Project Runway: Barbie

Since we were already in Indy and all, our Matty got me and the girlies a cheap-o Priceline hotel room (we were utterly miserable there, since there was an actual fire alarm that required actual evacuation in our pajamas, and actual firefighters in full gear, and the girls were hysterical, of course, but that's a different story, isn't it, La Quinta Inn that didn't give us a refund?), and the next day we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.

We lurve the Children's Museum, and go quite often. If you go during a school day, NOT a field trip day, and you're a member, it's pretty sweet. The carousel dude didn't even make us get off between rides, there was no waiting at the big marble run, no line at the boat-building, no having to share the wall-mounted T-Rex puzzle with some tourist kid who hasn't done it a million times and will just delay getting it completed in order to hear the big roar, etc. I do find children's museums in general a little annoying because I loathe hyper-parenting ("Okay, Ichabod, now it's your turn! Climb the ladder! No pushing! Let the little girl go up first! Walk, Ichabod! Be careful! Okay, go down the slide now!"), making kids move along before they're done ("Come on, Jackson, let's go see something else! Hey, let's go look at the boats, Jackson! Let's go, Jackson! Jackson, come on! I mean it! One!"), and using your bitchy voice in the gift shop, especially if you tell your kid that you're going to buy them something but then all you do is gripe about what they want.

Even that is quite a bit lessened, however, by going during a school day during the school year, and our time was quite pleasant. And in the afternoon, quite by chance, we walked into a program that is hands-down the best thing that I've done in the Children's Museum so far...

Tell me, friends. How would YOU like to design and then make a real, live Barbie outfit?

We liked it very much.

First, Mr. Grant gave us a lecture on color and fashion and style. Then there was the design portion of the programme:

And during the design portion, Mr. Grant came around and told each person exactly why he loved their design so much. We like compliments, and we liked Mr. Grant.

Then each person picked out the fabric for their Barbie dress, and then we folded the fabric, pinned a real, live, Barbie dress pattern to that fabric, traced around it with tailor's chalk, and cut it out:

The pattern was simple and yet brilliant, and don't worry--I looked and looked and looked at it, and I think I can make up something along those lines for some future at-home Barbie fashion design.

Instead of sewing, we used double-sided tape to put the seams together--again, BRILLIANT!--and little Velcro tabs to make the dress closures wherever we wanted. And, and here's the best part, we put our dresses on LITTLE BARBIE DRESSMAKER'S DUMMIES!!!

I may have been in heaven for a bit.

After we all had our dresses on our dummies and they had been duly admired, Mr. Grant brought out the fabric scraps, and the ribbons, and the beads and bobbles and sequins, and the fabric markers, and the fun truly began:

Both the girls found this last part, especially, to be utterly absorbing. Willow dangled bits of scrap fabrics and ribbons down from the hem of her dress, and Sydney ended up with a ribbon bow on each shoulder of her dress, a ribbon bow in front and back, ribbons drawn all over the other free spaces, and tiny little cut-up bits of ribbon here and there and everywhere.

When the girls were finished, they were both VERY proud of their Barbie dresses:

As well they should be.

Fishing Buddies

Homeschooling at the State Fair is in a league all its own. We covered all the essential subjects on our little mid-week field trip, including:

Foreign Languages

Biology

Ice Cream

Agriculture

Physics

The highlight of the state fair, however, was an experience that Willow has been asking after for literally YEARS:

Willow has been longing to fish.

I feel a little guilty about this, actually, since my people are all avid hobby fishermen, and as child my Papa used to introduce me to his co-workers from Dixie Cup as "my fishing buddy." Oh, I can tell you stories--the time I got a fish hook caught in the back of my head, the time that I mistook the minnow that was my bait for a fish that I'd just caught, the time that I caught the biggest fish in the entire world but Papa pretended to slip and dropped him back into the water because it was a carp and carp make terrible eating.

I haven't fished since I was a child, but it must run in one's blood, because Willow was born longing to fish, and NEVER have I taken her.

At the state fair, however, the Indiana DNR runs a stocked pond, filled with catfish and bluegill, manned by DNR volunteers, whose sole purpose is to give children the experience of fishing.

We wouldn't have missed it for the world.

I heartily approved of how child-friendly they made the experience. Instead of a fishing pole with a reel, which requires casting, the children all used fiberglass cane poles, which are vastly more user-friendly. They also used barb-less hooks, which eases the release of the fish and negates the possibility of bloody little incidents like my own childhood barbed-fishhook-in-the-scalp experience.

The volunteers, too, assisted the children at every step:

And they were just as thrilled as the girls were every time they landed a fish, for land a fish they did:

Sydney caught three fish, and although the actual fish business was the part of the process that she was least enthusiastic about, she was a trooper regardless:

Willow, however, could not have been happier about the two fish that she caught:

She was eagerly engaged in every part of the process, from baiting the hook herself to gently lowering her fish back into the water and watching it swim away again:

Will's plans for our future farm have since expanded to include our own fishing pond, also stocked with catfish and bluegill.

And in my mental checklist of the children's dreams and aspirations, I have duly noted--"Willow: Fishing. Goal achieved."

A Fair of the Arts in August

Dinosaurs!

More Dinosaurs!

New Signs!

More New Signs!

Rainbows! And Colored Pencils!

And Buttons!

And More Buttons! On My Favorite Find!

Good Company

And good times.

The next A Fair of the Arts craft fair is the second Saturday in September. Be there, or you know what you're gonna be.

Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week-ish, we:

had lots of marble races with our newish-to-us garage sale marble maze; spent some time on PBSKids.org (Dinosaur Train, which is mathy/sciencey, is perennially popular); watched a little Cyberchase and read How Big is It? over and over and over again, and requested Hillman's other books from the library because they are GREAT; and played with building toys both familiar and novel. Sydney played a Blue's Clues computer game, pretended that she wanted to work a 500-piece puzzle with me but instead rolled around on the floor in all the pieces and griped at me whenever I stopped working on the puzzle for even a second, and decorated and cut out innumerable paper snowflakes:

Willow asked me to get Crazy Machines from the library again, so I did, and she spent some happy time immersing herself in the wonder of physics:

goofed around a little with some homemade handwriting sheets. Willow still enjoys creating signage, and Sydney wrote out greeting cards to be mailed to beloved and far away family.

continued an obsession with Magic Tree House, occasionally listening to the audiobooks for hours at a time while otherwise occupied; sampled other audiobooks and CD readers now and then; were read to and read to themselves; visited Borders and the library; and watched Martha Speaks. Willow spends the majority of her waking hours reading, alone or in company:

She finshed all the Breyer Stablemates books except for Penny, which is currently in the possession of some other small library patron; read out loud to her sister and the kittens quite often; FINALLY received the Dinosaur Cove book that she'd been waiting for from the library forever (I actually got my librarian friend to purchase more copies of these books for the library--a six-year-old shouldn't have to wait two months for a book), and read it; and received from the library and read all the rest of the Boxcar Children graphic novels.

went to the farmer's market, went on playdates, did a little shopping and a lot of chores, gardened, played on the jungle gym (I just don't look when Willow + cast dangle from the monkey bars), and helped out at the craft fair. Sydney finished up swim class, and earned her certificate this time, so when swim classes start again next summer, she will finally, FINALLY be in Level 2.

watched a few documentaries; played a little Petz (not so much this week, thank GAWD because it's annoying); held a Great Cookie Bake-Off of our own--

--dried flowers in our flower press; watched Dinosaur Train amply (Willow instructed me to mark my planner for the date and time of some sort of Dinosaur Train special episode next week); pored over some of our collection of Smithsonian handbooks--primarily the horse and butterfly handbooks, I believe); attempted to use the laminator (great lessson for the babies on dealing with frustration, that laminator) and played with, cared for, trained, and loved our sweet, sweet foster kittens:

Willow baked her loaves of exemplary French bread, and managed to goof around with our collection of beach rocks and the hose without getting her cast wet, thank goodness.

There was singing, and instrument play. There was Wee Sing.

Sydney and I colored some of an amazing set of coloring greeting cards about the American Revolution, a souvenir purchased in Boston. While doing that we discussed the American Revolution, and how people get dead and what happens to them next, and how come Sydney wasn't a baby during the American Revolution or even growing inside Momma and Momma wasn't even a baby yet, and what Sydney could possibly be doing if she wasn't even a baby yet, and my personal views on war.

picked out quilt fabric for a new I Spy quilt; created our own art and also filled in coloring pages; sewed; made patterns and designs and pictures with Colorforms; and fingerpainted in the front yard:

Willow dug out some Valentine craft kit that I bought at 90%-off who knows when and happily made a Valentine craft. Sydney took advantage of some work that I was doing on the Cricut to request a bunch of cuts, and happily made herself some paper doll mermaids out of the pieces.

And that's how we homeschooled this week!

Next week's goals:

• 
  
  coffee can ice cream
• 
  
  fireworks in the driveway
• 
  
  Indiana State Fair!

Questions Better Left Unanswered

1. How did the child with the broken leg fall behind the couch?
2. What was the child with the broken leg doing on top of the couch's back? Sitting? Standing on one leg? Standing on one leg while reaching for something up high?
3. Why did the child with the broken leg not call out for help? Clearly, there is not enough room behind the couch for a child with a broken leg. How did falling on one's back behind the couch, without hope of getting up or out unassisted, NOT constitute an emergency requiring one to screech at the top of one's lungs for Momma, and yet breaking one's pretzel, or not finding one's favorite pair of shoes, DOES constitute this kind of emergency?
4. When I walked past the living room and spied one bare foot and one casted foot sticking up from behind the couch, and I therefore walked over, climbed over the couch, and asked the child with the broken leg if I could help her up, why did the child with the broken leg act as if I was doing her a favor by hauling her 40+poundage PLUS cast up in a non-ergonomically-correct position, thus straining my back? How would she have liked to have stayed down there all afternoon, perhaps, maybe with a bag of pretzels and a Boxcar Children novel?
5. How well do you think my sanity is holding up, in company with this child with a broken leg?

The Bread Baker's Apprentices

Willow mentioned only in passing that she wanted to learn how to make bread, but it immediately struck me as such a perfect activity (math! science! hands-on!) that I made a note of it, checked out some cookbooks, and added it to the litany of activities that I suggest whenever a child wanders up to me feeling a bit lost-ish ("Should we clean your room? Should we look through the microscope? Should we play a game? Should we bake some bread?").

At the moment, Syd's a little more the girl who wants to do stuff with Momma than Will, perennially immersed in a book, is, and so it was she and I who made the house's first loaves of French bread:

We used the very clear instructions from Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!: The Ultimate Breadmaking Book for Parents and Kids (then checked out from the library, but since obtained for free from Amazon using my swagbucks, yay!), but unfortunately I didn't have any white flour on hand, and so substituted white wheat flour, and the results were merely satisfying. Of course, Sydney had a brilliant time kneading and punching and baking, so our dry loaves of rough white wheat bread were well worth the effort.

A few days later, I had bought white bread flour, Cake-approved!, AND I found Willow curled up on the couch, reading over and over the recipe for French bread, so when she declared that she wanted to bake French bread ALL by herself, with no hands-on help from the Momma, I said, "You betcha!"

And so she did:

I helped her interpret the directions, of course, and I got out the ingredients, and Will has enough experience with cooking that she knows how to level off measuring spoons and measure to the line that I show her on the measuring cup, etc. And she did do everything herself, just as she had requested. She stirred every stir and kneaded every knead and formed the loaves and poured the teakettle of boiling water in a pan at the bottom of the stove to fill the oven with steam and even put the pan with its loaves into the oven, although her father had to hold her around the middle to keep her balanced on her sound right leg.

Still, though, I'm not at all sure about how much flour she actually put in, because I'm pretty sure she lost count, and the salt spilled, and I think that the dough was more goofed off with than kneaded, per se, and that's all to explain to you that the loaves...

They were perfect. Exquisite. We took them with us to the drive-in to see Despicable Me (which Willow HATED, by the way, and cried and begged to go home until I walked her in my arms like a baby so that Sydney and Matt could finish the movie), along with some Earth Balance, and everyone agreed that, in Willow's words, "This is the best bread in the world."

Those two hands that made it are pretty perfect, too.

I Spy Four Kittens

Sydney's I Spy quilt took a LOT longer to quilt and put a mock binding on than I had anticipated. I just kept having all this parenting to do, and homeschool parenting, etc., so I have not had nearly as much hands-on just-the-Momma craft time that I'm accustomed to.

I've had a lot of Momma/baby craft time, in which Sydney sticks lots of random open safety pins into a quilt as I'm pinning it, until I run out of safety pins. I've had a lot of Momma/baby baking time, which I'll post about a little later, but just know that French bread? Yum. Chocolate cookies six different ways? YUM! Scrubbing the table and scrubbing the chairs and scrubbing the floors and washing every mixing bowl that I own four times every day for four days straight? Not so yum, but it is a hazard of the house.

And I've had a little, little bit of just-the-Momma craft time, thank goodness for Magic Tree House audiobooks, and in that little bit of just-the-Momma craft time, I finally finished quilting and putting a mock binding on Sydney's I Spy quilt, and laid it nicely and neatly out on her bed:

Two minutes in, it was already looking loved:

Of course, loved as Sydney's new I Spy quilt is, it really isn't even today's big news. Here's today's big news:

Four new foster kittens, come to stay with us until they're big and fat and ready to be adopted. We're already smitten with them:

And they seem pretty happy with us, too:

Kittens plus kiddos? I think my wild ride's going to keep going for a while.