Autumn Leaves

The weather has been wavering between mid autumn and high summer for a couple of months now. Last week, however, the Autumnal Equinox made the seasonal change official, and it was imperative to take notice. It was time for our annual tradition of making leaf crowns!

There aren't many trees around our apartments, and what few there were have already lost their leaves completely, or hadn't even started to turn. The need for leaves was the perfect excuse for a long excursion about the neighborhood. Leaves were collected, nature inspected, and a passing dragon was kind enough to offer us a lift.

Once we returned from our roving and rambling, we sorted out the leaves and did our best to preserve some of them. Leaves we'd collected at the start of the day were already starting to dry out, so we got right to work. While there are more effective ways of preserving leaves, they take more time than we wanted, so this year we kept it simple and waxed our leaves by ironing them between sheets of waxed paper.

The next day Vance and I peeled the leaves off of the paper and glued them onto simple paper circlets to make our crowns.

Edward didn't want to take the time to make one himself, but he was happy to wear the one we made for him.

The remaining leaves were either strewn about in a festive fashion or added to our nature table.

How do you celebrate the changing seasons?

Kites

What better way to spend a blustery autumn day than flying a kite?

As it happens, we already own a couple of good, large kites, but they're the kind of kites that need a large, wide open place to fly, not the kind with which we can step outside to enjoy on a moment's notice. To remedy this situation, we made some little kites, using this pattern.

Edward preferred observing the kite making process to actually participating, but wanted to be front and center to all the action.

Later, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor. It took a few giddy tries,

but Vance managed to keep his kite in the air more often than not.

Edward preferred the "taking my kite for a walk" method of kite flying.

For the most part, the weather this week wasn't actually that great for kite flying. The days were either too rainy, or not windy enough. Still, I expect that there will be plenty of days for flying kites before the winter arrives.

September Playdough of the Month: Peachy Playdough

We had a wonderful first week of home school, and it ended with a bang. Well, maybe with more of a squish. We made playdough!

Each month we'll be creating and exploring a new kind of playdough. For September, we made Peachy Playdough!

It was fairly basic, as playdough goes. We just used the basic recipe that has been around for time immortal:

1/2 cup of salt
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
1 cup of flour
1 tablespoon of oil
Food coloring

Mix everything together in a pan. Stir well. Cook over medium heat 4 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly. When mixture clumps together, remove from pan and finish kneading with hands (this part is hot! don't get burned!). Presto change-o you have created amazing playdough that will last for ages if kept in an airtight bag.

We made a slight change to the recipe, though. We nixed the food coloring altogether, and prepped out water ahead of time to make it peachy. This was accomplished by steeping bags of Celestial Seasonings Country Peach Passion herbal tea in our boiling water.

Once the teabags were cleared, things proceeded as normal. Our playdough had a faint peach color, and smelled perfectly peachy. Once it had cooled enough that the boys were comfortable touching it, the real fun began!

Vance made a peach!

Poke. Poke. Poke.

Edward tends to take a few minutes to warm up to playdough, but once he does, he enjoys it every bit as much as his brother.

I think they would have played with it for hours if we'd had the time, but all good things must come to an end. Not to worry, though. Since this playdough keeps so well, we'll be playing with it all month long!

School's in Session!

A beautifully breezy morning - not too chilly, not too hot - provided the perfect backdrop for the grand opening of Zephyr Academy. As much as I'd like to deny it, Vance is growing up. Not a month ago, we celebrated his fifth birthday. Since Vance is now old enough to begin Junior Kindergarten, our home school has officially welcomed it's first class of one.

Along with younger brother Edward, who will be auditing this class at his leisure.

Though we're drawing inspiration and ideas from many sources, the core of the curriculum we're using for the Kindergarten years comes from Waldorf Essentials. The school year is based around an ongoing story about a kind and clever little gnome named Super Sam, and a little corner of our home has been transformed into "Super Sam's world."

Vance already adores Super Sam, and thoroughly delighted in immersing himself in the fanciful kingdom.

After a perfectly peachy morning, we had planned a long walk to a favorite park, where we planned to play and to look for fallen leaves. I suppose things had been going too perfectly, because it was time for the best laid plans of mice and moms to be laid to waste. Right outside of our front door, on this auspicious first day of school, some rather industrious gentlemen were hard at work fixing up our parking lot. How could we not watch something so exciting?

Luckily, one of the benefits of homeschooling is its inherent flexibility, so we spent nearly an hour being fascinated by liquid asphalt splashing onto the parking lot, being spread around and smoothed down like shiny black paint, and slowly changing color as it dried in the sun. Yes, we got our jollies "watching paint dry." I'm okay with that. We even made it to a park after all, if not the one we had initially planned.

Belated Birthday - Vance Turns Four

I told myself I would blog the boys' birthdays this year, and we're only about a month late for Vance. Better late than never, right? I wonder how long it will take me to get around to Edward....

Anyway, here we go.

Early questioning of Vance revealed that he didn't have his heart set on a particular type of cake this year. Would this be the year I wouldn't try to overachieve, and have a simple frosted rectangle? Nah, that would be too easy. He was unimpressed with any of the pictures I showed him, but he kept telling me to "think about his birthday cake." Then he caught me browsing for ideas on Pinterest, and immediately latched on to one of the cakes as HIS cake. No other cake would do.

Well, I tried. Fortunately, his standards were not all that exacting, so he was overjoyed with my best efforts. Unfortunately, it seems I didn't get a good photo of the cake. I would have sworn I did, but I can't find one anywhere, so we'll have to make do with this one of Vance with his candles. Close enough.

The day started off with a trip to the zoo with his best friend (who was about to move away, so Vance greatly enjoyed the chance for the outing before saying goodbye), followed by a picnic at the park, and the gift of a tent (which he loved)!

After nap, Daddy was home, and it was time for the birthday ring. The birthday ring is a German tradition we started incorporating into our family's celebrations last year. A new candle is added each year, and one by one, they are lit while telling the story of the birthday child's birth and life so far, and we've really enjoyed it. And then, of course, presents. Here we have the birthday table in all of its glory.

What is it with me and missing photos? It's a good thing this is a family blog, and not a professional one, or I'd have to fire myself. I got a couple of pictures of Vance opening gifts,

but somehow I missed getting one of him with all of his presents at the end, and especially missed getting a picture of his "big" gift - the fishing pole and felted fish. You can see a bit of it in those photos, so I guess that's okay.

This gift was a true labor of love, with me trying to figure out how to make the fish look right and work right, and Wazi and I trying to make the fishing pole work. Making a working reel sounds like a great idea until you're actually trying to do it, but it all worked out in the end, and he had a lot of fun with it.

The handy part about making this gift was that we were able to do a lot of work on it in front of Vance. We made a second set for his friend as a farewell present (including a little patchwork fish that Vance designed and did much of the work on himself - again, no picture. *Sigh.*), so as far as Vance knew, it was just the present we were making for his friend. When he opened it, he was both surprised and excited to see that he had one too!

Okay, this picture thing is really bugging me. The pole is in the room where Vance is napping, so I can't grab it, but I snapped a picture of some of the fish that were out here. That will have to do.

Later that night, Grandma and our friend Dee came for dinner. Grandma always finds the cutest wrapping paper!

Yay! Paper!

The following day, we got to go to the other grandparents' house to break open the piñata. It made a lovely hat. He also received cars and a beautiful apron (which he loves to wear when helping bake and cook).

All in all, a successful birthday. Phew!

Fun With Needles!

Yeah, so it's been another six months. I'll get the hang of this "regular blogging" thing one of these days. Meanwhile, we had birthdays, holidays, and other days about which I meant to do epic blog posts. Ah well. Maybe this year.

My favorite Christmas gift this year was a needle felting starter kit. I haven't had a ton of free time to work with it, but I have managed to create of a couple of nifty creatures, both of which ended up on our seasonal/nature table.

First was this little snowman. He's enjoyed living on our winter table.

Unfortunately for him, I'm rather tired of the winter, so I invited the lovely Mrs. Thaw to come sweep away the snow and make way for Spring.

Assuming she does her job, spring should be here in no time!

Playing Catch Up

This poor blog has been greatly neglected these past few months. Not because I've had nothing to write about - indeed, life has been very full. Rather, it's due to poor time management skills. With so much going on, I kept meaning to write about it, but there was always something else that needed doing when I though of it, whether it be hungry and/or tired children needing food and/or soothing, to a beautiful day that just cried out for reading, to plain old down time for myself in those rare moments of quiet. Now that things are settling into a better rhythm, however, I want to make more of an effort to blog regularly. So this is the great catch up post.

Part 1 - Learning to Eat, Learning to Sleep.

The first big thing that distracted me from blogging was Edward's feeding habits. When I last blogged, he was still getting most of his calories from the NG tube, having started to fight the bottle again right after we got him home from the NICU. He refused to even consider nursing. Attempts to feed him didn't go well, because whenever I tried, his older brother was right there, trying to climb over him into my lap and demand his fair share of attention. I can hardly blame him, but trying to get Edward to eat at that point required all of my focus. After a few minutes of Edward and I getting more and more frustrated, and Vance getting more and more demanding, I would just give up and use the NG tube. Something had to give.

I am very, very blessed to have such a wonderful, supportive family. We were able to make arangments with my dear Mom and Dad-in law for Vance to stay with them for a few days so we could focus on Edward eating. It was slow going, with the first couple of days being extremely frustrating, but by the third day, he was starting to show a lot more interest in the process, and eagerly participating in his feedings again. By the fifth day, we were comfortable enough that Vance was able to come home, because Edward no longer required such intense concentration to feed. Around this time, Edward also started to breathe a bit more easily, and we were able to finally wean him all the way off of his oxygen. We went ahead and removed the NG tube, as Edward was able to get all of the calories he needed with his bottle.

It was rough at first, because feeding him still took most of the day. He was on a slow flow nipple to prevent aspiration, since he was still working so hard to breathe. Two weeks after we pulled the NG tube, we were able to get him in for a barium swallow test, where they found out that not only did he not aspirate with a regular flow nipple, but he could eat much more easily.

I no longer had to spend all of my time feeding him, but we were still exhausted. When Edward came home, being in a dark, quiet room combined with the magic of not-having-to-wake-up-to-eat-in-the-night-because-of-the-NG-tube and resulted in him sleeping through the night immediately. It was awesome. Sure, we'd gone through a lot of hard times with this kid, but at least he was sleeping through the night! Unfortunately, once he actually had to put a little effort into eating, he tarted acting like a typical baby and waking up all night. Ah well. He eventually learned to sleep well at night again.

A skilled Edward can eat from a bottle and check out his Easter basket at the same time!

Part 2 - Moving Up and Out

The beginning of 2013 marked three years in the same apartment. It wasn't the greatest apartment. It was affordable. It was in a wonderful ward. It's immediate neighborhood was less than stellar, what with virtually everyone else in the building and surrounding homes being regular smokers. It was almost impossible to go outside without passing through a cloud of smoke. It was also old, falling apart, and infested with sugar ants who refused to die (at least, they never stayed dead for more than a day or two), despite trying every method we could find for getting rid of them. All of this had been hard enough with Vance. We had wanted to move much earlier, but were never able to find a better place to move into that still fit in our price range. Now that Edward was here, however, and having trouble breathing, it became more important than ever to get away from the smoke. In the winter, he almost never left the house. Once the weather warmed up, and the end of the school year approached, we took a leap of faith, turned in our 30 day notice, and began to look for a new place to live.

It was discouraging at first. Every time we found a place we thought would work, we'd find evidence that people who smoked lived right on top of it. And it didn't make any sense to move from one smoky situation to another. We had made arrangements to move in with my mom temporarily if we couldn't find a new home before we had to be out of our current one, but that would involve a long work commute for Wazi, not to mention the stress of having to move everything twice, so we hoped to avoid that if possible.

Finally we found what we were looking for. It was a bit more than we had hoped to pay, so money has been much tighter than we're used to, but we love our new home. It is open and bright. It has central air conditioning, which has been a true blessing this summer. It has a dishwasher, which I think is one of the best inventions of all time. It's in a whole neighborhood of similar apartments, with lots of grassy lawn, a playground, and other kids for Vance to play with. He has been in heaven since we moved here, running around with all of the "friends" outside. And while there are people who smoke, they are relatively few in number, and smoking is limited to specific areas. I can open my windows and let fresh air in, and it is wonderful.

Vance giving Edward a hug, and making him giggle.

Not much else to say. I spent most of July sick with the Virus That Would Not Go Away, but other than that, it has been a pleasant summer. We've been very blessed these past few months, and I can't wait to see what the next few have in store.

Handsome boy!