I’ve been struggling with what activities to do with Claire that stimulate her little mind . She really thrives on structure and being that she’s been in child care/preschool her entire life, this being home with mom routine just isn’t working for her. So we’ve started to do a specialized “learning activity” every day during Madeline’s nap. A homeschooler friend recommended the book Teach Your Children To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The name of the book is pretty cheesy but the content is great. We’ve been doing lessons this week and Claire is taking really well to it. It’s a phonics based approach, which is a challenge for me to teach since I was never very good at phonics. Anyway, 5 lessons down and she knows the sounds for M, A, S and can recognize them in words and can associate them together….like…am, as, ma. Pretty cool.

This was our art activity for the morning. And now we have a lovely gallery in our sunroom of her very prolific art work.

On the Madeline front…it turns out her saying “A Potty” all the time really is a request to go to the potty. Last night she said it about 80 times, I checked her diaper and it was dry, and I put her on the potty….and she went! Claire and I did a happy dance for her in the bathroom. She went a little again this morning before her bath. Pretty cool. I wonder if this is the beginning of potty learning for her….

No matter where we are, everyone comments on how big Madeline is.  Most people think that she’s at least 2 and are usually shocked when I tell them that she’s just 18 months old.

At her 15 month appointment she was 32 inches tall.  Today at her 18 month, she was measured at a whopping 35 inches tall and 27 pounds. That makes her off the charts in height and in the 90th percentile for weight.  If she continues at this growth rate, and the whole “take your height at 2 years old multiply it by two and it’s your adult height” thing is true, she will be WAY over 6 feet tall.

Jonathan and I are both on the tall side — I’m 5′7 and he’s 6′2, and we both have height in our families (I have two female cousins that are over 6 feet tall and Jonathan is the shortest of his male cousins).  Maybe we should start investing in private basketball coaching lessons now.

I just need to put a few things down on virtual paper so I can sleep tonight….

• The time is 11:39pm and I’ve been asleep on the couch for the last hour
• The Elkhart farmers market was kind of a let down, but they did have those really huge jelly beans from the Wakarusa Candy Shop.  Yum.
• I have 8 tomato plants in my garage that will probably die if I don’t plant them tomorrow
• No, I’m not really going to plant all 8.  We don’t need 40 bushels of tomatoes
• It’s Memorial Day weekend and it *might* get to 70 degrees tomorrow
• Hey if it’s Memorial Day weekend, do I get Monday off?  Oh right.  No.
• I’m more exhausted being a stay at home mom than I ever was working full time, yet oddly not nearly as stressed.
• I haven’t blown my hair dry in 7 days.  The Victoria Beckham cut doesn’t look so cute when it’s not blown dry, just for the record.
• Tomorrow is the “Old to Gold” sale at Notre Dame where the university sells all the stuff discarded by kids who moved out of the dorms and give the proceeds to charity.  When we were there we just scavenged what we wanted out of the bins and I think the rest got thrown out.  They hope to make $50k for charity this year.  I wonder if we’ll be up in time to go buy a dorm fridge for our basement or a bike for Jonathan
• Crap, that means next weekend is the Sunburst.  I really hope I can finish the 5k in under 35 minutes.
• I haven’t been to WW in 3 weeks
• Oh so that’s where Madeline put the night light from upstairs (it’s in the corner of the kitchen under the high chair)
• I’m still challenged for activities to keep Claire busy during the day.  My creativity is pretty lacking.  She can only wash toys so much without getting bored.
• I wonder where they get those tracers that they use at ECDC.  Claire would like more of those at home.

Ok I think that’s enough.  Pardon my truly random moment….

…..everytime I get the children clean, they do something to get themselves dirty almost immediately?

I gave the girls a bath this morning.  Then we had breakfast…scrambled eggs…one of their favorites. (Yes I remembered to put butter in the pan Keith).  I go to pop some more toast in the toaster and I hear “HAT. HAT”  which only means one thing…Madeline is wearing *something* as a hat.  I turned around and the entire plate of scrambie eggs is on top of her still wet and very clean hair.  Ugh.

I think I combed out most of it.  The doctor will just have to deal with a kid with eggs in her hair at her doctor’s appointment.  I guess she gets another bath after naptime.

Claire has started this OBNOXIOUS habit of eye rolling.  She does it all the freaking time, but most especially when she’s tired.  It drives me up the freaking wall.

Any idea how to get her to stop?

I’m really not sure which one of them is the teacher, but I think this a good first lesson.

Claire would like to write her name:  CLAIRE

for Emily C….

• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pkg (6oz) Stuffing Mix for Chicken
• 1/2 cup Water
• 1 1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into pices
• 1 t basil
• 1 t oregano
• 1 Cup Mozzarella Cheese

Place tomatoes with liquid in medium bowl. Add garlic and stuffing mix and 1/2 C
water. Stir until stuffing is moistened.

Place chicken in 13×9 dish, sprinkle with herbs and cheese. Top with Stuffing mixture.

Bake at 400 degrees (uncovered) for 30 minutes.

Makes 6 servings

This is super quick and easy and you can totally make this ahead, refrigerate it and pop it in the oven when you get home at the end of the day.

……that I get to do with the girls now that I’m home. The mall. I think I’ve been to the mall more times in the last 3 weeks than I’ve been the rest of the year. It’s just a nice, quiet place to take the girls in the morning when I don’t feel like cleaning up the playroom with them or getting out the playdough.

Claire really needed a haircut, so we stopped by Great Clips and hit the grocery store this morning for a few things for dinner. Then I thought, well…its deceptively cold outside, and the girls really want to play, so we took a trip to the play area at the mall. They have so much fun there and it’s nice and clean and never very crowded on a weekday morning. Good times!

Oh and just in case you’re wondering, tonight we’re having Bruschetta Chicken Bake - a recipe that my friend Michelle Huber brought over to us when Claire was born and we’ve made it often! It’s so easy I haven’t been able to screw it up yet.

1.  The name of  our adopted cat who really only comes over for food and to poop in my flower bed (yeah, try to explain to a 3 year old why cats bury their poop)  is not Spots, it’s TomTom.  I told Claire that and she told me “no Mommy, her names is Spots”.

2.  Apparently the playhouse is “not a sharing house today” because Madeline can’t climb in through the window and “mommy, you’re too talk to play in her because because its only only for kids like me, but not Maddy”.

3.  Madeline REALLY likes dark chocolate.  She had a minor meltdown when we went to pick up my last check at my old office and she had to leave without a third handful of Mark’s M&M’s.

I made this for myself for lunch and it was sooooooo yummy.

Ingrediants:

2 whole wheat tortillas (small)

Steamed Baby Carrots, halved

Leftover Hummus

Black Beans

Coat tortillas in hummus.  Sprinkle on black beans (try not to feed too many to baby).  Top with baby carrots.  Nuke for 20 seconds.  Basque in the delicious thing you created before you gobbled it down.

Nutrition:

Well…on the WW side….Tortillas are 1 point each, hummus is 2 points for the 2 tbsp I used (since it was my homemade recipe I could control the oil/tahini in it), carrots = free.  Black beans, less than 1 point total since I used about 10 on each thing.

4 points for the whole thing and soo filling.  Way better than a quesadilla.

Today was a lovely day in Indianaworld. Temps in the 70’s…sunny, kinda windy. Beautiful. We opened all the windows and have been enjoying the day.

I got home from the grocery store this evening and was putting the groceries away with Jonathan and our friend Robbie (er Joseph). I hear this startling meow and purring. I turned around and here is what I see.

That my friend is “Spots”. Turns out that Spots got picked up by the pound last week because she didn’t have a collar. Our neighbors, Kevin & Melanie, who had been feeding Spots went to the pound to go look for her. They gave her all her shots and sent her home with them, freshly adopted.

“Spots” first action after coming home was to first hang out in my garage yesterday afternoon. (I only discovered this when I was leaving with Madeline to pick up Claire and she went dashing out of the garage after knocking down three bottles of weed killer). Today she’s at our window. I knew this would happen if Jonathan fed her. (which he did again tonight.)

The good news is, Spots has a nice home across the street with a loving family and 4 kids who play with her all the time. Claire can go over and visit anytime.

Spots is still at the window, about an hour later, meowing away. We’re soooo doomed.

Hmm, that begs the question…I wonder what Kevin & Melanie actually named the cat.

So it’s been a week and a half of me being at home.  Here are the stats so far:

Madeline = happy child.  She’s sleeping better, laughing more, talking constantly and most importantly NOT screaming or hitting out of frustration.  I actually took her to lunch yesterday with 3 people she doesn’t know and she was a DOLL.

Claire still doesn’t get it that she’s not going back to Kidz Club.  She asks about it every day.   Today though, she was such a good helper, helping me clean out the screened in porch after we planted some seeds.  She’s happily playing out there now.

I am less stressed than I’ve been in a long long time.  :)  I love being home.  We have a good plan in the works to make it a permanent thing.

Mads is up from her morning nap — guess it’s lunchtime!

I don’t know what is going on with our RSS feed, but in some research it looks like a wordpress bug.  Blast!  So for all of you who read this blog using Google Reader or something like that….we’ll be back up soon.  For the rest of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you can disregard this post entirely.

Well, my first week home with the girls has been a lot of fun so far. Madeline has been so happy and cute the last couple days. Yesterday she spent most of the day asking “Where Puppy” and “where Daddy” and giving lots of hugs and kisses. She was a trooper when we went to the mall to get her new shoes too!

Tuesday was the Indiana Primary and I had both girls home. I told Claire our schedule for the afternoon, that after naps were were going to go vote and then go to Target to get Eggs and to the Dollar Store for sand toys and art supplies. She was oddly excited. I couldn’t figure out why. In the car she was asking about going “boating” and I thought it was just her 3 year old way of saying “voting”. So I tried to explain who the president and governor were and why we were going to go vote for them. She looked at me puzzled and said, well….is the president the lifeguard? The Lifeguard I asked? Why would there be a lifeguard? She said…you know to keep us safe in the water when we’re boating. I tried to explain that we were going VOTING, not BOATING and she still didn’t get it. Needless to say she was disappointed when we walked into the fire station and there were no boats. She also asked me as we were walking in if I was wearing my swimsuit so i could take my clothes off to go boat. I think the lady who was the judge of the election was very concerned about my parenting skills.

Now it’s Madeline’s nap time and Claire is doing a “Collage” project. Basically I gave her some scissors (it’s very hard for a lefty to cut I’m learning) and some glue and construction paper and a couple old magazines. I’m having her cut out pieces of pictures that she likes to make some “art”. About a week ago I got a letter from preschool that Claire was out of glue…….again. This is the 3rd time this year she was out of glue. I really wondered how much they glued things for her to be out of glue so much.

Today I discovered that my daughter is a glue waster. I left the kitchen just now to pick up some toys in the family room and she had a puddle of glue, conveniently in the shape of a smiley face, on her construction paper. I think she might have used about half the bottle. LOL. The finished product is adorable She says this is “Daddy”.

Three pictures later….more than 3/4 of the bottle is gone. I think next time we’re buying Glue Sticks.