belly laughs

My kids make me laugh all the time. Like deep laughter. Here are two moments recently. I was washing dishes the other day and I heard a sucking noise. I looked over and this is what I saw:


He was sucking on her fingers and actually holding on to them most of the time. And she thought it was hilarious. Then Noah got stuck under the table. It was fun trying to get him out of there.

This is happening

I grew flowers! I notoriously kill plants of all kinds. Even the ones that the guy at home depot called "hearty" and "impossible to kill". Oh, he hadn't met me yet. But sitting on my kitchen table right now is a vase full of paperwhites that I grew! I read about growing them indoors during winter on the raising homemakers blog. I bought some from a lady on etsy and she sent me 5 bulbs along with instructions on how to force them to grow. It was super easy, even for me. I did find a little tip about using a solution of 5% alcohol to keep them from growing too long and falling over. I think I started using that too late though because one of the stems did fall over. But I'm still pumped that they are blooming and beautiful.


If you are ready for spring you should try it!

Getting nice out!

It's getting warmer! We busted out the sunglasses the other day.

getting dressed

I have a book called Slow and Steady Get Me Ready! It has one activity each week for the first five years of life. The claim is that if you do these activities and also work on letters, phonics, and numbers, it is a solid preschool program and your child will be ready for kindergarten at age 5. We'll see!

The first activity we did is pictured below. I had Mary lay down and I traced her body outline onto a large piece of paper (the packing material from a recent amazon purchase). Then we embellished the face and I had her "put clothes" on the drawing Mary. She really liked it. I found myself getting frustrated with her a couple times and had to monitor my response. I want her to see these things as fun (which she did), but not be stressed out by my own impatience. She kept asking me to help her with the clothes but she hadn't really even tried. So I'd tell her to try again but I did have to help her some. I don't want her to get frustrated with the first activity. Overall I think it was good. She actually asked to do it again later in the day and went to get some clothes:)

Little mama

This may be too weird for you blog readers, but we think it is HILARIOUS!

On the move

Noah started crawling about a week ago. He went from rocking back and forth constantly to just crawling one day. It's like he decided to take the plunge.



He's gotten a little better since this video but I wouldn't say he's a pro yet:)

3 seams

At church we are collecting cereal boxes for the apParent project. You should check out their site! But basically a large portion of Haiti's orphans are not actually parent-less. They are children whose parents cannot afford to feed them and take care of them so they take them to the orphanage. This project helps women make money for their families so that they can keep their children. They make these awesome beads out of cereal boxes! Check them out.
Well a friend from church told me about this other organization called 3 seams that does something similar but with clothing for girls. You buy one dress and they send an identical one to a child who needs it. I bought the one in the picture for Mary last night. Part of me cringed as I hit the button to pay $50 for ONE dress. But then I thought about it and really I was buying two dresses. And I thought about it more and realized that it didn't matter how much we are going to get out of that money. That money is going to support people who really need it. Anyway, if you have a little girl or know someone you need a gift for...go buy something cute! They have skirts too that are much cheaper:)

ps - the jewelry from the apParent project is really cool too! I saw some at church and it is cute!