noticed the bump of the bone on his ankle. And then his hip. And then his elbow. So for months, Matthew’s been really into his bones. This week has been a long time coming, and one that I was super excited about!

I finally had the opportunity last week when Matthew started wanting to join me for my morning workout, and he asked me why we need to exercise. When I told him that it’s to help keep our muscles and our bones healthy, he started laughing. He got the muscle part, but when I said “bones” he thought I was being silly. I got to talking about how we eat certain food to keep our bones healthy too, and that it’s important to keep our bones in good shape because they help protect important muscles inside of us -- like our brain and our heart. And before I knew it, I had him all pumped up for our next preschool lesson.

Videos
I roped him in by showing him a video I’d found on BrainPopJr about Bones. When he was thirsty for more, (at the slight risk of stirring up the darker, nightmare-prone side of his imagination) I showed him this 3D visual of a skeleton walking inside of a man’s silhouette body, knowing that it be a sure-fire way to really grab his attention and get him asking questions. I was right. He asked to watch it again and again and again, each time fixing himself to the screen even harder than the last time, calling out new observations, like, “Look, Mommy, he moves his skeleton arm like this - that’s just like I do when I run!”

http://www.brainpopjr.com/health/bodies/bones/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRoSy1Hwouo&feature=player_embedded

Fast Facts
We already knew from our Skeleton In The Closet story that we kind of “wear” our skin over our skeletons, like clothing over our skin. So at the start of the week I carved out the most important, basic facts about bones for us to focus on. We learned that:
*Bones give us our shape
*Bones grow with our bodies
*Bones are stiff and strong
*Bones protect our insides (like heart, lungs and brain)
*Our “head bones” make up our Skull
*Foods like milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream help to keep our bones healthy
*Exercise is also important for healthy bones
*Bones are connected by joints, which enable us to bend
*Many animals have skeletons, too. But some don’t.

Reading List
These books were totally invaluable in getting Matthew excited about this week’s lesson. Each one brought something interesting and helpful to the table. I was excited to see how Matthew responded to reading such a wide range of non-fiction books this week. He totally got into them!
*DK HUMAN BODY one million things, the incredible visual guide
Richard Walker
*You Can’t See Your Bones with Binoculars, a guide to your 206 bones
Harriet Ziefert/Amanda Haley
*The Human Skeleton

We spent a little bit of time looking at the skeletons of different animals, and I even got to pull out his ultrasound photos so that he could see what parts of his own skeleton looked like when he was just a baby. He thought that was really cool.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Our first project was a simplified reinforcement of how our bones fit into our bodies. It helped to illustrate how our bones are strong and how they are different sizes. I did have to do the initial gluing of the popsicle sticks with Gorilla Glue before we started, and I had to show Matthew where to dab the (Elmer’s) glue even when he was involved. He really was only “helping” to make this project more than anything. It wasn’t one that necessarily called for a lot of creativity on his part -- but it was a great exercise in motor ability and following direction. More importantly, it got him asking questions and making observations (like why some bones are smaller than others and that they all connect to one another “like Legos!”) And, to me, the success of a project can always be measured in the number of questions it gets a kid asking about the subject while you’re working. This one did the trick.




Also, he turned out to be sickeningly adorable! We will totally save him (and probably make more) for Halloween.
(*Rib bones were taped onto the back of the back popsicle using a thin strip of mounting tape.)

The only issue I took with this project was that he wasn’t bendy. Matthew, apparently, did too, because he had an instant compulsion to start pulling at his limbs like an action figure once our Q-tips dried. He decided at once that if we could bend our arms then our skeleton man ought to be able to, too.
…Everybody’s a critic.

Luckily, our little hiccup was a perfect way to introduce the subject of joints! Almost instantaneously, I remembered a recent project that was posted by Kara on Little Learner’s Lounge just a few days ago using mini marshmallows and toothpicks. We put a spin on the same idea and made a man out of toothpicks and wooden skewers, connecting each with marshmallows joints that were able to move at all the same areas of the body that we do!
(He wasn’t exactly indestructible -- but that only made him all the better to munch on once we were done.)




Matthew was so interested in the way that the skeleton man in our video walked that I came up with this activity to reinforce the idea of how our bones help us move our bodies. It took all of maybe five minute to make using simple strips of foam paper, a pipe cleaner for the spinal cord, and easily movable pushpins. I mounted our “bones” onto a foam backing, but if I’d had corkboard, I would have just mounted him to that so that nobody had to hold him up during the activity. (Either way works.) We came up with silly positions to move our skeleton into, and then we took turns trying to mimic them with our own bodies. To make it even more fun, I put a Dancin’ Bones song on repeat and we sang along to it as we played. It was a blast!

*If you do use foam paper for this, double up so that the pushpin points aren’t sticking out (at least not too far) of the back. It might have a few tiny holes in it afterward, but you can still reuse it for another project when you’re done.

*Also, the adult will need to adjust the pushpins if desired, but a child 3 or older should be able to swing the limbs around in plenty of ways without moving any pins.

Throughout the week, we paid special attention to our bone health. Matthew joined me in my morning workout, as usual (it’s so cute, he uses two T.V. remotes while I use my 5 lb. weights :-P ) and everyday for snack we had something that was especially good for our bones: cheese & crackers, yogurt, leftover macaroni & cheese, oatmeal w/ milk, and over the weekend a special treat of ice cream at his cousin’s birthday party!

And on Friday, when the weather was up near 70 for the first time this year, we made sure to work up an extra good sweat at the playground. He even earned himself an extra half hour because when I told him it was time to go, he said, “But Mommy, I think I need more exercise for my bones!”

I just couldn't say no!

When My Daughters Are Mothers

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Motherhood is quite a throne to sit on. It’s stifling to know sometimes that this is my rightful place. To know that this is really who I am now. To look at my children, and be blown away by them, and know that I made them. That who they become lies pretty heavily in my hands. To know that so much of the future of the world has changed because I wrote these people and these lives and all that will be effected by them into history. I did that. I’m doing that now. I’m shaping the world through them.

It’s overwhelming.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being swept away. And it’s no wonder, really. Between the life-changing sentiment and the grueling responsibility of it all, there isn’t any wonder Motherhood has the power to overtake a girl’s essence completely if she isn’t careful.

My life has been turned in one strong swoop from something small…insignificant as a cough, into something almost powerful. I’ve caught myself in the past thinking about who I was before almost as if she were a different person altogether. And even though I liked her just fine, she really wasn’t terribly missed - it was almost as if she were only a means to an end. A road to a more significant Me, a happier Me. And until I had Scarlett, I don’t think I cared enough to do anything about that. I was enjoying the new Me too much to even really remember to look back.

I’ve discovered so much of who I am through my family. Through each one of them individually. And I do feel like I’ve become both a more significant reflection of myself and a happier one. Oh Gosh, a thousand times over. I was happy before, but good Lord, sometimes I feel like I have happiness spilling out of my ears. I go through more strenuous hardships, for sure, but the payoff is so great, it’s almost unfair.

I watch Mary, who has grown into so much of her own person already,… who is growing up so differently than I did, and in my effort to find as much common ground with her as I can, I scrutinize my past. I piece together bits of my adolescence that were similar with bits that were different and as I wonder how this life we’re providing will shape her, I learn about how the life I was provided has shaped me. And if I’m happy with it. To figure out if I’m doing the best for her that I can.

But it wasn’t until I had Scarlett that I started to really consider my life as a mother. This new definition of myself. Now that I’ve come full circle and the chapters of pregnancy in my life are behind me, I think about the home I’ve made for myself in this new arena. And how someday she’ll do the same. And if she’ll be happy when she does.

And it wasn’t until then that I realized I’m setting the stage for my daughters to be erased.

That if I lose myself in all of the hype of becoming a wholly selfless mother the way that I‘ve strived to do over the past few years as if it were an honorable goal to reach, I’m just setting them up to do the same a generation down the road. That all of the work I’ve put into building them up would be lost to their children - and as beautiful as their children will be when that generation comes - they will never be them. They will never be my daughters. And my daughters are not worth being sacrificed for anyone. And you know… Maybe I’m not either.

Since I’ve become a stay-at-home-mom, I’ve done a lot to bring order into our home. Things that I have genuinely enjoyed doing as both a mom and a (whacked-out type-A) individual, because I've grown to love taking care of my family above any and everything else. I’ve written out and stuck to a healthy meal plan; I’ve provided my son with a daily home pre-school education; I’ve organized a weekly schedule of outings to the produce stand, deli, grocery, wal-mart, and library; I’ve kept everyone’s drawers full of freshly laundered, crisply folded undies and I’ve kept even the most disgusting crevices of our toilet reasonably clean by sticking to a pretty tight chore list. Yesterday I started to write down a work-out routine… and I stopped.

And I decided to pick up my sketch book instead. And I decided that beginning right then, I’m going to pick it up everyday, whether time allows for it or not. Because a generation down the road, I hope my girls will do the same.

(In 2007, I was chosen to represent the Delaware College of Art & Design at that year’s Riverfest celebration, where I was hired to do a re-creation of a masterpiece by Michelangelo Buonarroti in chalk on the Wilmington Riverfront.)

One Great, Big Boy.

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This week, Matthew’s been making leaps and bounds toward all kind of newly discovered abilities. Abilities he didn’t know he had -- abilities that I especially didn’t know he had. And ones that together, we both think, are just about the baddest effing skills we’ve ever seen.

Seriously, I love what this kid can do.



Monday, Matthew sounded out his first word.
“Go.” We were going through one of our daily Stepping Stones Together stories, which his success to the best of my knowledge had really hung so far mostly on his ability to relate the pictures to what he’d remembered having read aloud to him just a moment prior… and less on his ability to actually relate each letter to it’s sound and then combine those sounds to form a word, and then the words to form a sentence. I knew we’d get there before long. I just didn’t think we were there yet.

And Monday morning, of all the mornings we’ve had, was not a morning in which I had expected to make any leaps or bounds toward anything academic. His attention might as well have been three blocks away, and any attempt I made to pull it back in just stirred up a fit of giggles. I was just about to clear the table for a break to let him burn off a few of the ants in his pants before we went on, when he stopped me (again) and promised to pay attention. I gave it one last shot, and what happened next could have knocked me right out of my chair.

I started to read the first half of the sentence - knowing that he hadn’t paid any attention to the first time it was read to him five minutes ago and wouldn’t be able to remember the rhythm of the text - but he stopped me. I even rolled my eyes this time, growing a little impatient that he wouldn’t just let us do this at a more productive time. And I was right. He didn’t remember it at all. He stared at it for a good thirty seconds, saying, “uhhhhh…. Um. Uhhhh… Hm.” Then he pointed to the G and said, “That says Guh.” Then pointed to the O and said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Go.”

“Go! Mommy, that says Go! G and O! It says GO!”

I flipped out. I seriously jumped up and hugged him and squealed. I kissed him and high-fived him and squeezed his face and hugged him again. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited since the day I found out I was pregnant with him. IT WAS HUGE. And all week long, he’s kept it up! He went on to sound out To, On, and Off, all throughout the week.



Wednesday, he traced his first letter.
This I have to thank his Leapster Explorer for. I’ve never even introduced this to him. Hell, I didn‘t even set him up with the game. In fact, I didn’t even know he knew how to get into that particular game in the first place. (To me, it’s just as amazing that he picked up on his own how to navigate through the system - I.E. recognize different symbols or buttons and relate them to what they accomplish, etc. - as it is that he can pick up on the concept the game is trying to teach.) In any case, he found his way to an alphabet game one morning, practiced diligently for about fifteen minutes, and then came tearing through the kitchen to show me that he made a letter!

(He actually is not allowed to play his Leapster without me - but it’s not the worst thing in the world he’s ever snuck off to do.)

He found a letter tracing game entirely on his own, practiced long enough to get it right (which I later figured out that pattern of *noise* -- Ughh!!! *noise* -- UGHH!! *noise* --UGGHHH!!!! was I kept hearing) and then was able to proudly show off a reasonably executed letter K. Throughout the week he went on to do M, T, N, and F also -- although the “circle-y letters” he says, he is “just not that very good at yet, actually.”

Friday, he started “writing.”
He’s loved to draw for some time now, but over the past few weeks he’s picked up on the fact that letters and words are not just for reading but for writing, as well. And that if I can write out grocery lists and sign papers than there’s no reason he can’t too. Being the over achiever he is, Matthew doesn’t just carve out one letter at a time, though, he writes these long, strings of sentences in this very lucid, purposeful script. It’s actually very elegant. And it’s different than when he draws. When he writes, he holds his utensil differently and he concentrates in a way that has this very distinguished air. He’s not being loose and creative. He’s being decisive and business-like. He’ll jot down a line of text here. A short paragraph, line over line there. Then he’ll add what looks like a title and maybe a date. Sometimes he’ll go back over to cross some tees and dot some I’s. It’s incredible. I swear he knows more about what he’s pretending to do sometimes than he lets on.

And just last night, he spelled his name for the first time.
He took out his Magna-Doodle, which may as well be a legal pad as often as he uses it to write instead of draw… and right in front of the whole family at the end of our bed… from left to right, in one long, fluent line after another, he scribbled. And as he scribbled, he sang, “M. A. T. T. H. E. W. M. A. T. T. H. E. W.” Over and over again, like it was just the littlest no-big-deal thing in the world to do. He spelled out that beautiful name that we chose for him so long ago… before he was ever even the littlest whisper of an actual person… that beautiful name that he’s given so much life to… He spelled it. Like such a great, big boy.



He is just my great, big boy.



My great, big, beautiful boy.

This Long Season of Marriage

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There’s just no getting around the fact that having three kids so early into a marriage can be a strain. And we knew that going in. It really wasn’t a matter of if it would catch up to us -- but when. And it didn’t take any stretch of the imagination to figure out that when for us would probably come around sooner than it would for other couples. There was no shame in it; It was as clear as simple math. And so we swore that when we got to that bridge, that we wouldn’t dig our heels in to save face. That instead of barreling through the burnout, convincing each other that that could never happen to us - we’d work to get back to our roots. Rekindle the romance and all that junk. You know.



The beginning of our relationship more closely resembled the throws of an addiction than it did a romance and it took all of maybe a week and half of actually dating before we started making plans for a future together. I can’t tell you how much of what we laugh about these days is how it must have only been by the Grace of God that we actually made it anywhere together. Spencer missed work, I missed class. We called each other in the middle of the night just because it was the only relief we got from counting the hours until we could see each other from one day to the next. The word pathetic would be a subtle way of putting our affection for one another, but we had no shame. We were in love.

Our itch to bite off more than we were sure that we could chew went on to follow us right on into our marriage, too. It wasn’t just that we moved in together within a few weeks of really knowing each other, or that our first child was a year old on our wedding day. We also planned our entire wedding in four months, and couldn’t wait a year of (finally!) being married to start working on baby number two. Add to that that we were already shoulder deep into the (sometimes complicated) dynamics of raising a pre-teen step-child together before a lot of people even begin to let the thought of babies cross their mind… We were taking on a lot together.

People accused us of thinking we had it all together before we actually did. They accused us thinking that being in love made us impervious to the harsh realities of life, and that we were in for a shock. They accused us of thinking we were the only two people in the world who had ever been this in love.

And looking back, even now, we’ve never disagreed with any of it. Except that it wasn’t so much that we thought we were invincible as it was that we were just really whacked out on love -- and that nothing else mattered. It wasn’t logical. But we are firm believers in the notion that if it were, it wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting.

~~~~~ Fast forward four years.

We started out our valentine’s weekend peeling the sheets off of our bed that had been freshly vomited on by our son -- who we hadn’t found out snuck into his older sister’s candy stash until I’d given him an ice cream treat for cleaning his room that afternoon. And it wasn’t until the wad of bubble gum he’d swallowed made it back up onto his t-shirt that he learned from a very exasperated parenting team how easily he could have choked to death. Spencer and I bathed the vomit off of Matthew together, because, these days that’s just sometimes the only chance we have to talk.


“I’m getting there, babe. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to admit it -- but I miss you. And not the vomit cleaning, driveway shoveling, baby tickling, disciplinarian you -- the you, you were before we did all this.” I gestured around us -- and even though there wasn’t anything in particular that I was pointing to, there wasn’t any shortage of evidential paraphernalia littering our house from you to take your pick. “And it isn’t even that you’re at work,” I said lifting Matthew’s arm and wiping down his rib. “I miss you the most when you’re right in front of me. I can’t remember the last time --” I started to say something that was drowned out by a sudden screech of laughter and the bouncing of tub water jumping overboard and splashing onto our knees. He grabbed the towel off of the door hook and didn’t even bother to dry himself off with it. He handed it to me, and we both lifted our lanky little boy out of the tub; rubbed him down and kissed his head unthinkingly at exactly the same time. “I can’t remember the last time we exchanged five sentences uninterrupted.” I wanted to add that I wasn’t complaining, but he nodded without me having to.

A few weeks ago a buddy from Spencer’s work said that Spencer could repay him for a favor by coming with him to a men’s church group breakfast held by his congregation. At the breakfast the men talked about how it’s tough in the particular stage or “Season of Marriage” we’re in right now to always be on the same page romantically. It used to be that sneaking off into the laundry room together at nap-time and laughingly shushing each other could be a lot of fun. That’s the season of marriage that most other couples our age are just starting to get into and enjoy, but for us the novelty of always, always, always having to plan for every romantic encounter (and not just the racy kind) three days ahead of time was really wearing thin. Whenever the kids got in the way of a romantic moment, we’d joke about The Season of Marriage and for a while, just like the whole sneaking away thing -- it was kind of cute in it’s own right. But even that was starting to feel like less of a joke and more of a suffocating reality.



So this Valentine’s Day we went out to lunch. He had the day off for a court-ordered appearance, and being that it was the only day off he’d probably ever have while Mary was at school, we decided to take advantage of the fact that we’d only have to find childcare for two of the kids. The fact that it was Valentine’s Day was really just a happy coincidence -- except that it was also my parent’s anniversary, so the fact that they were willing to take the kids (which they are amazing and wonderful and we love them so much for!!) was like a gift from God. It turned out to be the closest whisper to Spring that we’ve had all winter, and so just taking the long drive out to McKenzie’s without one-handedly tending to children over the seat was nice. We spent the first part of our little date upstairs at the bar, really having to put effort into not tying every conversation back to the kids somehow. We shared an appetizer of calamari which is our favorite drinking food - and something we consequently ate A LOT of on our Honeymoon, so it’s one that always sparks up good memories too. We took our drinks downstairs and found the whole place had been renovated to look more like a nightclub than a bar -- it wasn’t what we were expecting but because the whole floor was empty being mid-day, but still all aglow - it was actually kind of… (dare I say!) romantic! Just saying the word out loud (and maybe being a few drinks in) made us laugh like conniving little kids. We played a few games of pool, and by the time we made it back upstairs for dinner the kids were a hundred miles away from every conversation we had. (Except the part where we discussed how much we could get for them if we put them up for adoption and sold them in a bundle pack.) (...And how many lunches like that we could afford if we did...)

Raising our kids really is a lot of fun. And it doesn’t take us being away from them for us to know that. We laugh as much now as we ever did when we were dating and we’ll both readily agree that we’re so much more in love since they came into our lives. But being able to spend quality time alone so seldom always kind of stirs up this fear that in the months that pass from one “date” to the next that we’ll have lost something. We’ll have forgotten what it is we used to bond over before our children, or we won’t have much to talk about uninterrupted. Our whole day together boiled down to about three hours, but we could have stayed there a week and never stopped to look at the time, it was so much fun.

Before we knew it, my mom was calling and Scarlett was screaming… And just like that, we were back to reality. We paid more than we could afford for our meal, and we rushed back to all of the responsibility we had waiting for us at home.





Happy to have it back.

Menu Planning!

Pin It And other housewifely things I haven't done til now.


(No, it doesn't include balogna sandwhiches and applesauce - this was just the only remotely food related picture I could find. Plus, it's precious.)

Believe it or not, this menu plan is three years in the making. Up until then Spencer did the majority of the cooking in our family, (and honestly if it weren’t for Matthew coming along with all those damn maternal desires attached to him, he probably always would have :-P ) In any case, I’ve experimented with enough recipes over the course of that time to know now just by skimming a recipe, how to adapt it to our family’s tastes or to our budget or to our schedule. (For instance, almost everything needs to be doused in triple the salt, and hit with a squirt or two of Tabasco sauce. Also, just about anything that calls for shredded cheddar is better substituted with mozzarella.)

We’ve probably gone through over a hundred new recipes over the years, weeding through the vast majority of dinners that were too time-consuming, too complicated, too heavy, etc..., for our family until we were able to narrow down our selection to a good twenty to thirty stock recipes that have made it to the table and back again a dozen times, and have been a hit every time. Now the meals I make are not necessarily 120% organic, or vegetarian, or grown from a garden in my backyard -- but they are hearty enough to fill our growing family with leftovers to spare, healthy enough to satisfy my calorie-conscious husband (and chock full of veggies -- as we are a veggie-lovin’ family), delicious enough to make even kids the ages of 3 and 10 both ask for seconds, and easy enough for me to prepare with a baby (who is generally crying inconsolably throughout the entire cooking process) strapped to my chest.
These are all of the dinners that have made the cut, color coded by what we had over the past three weeks:

Mondays: Pasta
Chicken Parmesan over angel hair
Spaghetti & meat sauce with green and red peppers, salad
Shrimp Scampi & garlic bread
Creamy Chicken Primavera over rigatoni with broccoli, coliflower, carrots and fresh tomatoes
Shrimp in creamy garlic mushroom Sauce over angel hair, salad
Chicken and shrimp alfredo over fettuccini

Tuesday: Casserole
Chicken and Broccoli casserole with mozzarella
Sheppard’s Pie
Ground Beef & Potato Casserole
Turkey or Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken fajita and rice casserole with black olives


Wednesday: Meat & Potatoes
Breaded Ranch chicken with mashed potatoes & a veggie
Pork Chops (breaded or seasoned) with garlic & onion diced potatoes & a veggie
Mandarin Sesame Glazed Chicken Thighs with scalloped potatoes & green bean casserole
Honey BBQ glazed chicken thighs with potatoes aug ratin & green bean casserole
Breaded chicken breast sandwiches on Kaiser rolls w/ fries & cole slaw
Baked chicken with sun dried tomatos & mozzarella over rice
Seasoned chicken with mashed potatoes & green bean casserole
Pork Roast in crock pot with potatoes and carrots
Pork chops, fried rice & steamed veggies in Mandarin Sesame Glaze/ Salad with Hibachi dressing

Thursday: Large Pot Suppers
Homemade cheeseburger macaroni
Ham & potato soup w/ rolls
Cheddar Broccoli soup with potatoes & rolls
Chicken Noodle Soup & rolls
Chili
Spicey Chicken fajita soup
Turkey leftover soup


Friday: Appetizers ~ or anything light and easy
(After a long workweek Spencer likes to have a few beers before we eat - which gives me an awesome break because he doesn’t want anything too filling. If we go with an appetizer, we usually feed the kids some Chef Boyardee Ravioli or sandwiches/nuggets with Mac n’ Cheese separately. Everybody wins.)
Steak/burgers/chicken kabobs on the grill (though our steak was on the stove this time).
Tacos/fajitas
Pizza in/night out
~~~ apps ~~~
BBQ chicken pizza on baked tortillas
Calamari
Mozzarella balls

Weekend:
Roast large ham or turkey to cut up for sandwiches/soup add-ins throughout the week
Leftovers


I’m posting this today because I’m working on menu planning. Now that life with Scarlett is no longer life-with-a-newborn, and has thus become entirely less -- um, chaotic -- I’m cleaning house. I’m finally getting around to doing all of those things that life with a newborn stopped me from accomplishing over the past four months. And since it’s been about four months to the day since I’ve had dinner ready for Spencer when he walked in the door like I managed to accomplish everyday of my maternity leave while this little bugger was quietly trapped inside of my belly, I am more than ready to get a little organization back into our lives.



Clearly able to tell that I promised her homemade rice cereal and then handed her Beechnut cereal from a box after cussing fumbling in the kitchen for thirty minutes and then finally giving up. Even my baby judges me :-/

I decided to break our meals up into groups. It’s ensured a good variety throughout the week, and within each specific day of that week, too. I’ve stuck to the schedule for three weeks now, and I’m so happy with the turnout. The process of just jotting down all of our favorite, regular dinner ideas opened my eyes to just how much of a variety we’ve actually accumulated in our menu. We’ve been running out of inspiration and falling back too often on the same five or six dinner ideas night after night. Writing down all of our options made me realize just how senseless it was to keep our menu so narrow.

Plus, I save myself so much headache now by being able to take the next day’s meat out of the freezer the night before to defrost - so that I’m not stressing by midmorning that day over what to take out, and if it’ll even be thawed enough to cook by dinnertime. With this, it’s hard to skim over the list of all our favorite dinners without developing a hankering for one of them, and actually looking forward to starting it in the afternoon.

I can’t believe I didn’t do this so long ago.

Project: Backyard Preschool: Week 3!

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Is it just me or are Mondays coming more frequently these days?
Inspired Lesson: The Five Senses
Science!

Being that our Man of the Monday hour (or rather his mother) had a whole flurry of activity last week leading up to a very special THIRD birthday on Friday, I was prepared to keep the week’s pre-schooling pretty low-key. And this week fit Low-Key -- because, again, our inspired lesson was practically dropped into our lap. A birthday gift from the pre-schooling Heavens, no doubt. How thoughtful!
This week’s lesson and accompanying projects were my favorite so far! It was a fun, easy to pull together week, that probably won’t wind up costing any mothers in Vermont their carpet this time. :-P

~~~~~~

So, Matthew comes to me the way that pre-schoolers often come to their mothers… informing me that something was in his mouth. Bugs, actually. Something called Take Bugs, to be exact. Not knowing what a Take Bug was, I checked and wasn’t completely relieved when I found nothing. “Did you swallow it?” I asked. No, he told me. They apparently can’t be swallowed. Also, I have them in my mouth. Also, everybody has them. Also, ‘cause they live on our tongues and they taste our food. The conversation that ensued over the next thirty seconds was a confusing one -- but in the end we made our revelation. Bugs do not live on our tongues, but Taste Buds do!

He wasn’t buying it. He saw this on Nick Jr., after all, not five minutes ago. This practically deemed him an expert on this stuff. “Okay,” I countered. I challenged him to prove it, and we headed upstairs to the bathroom mirror with his giant plastic magnifying glass. (Note to parents: a magnifying glass should be, like, a required purchased for every preschooler on the planet. Yes, you are getting parenting advice from the only blogger left in the Universe who still lets Nick Jr. poison the mind of her child. Your Welcome.) I know the suspense is killing you, but turns out: I won the challenge. Oh -- In your face, Matthew! That’s right, Mommy won a bet with a three year old, and got her subject for next week’s blog post! Talk about a productive mother-schooling morning.




That day, I explained to him that we have five senses, and that senses are essentially things in our bodies that send messages to our brain, telling it what we’re experiencing. For the first day, we just explored the way that we use our five senses throughout any normal given day. The sticky feel of oatmeal on our fingers at breakfast; the sight of the sun setting to let us know Daddy will be home soon; the smell of dinner cooking in the afternoon; the sound of the baby crying because Mommy opened her laptop; the taste of toothpaste just before bed. The rest of the week (sans Friday -- because we had better things to do like get spoiled with doughnuts and pizza and birthday cake batter) we focused on a specific sense everyday.

Monday: Hearing
The following morning I gathered groups of objects tiny enough to fit inside of a small Tupperware container. The objects were all of varying strengths and textures so that Matthew could fill the container with one group of objects at a time, shake the container, and then compare the different sounds that each group of objects produced. This is when I reintroduced the idea that senses are what send messages to our brain to let us know what we’re experiencing. When we were ready to describe the different sounds I’d ask him, “What did your senses tell your brain about that sound? Did your sense of hearing tell your brain that it was louder or softer than the sound of the cheerios?”
Tip: This project has kind of a catnip effect. Letting a little boy shake something to see how loud a noise he can make is just about the easiest way in the universe to get him excited about something.

Tuesday: Sight
The next day, I just equipped Matthew with his magnifying glass and telescope and I encouraged him to check out any and everything that he could think of with it. Every so often I’d ask him to show me what he discovered with his sense of sight. When he showed me, I’d say something like, “Whoa! My sense of sight is telling my brain that knuckles looks really bumpy up close!!”



Wednesday: Touch
Wednesday, we were itching for a project so we took out a sheet of foam paper and made a cut-out of both of his precious little hands. (His first pair of cut-out hands, by the way! :-D So cool.) For touch day, I went around the house collecting a variety of cut-able texture samples. Bubble wrap, a piece of brillow pad, cotton ball, denim from my favorite pair of jeans that had unfortunately torn at the crotch on my way down from grabbing the crock pot above the kitchen cabinets the day before… all kinds of neat stuff. I let him practice with the scissors a little, cutting a small piece from some of the easier textures, then we’d take turns describing the way that each texture sample felt to our sense of our touch. After feeling an item, we’d glue it to a fingertip.
(Note: I wouldn’t even attempt this without mounting tape. All of the coolest textures need it to stick, and you only need to tear off a piece the size of a pinhead for it to stick forever and ever and ever. Plus it’s a great “sticky” texture itself that isn’t messy. If you don‘t already have mounting tape, it‘s worth buying because even the off-brands could mount an elephant to a wall. And who wouldn't want to do that?)



Thursday: Taste
This was another super-simple project that got the idea across beautifully and easily.
You’ll need:
a paper bag
Googly eyes + optional decorative items
Pink construction or foam paper
Glue stick
Salt
Something small and edible to represent a sweet flavor and a sour flavor. (ex: chocolate chip & sour candy)
We made a paper bag man. All we did to ours was toss on some Googly eyes and call it a day, but you can get as creative as you want. Cut out a nice, large tongue from a piece of construction or foam paper, and glue it to the inside of the “mouth” crease. Let the glue set while your little one helps you grab the edible items from the cabinet. This is where I explained to Matthew that our tongues have taste buds - just like we saw at the beginning of the week with our magnifying glass. And that our taste buds pick up four different kinds of tastes: Sweet, at the tip of the tongue; Bitter, at the back of the tongue; Sour, on the sides of the tongue; and Salt, all over the tongue. I let Matthew eat a chocolate chip, and I explained to him that it’s a sweet taste. (For older children you can let them tell you.) Then, we took another chocolate chip and we glued it to the tip of our paper bag man’s tongue. I repeated this with the sour candy, and we glued it to the side of the paper bag man’s tongue. Then, we covered the tongue in glue from our glue stick, and - since salt is tasted all over the tongue - I let him shake the salt all over.
The coolest part is that when it dries, the salt looks like little taste buds!
(You could also use pure cocoa or a piece of banana peel for bitter - but I thought I’d spare him that part.)

Vocabulary word this week: Sneaky
Over the past three weeks Matthew has all but mastered the art of being sneaky… Sneaking snacks before dinner, sneaking his binky before bed. It’s a word we use often. But in the beginning of the week when it popped up several times in one of our stories about a band of secret kindergarten agents, we learned that sneaky is not necessarily synonymous with naughty. I have a feeling this might come back to bite me in the rear sometime this week.

(Some of the AMAZING books Matthew got for his birthday! Among them were three from the Eric Carle series -- best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was mentioned in a previous post as being a good read to follow up our insect theme. The Grouchy Ladybug sparked up a great conversation about insects, which was brought about by a fantastic little 'dedication to ladybugs' in the beginning of the story - where it is explained that ladybugs eat aphids, what aphids are, and the way that both insects effect their environment.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stepping Stones Together: Weekly Review

For Matthew’s birthday I sent out with the invitations a little note mentioning that we’re still a little overstocked in the toy department from x-mas, but that if anyone would like to get him anything, Matthew was really excited to be learning how to read and would LOVE some new books. So at his Hullabaloo party on Saturday, naturally everyone was curious about how close he could possibly be at only three years old to actually reading. Both my mom and I ended up talking the ears off of all the guests about the Stepping Stones Together early literacy program, which Matthew is now into his third week of. Last week was a great demonstration of just how convenient the program is to put to use, even for busy party-planning moms (and mom-moms in the case of my mom - who has purchased the program to do with my nieces.). With the party being kind of thrown together last minute and with me busying myself building a 3-dimensional garbage truck cake (with an open hatch and actual edible “garbage” spilling from the back) -- last week was crazy. I intentionally took it easy with our other pre-school related activities, but we never missed a single day of our Stepping Stones Together reading time. At only fifteen minutes a day, it’s easy to accomplish right at the breakfast table! Once we’re finished reading our story, and Matthew finishes up his breakfast, he really enjoys being able to color in his books which are all easily printed right off of the computer. This buys me a few minutes of time with the baby or to clean up from breakfast while he’s happily occupied bringing color to his favorite characters.

We’ve also started playing a matching game with some of the printable sight word flashcards. I lay out some of the sight words from the story we’ve just read, and as we go through the story a subsequent time, I point to a specific word in the text and Matthew finds and grabs the matching word flashcard. There was a lot of blind guessing at first, but in only a matter of days, he started to really catch on. I was really surprised to see that Matthew is now starting to notice the different between long words and short words. Whereas he might have once mistaken Dig for Dinosaur because they both start with “D” - he can now narrow down his guesses by how long or short he knows the word is. Quite a leap in the right direction!

Tell me what you think! Any other project or lesson ideas? Would you try these with your kids? Any suggested reading material for this kind of lesson -- actually I could really use some ideas on that front. I went specifically to the nicest library in our area to pick up some related reading material - and even the librarians weren't able to help me find any! If nothing else, let me know you stopped by! Thanks!

The Girl With the Very Awful Nickname

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This month, you have gained a nickname. You’ve actually gained about thirty of them. And all of them… Yes, all of them… are awful. Addictively, adorably awful.

~~~~

“That is a name,” we kept saying to each other. “That is a name of a name if ever a name there was. We are the most awesome name-pickers ever. People should pay us to name their daughters. We would name them all Scarlett and it would always be a hit. We would make a million dollars.”

These are the kind of conversations we had after coming up with the name Scarlett for you. After we thought of it, we had a hard time figuring out how anyone in the world could bare not to give this wonderful name to their daughters. I mean, Scarlett, wow.

And most people seem to agree. It’s not uncommon for me to tell a polite, inquisitive stranger your name and have them gasp! And sputter the words 'Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!' For like ten minutes after they hear what it is. It’s as if we were the only ones in the world who knew that this wonderful name existed. Which only left us to wonder: If it was such an awesome name, why didn’t more people have it? Hm. Wierd.

A lot of people actually do love the name Scarlett, which you wouldn‘t know from the rarity of it these days. In fact, it’s one of the most widely searched baby names on the internet. The problem is: the reason it’s so widely searched is because there are just next to NO middle names that go with it. But arguably worse than that (!): there are no nicknames for it either. Well, your father and I (or more accurately your mom-mom and I) being the incredible name pickers that we are, discovered Rebecca. So the middle name thing wasn’t a problem. And as for nicknames, well, we just reasoned that you wouldn’t need one. Scarlett is just too beautiful a name to chop into pieces anyway. We wouldn’t end up calling you Scar, like people warned, we would just always call you Scarlett. Problem solved! Genius!

And for months, it really was that easy. Once in a while we’d call you Snuggle-Butt or Lollipop or something silly like that. But for the most part, you were Scarlett. Okay… Scarlett Margret came about pretty early on.... But that wasn’t supposed to stick.

Four months later, we’ve run into a problem with your name. A real and true dilemma.

~~~~

The problem is, that you do an incredible assortment of really adorable things, like, everyday. I mean, delightfully adorable things. I’m talking the kind of adorable that could melt the heart of a deadly ninja assassin. I am not joking. That is how cute you are at four months old. And I am admittedly not a baby-person. This is going to sound awful, but… Let’s be honest, babies are just a lot of work considering the only return you get is puke and poop and drool. At least until they learn how to smile.

Oh, but my love, then you learned how to smile. And with that wonderful smile came a whole assortment of really cute baby habits; really deadly-ninja-heart-melting baby mannerisms. To name a few:

1.)You kick your legs just before you smile. The happier you are, the harder you kick, like a dog wagging it’s tail so hard it loses all control of it’s entire back half -- that’s you. Except with chunky-monkey legs instead of a tail. And a big, gummy smile. SO CUTE.

2.) You are a remarkable conversationalist. You coo like no baby has ever coo’d before. You goo and gaa and coo for these crazy ten, fifteen minute stretches. And that’s if your just lying in your bassinet with no one to coo at. If someone is polite enough to engage you in conversation, you’ll talk more than them. You will even coo OVER them, raising your voice to be heard over theirs. SO. CUTE.

3.) Your hair explodes into a ball of untamable fluff when you get out of the tub. Every single hair stands totally on end as if being pulled up by some kind of static force. You look like a fuzzy duckling. I call you Spike. YOU ARE SO CUTE.

4.) You hold your own hands. And I mean, all the time. Once in a while you’ll take a break to manhandle a toy for a minute or two, but then you’ll let go, and you’ll lovingly take your own hand in the other. You’ll intertwine your fingers, you’ll clasp them together and build a bridge over your head, you’ll try to do a primitive kind of clap action -- either that or you’re trying to high-five yourself. Either way: SO CUTE.

5.) You have a silent giggle. Oh, it’s there. Trust me, it’s there. You smile so wide, that you choke on the air you bring in, and then you have to cough it back out. You kick your legs like you’re doing a Shirley Temple dance routine and your eyes scrunch up to make room for your smile, and your whole head wiggles from side to side with this uncontrollable, EXPLOSIVE joy. But try as you might, not a whisper comes out. Which takes something already cute, and turns it into something SO CUTE.

6.) You smile like me. Except you do this thing where you tuck your face into your shoulder, and look back with this little, flirty side-glance, and you bring your fist to your mouth, and you smile over the chomping of your own knuckles. IT IS SO CUTE!

7.) You laugh in the middle of crying. You cry -- no, no, no, no, no… You complain every single second you are not being held. It’s not an outrageous scream like your cry is. It’s a moaning, grimacing, whine where you make a face like you’re crying, but it sounds more like you’re talking… you know, complaining, that no one is holding you. As soon as someone makes it over to you, your face lights up and you smile(!) but your complaining gets much louder, as if to say, “Oh good, you’re here! NOW GET ME.” You look like Matthew when he gets tickled in the middle of a fit.

8.) Lastly, you gurgle for daddy. Sometimes, when you‘re talking to Daddy, you‘ll gurgle in this special way that you do only for him. He’ll talk to you in that sweet little tone that only daddies with little girls can manage, and you’ll get so lost in the wonder of this particular moment that you’ll look up at him with a whopping, radiant smile and just drown in your own gurgle-y little baby babble. You don’t kick. You don’t screech. You don’t give off a silent giggle. You don’t chomp on your hand or wiggle your head in delight. You just look up, softly and happily and otherwise totally still. You smile, and you gurgle.

And somewhere far off, the heart of a ninja goes all fuzzy. Because you are so freakin’ cute. And when something is that cute… The urge to call that something by ridiculous, nonsensical names cannot be contained by the boundaries of prettiness or class. So we end up calling you things like:

Scarlett-Barlett
Scarlett-my-Margret
Scarley
Scarley-Marley
Scarley-baloo
Scarley-Bumper-Butt-McGee
And yes, even Scar. Along with a hundred different equally unflattering variations of the already less-than-flattering word. In fact, many times… just Margret. Yup. Just Margret. Don’t know why. But for some reason, when you look cute, I just have to call you by something different. Even if it’s another name altogether. Even if it’s another name that *is not necessarily awful itself* but is every bit as long and not any less complicated to say.

I guess you had it coming. After all, my nickname is Squee. (Short for Alicia Piesha, Lemon Squeesha as given to me by Daddy and Mary when Daddy and I first met, and that has unfortunately stuck around into our forth year together just because it is apparently, “so hilarious to say.”) But if you are any indication, then you can take comfort in knowing that love can many times be measured in the awfulness of a nickname.

And you might as well take comfort in it, because as much as I fight it, I don’t think these nicknames are going anywhere, Marley-My-Love. In fact, they’ll probably only get worse.