A Day in Photos: For Evelyn

A Day in Photos: For Evelyn

http://threecontinentfamily.blogspot.com/2009/03/anybody-in.html

March 17, 2009

Alarm is not set.  Q has off of school (Superintendent's Day: Hmmm.  Superintendent is perhaps Irish?) and I've taken the day off too.  Big plans, but Q has been ill since Friday so probably a visit to the doctor is in order.

6:30 AM Q awakes and asks if we can skip cuddle time and go directly downstairs to see if the leprechaun has come and left him anything.

Q discovers 6 dollars and the note below.  He tells me he thinks the writing looks like mine.  What?!  Are you saying my handwriting resembles that of a leprechaun?  Why I never....

Homage to Julie:  Broken Coffee Pot Photo: 

About 7:30 unable to really eat toast as Q cannot yet read and I am his reader.

Homage to Rachel: Hair drying photo (I will do a post of all the out takes - they are hysterical. at least to me.)

9:30ish Sit down to look at taxes.

10:00 AM Avoid looking at taxes by taking Q to a cafe.

11:15 AM Doctor's Visit - Find out Q has strep throat!!!

12:15 Decide to drop Q off at home instead of taking him with me to the grocery store.  Figuring infecting half the town at the local cafe is accomplishment enough.  Stop for moment to appreciate our first flowers of spring.

1:15 PM  Stopped at gas station that didn't have auto charge thingy on gas pump.  Decide I cannot go into gas station to pay.  Try in town grocery that is a little gross but may have cubed beef for stew.  It does not.  Drive to second gas station that happens to be next door favorite restaurant/ gourmet take out to see if by chance Jesse has made Irish Stew.  She has not.  Get turkey sandwich to eat in car on way to grocery store that is 7 miles away.  Luckily they have cubed beef.

Back home to start stew.

Earlier in the morning Q had looked through his cookbooks (he has about 4 kid cookbooks) and chosen a cupcake recipe that has shamrocks on the top.  We start to make the recipe and I realize that the recipe, which appears to be English, makes about enough batter for 6 mini cupcakes.  Leprechaun's we are not and so half way through the recipe I grab another book and start adding more ingredients (Barefoot Contessa's cupcake recipe: highly recommended!)  Q has decided instead of green and white cupcakes he will use all of the colors saying that they will be rainbow cupcakes in honor of the leprechaun.  He practices separating the eggs (we only lost one!) and separates the batter into four bowls and then has four colors to work with. This took more than an hour and was part art project, part science and of course part cooking. 

Please note:  Strep infected cupcakes were kept for our own consumption.

6:00ish - Dinner with the guys (something I do not get to do on work days.  Y is trying to be funny by doing the leprechaun dance to get Q to smile but Q is too annoyed having to wait longer to start digging into his stew.)

7:00ish Q comes running downstairs to show me his 6 year molars are coming in.  We are both really excited.  We jump up and down and I give him a big hug!  My baby is growing up!  For some reason it feels as important as the day I saw his very first tooth come in.

7:30  Last hurrah playing in bedroom before story time while Q does nebulizer for his asthma.

7:45 Start of story time - favorite time of day.  This photo is what I imagined reading stories would be like before I had Q.

These next photos are more what it is like; constant movement and commentary.

Don't you love the title of this book.  Q would not have cared if this were a book about advanced calculus - he was taking this out of the library and bringing it home.

Here wiggling front tooth that is very ,very loose!

8:30 PM - American Idol time.

10ish put away food brew last cup of tea.

Drink tea and check blogs.

I will spare you the shower and bed photos.

Thanks Evelyn for suggesting this.  I had wanted to do a day in photos with Q and got to it much more quickly than I might have if you had not asked us to do this.

Thanks to everyone that has already shared their day in photos it's a true joy to be able to see lives so well lived.  For those of you that do not post your family photos I would encourage you to do this for yourself (without posting of course.) As another blogger has said the exercise really does make you look at your day in a new light.

Summer

Summer. This was last year when he wanted to have his head shaved. This year there's more hair and now that he's 5 1/2 a lot more attitude which is terrific as I love both his hair and his growing in-your-face attitude. We've been blessed with one of those children who own at a young age an inate and truly superior sense of humor. It makes flight delays and sunburns and bad food all good. Really. I wish every harried traveler could have a companion like him. Strapped into his seat for a an hour and a half and then being returned to our original airport because of mechanical difficulties (we were happy to go back - there were LOUD banging sounds going on the entire time) what did he do but make up funny songs. Songs about planes and being late (which we were, for the flight that would eventually return) and mechanical difficulties and airplane engines that double as espresso makers, lots and lots of songs. And jokes. At times we both laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes. Sitting in the front row of a small plane he every once in a while knocked on the wall in front of us. Just knocked while he sang and talked. Every maybe 5 or 10 minutes, a knock. After awhile I said to him, "You realize that is not the pilots cabin don't you?" His eyes got huge and twinkly. He had of course thought that was the wall separating the pilots from us. "I thought it was the pilots room!" "No," I said "you've been trying to annoy the coffee maker for the last half hour." He laughed so hard I thought the stewardess was going to get out the oxygen for him and so of course I laughed too.

I do not understand the craze for bringing dvd players on trips like this. Maybe it's because I'm a working mom but I don't think so. Really, what is better than traveling? Than leaving home and getting to fly above the earth to actually and truly fly through the clouds? I know what is better. What is better is to have the oppurtunity to fly through the clouds with a 5 year old and see the wonder in his eyes and in no small way feel it again myself.

At the end of the plane ride he said to me "Ya know Mom in your every day life you can be very serious. I sometimes forget how really funny you are."

What could be better?

Preschooler Activities

There was a post on one of the groups today from a soon-to-be first time mom who is adopting a four year old. She wanted to know some activities that she could do with her daughter.

The most important thing I've learned is that most preschoolers would rather spend quiet time with mom or dad than go to a zoo, a museum or some big show. Not that they do not like those things occasionally but what preschoolers want most is your undivided attention.

Here's our family's favorite activities:

Kitchen time. A child's size apron and their own cookie cutters, dough scraper and half moon vegetable cutter are wonderful tools. Don't fuss over cookie dough if you don't want to - buy the already prepared stuff in the grocery. We love to bake and sometimes we go all out but there is always dough in the freezer ready to slice up for cookies. Muffins are good too as they can be frozen and kept for school snacks. Friday nights are pizza night in our house. My husband stops off at the pizza parlor and buys the dough. Then he and my son make pizza and rollies (an invention of Q's that he's very proud of - rolled up pizza dough around whatever fillings he likes.) My husband slices up veggies (no my son doesn't use the veggies - but hey one day - you never know) puts out tomato sauce (homemade, from the jar or from the same pizza place) and cheese and maybe ham. My sons total time in the kitchen with dad is probably 30 min (of course, dad is in there for much longer) but the memories they are making together are pricesless. Fruit smoothies are great for breakfast or quick lunch and we always have frozen fruit on hand to make them. They can be made with milk, soy milk or just a banana and oj. This is a very noisy activity and I can see how it might be frightening for children are not accustomed to the sound.

Garden time.

You don't need a garden. 6 small herb pots a few seeds and some dirt, cover with plastic wrap and have the child mist every day. Soon they will have their own herb garden! Mint is one of my favorite herbs for children as it makes a terrific tea for tummy aches. Of course if you do have outside space that's nice too. Gardening for a preschooler means digging a hole - and watering, lots and lots of watering. Don't plant anything precious or expensive, preschoolers are going to kill half of what they plant. For that reason I buy a full tray of bedding plants and let him plant the full tray pretty close together. That way when half of them are all smashed up from gettting stepped on and squished (or drowned in over zealous watering) he doesn't really notice. This is not about the look, it's about getting dirty and feeling the earth between your toes.

Beach, lakefront, riverside;

Any place that you can wiggle your toes, run from waves, feed ducks or throw stones into the water is pure heaven for preschoolers. If they collect stones and sticks and seed pods give them some paint and glue and sparkles and let them make some art when they get home.

Movie night.

We are not big movie watchers and the language issue can make it difficult but I highly recommend the Pingu dvd. If you don't know Pingu he's a penguin and he doesn't speak english or any other human language. He does speak but it's penguin, so no one in your family will be able to understand it. Pingu lives in a snow covered land of course, with his mom and dad and his baby sister (her birth from an egg complete with doctor penguin helping with a spoon is one of my favorite episodes.) They are charming and adults as well as children will laugh throughout the episodes. We can't do movie night without popcorn and our prefered is jiffy pop for the dramatic effect of the inflating tinfoil.

Art.

We have an art table that is all his with paints, markers, oil pastels always out. I like the big artist sketch books with the wire binding. They can pull out the pictures if they want but if they leave them in you have a sketchbook of life as they see it. when one book is full put the dates on the front and keep. You'll be amazed at the progress.
When we work together we always make abstract work. Perfectionist preschoolers can get very hung up on "but I can't draw a dog as well as you!" and they can give up. So we make a lot of abstract stuff. Put a piece of paper in the bottom of an old 8x12 cake pan, roll some marbles in paint and then put the marbles in the cake pan and roll around. Or take the same pan, fill up with cheap shaving cream (about 3 inches deep) smooth it out and drizzle food coloring on the shaving cream. take a small fork and swirl the food coloring dots through the shaving cream. Now lay a piece of paper over the shaving cream and pull up slowly. You'll have a beautiful swirly masterpiece. And take yarn paint the yarn and use the yarn to paint on the paper by laying the yarn down in patterns. Lastly, we don't use crayons in our house. My son wouldn't touch them, I'm not exactly sure why but he had boxes of them and never used them. Then I bought him some inexpensive oil pastels and he's been drawing ever since. They feel very different from crayons and any child that likes hard lines and edges and drawing within the lines will not like them. But for the true budding artist you can't beat the depth of the colors and the emotion of the lines that your child will produce. Much of what he produces are literally frame worthy.

Tea parties are great for boys and girls, just invite all their stuffed animals and dolls and serve real tea (mint or fruit flavored) and of course cookies.

Camp in the living room/ dining room/ kitchen. Lots of pillows, chairs, blankets, flashlights and picture books. Make sure you get in the fort also. Don't forget the band-aids and first aid supplies, there's always a stuffed animal who gets hurt and will need some medicine.

The most important element to all of the above activities is YOU. Do not think these are activities for them to do on their own, although they may be capable. The idea is to spend some time together doing an activity that they enjoy.