Trying to turn my thumb green!

This year I decided to venture into gardening. Now that my kids love being outside, it is easier to maintain a garden while supervising them. YAH! Plus, they love watching it grow and helping maintain it.

We have strawberries (which have produced tons), tomatoes, lettuce, brussels sprouts, potatoes, carrots and basil growing. I didn't dabble too much with flowers because I want to eat what I grow. We all know I LOVE to eat.

I, however, became inspired to make a living wreath for my front door.

I was very excited to hang it since I had to leave it flat for 6 weeks while the roots set.

Isn't it lovely?

It obviously still has filling in to do in some places, but I am quite pleased. I plan on watering it about once a week since I used succulents. I went to water it after the first week...and... I dropped it!!!! All the 'chicks and hens' plants fell out :( So I have to wait again for them to root. I may let the other plants fill in the missing spots though, ugh!

Spotlight on Brady

Tonight I want to dedicate a post to just Brady (yes, Reese and Elliot are to follow).

Brady started Kindergarten four weeks ago. I have already seen tons of growth in her. Going to school over six hours a day really does make a difference. She is able to retain the foreign languages she is learning; sign language, German and Spanish. She is more interested in vocabulary, constantly asking what words mean to confirm her definition from context.

I have also loved watching her grow in gymnastics. When she started in dance she was a natural talent. She has a natural ballet line and picked up right away. With gymnastics, she is in a 5 and 6 year old class, with girls that have already taken for a year or two. She is not a natural. She has been practicing all over the house though. Within three weeks, she can now do a bridge and is pretty close to a cart wheel. She is becoming quite the dare devil; climbing up to the top of sofas and jumping off or...

We have also watched her love of reading develop. She has a HUGE interest in chapter books being read to her. She is also able to summarize at the end of the chapter accurately in 4-5 sentences. We currently have an American Girl compilation book of 6 novels. She is determined to finish the whole thing before we have to return it 3 weeks later.

Here is a recent funny story that really demonstrates her personality. Karl and Reese were at soccer. Elli was sleeping and I was cooking dinner. Brady entertaining herself outside, digs up dirt and wants to plant seeds.

I provide her with some seeds and she states she needs to make a calendar chart to remind herself to water the seeds everyday. Using her monthly calendar she writes Sunday through Saturday on a piece of paper. She shows me and states that she messed up on the W for Wednesday. I assure her that we can still understand what it says. We work on creating a chart together. She wants a stapler to complete the chart so I give her one and then finish my chores. This is what I come up to next...

She taped it to the sliding glass door and everything. I was wondering why the handwriting paper got added but didn't think much about it. Then I realized it is Brady and she does everything for a reason. Since she messed up her W, she attached the W handwriting paper so that she can practice her Ws every time she waters! She is her father's child!

Brady, I love you for your beauty inside and out. You are my big helper with perseverance like none other. I love that the times I have to 'get on' you about something, it is because you are trying to help out too much! I love that you have a deep sense of who you want to be. I hope that you keep all these personality traits. You are going places!

Leader of the Day

Reese was the leader of the day at preschool last Tuesday. I have written about Brady's experience as leader of the day, but this was Reese's first time to experience it.

She choose apples and bananas to bring for group snack. Here she is prepping the snack.

Moms, I want to share a trick that the teacher did, that I personally never thought about but it makes a big difference. To make the apples managable for Reese to cut, she sliced them in half horizontally. Therefore, there wasn't as much apple for Reese to push through. Also, the apple is then already cut into little pieces. And if you are like me and end up no where near the core at the bottom, it helps with that too. 

Reese choose to bring the Bonsai tree that Kaddie (my father) sent her in the mail last week. The students were very intrigued by the plant and had a in depth conversation as to whether the tree would get a lot bigger.

Reese also got to walk the line and change the date on the calendar. 

  

Reese was very proud to be the leader of the day. And for the first time, she has said she loves preschool. Feels good to hear that, she just had to adjust.

Rededication

I recently have decided to rededicate myself as a stay at home mom. What do I mean by this? I want to be proactive, create environments that will benefit my children in several different faucets, and give them the positive attention they hunger. I don’t think I had stopped being a good mother when I decided this but I had started letting day to day pass by doing what was comfortable and easy. Just getting through the day as it comes my way.

 

Here is how I am rededicating myself as a stay at home mom:

• weekly crafts
• planted a vegetable/flower garden with the girls
• heavily involve girls (individually) in one dinner preparation a week
• trying to decrease TV viewing

So I have been doing weekly crafts for two weeks now. The first week we created the garden. The girls shopped for materials with me, picked out the seeds, filled the garden with soil, water on a regular basis. All around it is a wonderful learning experience. 

This is the day we created it. WE now have corn, lettuce, cucumber, strawberry, zinnia, pumpkin all sprouting in there (I know that is too much but it was what the girls wanted).

The cinder blocks is a trick my sister taught me. In the holes you plant invasive herbs. Well that is not what made it in our holes, but the girls grasp which seeds are which with the divide. This week’s craft was a bird seed wreath (thanks for the idea Amy). It was a dud and we ended up with a pile of seed on the slide outside. I do have quite a few ideas for future weeks that I am eager to do.

 

The dinner planning has been the biggest hit thus far. The girls had been begging me every night that I cooked to help out, well with my Zumba schedule and Brady’s ballet on Friday there are a lot of nights that I am in a rush to cook so I ended up yelling at them to get out of the kitchen more then they deserved. They are trying to help, why am I yelling at them? So I read about a family that lets each kid in the fam have a night where they completely decide the dinner menu. Well I took it one step further. Both of the girls get a night so completely decide the menu and then they help with every step of the preparation, table setting, and clean up. Brady has Monday and Reese has Wednesday. This has been a HUGE hit. Brady has had tacos both weeks. Reese’s first week she requested “strawberries, lettuce and chicken” this past week she wanted “strawberries and pancakes.” Now they know they cook on their one special night a week and mommy does it every other night. I wish I would have thought of this earlier.

 

Lastly, the TV has been the hardest. I like it as a babysitter of sorts. It helps when I need a shower or have phone calls to make, etc. So they are in the habit of one hour a day. They know that means two Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So when I say no TV lets go to the beach, I get the response, we can go to the beach AFTER two MMCH shows. UGH! I am trying to keep them busy, but honestly they need the wind down time too. So I am having an internal debate about TV and what is my stance about how much the girls should watch.

 

That is all for now, I am sure there will be future posts about a weekly craft or update on the garden!

Brady's Blooms

Beppa (Karl's mother) gave the girls an indoor garden as a Christmas present. Okay, well I admit that this gift I think was intended for Reese, but she was more interested in eating the dirt so Brady kinda adopted it :)



The garden pots are made from recycled milk jugs so they are being green while having a green thumb...HOW FUN!!! In February, we were finally settled enough from the move we decided to get gardening. The three seeds included were sunflower, zinnia, and sweet basil. The set also included soil discs that had to be moistened and you had to wait 30 minutes before planting the seeds.

[caption id="attachment_543" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Those 30 minutes seemed to last FOREVER!!! At least in toddler world..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_544" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Oh man, still 17 minutes left to wait!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_545" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="30 minutes is up...time to fluff the soil!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_546" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="The girls favorite part, patting the soil after the seeds were in"][/caption]

 I always wanted to keep the pots at a level where the girls could check to see if any sprouts had come up, but Brady everyday would stick her finger in to "make a hole for the seeds and then cover it up, then pat pat pat". I feared that we would not have any growth at all.

By early March, sure enough we saw tiny sprouts on the Zinnia plants!





The sun didn't come enough through the window by kitchen table so we moved them to the window in Brady's room (the front of the house). The plants TOOK OFF!!! Brady got to water them every other day, which she throughly enjoyed doing.



So by mid-April, they were too big for their pots and needed to be replanted. However, we still hadn't seen any blooms on the two flowering plants. We did take advantage of using fresh basil in recipes! So we planted the three plants near the front entrance of our house (and near the automatic sprinkler).



 

 

[caption id="attachment_553" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="BOO felt the need to take pictures as well. Here is the view from inside the house..."][/caption]

Well, we have been keeping an eye on our garden. Brady waters it when she plays in her "pool." But recently we WE GOT A BLOOM!!! And three more are on the way...YAH! Thank you Beppa for such an fun, green and educational gift!