Spit bugs

Do you see the frothy "spit" in the midde of my lavender plant?

Lilly has developed a new habit over the past few weeks...spitting.  So today I introduced her to spit bugs in the garden.  We walked around the plants and I showed her the little blobs of white "spit" that spit bugs leave on leaves and stems.  She was both horrified and fascinated that bugs spit.   I told her that only nasty bugs spit...not little girls or boys.  She said she didn't want to be like a bug so she didn't want to spit anymore.  I don't know if it's a permanent fix but for now she equates spitting with bugs.

Oh, just a comment...I looked up spit bugs on google and read that the spit has an acrid taste.  Who in the world would taste the spit of a spit bug?!!!  Yuck!

Happy Father's Day

Chuck, Lilly and Ellie made this special present for Grumpy on Father's Day. 

I hope we all appreciate the fathers in our lives...our husbands, the father of our children and our children's grandfathers, our own fathers.  Sometimes I think they don't get enough credit for all they do for our families. 

The resourceful preschooler

I guess the shiny, silver scissors were too much to resist.  It didn't take long for Lilly to whack off a chunk of her hair, much to the distress of everyone around her.  Chuck cried.  "Can you make her hair big again?" he asked.  I'm afraid that's beyond my abilities  :)

No matter how hard we try to keep certain things out of reach, preschoolers seem to be able to find a way to get whatever attracts their attention.  I remember when my four year old son came out of the bathroom with blood running down his leg.  It seems that he wanted to shave his legs  :)  I honestly had no idea that he would play around with a razor.  Luckily, he didn't cut himself badly but it was an eyeopener to me that nothing is sacred in the house.   And one of my daughters did what Lilly did, only to her bangs.  She was frustrated with them so she lopped them off to the hairline.  Now THAT was hard to fix!

We can do our best, be smart and vigilant but beyond that, we can only hope and pray that our children don't do anything harmful.  At least Lilly didn't accidently stab herself!

Baby chicks Part 2

A year ago, I wrote a post about baby chicks (June 11, 2012).  Baby chicks need to emerge from their shell without any help or they will die.  Even though we might think that we're helping them by removing some of their shell, the chicks develop their strength from the process of hatching from their eggs.  In the same way, our children need to be allowed to develop their strength through the challenges they face.

I don't know what made me think about baby chicks today but I had another thought about the development of chicks and how they compare to our children.  Even though the chick has to hatch on its own, the mother hen is always close by, keeping the egg warm, turning it, clucking to give the chick direction and then sheltering it when it hatches.

Can you see where this is heading?  Sometimes we have to stand back and watch as our kids experience challenges but that doesn't stop us from being supportive, providing encouragement and direction to help guide them through their difficulties.  We provide a warm, nurturing home, safe from outside influences and if anyone threatening comes near, we aren't afraid to peck the intruders eyes out!  :)

It's a tool, not a toy

Funny thing about technology...we gripe about how our kids use it too much, yet we are becoming more and more dependent on it ourselves.  Where would we be without computers (specifically the internet), GPS, cell phones, our smart devices, tablets, cable TV, iPods and all the other marvelous gadgets that Microsoft and Apple come up with?  It really wasn't that long ago when those things weren't available yet today we can't live without them.

So is it any wonder that our kids are so drawn to using the same things we do?  How can we tell them not to spend time on the computer when every day they see us with our laptops on our laps, plugged into our iPods and watching the latest episode of our favorite sitcom on Netflix?  (now THAT is multi-tasking!)

Here's a suggestion.  Teach your children that all these devices have a useful purpose.  One of my husband's favorite sayings was, "It's a tool, not a toy."  We didn't mind our children using technology for their education (in fact, we encouraged it!) but we tried to limit the mindless surfing on the internet and game playing...not always successful but we tried  :)

Maybe we should remind ourselves the same thing...it's a tool, not a toy!

Kids + dirt + water =

I think someone should invent disposable clothes for kids...maybe like a jumpsuit or a hazmat suit. :)   Just think of it, your kids could go out and play and you could strip off the disposable suit when they were ready to come back into the house and they'd still be clean!

Chuck and Lilly were outside "helping" in the garden this afternoon.  They dug in the dirt and got pretty dirty.  Then they turned on the faucet and started playing around with the hose, adding water to the dirt on their dusty, dirty little bodies.  Then they went back to digging, adding another layer of dirt on top of the now muddy layer.  Finally they topped it off with a wrestling match in the grass.

Just as I was thinking that at least one of them didn't have to go to the bathroom, Lilly announced "I have to pee!"  Oh, how I wanted that hazmat suit!

Will someone PLEASE invent it?!  You'd make millions!

Averting a restaurant meltdown

Five hungry children under the age of six at a restaurant is a potentially volatile situation.  Add to that a twenty minute wait for food and the natives were definitely restless!

Time to distract!  The waitress left a pile of straws at the table so the kids and I spent several minutes bending the straws into numbers, shapes and alphabet letters and guessing what they were.  They were really good at recognizing their letters and numbers!  They even learned what a trapezoid and rhombus were  :)

Children can be easily distracted...which is a good thing!