Using Our Creative Juices

Today started out with the boys snuggling in my bed to wake me up. Edmund had a poopy diaper, ::sigh::, yes, he'll be three in April, and no, he's not yet potty trained - I don't have high expectations since it was just a few months before Peter turned four that he was officially potty trained, I'm taking my time. The boys were playing rather well this morning. We had a bowl of cereal with bananas, Peter decided he didn't want the bananas, after this admission, Edmund decided not to eat his bananas either. After the boys put their bowls in the sink, they asked to watch a movie. I turned on music, and despite their initial protests, they were soon singing and dancing along to their favorite songs. We then built block towers together. We were building them for princesses, and Ogres (we had a Shrek Marathon on Tuesday when the weather was cold but the snow didn't start falling). I then let the boys play, and cleaned up what they weren't playing with. I think I cleaned up the same stuff about times in a row at one point. We then read at least five books on the boys' beds from the library. Peter surprised me by reading some words with "oo"s in them. Like "zoom", "vroom", "zoo", etc. Yay for Leap Frog shows on Netflix!

 We were having a snack of blue corn chips with melted cheese (yes, nachos) when we got a call from someone we love. After the snack, we cleaned up, and the boys got back to playing and I had the idea to write up the blog about the library books, which took a while.

Then Peter wanted to play out side. He really wanted to get the charcoal out of the bags and make our snow pile into a snowman. I convinced him to use some of the gum balls I baked instead.

After Peter was inside and played a bit with Edmund (nicely) I allowed them to finally watch some TV. They watched one episode of Leap Frog Opposites, and two Magic School Bus episodes. While they were occupied, I realized I was out of laundry detergent. I am so lucky that I am curious.

I have been making my own detergent off and on for several years now. I only attempted this once I was married because I knew I couldn't have done this living at home. My mom would have been yelling at me for making a mess because there's always something I forget to clean up!  

One of the kids shows my boys watch stars a "Green bear, who lives in a tree, next door to the Baxter family", his name is Boz. It's a Christian show, that teaches kids virtues, I would describe it as a Christian version of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. One of the shows is about imagination and how it's our greatest tool. I would definitely agree. If I didn't have an imagination today, I would have had to bundle the kids and myself into the car, brave the unplowed, icy streets of the neighborhood, to a very crowded grocery store on pay day just to get some laundry detergent. But I knew I had some bars of Ivory soap in the linen closet, and the other ingredients in my laundry room, and the grater in my cupboards. I got the recipe from the Dugger family website years ago. I use Ivory (aloe vera scented) instead of Fels Naptha.

Dinner tonight was cheese pizza, since it is a Friday - meatless and I didn't feel like cooking. After dinner we cleaned up after ourselves - the boys bus their plates, went up stairs (Peter needed all the lights out because he had his sonic screwdriver and a mini flashlight), brushed our teeth, got changed for bed and read more stories.

Tonight's bedtime stories included:
Disnye*Pixar Story Collection with Run, Remy, Run!, Just Keep Swimming, Driving Buddies, Buzz's Backpack Adventure, and  Boo on the Loose.
Spider-Sense Spider-Man: Spider-Man and the Great Holiday Chase by Michael Teitelbaum
SNOW by Uri Shulevitz
My Pig Amarillo by Satomi Ichikawa
Poem: The Little Turtle by Vachel Lindsay and Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti - both from the book: My Favorite Kindergarten Poems - and we did the discussion questions at the end of the poems together.

I do love reading to my boys. Playing their games sometimes makes me feel like I want to gouge my eyes out for some reason, but reading…I LOVE reading to them. I love reading with voices for all the characters, different accents (even if I get it wrong, they don't seem to mind), etc. I just love it.

I love when their Daddy reads to them too!

After I finish typing this, my priority will be to get our swimming things ready for our first swimming lessons tomorrow! I am so excited that the boys are going to be getting swim lessons at the same time (Peter starts ten minutes before Edmund). Peter gets to be in his class by himself with other classmates, and I get to stick with Edmund in his class. I also received a call that we will be having a handy man come over to get estimates for some repairs to this house we are renting. I will be so happy to have that darn hole in the fence fixed up. Not only do our kids like to escape through it, our next door neighbor's dog likes to come in our yard through the hole, and the kids are not keen about that at all.