Breakfast

By far, breakfast is my favorite meal. French toast, pancakes, eggs, muffins, scones, bacon, the list goes on and on. On Karl's day off (Monday) we nearly always eat a big breakfast. Karl's usually in charge of the eggs and I make pancakes and syrup. As the years have worn on, we've made this not only one of our tastiest meals, but also our healthiest. Karl finely chops up broccoli, carrots, onions, or whatever other veggies we have on hand (cucumbers surprisingly are some of my favorites. He sautes about a cup and a half of veggies in some butter before adding eggs and cheese. I make oatmeal or whole wheat pancakes that are usually beefed up with some flax meal or chopped nuts. Karl always spreads peanut butter on his pancakes and sometimes I just go with peanut butter and bananas instead of adding syrup. The kids LOVE breakfast and Ruben will eat a portion of eggs nearly the size of mine (probably 2 eggs plus veggies). Most recently I made some rhubarb scones and have figured out a way to freeze them ahead of time so next time we make breakfast I already have a treat waiting in the wings. I love breakfast

Rhubarb Scone, super ripe pear, and blackberry

Catching Up

I'm starting to see a trend. When life is busy, the kids do crazy amazing things that I should blog about. When life slows down enough for me to blog, I've forgotten what those things were...

Ruben's Update
This kid is talking. Granted, most of what he says is repeated from something I've just said but he's starting to get it.  I feel like June didn't really talk until she could do it on her own. She wasn't a huge fan of parroting my words. Ruben is trying to keep up with the conversation. He says colors (Gee, Pur Pur, YahYah, Boo, Reh, Peenk). If you ask him what color something is he will tell you except his first guess is always green, then purple, then yellow, then blue. You get the picture. Still it really impressed this lady at a wedding when I was standing there with Ruben asking him what color the balls hanging from the ceiling were and since they happened to be the four colors he guesses, he got an A+.

Ruben is also exercising his right to choose. Mostly he chooses, "no" but if it is enticing (or if I use my super excited voice) he'll say "yeah, yeah." Always two yeah's. I'm not sure why, but it makes me want to sing that Kelly Clarkson song.

Final note on Ruben is that we finally trimmed his hair. I didn't really want to, but it was getting long enough that I was needing to brush it once a day to keep it from becoming a rats nest. It's hard enough to brush a three year old's hair, so I didn't think I'd have the patience to brush both heads in the mornings. While I cut off a good two inches around the back I left a lot of the length up front so most people didn't notice right away that we had cut it.

BEFORE

AFTER

Now a note on June. The girl is crazy into playing lately. This is really good and also really frustrating at times. The frustrating times for me are when we're getting into the van to go somewhere. I'm encouraging independence with the car seat so June has to get into her seat and get her arms into the straps and buckle the chest buckle all on her own. The problem arises when she gets distracted by a toy or a thought or a step in the process. If I let her, she could take an hour getting into the van, locating the toys that need to be within reach, closing the van door by herself, checking out the backseat to see if anything changed back there, seeing Hallie's carseat and asking when Hallie was going to come over again, getting back to her carseat, showing me yet another cool way she has developed to climb into her carseat, getting a toy for Ruben (usually from the back seat - repeat those backseat steps), finally getting into her seat, juggling her toys enough to get her arms in the straps, remembering she wanted to take off her sweater, taking her arms out of the straps, putting her arms back in the wrong straps, detangling and finally getting her arms in and buckled. If I haven't intervened at some point in this process, I'm usually standing outside the van praying for patience or sitting in my seat trying to keep her on task.

The playing is amazingly good when it comes to the rest of the day. We've had a lot of friends over to play recently and every time a friend is over, an entirely new game comes into play. My favorite was the day Hallie, Madelyn, and June decided to play in the van for an hour and a half. They filled the trunk with ball pit balls. They played lifeguard and swimmers. They strapped each other into car seats and drove all over town. They especially enjoyed it when I closed the back door of the van so they were completely enclosed. Such fun!

Super Heros

On our last trip to Kansas, Nana shared a set of books with us from her old preschool teacher days. The "Dinofours" are dinosaur preschoolers who encounter all sorts of preschool related experiences, conflicts, and activities. June loves these books and would sit through all of them in one sitting but we usually limit her to 3 or 4 because my voice doesn't last much longer than that. One of her favorites is about the T-Rex Brendan pretending to be Super Dino. We already have Dino tails that the kids love to wear but in the book Brendan wears a cape. Now since I'm addicted to Pinterest, I've seen a couple of really cute, really easy patterns for capes and happen to have a closet full of fabric I've filched from Jan's basement (she seriously has her own fabric store and is willing to share any of it with me, which makes these projects so much more manageable). I decided Tuesday would be a great day to pull out some fabric and get to work on these capes. It also happened to be the day I had agreed to watch not one, not two, but four other children. Granted, I had three of them only in the morning and Hallie doesn't come until eleven, but it still made for quite the exciting day. Plus, it was raining all day so there was no going outside. 

June's still pretty new to the super hero gig, but after getting some new ideas from all her friends, we'll have adventures soon to share.

The teeter-totter also made its way back into the house for some great times. It's actually amazing how little work it takes to keep six kids entertained, alive, and fed. The feeding part is actually the most challenging. 

June and Ruthie played doctor with this hammer for probably thirty full minutes. One would lay on the yoga mat and the other would gently tap their entire body with the hammer. I wasn't around when it started so I don't know who initiated the play but it has been over a year since June has been to the doctor so I have no idea what she thinks a doctor does. But obviously it's fun to pretend!

Bunnies!

Spring has been in full swing here in Iowa since mid-March so the rabbits in our neighborhood have had plenty of time to get busy and start some families. They are everywhere! And Ruben loves it. When we eat supper on the back porch (which is most days now) he completely abandons his food to point at a bunny and yell "Buh Be! Buh Be" In fact every time he sees the backyard either from the house or the driveway or the car he's on the lookout for "buh be's" and will either yell "buh be!" at them or look at me with this sad face and say "all gohn." Birds are similarly fascinating but since they move faster and don't stay put quite as long as rabbits, their intrigue is shorter lived.

When we got home from Financial Peace University this evening, there was still plenty of daylight left and the kids were wound up from playing with kids at church so we went on a bunny hunt. All we had to do was walk down the street and we managed to find 10-12 bunnies within front yards alone. The kids had a blast trying to spot the bunnies then try to get as close as possible before the bunnies bolted. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering why there were little kid giggles coming from under their windows, but one of the benefits of living on a street with older neighbors is they tend to love it! Thank you neighbors for letting us tromp through your yards in search of buh be's.

No more nursing

After last night's 3 hour fit asking for mom, Ruben's been cut off. I was going to gradually wean him but we're done. He was only nursing before bed anyway, but now he's using it as a power play and these parents aren't going to take it. Karl walked him around the block three times in the sling, but it's done. Ruben went to bed without nursing.

The Rearrange

I don't know if a lot of people do this, and I blame it on moving every year for the first four years of our marriage, but we rearrange the furniture on a semi-annual basis. What can I say, we love change. I mean, it's not like our house is huge and we're able to completely redesign spaces. Plus, all of our furniture is second-hand (thank you Craigslist), so it's not like we're putting together terribly matching pieces. It's more about how comfortable we are in the space and how we anticipate using it. Last week's big rearrange was all about turning the living room into a space for gross motor play. That means more rough housing and running and fewer toys. In fact, it really meant no toys at all. They have been banished to the bedrooms and basement and so far, they've mostly managed to stay there. Roughhousing and running have increased by three fold and now that the computer desk is out of the way, the circle through our kitchen, living room, and dining room is going to have permanent skid marks.

Quirkiness

Our kids have acted strangely lately. Yesterday when Ruben saw June wearing a headband, he wanted one too. So he wore a green headband all day...and night...and today. June is usually a "path of least resistance" kind of girl, but yesterday on a rare trip to Walmart, she decided that she could carry the 20 gallon tote we were purchasing all the way to the register...then to the car...then inside the house. Then both kids climbed in the tote and ate their bedtime snack. Because that's what every kid does...eat bedtime snack in a tote wearing a headband.