Aa Week ~ Cecilia Begins Kindergarten!

 

Cecilia began Kindergarten with A week a few weeks ago, before we went on vacation to the beach!  Here are the highlights of her start to the school year!

 

Traditional "first day of school" photo by the front door... don't ask me why it is always by the front door; I have no idea.  But Cecilia was happy to be included in the "first day" photos this year!

 

She made letter Aa using play dough...

 

...and tracing in cornmeal.

 

She heard the story and song of the Apple Blossom Fairy.  She has been so, so excited about getting to color the flower fairies this year - like, more excited than I would think one could be over coloring.  She really loves to color, and to draw.

She made apple prints using paint and an apple that was cut in half.

 

We also made an apple pie - here she is using scraps of pie crust dough to make "cookies" with an angel cookie cutter.

It is a tiny apple pie... I am trying to lose my extra baby weight still from this adorable little feather of a toddler:

 

Cecilia shows the finished pie... the top crust was made by cutting out the dough using an A shaped cookie cutter.

 

She made a collage of pictures beginning with A cut out from magazines.

 

She learned a bit about St. Anne and began learning letter formation by tracing poetry.

 

Her St. Anne illustration

 

More tracing - her angel poem

 

 

These biscuits made with angel-shaped cookie cutters are from a recipe that is actually called Angel Biscuits!  They have yeast in the dough, but they don't have to rise - but it makes them lighter and fluffier, like angels, I guess?  

 

 

A few other things Cecilia did this week... Assumption of Mary coloring (the solemnity of the Assumption was just this week, too!) and an apple tree craft/math activity using Do-a-Dots.

 

Cecilia also made an All About Me lapbook.

 

And finally, she colored her first virtue coloring sheet.  We will hang them around the room as a border and then compile them into a booklet at the end of the year.  Caroline is having fun remembering when she did these things... and complementing Cecilia about how she colors so well compared to when she was a Kindergartener, which is very sweet of her to say.

I doubt I will be able to keep up with posting each letter for Cecilia's Kindergarten year... but we are going to try to have as much fun with it as we can, and once I drop these last pesky 20ish pounds, maybe we can do more letter of the week cooking projects!

Bathtub Cleanup...

Wanna know what's even more fun than cleaning wet oats out of the tub after giving your toddler an oatmeal bath to soothe a rash??





Cleaning oats AND poop out of the bathtub.  Oh yeah.

On the bright side, the oats do make for smooth, comfy skin, especially when you add a little coconut oil to the water as well.

And that's all I have to say about that.

"Baby's First Words" Books

You have probably seen those big board books for babies and toddlers... the ones that say "Baby's First 100 Words" or "Baby's First 1,000 Words" or "My First 1,000 Words in French," and so forth.  We have some such book, and it has the words under bright photos of things that are supposedly early words spoken by children.  They typically are full of things like farm animals and pets, basic household furniture, some fruits and vegetables, basic vehicles like cars, trains, and airplanes, articles of clothing, and sometimes basic actions like skip, smile, jump...

BORING!

(y'all should detect my sarcasm in this post... I am not calling babies who enjoy these books, including my own, boring, nor am I suggesting the things pictured in these books are unimportant words to know... just a disclaimer, you know...)

I'd like to suggest that someone invent the "Eclectic Baby's First 1,000 Words" book.  You know, for those babies whose vocabularies develop in atypical ways.  For instance...

Instead of "pizza," how about...

t-bone?

Instead of "car," how about...

Volvo?

Instead of "dance," how about...

arabesque?

Others to consider...

bucket truck?
(instead of the standard old "dump truck" and "airplane" - maybe there could even be distinctions between "tree service bucket truck with 60 foot boom" and "utility service bucket truck," for the baby who must adhere to precise details)

tabernacle?  genuflect?  priest?
(these would appear in the "Catholic Baby's First 1,000 Words" version)

weed wacker?  lawnmower?  chainsaw?
(much more advanced than a simple "hammer")

Chick-fil-A?
(rather than generic "restaurant," although it could be seen as marketing to children within the book)

iPad?
(important to include if daddy has one for work so toddlers will learn to stop calling it "Daddy's pad")

La Leche League meeting?
(this could go in the "Breastfed Baby's First 1,000 Words" version in place of the "bottle" picture)

Pope(s)?
(Lucy can id Benedict by name easily; still working on Francis)

hummus and pita?  beets?  figs?  shrimp?
(for the baby with a mature palate)

Lucy's word book would be interesting, huh?  Of course, other young toddlers have given me other ideas of additions to the Eclectic Baby's First Words book...

Caroline contributed the words "lemur" and "apparently" as a young two year old.  But I don't know how to show a picture of "apparently," so that one won't make the final edit unless somebody can figure it out for me.

My brother Tim contributed "barracuda" as a one year old.  This is a really fun word for a toddler to say, trust me.  Or try it out by asking a one or two year old to say it.

I do think I would also add an image of a duck upside-down in the water, looking for food, with the label "duck bottom."  Why?  Because Lucy recently pointed to a drawing in a book of a duck's rear end sticking out of the water and said, "Lemon."  Gotta clear up these little misconceptions.

 What are some atypical first words that you would add to a Baby's First Words book, based on toddlers you've known?

Musically, I Never Left the 1990s

I was getting my hair cut at a place in our mall this weekend when a song began playing over the speakers that I hadn't heard in awhile.  "This was the very first album I ever bought, on cassette tape!" I thought to myself.  As the song was "Forever Your Girl" by Paula Abdul and the album was released in 1988, I didn't mention this aloud to the lady cutting my hair, who I am sure was maybe 2 months old at that time, if she had even been born at all yet, ha.  I probably bought the album in 1989, when I was nine years old... almost 25 years ago.  (This was *before* Paula Abdul was on American Idol, for those of you who are in your 20s still!)

Although 80s music is fun, and I have a long list of 80s soft rock songs that bring back memories of long vacations in the family station wagon, I don't own 80s albums and stick them in my car's CD player the way I still do with some 90s music.  Those songs are more for listening to on Youtube for fun or enjoying them on the radio when I happen to hear them (or for long drives to Florida!).  My cassettes of Paula Abdul, New Kids on the Block, Bon Jovi, and Guns 'n' Roses are long gone.  In fact, while classifying the 80s soft rock songs as "sentimental," I would only refer to these four examples of late 80s music as "lame" (well, Bon Jovi isn't *totally* lame - I'd actually still go see them in concert if I had the chance!;). 

But for some reason, 90s music is still cool.  A lot of it is still enjoyable, and I will still listen to it whenever I can manage to pry the Tonic CDs or Little House on the Prairie audiobooks from my CD player (and hey, one those Tonic albums is actually a 90s album, anyway!).

Okay, so some of the 90s stuff I used to listen to is just awful to me now.  Like Pearl Jam - ick.  And Nirvana - grating.  (Here's where I get to admit that I cried when Kurt Cobain killed himself, and then went on to write a research paper on the subject the following year in high school.  Go ahead and make fun of me. ;)  And then there is the 90s music I never liked back then either, even though everyone else did, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Smashing Pumpkins (although somehow some Smashing Pumpkins songs are less irritating to me at this point).

 So here's my little list of albums I bought when I was a teenager that I still like and at least occasionally listen to 15-20ish years later...

1. Stone Temple Pilots - The Purple Album (1994)

2. The Toadies - Rubberneck (also 1994)

No, I don't listen to this with my kids in the car.  I don't listen to any of these with my kids in the car, actually.  These are for kid-free speaker blasting drives by myself.

I had a Toadies bumper sticker on my car - seriously.  How many people do you even know who had a Toadies bumper sticker?  That's right - one.  How many people have even heard of the Toadies who will be reading this?  I have no idea!  I bought this album because I heard one of the songs from it on MTV and then heard the whole album played at Fellini's Pizza while eating there with some friends, and apparently I thought, "Whoa, I need to buy this album."  Back in the 90s, we actually had to buy whole entire albums just because we liked a song or two on them.  But this time, I had actually gotten to preview the whole album and made an educated decision. ;)

3. Spacehog - Resident Alien (1995) and The Chinese Album (1998)

I actually got to see Spacehog in concert in Atlanta at the Cotton Club soon after this second album was released.  If anyone wants part of a bootleg recording made from inside a shirt pocket on a handheld tape recorder on one of those tiny answering machine cassettes, let me just go dig that out of a closet for you...


4. For Squirrels - Example (1995)

5. Deconstruction (1994 - apparently that was a good year)

6. The Cure - Wish (1992)

I also had a couple live Cure albums and a remix album called "Mixed Up."  Such beautiful sadness.  I liked sad music, generally.  Isn't that all they made in the mid-90's anyway? ;)


And, of course... Tonic - Lemon Parade (1996).  Except I didn't own that one as a teenager - I bought it when I was 30.  Somehow I missed it back then even though I knew it existed.  Whoops.

Oddly enough, if I think back, I would have to say my most favorite musician in my teen years was Beck.  I had the albums Mellow Gold, Odelay, and One Foot in the Grave (which was my favorite one even though it was released on a smaller label and was virtually unknown... I tended to like those kinds of albums best, it seems, as evidenced by #4 and 5 above).  Yet, I don't have any Beck albums any more other than One Foot in the Grave, rarely listened to any more.  I don't know why, but they just didn't stand the test of time for some reason.

So, there's my randomness in musical taste.  I don't really like much new music - maybe because I don't get a chance to ever listen to any, ha.  Or maybe because it all stinks because it has that auto tune junk in it... either way, I just stick with a few known favorites when I get in the occasional mood for something non-Tonic and non-children's music/audiobook/etc.  Truly, the CD that I have heard most lately would be The Sound of Music soundtrack, at my children's request.  Even the 1 year old can sing some of the songs.

So, what was the first album you ever purchased?  What kind of music did you like growing up, and do you still like any of it?  Do you ever break out any of the old albums from 20 years ago?  Or am I the only one?  Feel free to share in the comments!

Catching Up... Celebrating the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus falls on June 7th each year.  The Immaculate Heart of Mary is celebrated the next day, on the 8th.  We celebrated by making these heart cupcakes and then decorated them like the Sacred and Immaculate Heart images. 

 The cupcakes were a King Arthur whole grains cookbook recipe... butter cake, I think?  We just frosted them with cream that I whipped up and then added strawberries for the flower and flame parts of the images...

 ...and mini chocolate chips as the crown of thorns.

I made these in a baking pan I found on clearance at the craft store... they have six heart-shaped compartments in them and are a bit larger than a standard cupcake.

 After dessert, we prayed the Litany to the Sacred Heart together.

Oh, and it was a Friday - on which we typically are meatless - but for a FEAST day, we get to feast!  So, t-bones it was!! 

Lucy loves to gnaw the bones after eating her fill of the beef...

We are loving this grass-fed beef that is filling our freezer - the t-bones especially are incredible.  Chris has learned to grill them just perfectly.  Lucy approves, as you can see!

Catching Up - Independence Day!

Here are some photos from our rainy July 4th!  Chris took the older girls to Alabama to buy fireworks... since we live only 15 minutes from the state line, and they sell much better fireworks there, ha!

Chris grilled burgers and hot dogs, too, in between the rain.  It all managed to work out!