The Ballerina, and Her Bun, and Thoughts on Organization

It's a new year of ballet, and the ballerina finds herself quite eager and prepared:

As the girls grow older, it's been such a relief to be able to gradually give up the exhausting chaos of their tiny years (they're 22 months apart, remember? I yawn just thinking about those days...) and, with their help, actually develop a system and an organization for some things that make our lives so much less stressful.

Take the pink ballet uniform, for instance:

The leotard and tights (the same as last year, thank goodness for stretchy fabrics!), get checked over when Syd gets home from class, hand-washed if they need it, and then put back in Sydney's ballet bag. The ballet shoes (brand-new from the dance store, leather shoes are NOT very forgiving) can go straight into the bag. Generally, Sydney isn't permitted to wear her ballet shoes outside--photos are a special occasion.

Sydney isn't permitted to wear her ballet uniform to play in--it was very expensive, and she has plenty of other leotards, some of them nearly identical, to fuel her at-home ballet daydreams--and so being permitted to run around outside in full uniform, near a fountain, no less(!), was pretty fun:

Being basically the butchest mom on the planet, the ballerina bun has been one of my biggest fears for a long time. I bit the bullet this year, however, and to my surprise...that damn bun is easier to make than a braid!

I've since decided to skip the netting, since I don't bother to slick the rest of Sydney's hair back with gel and spray, but even so the bun is sturdy and simple and attractive, and I've even begun using it to pull the girls' hair up when I want it out of their faces during the week. Who knew?

It's only since I've seen how easy even getting ready for ballet can be with a child who is organized, capable, and responsible for her own gear that I've begun to feel less bad about sending the girls to Montessori when they were littler with tangled hair, dirty faces, no socks, and lunch eaten in the car on the way there. How on earth did those other parents send neat and tidy small children out into the world every single day, on time and with a hot, healthy lunch in their tummies?

Really, however, my greatest revelations ought to concern how to apply this study in organization to all the other remaining areas of overwhelming chaos in our lives. A gymnastics bag, for instance--we'd know where the gymnastics leotards were even before it was time to get ready to go, and Willow might actually be able to find her gymnastics shorts for a change! And if each girl only wore her gymnastics leotard for gymnastics, then perhaps we'd be spared the desperate search among the play leotards each week to find one that fit for class...

And surely there is some sort of simple way to fix a child's hair so that the dratted ponytail doesn't dig into her skull during forward rolls?

Seeing Strange Fruit

Every year I vow that next year I will take my girls to the Lotus Festival of World Music.

Think of the cultural stimulation! The excitement! How it will deepen their understanding of the world, and increase their love of all music! Besides, I really want to go, and we don't do babysitters.

Then that next year rolls around, and I look at the ticket prices compared to the short attention spans of my babes, and the fact that each of them STILL throws the occasional tantrum when over-stimulated and denied their way, and I think...next year. I will definitely take my girls to the Lotus Festival next year, when they're a little older, can appreciate the expensive music, and can be certain not to embarrass me and/or ruin the performances for everybody.

Fortunately, the Lotus Festival does so much community outreach that we do still get quite a bit of cultural stimulation and excitement and global understanding and world music, generally in outdoor locations with lots of other families with small children around and plenty of playground equipment or fountains or trees with falling acorns to entertain those with short attention spans.

Campus is a lovely hike from our house, so one afternoon this week we had a lovely hike there, stopping to gather acorns and black walnuts and pinecones and interesting sticks, to watch Strange Fruit perform on the lawn of the IU Art Museum.

It was the perfect performance. It was the middle of the day on a weekday, so while there was a good crowd of college students and families and a few grade school groups, it wasn't overwhelmingly packed. It was a nice day, so everyone was able to lounge on the grass, enabling even the littles to see everything. And, because it's a small town, we found a few friends to sit with:


Do you know Strange Fruit? They're Australian dancers who climb tall flexible metal poles, strap themselves to the tops of the poles, costume themselves, then use the poles as extensions of their bodies to perform gigantically swaying, twirling, bending choreographed dances:

It's really something that you have to see to believe:


Yep, that's my kid. SUPER immersed. Good thing I didn't pay thirty bucks for her to happily dig in the grass while women dance high overhead. Actually, she did engage when the dancers began to really show off how they could bend--

--so much so that she asked for my camera, and these next few photos are hers:

In the end, both girls agreed that the performance was wonderful, and they behaved excellently and were proud to be there:

Next year, I'm definitely going to take them to the full Lotus Festival.

Definitely.

The Sweetest Bake Stand on the Block

Yep, they did it all:

They shopped for the ingredients.

They read the recipes (well, the older one did, anyway).

They set the oven temperature.

They did the baking.

I poked the skewers.

They did the decorating.

They helped Daddy build the stand.

They wrote the sign.

They sold cookie wands and s'mores cupcakes to our hapless garage sale shoppers at $1 each:

Next year, I'll guide them into something simpler than the s'mores cupcakes, since nobody really wanted to buy a gigantically messy, marshmallow-frosted, Hershey bar decorated cupcake at a garage sale, although a couple of parents did get tricked into it. The cookie wands were a hit, however, and the girls were absolutely thrilled with the twelve dollars they earned in just a few hours (hee!) of labor.

So thrilled that they barely even noticed all those toys of theirs that got sold--shh!

We used this book for the cookie wands:

Summer Girls

Last overdone photo mosaic, I swear, but if I'm going to spend the time editing a billion photos to print, then dang if I'm not going to get every bit of use out of them!

And therefore, my girlies' best summer moments:

Now let's get started on the autumn memories, shall we?

Snapshots of a Trip

I've spent the past couple of days re-editing and cropping our Florida vacation photos, because I thought that the girls might like to try their little hands at scrapbooking--such a novelty for my kids, to have actual photos in their hands!

At the time, that Florida vacation was equal parts joyful and stressful. I knew at the time that these were precious  moments that I had the privilege to experience with my girls, but not having Matt there for that last week made everything SO much harder, and coming right on the heels of his absence (not to mention the stress of) for jury duty for that murder trial, and frankly, I was pretty resentful, as well.

But look what happy memories we made! Look at the adventures we had, the new things we tried, the joyful moments that we had together:

The stress? Heck, I don't even remember what was so hard--I'd hope in the car for another cross-country road trip with the girls tomorrow.

Being mad at Matt for not being with us? Now I just feel sad that he wasn't there for our happy times, that he won't be in these precious memories that my girls carry.

I've made master plans, and started the savings account to match them, so that we should be heading back to Florida for another happy vacation in almost exactly one year. This time Matt will be with us for the whole trip, and I don't care what he says.

And the photos? They're going to contain quite a few more mouse ears, if you know what I mean.

Tutorial: S'mores Cupcakes

1. Prepare your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe as usual:

2. After the cupcakes have baked and then cooled, frost each one with marshmallow fluff:

3. Poke a broken piece of graham cracker into each cupcake, and put a piece of Hershey bar on top:

4. Repeat until you run out of cupcakes, or you get sick from all that sugar:

Yum!

Primary Colors Play Silks

A simple set of play silks

 30"x30" set of three, one each in red, yellow, and blue

wide enough to tie around a child's waist, light enough to braid into a child's hair

they stream satisfyingly behind you as you run

they certainly don't slow you down

perhaps, if you twirl with them, they'll make you feel giddy

superhero cape? you bet!

because imagination is, of course, a superpower

There's a primary colors set of 30"x30" play silks up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, joining the multi-color play silk canopy, to be joined, ideally sometime soon, by a full rainbow set of play silks. 

I can't imagine the circus it'll be to attempt photographing a full set of seven play silks all in action at one time.

Mapwork: Haiti

Along with sewing sundresses for Haitian orphans, the girls and I did a few more activities to round out a brief unit study of Haiti, one meant mostly to contextualize their understanding of their service project.

I've been surprised since we began homeschooling to learn how much I value, and therefore emphasize (and therefore assign!) memory work. It's far from the former mental picture of public schools in which everything was learned by rote and nothing internalized by doing, but I certainly have seen that in the large days of work and play and study and rest that homeschooling allows us, there is plenty of room for plenty of memory work. And thus we memorize poetry, and spelling words, and Latin and Spanish vocabulary words, and math facts, and geographical locations.

Mapwork goes along with whatever other study we're doing of a location. Along with their sewing project on Haiti, for instance, I showed the girls the location of Haiti on the globe and asked them to memorize it so that we could play the "globe spinning game." In the globe spinning game I spin the globe, and when it stops I ask the girls to find a location. Each girl can now find Haiti consistently on the globe, no matter their starting point.

I also think that map labeling is a valuable activity--it's all about context! Instead of a country-specific map, I usually choose a more regional map from Megamaps, so that the girls can color and label not just their country, but the countries and surrounding oceans:

Each girl also has a one-page world map (also from Megamaps) in her geography folder. As each country (or state, or ocean, or continent) comes along, she colors and labels it on that world map. We reuse the same map until there's an overlap (Africa, for instance, and then Egypt), and then I print them a new map to start on.

Labeling the maps and initially memorizing the geographic location takes...hmm, less than half an hour? Maybe around that, depending on the complexity of the location. After that, reinforcing the location on the globe by playing the globe spinning game takes probably 30 seconds every now and then, certainly not a significant time-suck for such a valuable piece of memory work.

Now, when they're older, I'm going to print them a giant world map, and then we're all going to start learning how to draw in countries freehand. An entirely freehand map of the world is an accomplishment that I'm quite looking forward to.

In our study of Haiti, we also used:

A Day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival

...which nearly did not happen, because it was so rainy. However, the troops were rallied with the pep talk that REAL medieval villagers would not have let a rainy day run their festival. Hell, if the sun was out, that's the day that they'd probably stay indoors, blinking in fear at that unfamiliar bright orb raining the unwholesome glow of dragon's fire down upon them.

And so, accompanied with many lectures on the differences between a historically fair medieval representation and what is more accurately referred to as a medievalism, all coming from the mouth of the resident stay-at-home mom who has the Master's Degree in English with an emphasis on Medieval Studies (ahem), we had a fabulous day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

There was stage combat, bawdiness included:

(I have also trained in stage combat, as well as fencing the sport, on account of I am a dork.)

Magic:

Fairies:

Dragons:

and pirates, wenches, serfs, barbarians, plenty of royalty, etc. I dressed in my Goodwill Ren Faire dress, while Willow dressed as a wizard and Sydney dressed as a fairy. Willow was often asked to perform various spells for various residents of the village (SERF: Please, Miss Wizard, perform a spell to give me a pot of gold. WILLOW: No, I'm going to turn you into a frog! SERF: AAAAAAAH!), and Sydney was often queried about whether she was a good fairy or a bad one. Matt was boring in his T-shirt and shorts, so we improved him:

There were tons of shows going on all the time and a million other things to do that were absolutely free (not least of which was petting the jousting horses)--

--but I hadn't realized that there would also be tons of really fun rides and other activities (throwing tomatoes at the wretch, anyone?) that cost money, and so it really wasn't in the infernal budget. We permitted each girl to choose ONE activity, therefore, out of all the possibilities. Willow chose a life-sized walk-through maze, Sydney was beside herself at her inability to choose between the maze, riding the jousting horse, riding the camel, going on the carousel, throwing tomatoes at the wretch, trying out the climbing wall, etc., but then finally settled on possibly the wildest ride in the village. It looked so impressive that Willow spent her own money to ride along:

Barf, right? The girls loved it, though, and I think it was their favorite thing at the fair, along with the moderately-priced handmade wooden sword and shield set that I bought for each of them. Matt's favorite thing was the smoked turkey leg, hands down (also barf), and I think that I was the fondest of this juggler:

Dorky dreams do come true:

Carrot Cake Bake-Off

With our budget being so...well...budgeting, I've been trying to cook more. As in every day. And my own personal rule for when we cook around here is, "When you cook something, double the recipe." That way the girls and I can have leftovers for lunch for the next couple of days, or the extra can be frozen and served for dinner next week, and when you don't enjoy cooking (as I don't), that's a big deal!

For my Matt's birthday, this meant carrot cake. I have a whole carrot cake Pinboard, just for dreaming about delicious carrot cake recipes to make for that Matt of mine. This birthday, however, I made him the ultimately simple carrot cake recipe from Made. And, of course, I doubled the recipe.

Goodness, that recipe makes a lot of carrot cake!

Inspired by our first Great Cookie Bake-Off that worked so well, every now and then the girls and I repeat the experience with some other amenable recipe. And it turns out that simple carrot cake batter, enough to make three dozen carrot cupcakes, is perfectly amenable to experimentation.

The bake-off rules:

1. We divide the recipe between us. 
2. We lay out every possible mix-in, from healthy to unhealthy and usual to unusual and just plain odd.
3. Every person is allowed to customize their own batter exactly how they want.
4. The results are baked and, inevitably, enjoyed by all.

The girls love this project--

--and always come up with excellent combinations, chock-full of pretzel M&Ms and dates and raisins and sprinkles and bits of candy.

When they were weary of experimentation, a good forty or so cupcakes later, I baked the rest up plain:

Yes, the recipe, doubled, made THAT many cupcakes!

My girls are excellent and creative chefs, of course, but I do have to say that this round decidedly goes to...ME! My carrot cupcakes with chocolate chips, candied ginger, crushed pineapple, and walnuts were scrumptious beyond compare.

Tutorial: Liquid Watercolor Spray Paint

You'll need:

• liquid watercolors
• teeny-tiny travel-sized spritz bottles
• masking tape and biiiiiiiiig paper
• a day suitable for outdoor play

Pour liquid watercolors straight into your teeny-tiny travel-sized spritz bottles:

I know that some people water down their liquid watercolors, but I don't--I love those super-saturated colors that the straight watercolors will give you, and even undiluted, a bottle of liquid watercolor lasts approximately forever.

If you have an easel big enough to hold big paper, go ahead and mount your paper there. Otherwise, use masking tape to tape it at the top and bottom to a fence or a tree trunk or, if it's started raining all of a sudden, to the inside porch railing. 

All that's left to do after that is to spray paint!

This is an excellent activity for strengthening your kiddo's hands, by the way--pre-writing skill-building!

I love how the colors combine--so much more interesting than conventional spray paint, which I also let my babies use:

Masking tape is also a really kid-friendly material, easy for them to peel and tear off and stick, so it's fun to encourage the kiddo to make some custom masking tape reverse stencils: 

--which you can then spray paint around:

When you're finished, peel off the masking tape--

--and pose with your masterpiece!

It's a star and the earth and outer space, says Syd.

We used:

Ancient Egypt Unit Study: Sugar Cube Pyramids

Shopping for sugar cubes involved a trade-off, unfortunately. I sacrificed the perfectly uniform shapes that more realistically depict the engineering of the Ancient Egyptians for these brown sugar cubes that more realistically depict the color of the sand blocks that they used:

Unfortunately, these brown sugar cubes don't have good regular edges, and since we were "between" kitchens during this project (we've since finally kicked the workers out of the mostly finished kitchen, choosing to suffice with plywood nailed to the tops of our cabinets and partly unpainted walls until we can do the work ourselves rather than just flat-out run out of money, which is what we were heading towards, sigh) I couldn't mix up a batch of royal icing to use as mortar. I therefore don't think, then, that this particular project achieved a good model of the engineering of an Ancient Egyptian pyramid.

Ask me if the kids care:

The girls had a fabulous time building with their little sugar cube building blocks, and were quite proud of their ungainly, tumble-down sugar cube constructions:

Of course, what kind of momma would I be if I didn't create along with them?

I hid these sugar cubes away until a day in the near future when I feel like mixing up royal icing and trying the pyramids again, and they'll also be perfect with our Halloween candy houses and Christmas gingerbread houses. I'm still on the lookout for uniform brown sugar cubes, but at least where we live, packages of sugar cubes in grocery stores seem to have mostly gone the way of the dinosaur.

Or should I say the Ancient Egyptian pyramid?