My Kids Hate Food

Cooking has become very blah to me over the years.  It was never something I loved doing.  I don't hate it either.  But my kids seem to hate food and listening to them complain at every meal stifles any longing I had deep within me to be creative in the kitchen.  However, inspiration surfaced at lunch the other day.  If you see an owl on a branch, you are very gracious.

If you have picky eaters, I'd love to hear how you changed their eating habits, dealt with the complaining at the table, and would love any kid approved recipes you'd like to pass along.

Stolen Away

On Thursday night, my husband informed me he was taking me away for the weekend and I was not allowed to ask any questions.  This is a BIG deal considering we haven't been away alone together since we only had one kiddo.  It's also the first time we've left Kian overnight. 
Friday, Zac arrived home from work early.  We dropped the kids off with Grammy (bless her) and headed to beautiful Cambria.  Yesterday we holed up in our beautiful room, watching movies, surfing the Internet, reading magazines, just doing nothing and having no schedule.  How nice!  We weren't hungry at dinner time but knowing the whole town closed down between 8pm and 9pm, we called in a quick steak cob salad takeout order from our favorite grill and put it in the mini fridge.  We later ate it....after 11pm!!  Glorious. 
Today we've enjoyed yummy food, a walk to a nursery, a small hike, napping, and more movies and Internet surfing.  I've also spent some time catching up on photos. 
Here's a few pics I've snapped so far.

Taken for Zac who's going to use it for inspiration.

We bought some seeds for our garden; hollyhock, sweetpeas, and nasturtium.  Isn't their seed rack cool?!  I love that i have a husband who, upon seeing this rack of seeds said, "Honey, every year I want to plant Hollyhock and we never do it.  Let's get some."  He rocks.

I want to make one of these.

These welded peacocks were amazingly made.  Their bodies are rocks and they swing like a pendulum when the wind catches their tail feathers.

Love this resourcefulness.

I've always loved these growing roofs.

We found some deer tracks on the trail that led us to these cute guys.

In addition with watching our kids, my mom sent us away with a goody bag full of junk food, her homemade Kahlua, and gossip magazines she grabbed from her office.  We have both commented on how we feel guilty just sitting around doing nothing but relaxing.  I guess that's why such things are called "guilty pleasures."

I am loved.  And I love.

i Spy Swap

I started blogging last Summer and very soon found some favorite blogs that I still follow today.  One of those blogs is Obsessively Stitching.  For months I watched as Care made i Spy quilts and hosted i Spy fabric swaps.  Basically, the quilt is made of 200 or more squares, each of a different novelty print.  They are made for kids to cozy up with and play i Spy.  Same premise as the books.  So anyways, I stalked her blog long enough and finally jumped in on her last i Spy fabric swap.  Basically, a bunch of women sign up. Each buys 10 prints, cuts 20 squares from each, and sends them to her.  You get back 200 squares...all different!  This is such a great idea because if you sew, you can imagine what a pain it would be to come up with enough fabric to make one of these quilts using just your scraps.  Here's the prints I contributed to Care's swap.

The picture sucks because it was taken at midnight, but there's strawberries, spools of thread, blue ribbons, hand prints, racing flags, cupids, clovers, Norman Rockwell silhouettes, guitars, and robots.

I was planning on making the i Spy quilt for Logan's 6th birthday in April.  He's obsessed with our i Spy type books.  So I was very excited about this project.  Then I had the idea to double up and also make one for my nephew's 8th birthday just days after Logan's.  I wanted to do both quilts at once so that I'd have a total of 400 squares in front of me at once and have more to play around with.  So I joined in LAST minute with a swap my friend Elisa was participating in.  In one night I cut another 200 blocks (thanks to my sis who did a fabric run for me.....thank goodness for cell phone cameras) and mailed them off the next morning.  Here's the blocks for Katie's swap at FabriKate.

More robots, horse, dino letters, chickens, floral with bees and ladybugs, school letters, more guitars, Noah animals, space, and candy hearts.

Elisa and I should have our squares by February 20th and then we're having a crafting day to get going on them together.  We can't wait!  Stay tuned for the progress.  And if you're interested in seeing what an i Spy quilt looks like, follow the link to Care's blog.  She has a Flikr group full of pics.

One Small Change - January 2011

My one small change for January focuses on the kids' pajamas.  We recently learned that all loose fitting kid pajamas are coated with fire retardant chemicals.  Once we learned this, we tried to find information online about these chemicals.  Some information said the chemicals were harmless and there was too much hype over the concerns regarding them in the use on kids pajamas.  Other articles said the chemicals DID have harmful effects....specifically showing signs of messing with the nervous system and thyroid.  Interesting.  Other articles said that some of the chemicals hadn't been used over long periods of time so not enough was known about long term effects. 

Though we could not ever discover 100% if the chemicals were harmful or not, we WERE able to discover what pajamas they are used on.  Basically, any loose fitting pajamas have the retardant chemicals on them.  I'm not sure about the organic options, but the normal ones you buy in the store have the retardant.  The ones that are free of chemicals are long johns and those thin cotton two piece numbers that remind me of thin long johns, just made of cotton instead of thermal. 

One of the major issues that was pushed by the authors of the articles in favor of the retardant chemicals on p.j.s was the chance of the child coming into contact with an open flame such as a candle.  Their point was that if the child was messing around with the open flame, their loose fitted p.j. sleeve would not ignite.  Well, we rarely light candles in this house and when we do, we don't leave them in reach of the kids.  Never once did the pro fire retardant authors address the fact that if the house were to catch on fire, the retardant in the p.j.s would not do much for a child who's bed sheets and hair would catch fire.  Authors against the chemicals did mention this fact.  In the tragic event of a house fire, the retardant doesn't have a fighting chance against all the other flammable materials surrounding the child.  Since our kids' safety in the case of a house fire would not have anything to do with weather or not their p.j.s were flame retardant, and since we don't have open flames such as candles lit in the house at their level, making the switch to chemical free p.j.s was easy for us. 

Everyone has an opinion and with stuff like this, since we're not scientists, its hard to know who to believe. We decided that since the harmful effects were unclear, we'd just skip on the loose fitting store bought p.j.s to be on the safe side. The kids already have a decent amount of thermal and cotton long johns so it was easy to go through their p.j.s and get rid of all the bunny sleepers and loose fitting two piece sets. I consigned, thrifted, and handed down their old p.j.s. None went in the trash.  To fill in the few gaps in their pajama needs, I sewed up a few flannel pants for each of them.

 

Kian was NOT happy about modeling his Big Butt Baby Pants and needed some consoling from Daddy after the torment of it all.

So how is this one small (green) change?  No chemicals = Green   
Plus, I'm really good at reusing stuff so a lot of the flannel used to make their pants (as well as the piles of flannel waiting to make more when they grow out of these) was handed down scraps, old sheets, or thrifted.  So I'm using stuff that would have otherwise just been thrown out.  Some is new flannel though, I admit.  JoAnns was having a super sale on flannel on Black Friday and I got sucked in big time.  :)  But in this house, we use flannel to the max.  None will go to waste!

An Experiment With Fire

 One morning, as I was lighting a fire, Logan started asking questions about which things would burn and which wouldn't.  I decided to do an impromptu science experiment with he and Felicity.  We gathered a few items and one by one, added them to the fire.  The kids sat and watched as the items burned, or didn't.  In the picture below you can see their rocks we added.  If you look really closely, you can also see a nail sticking out of the top right piece of wood.  Both were part of our experiment.

Here are the kids watching their items burning (or not).  You can also see that Logan has a list in front of him.  We made two tables on two separate pieces of paper.  I didn't take a picture of them because, well, I'm being lazy.  On one table we made a grid and listed the items we planned to burn, and each of our guesses.....yes (it would burn), or no.  Our second table was actually two circles.  One was labeled "Burned," and one was labeled "Did Not Burn."  After observing the items in the fire, we added them into their appropriate circle.  Some things we had to have patience for, such as the rocks and nails.  They required the fire to completely die out so we could rummage around in the ashes to find them.  Other objects, such as rosemary, paper, clothes pins, and pine cones burned quickly.  Still other objects, such as pomegranates, definitely burned, but pretty slowly.

Texture Play

I've done texture play with my kids ever since Logan was the size of Kian in the above picture.  The kids love it, it's easy to find the supplies on hand, and it's great for preschoolers.  I basically just fill a bowl with a substance, provide plenty of spoons, containers, and other kitchen gadgets, and go grab time to fold laundry while they go at it.  Oh, and before I get to my laundry, we talk about what it feels like, smells like, and if applicable, what it tastes like.  That's why texture play is a great preschool activity.  It's a lesson in the senses.

I think this day they were playing with baby powder.  I have had a lot sitting around from our pre cloth diapering days.  They sure smelled good after they were done.

Felicity discovered that baby powder makes good clouds.

Sick Mama = Imaginative Kids

This last weekend I was sick.  I was thanking God that for the second time this Winter, I was sick over the weekend when I had my helpful husband around to take over.  I laid in bed ALLLLL day Sunday.  When Monday morning rolled around and I got up snarfy, dragging, achy, and sleep deprived, I was in the survival mind set.  I knew the day would be hard.  I knew I didn't have much energy or patience for bickering, a thousand questions, and much other than doing the needed diaper changes and meal making.  I just told myself to muscle through and Zac would be home at 4:30.  But I now admit that I feel guilty for thinking that way.  The kids were so amazing!  After breakfast they seemed to transport themselves into some imaginary land where they stayed the whole day.  They played nicely and kept me cracking up from my comfy seat on the couch where I clicked away with my camera.  I was so thankful because there's many a day I feel I break up arguments all day long.  How nice to not have to do that while feeling achy and snarfy.  Here's a few of those pics I snapped;

First they went out onto the front deck and found the bag full of seed pods we'd picked off a tree a month or so ago.  They all set to work cracking open the pods and finding the little seeds. 

When they came back inside, Logan found all the collapsible hampers in the house, emptied them, and then Felicity and Logan used them to jump around the house in.  They made up a few games I didn't understand the rules to.  They did this for a long time.

Poor Kian wanted SO badly to jump just like Felicity and Logan.  He kept saying, "dump!" while pumping his knees and throwing his hands into the air, never leaving the ground.  Poor kid.  He resorted to wearing his hamper on his head and chasing after Felicity and Logan.

After a lot of jumping, Felicity laid down in her hamper.  I told her she looked like a caterpillar in a cocoon and she should come out and turn into a butterfly.  It took her a long time to come out as a butterfly as I think she was escaping the crazy energy levels of her brothers for a while.  You can't blame the girl. 

After Felicity turned into a butterfly, Logan turned the hampers into a drum set.  He rocked out for a long time just on his own.  Then I turned on iTunes and all the kids rocked out to their new playlist I made them.  Logan was stoked because I had just purchased him a few songs from the How To Train Your Dragon soundtrack.

After I turned the music on, the other two joined in and danced.  Kian's head is blurry here because he's doing some baby head banging.  Oh, and if you didn't notice, yes, Logan and Felicity dressed themselves.  Not because I couldn't, but because I just didn't care.  This was Felicity's 2nd dress of the day.  She chose to wear it over a pink shirt with her tan deer print cozy pants on underneath.  Hey, a girls
gotta do what a girls gotta do to wear a dress when it's cold out.

Singing together.

Someone should put a hat on that baby to get his hair out of his face!

Joining big brother on a few instruments.

Felicity, in dress number 3 out of 5, did some treasure hunting under the couch cushions.

And this was all before lunch.

Busy kids.

Later, my little sister came over for a visit.  She had had a hard day so we went out back and soaked up some good vitamin D and watched the kids swing, play in the dirt, and run more energy off in the greenbelt.  I wish I had a picture of my sister's face when Felicity brought her a worm she had dug up in the garden.  My sister and I are very different.  I like worms, she likes her Vera Wang purse.  Did I even spell that right? 

This morning I feel worse.  The kids are still doing pretty good.  There's been a few bickering moments, but not too bad.  The day is beautiful so maybe we'll head out back and find some more worms.  : )