My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Soap! (and a Giveaway of Soap!)

a write-up of the hand-crafted soaps of Soaps to Live by

and a giveaway!

Hop over right now and enter that giveaway, because I want you to have some nice soap as a present.

Kid-Made Tree Swing

Apparently, all you need is--what is that? Two yards?--of fabric (fortunately, it was a piece that was given to me and that I don't especially care for, but that was just happy chance) and a willing mulberry tree that has two branches at just the right distance and angle. These appear to be the factors that the kids used when making this, their now most beloved tree swing:

The first that I knew of this creation was hearing the ungodly scraping of branches against my study window, running over to check what the hell the kids were doing to the house this time, and seeing Will happily swinging here while Syd was telling her a story of what sounded like what adventures might ensue if the chickens escaped.

The girls have been going through a phase of experimenting with tying their play silks to any and everything and hanging and swinging off of them (thank goodness for sturdy silk!), so I wasn't *too* surprised to see this latest invention. I've recently finished up dying them several new long rainbow play silks (I did a terrible job on the color transitions, and they look horrible, but fortunately my kids are easy to please--in THAT area, at least), so I'm eager to see what new wonders of engineering they'll come up with.

Fossil Walk

Fossils are a big thing here in Indiana. Because we used to be an inland sea, basically our entire subsurface is bedrock that used to be ancient sea floor. You're probably not going to dig that far down in your yard, but any big roadwork around here tends to have a few fossil hunters sneaking around after hours, and nearly all the creek beds flow against that bedrock, so they're always fair game for finding fossils.

A couple of weeks ago we went on a guided hike through our Parks and Rec Department to a creek bed that isn't usually accessible to the public, all for fossil hunting:

We know pretty much all the common fossils to be found here, but it was nice to have our own tour guide there to help us identify the fiddly bits ("That's mud," he told Matt, who had just presented him with what he considered to be the Great Fossil Find of the Century). He also identified a salamander that we all thought was a snake, which is his fault since he'd just given us a lecture on the Dangerous Snakes of Indiana, although he did reassure us that nobody on one of his walks had ever been bitten by one (sitting on the ground and confronted by something slithery, I called out to him, "Hey, look at me! I'm about to become your first person to be bitten by a Dangerous Snake of Indiana!").

We were each allowed to choose two of our fossils to keep. I swear that Matt took his mud; I took two excellent examples of ancient sea floor:

See all the embedded fossils in those two sea floor fragments? And I didn't even notice that crinoid to the right!

 Will, who is a really great fossil hunter and has been since she was a toddler, took home a large segmented crinoid and a partial horn corral, the best that we've found in Indiana to date (we found better ones at Penn Dixie, but that's in New York). Sydney found loads of little crinoid segments (forgive me when I tell you that they are commonly called "Indian beads"... sigh), and then, with the clock ticking down, drove herself to near mania attempting to choose just two of these to take home. She solicited many opinions--

--narrowed the selection down some, got frustrated and nearly tossed the entire lot into the creek, declared that she was just going to steal them all, simply sat and contemplated them with grief in her heart--

--and then, thank the lord, finally chose two at random and had done with it.

Another benefit of the guided tour was learning some other great locations to search--roadcuts, railroad beds, side-of-the-highway embankments--the locations of which are mainly spread by word of mouth. If we can decipher the townie-style directions (off-road parking instructions, where to climb from there, etc.), hopefully we'll be taking some weekend day trips to visit a few of these places.

I hear they may have trilobytes!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Mason Jars!

a felted wool sweater Mason jar cozy

and a review of Mason Jar Crafts, including this Mason jar lid photo frame

I've got it on my to-do list to make multiples of both of these items this week--the felted wool Mason jar cozies to put aside as Christmas gifts, and the Mason jar lid photo frames to put up in multiples on one wall in the hallway. 

And, quite unusually for me, I may actually get these projects done! I have been QUITE productive this week, sponsored in part by both children's absence at day camp every afternoon. The camp ran through the start date of our local public school system, which meant that we couldn't have our "Not the First Day of School" party this year (doughnuts and a movie), but since the girls happened to be outside skateboarding and biking in the street as the school bus drove by, I consider it a first day of school success, regardless.

Summer 2013: Android Version

So I may only dump the photos off of my phone when I need the space for audiobooks from the digital public library and biology lectures from my MIT Open Course class, but whenever I do, I'm always so interested to see what I wanted to photograph when I didn't have my DSLR around. Contrary to the mommy blogger work ethic, I don't often drag my camera with me these days, so my phone photos capture completely different memories of our summer:

And now I'm curious to dump the photos off of the ipad and see what ELSE we did this summer!

Sydney Won't Dive

After asking to take this diving class, and asking over and over when it would begin, and jumping up and down and squealing with excitement when she was FINALLY told that it would begin tomorrow, and being completely ready to go, towel in hand, hours in advance...

The poor diving teacher couldn't get Sydney to jump off that diving board for nothing.

Well, to be fair, Syd dove the first day of class. She dove--a little more reluctantly, but she dove--the second day of class.

Third and fourth day of class, though? No deal.

My part in the process was to sit in a chaise longue and bury my head in a book, giving off an air of "I'm not watching you! I attach no judgment nor value to your performance or lack thereof! Don't you dare go to therapy in 20 years and tell your counselor that I forced you to jump off huge diving boards at age 7!", while sneaking peeks at her out of the corner of my eye, and noting uncomfortably how long the poor teacher spent with her each turn (I clocked two minutes, one time) while four other damp children shivered in line behind her, waiting their own turns that would take all of 15 seconds each.

If I was the kind of mother I'd like to be, I would have asked her, before that third class, and perhaps halfway through it, and then again after it, if she wanted to keep taking diving, or if she was all done. She might have said she wanted out, she might have said she wanted to stay in. Who knows? Not me, because I didn't ask her. I didn't want her to quit. I wanted her to keep taking the class that I'd paid for, and I wanted her to participate, and I wanted her to obey her teacher and concentrate and do her best.

I wanted her to be a good girl.

But the thing is, I don't want her to be a good girl. I want her to feel free to change her mind if she makes a decision she regrets. I want her to do or not do uncomfortable things because they're her own choices, not because she's obeying someone else. I don't want her to feel like she has to be the most attentive, most diligent, most talented person in the class, in every single class she ever takes.

I might have stopped talking about her and started talking about myself as a kid there.

Now, how to combine these skills that I want my daughter to have with the skills of work ethic, good sportsmanship, and, yes, attentiveness and diligence that I also want her to have, I do not know. Does every parent stress this much about swimming lessons?

Kid-Made Rainbow Waffles

Waffles, oatmeal, boxed macaroni and cheese, biscuits from scratch, and coffee mug eggs comprise much of what the kiddos cook independently. Occasionally, they'll be inspired to cook something more elaborate, but in the one to two meals that we all make for ourselves every day, these, combined with such uncooked fare as sandwiches, fruit, yogurt, and cold cereal, are what they eat.

Every week, I try to make a quadruple batch of waffle batter, a double batch of pizza dough, a giant bowl of pasta salad, a pan of whole grain muffins, a Mason jar full of marinated tofu, a crock pot's worth of beans, and whatever else I think might help the week out. Often it's refrigerator pickles, these days. Oven-dried tomatoes. Kale chips.

Most of the other food is eaten throughout the week, and it does help make the days easier, but that quadruple batch of waffle batter? Man, it's gone in two days! And not by me or Matt, either--those kids will plug in the two waffle irons, and then just stand in the kitchen, making and eating waffles. For hours. For real.

Last week, combined with a clearly insane desire to spend even MORE time in the kitchen, I divided the quadruple batch into thirds and dyed it in the primary colors. We've made rainbow waffles before, of course, as a one-time treat, but I've never just made it and stored it that way.

Would it make kid-made waffles even MORE nommy and fun? You BET it would!

I put some of the batter into big jars that the kids could spoon into their measuring cup.

I put the rest of the batter into squeezie bottles.

The kiddos REALLY liked using the squeeze bottles to make waffles funnel-cake style.

I've been trying, lately, to think of more foods that the girls could cook independently, and ideally foods that would work as dinners, because not having to cook dinner all the time would be AMAZING. The kids have made dinner before, so I know they can do it, but I feel like they need some more meals under their belt before it becomes a regular thing--I can only eat so many waffles and coffee mug eggs, you know?

Here are the ideas I've got so far:

• grilled cheese sandwiches
• hamburger soup
• rice and veggies in the rice cooker
• spaghetti

Any other ideas? To make it more complicated, they're both still too short-armed and timid to really use the oven independently, and when I say I want them to make dinner independently, I MEAN it, as in they're in the kitchen cooking dinner, and I'm over across the room not cooking dinner, so we're talking kid-friendly stovetop, crock pot, microwave, and rice cooker meals here.

Fine, I'll let them use the blender, too, so now we're up to waffles and coffee mug eggs AND smoothies every week.