Brrrr

I was right. It was FREEZING. Really, the timing was very unfortunate because last weekend was sooooo beautiful; we could have really raked in the cash last weekend. But yesterday, I was having trouble making change for people buying tickets because my fingers were so stiff from cold. No one wanted to hang out in bouncies (with no shoes on!), although the kids seemed to mind it much less than the adults. No one wanted to get tattoos because they didn't want to expose skin! Fortunately, the chili and the craft booths were inside, but overall attendance was undoubtedly poor compared to a warmer day.

I've just now finished thawing out! I came home and helped put kids to bed. Then I couldn't keep my eyes open and went to bed at 9:30.

Busy Little Bees

This weekend is a fall festival for both May and Ruth's schools. They go to different schools, by the way. May 7.2 goes to a private Christian elementary school, while Ruth 4.6 attends a Montessori school for preschool. May also attended a Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten before switching to her current school.
The Montessori method is really awesome. Instead of leaving your child to play with toys, color with crayons and learn silly little songs, your child can spend her morning learning to wash dishes, sweep, read, manipulate objects with mathematics implications they don't even realize they are learning. The children are given responsibility to find their own work, practice their own work, clean up their own work, and even teach other children how to perform the work. Multiple ages are in each room (3-5 year olds, for example) so that they can learn from each other. And I use the word "work," which is also the term the teachers use, but the children love it. It's not a burden at all. They take a tray to a table or set it out on a rug on the floor and move colored water from one container to the next using a little dropper (teaches proper pencil grip). They use beads or little round plastic circles to lay out a pattern that ultimately teaches what odd and even numbers are. They taste test foods that preschool-age children rarely eat. They learn songs (yes, of course, some fun little silly ones because they are kids after all) both fun and with lyrics that teach them the names of continents. They learn the sounds letters make and have fun tracing them in sand. They polish rocks or wood, learning how to remember and follow sets of instructions to complete a task. Basically, the room is full of little activities, books, projects, that are all fun for a child to do, but secretly teach something interesting.
Ruth is constantly (and May did this too) popping out sentences that you would never hear come out of a non-Montessori trained child. None of which I can think of at the moment, but this is an ongoing blog which will undoubtedly have many posts about so-and-so "saying something hilarious today!"
So, why is May in a Christian school rather than Montessori (because, yes, the Montessori school goes up to 8th grade and the learning and projects completed at elementary levels are just as impressive - more like a younger version of college with all it's independent work/research/presentations)? At the end of her kindergarten year (a time when she'd face transition anyway out of the 3-5 room and into the 1st-3rd grade room), we opted to move her to a Christian school. She is incredibly bright and will learn anywhere, and so we decided that in the grand scheme of life, having an education based in God's word and surrounded by staff that love God and model that love to our daughter was more important than all the benefits (or maybe a better word is differences) a Montessori school offered over the Christian one.
Back to my original intent for this post. We have a festival today with inflatables, concessions, silent auction, craft bazaar, games, face painting, etc. Then tomorrow we have another festival with inflatables, games, tattoos, chili supper, craft booths, etc. And, after a week of 70 degree weather, these 2 days have a high of 50 degrees. Brrr! I'm volunteering for an hour today and for about 5 hours tomorrow.
I predict a stress headache on Monday.

All of Us

Ok, I had to find one that included Spitz. (-:

Halloween

Well, we had a busy weekend starting with Halloween. I'll see if I can't dig up a picture for this. May and Ruth were dressed as the co-stars of the newest Barbie movie, The Diamond Castle. They were in fancy dresses, tiaras, and heart necklaces; Princess Liana and Princess Alexa deserved no less. Oh, and Spitz was dressed as one of the male counterparts from the movie, Jeremy. (He looked like he was wearing a pirate costume less all the pirate-y parts like the weapons and eye-patch -- which he was.)
Rose 0.10 was a cute little pink bunny rabbit; the costume was worn by May 7.2 back when she was just 1.2. I decided to match her by finding an adult bunny costume. Fortunately, I was just looking for ears, not a full costume, because the adult bunny costumes (and they are plentiful) are not PG. In fact, there are very few female adult costumes that aren't a bit scandalous, not to mention sized for skinny women. Anyway, I did find a set of ears, tail and gloves. When the gloves turned out to have about 2-inch fingers, I pitched them, but the ears and the little pin-on puff-ball tail were just perfect.
The night was beautiful, near 70 degrees, perfect for lots of neighbors to be out and sociable. Ruth didn't make it too far before the bag was too heavy for her and she wanted to come home, so Rose and I walked back with her while Spitz and May continued on. Grandma and Grandpa were holding down the fort at home, handing out the candy.
May and Ruth were allowed to eat to their hearts' content until bedtime. Spitz and I topped off the night with the Heroes season 3 opener which we had DVR'd and just gotten up to (finally finished season 2). [Total side note: O.O what were they thinking with this season? Ack! ]

Edit: Added the photo - It's Ruth, May, Rose & I and also Spitz' sister (the gypsy).

Update

We did go to Cookie Cutters this afternoon because her teacher agreed with me this morning that it really did need cut in the back. Both her teacher and my sister-in-law used the word "mullet" without my mentioning it. That convinced me something had to be done!

Now, she really does look cute. But the 12-inch corkscrew honey-blond curls were beautiful.

*Sob*

It was so soft. Honey colored and soft. I held it in my hand and fought tears as I slowly dropped it into the kitchen trash. Four and a half years it took to grow, and my husband found it in a pile next to my daughter Ruth when he got home from work. She was holding the scissors and looking guilty.

I knew something was wrong the way he looked around the corner of the door at me as I nursed baby Rose up in her bedroom. He looked almost fearful. Seeing what I was doing, he started to close the door over, but I quickly assured him that Rose wasn't going to sleep. She'd just wanted to cuddle a bit. His first words were, "She's already in time out for it...."

I rushed down stairs, and saw her. What was left of her. All the beautiful, 12-inch-long curls gone from both sides of her head. I was so appalled. "Daddy already talked to me about it!"

Cookie Cutters was still open, but completely booked for the night. We went to Fantastic Sam's. Ruth had been crying for the last hour before we got there because she was so upset that we had to cut more and that she would no longer be able to wear a ponytail. (I thought of the first French braid I'd put in it just last Saturday and the excitement with which I'd been looking forward to doing it again, only better with practice.) Somehow the lady at Fantastic Sam's convinced us that we could leave the long back, just feather the sides and even it all up. I was less than pleased with the results. Mullet, I just keep thinking. We'll probably be going to Cookie Cutters soon to fix it.

*sob*

Start Your Engines!

Yesterday, Rose 0.9 crawled for the first time! For the last month, we've been telling people, "she's about to crawl. She is sooo close!" For the last week, I've seen her periodically getting in the correct position, up on hands and knees, but then after a few seconds of seeming like she wasn't sure what happens next, she would collapse. Then for the last couple of days, she would find that position and rock forward and back just the tiniest bit.
We were at ballet yesterday, waiting while May danced. Another sibling of a dancer was running a fancy white toy car around and Rose wanted it. So, she pushed herself up and with 4 cheering moms watching, crawled about a foot and a half. One mother, who was more prepared than I, dove into her purse and grabbed a digital camera. She said she thought she'd caught a little bit of it and will hopefully email it to me.
By the end of last night, Rose was going a few feet here and there, still looking shaky and uncertain and slow, but accomplishing the task anyway. By the weekend, I bet she'll look as if she's been crawling for months (if she isn't pulling up or cruising!).

DDR is Life!

Give the crowd some eye candy!
I love DDR. (Nope the picture here has NOTHING to do with the post. I'm just experimenting and having fun. This was Rose about 3 months ago. She looks a lot older now at 9 months. But she is still a cutie.)
So, like I said, I love Dance Dance Revolution. I'm getting pretty good at it. Super Samurai is crushing me, but I try it two or three times every morning, and I've gotten it down to 20 Boos. Yay! Then I switch to workout mode and songs that I can handle pretty well.
It's pretty good exercise, too. That's another big reason why I do it, since baby weight always seems to come off of different places than it went on. (I'm back to my pre-Rose-pregnancy weight, but still have more of a tummy than I used to. Where did it come from? Ack!)
Spitz played DDR with me for a while. But since he found out about his herniated discs, he's supposed to stay away from impact activities. So I dance all alone with an infant audience until she gets tired of watching and demands attention. Actually, there's usually a middle stage in there where I add a slow song and dance with her in my arms. Then we both decide it's time to stop.
Spitz and I have taken dancing lessons in the past and really enjoyed it. Nothing like DDR; we've done a bunch of ballroom dancing. In fact, I think we both intend to take it up again once Rose is old enough to leave with babysitters/child care rooms easily. Last night we ran into our old ballroom dancing instructor, Phil. He was an awesome instructor, a bit intimidating, but cute (of course, that's a very important trait in someone you end up dancing over and over with! lol) We were at Target, and he came up and said hi. We talked long enough to find out he gave up dance instruction (after like 20 years of it) because he wanted a more steady paycheck. Now he's a mall security guard. Something about that is so, so very sad.

Naming Convention

Ok, I've decided on names for my family. They come from various places (no, Karya is not my real name) to protect my family's anonymity. The other naming convention you might notice is the version number that will sometimes accompany a child's name. It means years.months of life.
At the moment, I have May 7.2, Ruth 4.6 and Rose 0.9. I won't use the numbers after the adults. Who really cares how old we are anyway?

In case you wondered about the nicknames I mentioned earlier (Recheetah and Stickapod), I'll have to tell you where those came from, too. Maybe later today. But right now, the whirlwind morning is about to start, and if I don't go get in the shower immediately, I'll have to live without it until about noon. Off to the races!

Paperbackswap.com

Someone told me of this site just a few weeks ago and I'm really enjoying it. You can create an account, list all the books you have that you are willing and interested in trading to other folks, and request books that other people have listed. It is entirely free to join (right now - they warn that they may have to charge a fee in the future, but they guarantee any new member at least 12 months free at the moment). Once you list 10 books you are willing to swap, the system grants you 2 credits for free just for joining. Then you browse the approximately 2.5 million books that are posted on the site and pick what you want. The individual who listed the book is then contacted to send it off to you via US Post Office media mail. (about $2.23 on average) Once you report receiving that book, the sender gets a credit to order another book from someone else.
The only money you pay out is the postage to send books that someone requests from you. When that happens, you earn a credit to order a book from someone else.
This is a great system of sharing books around with other people and finding books you want at a really reasonable cost. Granted, the books you post need to be desirable or no one will ever order books from you. (If no one orders books from you, your account never earns credits to order other books.) Oh, and if you care to use cash, credits can be purchased for $3.45 each as well.
Since this whole system requires participation, I'm telling my friends! I've actually seen the number of books posted in the system grow in the last 4 weeks that I've been using it, so the word must be getting around.
(Oh, and they have related sites for trading DVDs and other stuff. The credits can be used on any of the sites, I believe.) (-:

Before I go

One last brief comment.
Now that I'm posting here again, I feel like I ought to ask people to read it. I mean, why spend time writing if no one will read and give comments, right?
Can I get up my nerve to let others know it exists? Would that change what I write - knowing I'd have an audience?
Hmmmm.

Runaround Saturday

Every Saturday has felt like a race recently. How can so many people have given birth in the month of October? We've been to so many birthday parties recently! Oh, and throw in 2 soccer games each Saturday and a Halloween party last week. Saturdays have been completely eaten up.
As a result, our house and yard look the pits, and our puppy has had several accidents in her crate because she just can't last the lengths of time we've had to crate her. Poor girl. And poor me because I've gotten to clean up dog pee twice today. (The perks of having a puppy! Woot!) *sigh*
But, I'm happy to say that the soccer season ended today. That in itself is a joy because our girls have a track record of always getting placed on YMCA soccer teams that will be creamed, crushed annihilated every week. (I know we aren't supposed to keep score, but it's hard to miss that we've lost when our team only makes one goal the whole season!) And I know it may not seem that their mother is a reliable source for this kind of assurance, but I assure you it's not because of their playing. They aren't too bad, and are definitely learning and improving each season. Somehow we are always on the team with several underage kids, or several completely non-athletic kids, or something.
R was actually one of the 2 best players on her team this season. I think she was maybe one of only 2 seven-yr-olds on her 6-7 year old team. That may have had something to do with all the losses. The team really needed an aggressive 7-yr-old to take the ball down the field. The 2 best players this season (including R 7.2) were both awesome defenders.

Ok, now that I've totally rambled, I have to go get ready for tomorrow's Sunday School lesson that I'm helping to teach!