Lucy Lately

“Look at the mountains. This is like a dream come true.”

Pulling away from the airport gate: “Now we’re talking!”

“Mom. Don’t you wish we had a robot that did all our chores so that you and me could play Barbies all day!?”

“Lucy! You did a great job at your first swim class!”
“I do what I can.”

“Do you wish everybody in the world was Captain Hook so that nobody would have to clean their rooms!? [Before I have time to answer.] Me too.”

“Thanks, Siri. You’re the best robot friend I’ve ever had.”

“Lucy. Stop. What are you doing to your brother!?”
“Nothing. I’m just pretending he’s my puppy.”

“It’s like the mailman doesn’t care about kids who like Legos, and animals, and toys.” [On days when a magazine or toy ad doesn’t come.]

[On completing a “History of Me” worksheet for school.]
“Where were you born?”
“St. Louis, Missouri.”
“Good! What country?”
“Mizzou country?”
Yep.

[After he gets hurt.]
“Landon I have some good news. I’m kind of a doctor.”

“Daddy, what does diva mean?”
“Well. [asks Siri] Siri says it’s someone who might get too much attention and cries when they don’t get what they want. Lucy, I think you might have a little diva in you…”
“Let’s never speak of this again.”

That Time I Shot A Booger At My Dental Hygenist

I’m kind of getting annoyed at the internet. Sometimes it’s just too much. Too much information. Too many pictures of perfectly decorated houses and well-coiffed women. Too many ways to make quinoa [don’t get me wrong, I love quinoa]. Why so serious, internet?

So here’s my contribution to making the internet take itself less seriously. To adding real things. To not spending all my time telling everybody how awesome I am.

I made a mistake this week. I always schedule my dentist appointment on President’s Day so Chuck can stay home with the kids. I think my appointment was made on the date of President’s Day last year. This year, unfortunately, that fell on a plain ‘ole Thursday when school was most definitely in session. Adding to the can’t-catch-a-break-ness of the sitch was the fact that the appointment was too close to Landon’s school start time for me to drop the gang off anywhere.

So the four of us went to my dentist appointment. A 30-, 5-, 3-, and 1-year-old. Together. But it’s okay, guys. My dental hygenist is super great. I’ve been going to her since I moved here. Nearly a decade! The appointments are [usually] so relaxing, like you’re just chatting with a friend.

So my tag-alongs made it less relaxing than usual. But not bad. Snacks and iPads can right a lot of wrongs, amiright!?

Since I led with the punch line, I’ll get to it.

My DH is telling me this terrible story.

She was camping with her family and decided one morning to take a 3-wheeler out to explore. She came upon a turtle and stopped to pick it up. Her grandkids were back at the camp and she knew they’d love to see it. So she put the turtle on her lap and started driving back. She hit a bump and looked down to check on the turtle. Unfortunately, when she looked down she missed the second bump. She flew backwards off the vehicle, with the vehicle landing on top of her [I told you this was a terrible story!]. She passed out, obvs.

She listed out her extensive injuries including breaking her clavicle and needing staples to put skin back in the right places. She told me she missed six weeks when one of her gashes got infected. I’m laying there with my mouth open thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is so terrible!”

And then she said, “But don’t worry: the turtle was okay. He was wearing his helmet.”

And with my mouth stuffed with instruments aplenty, my nose betrayed me.

I mean, she didn’t mean that as such a punch line, right?! Why is that so funny!? The turtle was wearing his helmet… Ooof.

How Tall Am I? // Family Game Night [And A Giveaway!]

My husband and I put board games on our wedding registry. We took Boggle on our honeymoon [nerd alert :)]. We are big, big fans of board games. When we had kids, I just sort of assumed that as soon as they hit preschool age we’d be elbow-deep in Candy Land and Don’t Break The Ice. But wouldn’t you know it, my kids don’t like Candy Land. I figured we would just need to wait for them to get a little older and try again, but Landon’s occupational therapist said she thought board games would be a great way to get him used to having longer social interactions. So I went on the lookout for a board game that everyone in the family would like AND would hold the attention of my three-year-old autistic son. No big deal. ;)

[She’s celebrating a Sequence Letters victory a bit prematurely. Hehe.]

We already owned a game called Sequence Letters that we played during our “school” time with Lucy and she really enjoyed it. It’s a little much for Landon since he doesn’t know any letters yet, so I started looking at other games the company made to see if any looked appealing.

“How Tall Am I?” stood out because our kids [most kids] love to measure things. Any sort of thing. All the time.

The premise of the game is super easy and the included pieces are super cute. There’s a die to roll and it tells you which part of the body you get to pick that turn. You can mix and match the cardboard pieces to make some pretty silly characters.

We played this after dinner one night [don’t mind the piles of real life in the background]. Landon made a police clown ballerina. Recently diagnosed with autism, it’s hard to keep him engaged during group play. He’d much rather play trains in his room. To help him not get frustrated and fixated on the pieces lining up and staying perfectly together, I put down a little piece of drawer liner.

Once everyone gets all the pieces needed and their characters assembled, you can measure to see who made the tallest form. When it’s just me and Lucy we also mix up the rules to try to get the shortest, or even a specific height.

We did some guessing on how tall our characters would measure in her science notebook and she drew out the figure and the ruler. We even got to talk about different standards of measure since the ruler has inches on one side and centimeters on the other.

I can’t recommend this game enough. Anything that can engage two preschoolers without any fighting is a winner. Each round takes somewhere around five minutes for the four of us to play so it’s quick enough that no one feels like they’re waiting “forever” for their turn to come around again. I bought ours off amazon, but liked the game [and the company] so much I decided to ask them to sponsor a giveaway so that one of you could have your own “How Tall Am I?”! And they said yes!

To enter the giveaway, share this post via your favorite social media outlet [facebook, pinterest, etc.]. Then come back here and leave a comment telling me where you shared it and your email. If you share it two places, leave two comments. I’ll leave the giveaway open for a week and then use a random number generator to pick a winner!

Disclaimer: I purchased this game on my own and loved it so much I decided to ask the company, JAX games, if they’d like to give one away. The opinions on the game are all mine.

Doll Fashion Girl

If you’ve met my daughter, you know she is super creative. Her thoughts, her drawings, her imaginative play– her creativity knows no bounds. When she asked Chuck and I if she could have a blog a few days ago we laughed and laughed. And then we got on board. We asked her what she wanted to name it and she said Doll Fashion Girl, which I imagine comes from the song she serenades us with that goes, “I’m a fashion Girl. I’m original.”

Instead of using the artkive app like we have in the past, we decided we’d throw her creations up here. Her first portfolio. I love this kid.

Lucy Lately

[While watching Busytown Mysteries]
Pig Will and Pig Won’t walk across the screen.
“Those two, always arguing.”

Lucy: “Mom, do you think Dad will take us to eat at The Buffet?”
Me: “The buffet? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lucy: “You know the place with the slide and the chicken that doesn’t make me sick.”
Me: “Do you mean Chick-fil-a?”
Lucy: “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
[Same number of syllables! Say it fast!]

Lucy: “Who’s going to make me a card!?”
Me: “You don’t get a card, silly, it’s Mother’s Day!”
Lucy: “Well, when is kid’s day?”

“Landon! We get to go to kindlegarten where we’ll watch a bunch of shows.”

“Mom, can you let Cassie’s mom know that we won’t be able to go to their house today because I missed the opportunity to choose good behavior?” [She IS listening!]

“Landon, do you want to crush some candy with me?”

[Talking of a little boy, who is a friend.]
“Do you mean his mommy is the only one who gets to kiss him!?
[Gulp. Jesus take the wheel.]

“Cohen, do you want to sit on a Lucy chair? I won’t drop you!”

[In Whole Foods.]
Lucy: “Baaaaaah! The conveyor belt ate my crackers. I’m never going to get crackers again. [Literally crying. Literally.]”
Cashier: “Rough morning?”
Me: “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Cashier: [Raises eyebrows.]
Me: “Oh I’m sorry. I was talking to her. Yeah, I guess she’s having a rough morning.”
Lucy: “Ooooooh, I searched for those crackers and picked them out and carried them through the store and the conveyor belt just ate them! What am I going to do!? I’m staaaaaaaarving! I’m so hungry. I’m staaaaaaaarving!”
Me: “Do you mean these crackers?”
Lucy: “Oh. Cool. Thanks, mom.”

Lucy Lately

“I’m gonna watch this Barney so I can help Buddy learn his imagination.”

“Landon, you can’t push me into the potty. If you push me into the potty everyone will miss me.”

[To the tune of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’] “Myyyyyyyyyy golden rings!”

——
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…

Hm. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

We should pray for him, Jesus.”
——

“Jesus, I love this dinner. Amen. I love myself. Amen. Help Cohen. Amen.”

L: “Do you like my dance?”
B: “Yes.”
L: “Thanks. I learned it at high school.”

L: “Mama, when I’m a mommy I’m going to get email.”
B: “Cool. Hehe. That’s funny.”
L: “But right now I just don’t like the way it tastes.”
B: “Huh? I don’t understand. Oh, did you mean oatmeal?”
L: “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

L: “Mom. Do you wish I was a polar bear in the snow?”
B: “Yes. Because then you could play outside and you wouldn’t get cold.”
L: “Would you like to play my polar bear game later?”
B: “Um, sure. How do you play?”
L: “Alright. We’ll. Step 1: Be a polar bear. And then there are some other steps.”

L: “Mom. Can you tell the twins’ mom to buy them bananas?”
B: “I could. Did they tell you they need bananas?”
L: “We’ll, no. But I just think they would like them and I think it’s important for mamas to buy food.”

Lucy Lately

Me: “Hey, Lulu, what are you doing with all that hay?”
Lucy: “I’m celebrating.”
Me: “Okay. What are you celebrating?”
Lucy: “My birthday.”
Me: “So you want a hay birthday instead of an Angelina Ballerina birthday party?”
Lucy: “Um, no. This is my hay birthday. My pretend hay birthday. That’s all.”

Lucy: “Mom I made a dream last night and it wasn’t scary! It was about iPhones and they had games on them and you let me play them!” [Keep dreamin’, kid.]

[Right this minute]
Lucy: “Hey you wrote Lucy up there.”
Me: “Yes, I did.”
Lucy: “Did you also write water bottle?”
Me: “No.”
Lucy: “Are you writing something about me?”
Me: “Yes. Because you say funny things.”
Lucy: “Can I watch Handy Manny now? The one where he goes to the airport.”

We were at the playground last week and she introduced herself to a few girls her age. They were playing tag and when they switched to “Ring around the Rosie” Landon wanted to join in. But, you know, he doesn’t have any words and he’s a boy. As soon as she sees him standing outside the circle she yells, “Everybody stop! That’s my brudder and he wants to play too.” And then I cried. Seriously. Right there on the playground bench.

[Singing in the back of the van.]
Lucy: “Oh oh oh, you’re my mom. And you’re so big. Oh oh oh. And you keep getting bigger. And you’re my mom.”

Lucy: “Mom, how do you show my friends the pictures I ask you to take?”
Me: “Uh, I put them on the internet…”
Lucy: “Yeah, but how do they see them?”
Me: “Well, I usually put them on Facebook and their moms probably show them.”
Lucy: “Well, how do you take them?”
Me: “Um, there’s this app called Instagram.”
Lucy: “And it let’s you take pictures?”
Me: “Yes.”
Lucy: “Does it make a noise when you push the button?”
Me: “Actually, yes it does.”
Lucy: “And then you send them to the place to show Cassie’s mom?”
Me: “Yeees…”
Lucy: “Okay.”

[Standing on two HotWheels tracks, holding two more as poles.]
Lucy: “I’m trying to ski.”
Me: “Yeah, I see that.”
Lucy: “But I’m not going very fast.”
Me: “I’m sorry.”
Lucy: “I’m just gonna give up.”

[This one is still making me laugh so I’ll include it again.]
So Lucy threw up a few times last night. But the worst part was that she kept apologizing for it and breaking my heart. She seems totally fine otherwise, it’s sort of strange. But as she’s laying in my bed this morning she says, ” There’s no food in my belly [pat, pat] because last night I had a lot of mouth accidents.”

[Looking at the new tile floor Chuck laid in a brick pattern.]
Lucy: “Oooooooooh Mom, you guys made me a hopscotch board to dance on. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.”

[Balancing pillows on top of each other of the floor.]
Lucy: “Buddy, back up! You’ll ruin my masterpiece!”

Here and There

Woah, life. Hold on just a minute there! It seems like time is passing in weeks instead of days.

Like celebrating seven years in this wonderful home I am so thankful for.
Realizing I’ve been married to my best friend for more than a quarter of my life.
Answering the “How much longer?” question with “A little over a month.”
Preparing a birthday party for a four-year-old [I mean that is officially into little girl territory].

Summer ended with frequent early morning trips to the zoo to ride the carousel as many times in a row as possible.

There was a much enjoyed hayride [and the declaration that Saturday is “Tiger Day”].

They’re the cutest apple pickers I’ve ever seen…

Selfies are only going to get harder as a party of five!

This boy and this face.

Look at mama. At the same time. Lots of park playing.

Sneaking to The Lake with Daddy for a conference he was presenting at.

They were big, big fans of the indoor pool.

Even if it wore them out.

Trick-or-treating at the zoo. Lucy said, “Trick-or-treat. Thank you. I hope this candy doesn’t make me sick.” and Landon refused to wear his plane or ask for candy. Maybe next year. Hehe.

This goes: “Who wants to ride the carousel?” [Landon raises hand.]

It’s really one of his favorite things.

And here’s one of my favorite things.

And another.

And definitely this.

And sort of surprisingly this.

Capturing moments that try to pass too quickly.

And a very “real” Halloween picture.

Homeschool Preschool: The Letter G

How cute is the craft from the letter G? Here’s our inspiration. Usually I cut out the pieces and take a picture of what it “could” look like and then I show the picture to Lucy and let her do her work independently. I’m learning more and more about her learning style each week of school and I think she really dwells in a hands-on, self-taught learning environment so I’m trying to figure out activities that build into that and make her feel she has a safe place to learn.

Our favorite books for the week were:

How Groundhog’s Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
Who Am I? Giraffes by Moira Butterfield and Wayne Ford

Because we had a vegetable garden all summer, they really enjoyed the gardening books. We did a fun art activity where I cut some brown “pots” out of construction paper and let them plant whatever they wanted.

I let them use our special [read: not washable] Mr.Sketch smelly markers and they loved them. I thought they both did well. Lucy actually made a daisy, a pink rose, and a purple flower. She then went to her room for a while and I heard a lot of banging and crashing. When she emerged, she’d planted a “real” garden of her very own.

We’ve had some very specific homework given to us by Landon’s occupational therapist so he’s been doing those for his “school”.

He’s been riding on the sit ‘n spin to work on his core muscle strength.

His speech therapist let us borrow this awesome Old McDonald set where Landon wears a felt type glove and there are animals with velcro so we can sing the song and put animals on his glove. He is a big [BIG] fan.

I found these playdough mats at learn.create.love and they enjoyed playing with them. We have been working on helping Landon stay engaged in activities for longer periods of time. We laminated ours so they’ll last a long time.

They both enjoyed the pattern block alphabet cards I found at Confessions of a Homeschooler. I laminated those too. I laminated a lot this week. :) It was great.

Landon’s OT asked me to think of things he could stack that would require him to engage both hands. So cloth diaper laundry provided that opportunity. When he couldn’t make them all work in one stack he decided to try to stand on the stacks. Did.Not.Work. Hehe.

For a Montessori inspired activity, Lucy polished my wood salad bowl. We just used some food grade wood oil, a paint brush, and a cloth to polish it. She got a little tired of doing it halfway through but persevered to do both sides when I asked. And in the end she was proud of her work.

We did some work with our Learning Resources self-correcting sequencing cards [they were like 3 or 4 bucks at Toys ‘R Us]. These actually give us a good opportunity to work on some of the consonants we’re practicing for her speech. She’s not in speech therapy or anything, we just work at home on g, p, and f. If she can’t pick them up in a few months we’ll decide if she needs to get evaluated but I think for now we’ll just keep practicing. Landon’s speech therapist gave her some “homework” and she loved that she was included.

She’s been practicing making lists. :)

So it was a great week. It was very light on worksheets and even letter formation but, like every week, it’s Lucy-led so I’ll just continue to try to give her activities that she asks for. It was fun to include some more pictures of what Landon’s week looks like. When I think of it as him doing “school” I do notice myself being more intentional and mindful of how he spends his time; that can’t be a bad thing!

Homeschool Preschool: The Letters E & F

Sometimes I look at other preschool blogs that I really enjoy and they’ll show all the work they did in a week and I’ll think, “How!!?” We’re pretty [age-appropriately] low key around here. It works for us. I can’t even seem to post these updates with regular consistency, so I couldn’t imagine adding more activities! Just a good reminder [to myself] that you do what you can, when you can and you do your best not to compare to others. So, bonus post: two letters for the price of one. We definitely had some fun with the letter ‘E’.

We started off the week by making an elephant puppet. I can’t speak for all toddlers, but my kids love puppets. So much. I didn’t really have a template for this. I did a Google image search for ‘elephant paper bag puppets’ and cut the pieces out of construction paper. I lined it up on the table to show her what it would look like and showed her one of the pictures on the computer. The rest is all her. :) She did most of it with a glue stick but we did have to reinforce the back seams of the heavier pieces like the ears with masking tape. This is definitely a preschool activity, not so much for the younger set.

He was, however, completely occupied by the play dough.

We glued googly eyes to a big construction paper ‘E’. She had a great time doing this, but it did lead to an interesting conversation about phonetics that she did not care about one bit. She had complete faith that if I told her eye begins with an ‘E’- well then it’s true.

Our ‘E’ books were great.’ Dot the Fire Dog’ is still holding strong [spoiler alert: we’re still reading it]. I really enjoyed ‘I Am Eyes’.

I picked up some Crayola dry erase boards on clearance at Target and Landon has really taken to his. We’ve been working with him to try to get him to engage in activities for longer periods of time and this guy is really helping out.

We continued playing in our space rocket and Lucy continued to add “buttons” and adornments. Silly girl. We should find a safer helmet alternative, but that one only stays on for 30 seconds or so.

This was my favorite moment of the week: anxiously awaiting story time.

The letter ‘F’ week was a little light on the paper work. :) It was a beautiful week outside and each passing day of the calendar reminds us that our outdoor playground time is fleeting so we went to a different park nearly every day. We still did our F do-a-dot worksheets and practice but we didn’t do too much else.

The ‘F is for Fox’ activity was meant to go along with ‘The Fox and the Hound’ but I couldn’t find our copy of the book. I did, of course, find it this week. [p.s. our school desk is looking, “well used and well loved”. Gross.]

We also did a craft with the book ‘Fish is Fish‘ [same author as ‘Swimmy’ which is another favorite]. Leo Lionni’s illustrations are amazing, so we did a craft to try to capture that in some small way.

I grabbed every different color of blue [washable] paint that we have and put them out on a palette so that color mixing would be a bit inevitable. Instead of using sponge stamper brushes I used some masking tape to adhere a cotton ball on the end of a craft stick. I do that for quicker clean up – no brushes to rinse out! And, the cotton balls gave the kids a surface which had different levels of absorbancy and gave their fish more dimensions.

At two, Landon was mostly interested in getting as much paint on the cotton ball as possible, but that’s what art smocks were made for…

Our week also included a lot of very tall tower building, which is a mama favorite too!

To end the weeks we reviewed all the letters we’ve learned so far using a salt tray. The tray is from the Melissa and Doug Lace and Trace set and held up the flashcards perfectly.