More projects

Several years ago, the summer of the first year I began teaching (10 years ago, eek!) I discovered I must have projects in the works. Whether it is designing and building a quilt, board game, outdoor landscape, or water coloring and sketching, I have to have an outlet for all the crazy things floating in my head. I've been a bit of a lock-in lately with my youngest being sick for nearly a week now, and today was the first day I felt he was well enough to venture out...so we went to Lowe's and (evil) Wal*Mart for some inspiration. And we found it! With Ian happily crawling around and getting into stuff for the first time in days (aka I didn't have to hold him 14 hours of the day), Oliver and I designed some fun manipulatives.

The first one is a "Melissa and Doug" inspired Build Your Own Felt Sandwich. I saw this for about $25 and knew it'd be a great Christmas present. But for about $5 of felt and colored Sharpies, we designed our own!

We've got 3 types of breads, (wheat, pumperknickel roll, and baguette), condiments (mayo, ketchup and mustard), meats (salami, ham/turkey, and peperoni), cheddar cheese, and veggies (lettuce, tomatoes, purple onion, mushrooms, bell pepper, pickles/cucumber). I say it was a success since Oliver kept trying to feed the meat to some imaginary baby monsters. On a side note, he's now obsessed with Spider Man and was dressed in spider man pajamas and destroying monsters as I cut shapes out of felt. Apparently the babies are nice, as are their parent-monsters...so I had a nice conversation with the mommy-monster at Oliver's request. I think he's in need of a playdate, sheesh!!

Looking at the tasty sandwich parts, I think it'd be fun to do a pizza version, taco version, maybe desserts, I don't know. It's endless!

And the second toy is inspired by a woman at church who brings all kinds of cool things for her kids to work on. I saw one of them (which totally intrigued Oliver) and decided we could create that for Christmas too! So for about $8, we came up with this:

It's a rubber band board that even I had trouble stopping playing with long enough to eat dinner. There is a pretty wonky nail in there, but there must be a hard spot in the wood, certainly not my awesome hammer-skills...

Here's hoping we can get into more good stuff tomorrow...there are always ideas of things to make, the question is, will there be time tomorrow and will Ian be as easily distracted for that long again? We shall see!

Grandparents

I'm having one of those blah days. I'm not sure if it's because Ian's sick, again, and we're on day 5 of vomiting and diarrhea. My poor little baby can't seem to stay well this Fall, and I hate it for him. He's so miserable and thanks to 2 of these illnesses, we now know he gets febrile seizures. I'm so glad Oliver's in school today so he's not stuck around the house again being silent so Ian can sleep, while having no escape to get out and go nuts. He's an amazing little 3 year old!

So, to add to my blah day, I realized right now why I'M so blah too. Out of the blue I'm missing my grandparents. They have all passed away now, and it's hard today to feel like I'm no one's grandchild anymore. There's some special love that only grandparents give to kids, even after they're all grown up. As we approach Thanksgiving, I miss Granny and Pa's house. The familiar smell of brownies, fried chicken, and oil paintings. The pretty roses around the house and the whole family sitting on couches without the distractions a good wi-fi connection bring. "Penny for your thoughts?" Oh how I'd love to have a long conversation with Granny right now. Or listen to one of her funny childhood farm stories, or of her teaching stories. To hear Pa make those silly noises with his mouth and rocking in his chair, telling stories of how he made the designs in the carpet with a piece of wood before we came over. The Macy's parade in the background. I would love to watch my boys and their cousin play around with the toys we enjoyed from our childhood Thanksgivings at their house. I'd love for Oliver to go into Granny's garden with her to pick the perfect rose, or watch in disbelief as Pa climbs to the top of a ladder to get the best-smelling, prettiest Magnolia flower. For the cousins to learn the art of the best card game ever, "Battle!" No one can play it as well as Aunt Carolyn. I'm missing a big squishy hug from Granny, and a manly smelling hug from Pa right now. And I wish my boys could know how totally awesome their great-grandparents are. I'm so happy my Oma was able to meet all her great-grandchildren before she passed this past year, but I wish they could've known the woman I knew - the faint smell of coffee through a beautiful thick German accent. Who made delicious spaghetti sauce from scratch and created hours of shadow puppets on the walls. The woman who would practice getting the "Salsa hips" just right in the reflection of nighttime windows with us, and would read the same page of a book all day long because she fell asleep mid-sentence too many times. I miss my grandparents today but am so thankful I knew them so well.