Tag: limerick

Posted in family life

water balloons in october…

Posted on by kristinabean

So after our beautiful 2-3 weeks of cool relatively autumnal weather, summer decided to visit again and we’ve had highs in the 90s for a week or so straight. Sigh.

The boys have enjoyed pulling out the water play again for one last hurrah, though, and we took advantage of the chance to use up the last of our water balloons before the dry winter could render them useless.

You can tell from the long sleeves that it had been cooler in the early morning, at least 🙂

Both boys’ main objective seemed to be popping the water balloons as quickly as possible, so they mostly just threw them into the rocks as the most reliable way to get the pop to happen – they didn’t always throw hard enough to get them to pop on the concrete. Limerick also enjoyed stomping on them as an effective way of making them pop, and Rondel humored me enough to play catch a few times and throw the balloons at me instead of the rocks.

Limerick also kept calling them bubbles, for some reason (maybe because bubbles also pop?), which Rondel found absolutely hilarious 🙂

It may not be much of a fall here in the desert, but we’re finding fun things to do with what we have, and enjoying our colored leaves and pumpkin vicariously through our picture books. Maybe next year we’ll make it up north to see the changing colors in person!

Posted in family life

a little stegosaurus!

Posted on by kristinabean

There’s a little stegosaurus running loose around here!

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(His tail still needs another row of plates but he can’t wait!)

He looks pretty friendly to me, and he’s definitely excited to see the moon still up in the morning sky.

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I mean, have you ever seen such a smily dinosaur?

I wouldn’t want to get spiked by that tail, though! Even friendly little stegosauruses can be fierce when they need to be.

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Someone remembered that stegosauruses walk on four legs!
Posted in family life

being cute

Posted on by kristinabean

Most of our park outings involve a snack; I’m not sure if it’s actually needed, but it’s become a habit and I don’t feel like poking the bear by trying to change it!

Anyway, the boys were being pretty adorable the other day during their snack:

I’m not sure why, but they couldn’t stop laughing about something! It was one of those moments that makes all the hard days worth it, when we are all just enjoying being with each other without anything special going on at all.

Posted in Uncategorized

apple-printing!

Posted on by kristinabean

The official beginning of fall has actually coincided with the onset of beautifully cool weather here in the desert, and I’ve been accumulating fall activity ideas to do with the boys. Apples are going to be our loose theme for the next two or three weeks, followed by pumpkins in time for October leading into Halloween. We just picked up a couple apple books from the library on Saturday (and have more on hold since everyone else seems to be into apples right now too!), and Saturday morning we tried out some apple printing.

We cut one apple vertically so the prints would have the recognizable apple shape, and the other one horizontally so the boys could see the star inside (and hopefully get it to show up in the prints too). At first I just gave them the apple halves, but it ended up being difficult to get the apples out of the bowls of paint, so I stuck popsicle sticks in two of them to use as handles. It worked pretty well! I think that brushing the paint onto the apple would allow you to get more even prints; dunking tended to give us an excess of paint for the first stamp or two. The prints would also probably be better – as in, more apple-like – if the boys hadn’t taken bites out of them all 🙂

I made the paints from flour, water, and food coloring (with some salt so the leftovers would last, and some baking powder so we could use it as puffy paint), because I knew the apples would be impossible to resist. If it’s any indication, we’ve gone through 10 apples in the last 5 days… so I needed our paint to be completely edible. I may have done more actual stamping than the boys, but they had a great time – we spent almost an hour and a half on the project, not including all the cleanup, and that’s a long time for a 3 year old and a 1 year old!

And they got into the painting too:

We didn’t microwave the paintings to make the paint puff, and when it dried it really curled the paper up, but the boys are far more interested in the process than the product so I don’t think they cared. Actually, I don’t think they even noticed… I hung the papers to dry on a clothesline in the garage but I probably could have recycled them without triggering any emotional danger zones 🙂 I’m pretty much the same way with my own art, though, so I like it!

All in all, a great start to our fall apple “unit study” and a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning together!

Posted in family life, Uncategorized

more pancakes!

Posted on by kristinabean

So, I know I’ve posted about pancakes before. What can I say, they’re still a hit around here 🙂

I am on the search for a good pancake mix, though, too simplify the process even more; I’ve tried the recipe from Like Mother, Like Daughter but it wasn’t our favorite, and I’m planning on trying the whole-grain mix from King Arthur Flour next.

In the meantime, however, I used up all my wheat berries and haven’t made it out to east Mesa to buy more… so the other night when I planned on pancakes and hadn’t yet realized my critical shortage, I had to find another recipe ASAP (it was either that or come up with an entirely new dinner plan thirty minutes before everyone was going to need to eat – yeah, not happening).

I ended up using Mark Bittman’s recipe from the New York Times, which is a very basic white flour pancake recipe, but I made it special by adding some small diced pears (which we needed to use up anyway) along with some cinnamon and cardamom. I don’t think anyone else in the family gets bored of eating the same pancakes every time we make them, but I always want to try something new or different, and the King Arthur Flour mix recipe had provided some add-in suggestions that got me thinking. And ever since I discovered Smitten Kitchen’s pear bread recipe I’ve been unable to separate pears and cardamom in my mind, so I added some cinnamon and cardamom to these pancakes as well! (Incidentally, the pear bread recipe doesn’t actually call for cardamom, and I don’t remember why I originally added it – but it makes the bread really stand out from otherwise similar applesauce/spice cakes. What can I say, I modify all the recipes I touch.)

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Lightly drizzled with maple syrup (for Limerick and I) or just butter (for Rondel, who thinks he doesn’t like syrup), and accompanied by hash browns and sausages, they made for an incredibly luxurious dinner 🙂 Even my picky eater didn’t seem to notice or mind the small pear chunks scattered throughout, which was my main concern, and the sweet tooth of course thought they were a step above normal pancakes.

So – if you’re looking for a special occasion pancake, that may be more of a treat than a seriously healthy food, I would recommend this one! Once I get more wheat berries we’ll go back to our whole-grain pancakes, but these are quite good and, at least with the add-ins, don’t leave me missing the rich depth of the others. I’m already starting to plan different fruit and spice combinations to play around with – maybe something with cranberries and apples? Any suggestions?

Posted in family life, musings

brotherly harmony

Posted on by kristinabean

I’ve had a lot of ideas for blog posts – and inspiration always seems to strike when there’s no chance to write, and then disappear when I actually sit down with a free moment!

Lately I’ve been thinking about Psalm 133, in the context of the affection between my own two boys.

How good and how pleasant it is,

When brothers dwell together as one!

Like fine oil on the head,

Running down upon the beard,

Upon the beard of Aaron,

Upon the collar of his robe.

Like the dew of Hermon coming down

Upon the mountains of Zion.

There the Lord has decreed a blessing,

Life for evermore!

The analogies amaze me, as I come to understand them more deeply (oil running down someone’s beard was admittedly a strange image before I learned more about it!). The harmony and unity of brothers (whether actual brothers or spiritual brothers) is compared to the oil of consecration used to sanctify and set apart the high priest, and to water in the desert. In other words, it isn’t a trivial or an inconsequential thing, but rather one of the sources of life and flourishing.

Earlier this evening I told Rondel that I was going to wash up the dishes before bed, and that he and Limerick could either play alone or play together while I did that. Instantly, he replied, “Play together!” and to make sure he realized I wasn’t going to be playing also I queried, “You want to play with Limerick?” Again instantly, he answered, “You do!” (meaning “I do!”). And off he went to find Limerick and play with him.

While the boys have the inevitable quarrels that any two people have, when different goals and ideas collide, they play together remarkably well (especially considering all the sibling horror stories I’ve read about). They would almost always rather find a way to work out their differences and come to a renewed unity than take the easy route of just playing individually, and I love that about them. I love how Rondel, after losing his cool with Limerick and yelling at him about something, will feel the tension in the air and seek to heal the relationship by giving Limerick a gentle hug and kiss. I love how Limerick will imitate Rondel’s play even when he doesn’t fully understand it, just so he can be a part of what Rondel is doing.

And my hope is that their growth in unity now, together, will prepare them for the difficulties of community throughout life and for holiness – that it will equip them to be a source of pure water in the dry and thirsty land they’re growing up to inherit, where relationships are utilitarian, selfish, and broken.

Posted in family life

a little bit of normal life: gardens, dirt, and popsicles

Posted on by kristinabean

Well, our sweet potato growing experiment failed.

I know some varieties of sweet potato can grow in Arizona, but the microclimate of our backyard is warmer than average due to heat radiating off the walls, and the copious amounts of water we gave the plants just barely managed to keep them from dying for the past couple months. Compared to how sweet potatoes should look after that much growing time, they were small and sickly. And all the purple ones died after a particularly hot and dry week in July.

However, we took advantage of the garden being empty of plant life to completely rebuild the frame for the raised bed, since the old one had succumbed to weather damage and splintered apart. My husband did an awesome job with it, and found an environmentally-friendly water sealant to protect the frame so it should last for a while – and the boys have been loving the chance to play in the dirt before it’s time for our fall planting.

Rondel prefers to sit outside the bed and use his construction trucks to dig; Limerick had more fun climbing right in and burrowing into the dirt with his hands.

Since the soil hadn’t been watered for a few days in preparation for moving it out of the old frame and back into the new one, it was blowing all over us like dust – so I turned the hose on to a trickle and added it to the fun 🙂

Limerick was incredibly focused on the dirt/mud. I don’t think he smiled once… he was too busy investigating the different sensations of dusty soil, wet soil, and puddles in the soil. It amazes me how dirty he can get when he’s intent on experiencing or exploring something! I had to spray him down before we went outside and it was surprisingly difficult to get all of the dirt off of him. But it was worth it – if you’ve been reading here for a while, you know what a fan I am of messy/sensory play!

And then (true mom confession) I fed them homemade peach popsicles for dinner with the excuse that we were all too hot from being outside to eat anything warmer 😛

Posted in family life

water balloons and popsicles

Posted on by kristinabean

The boys’ cousins came over this weekend for a play date and we went all out preparing for the fun – because when you live in a small house you don’t want to keep four toddlers and a baby cooped up in it all morning, and when it’s summer in the Valley of the Sun you can’t just casually go outside to play (especially when the raised bed catastrophe in the back makes it into a child safety hazard – exposed nails, anyone? – so the moms have to be outside in the heat too!).

So, to make sure we could handle both the crowd and the weather, we made popsicles (for the first time for my kids!) and water balloons (also a first!). Rondel and Limerick were absolutely enthralled by the water balloons, and couldn’t keep their hands off of them while I was filling them up, although they did try their best to be gentle and save them for when the cousins arrived. Their look of surprise the first time one popped in their hands was priceless 🙂 And of course, when they finally did get to start throwing and deliberately popping them later in the morning, they were completely into it. I think the approximately 100 balloons survived about ten minutes into the water play…

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selecting balloons from the bucket (which was almost full at the beginning! The kids didn’t leave me much time to grab the camera)

The popsicles were an equal success with the four toddlers, and a much greater hit with the baby, who obviously couldn’t share in the water balloon fun. I had made two types, one using watermelon and lime and another more creamy variety using strawberry, banana, and milk. While the strawberry-banana popsicle was the first to be claimed and devoured, everyone went back for seconds and ate up the watermelon popsicles without any complaint. I only tried the watermelon and was surprised at how refreshing it was, and how well the lime complemented the watermelon flavor. And everyone took a turn feeding their popsicles to the baby – I wish I could show you all those pictures! My nieces and nephew are really quite adorable 🙂

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And in between the water balloons and popsicles, the kids played with a hose sprinkler, a plastic slide, a kiddie pool, and a lot of different cups and bowls – the standard water play setup for our house. But everything is more exciting when you have a friend to share it, even if it sometimes means waiting a while for the slide, or being crashed into at the bottom by an overeager cousin 🙂

Posted in family life

best friends

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel has a rudimentary understanding of the concept of “best friends” from watching the Pixar Cars movie, where Mater and Lightning are best friends despite the major differences in their personalities and experiences. The other day, this conversation took place between him and his daddy on the topic:

R: Lightning McQueen and Mater are best friends!

D: Yeah! Do you have a best friend?

R: You do!

D: Is your best friend Mommy?

R: No, your best friend is [Limerick]!

What’s fun for me (and also really rewarding) is to watch this play out in everyday life. When Limerick went down for his nap the day before yesterday, Rondel came up to me with a sad expression on his face, asking where he was because he wanted him. When I told them it was bedtime yesterday because they were acting tired, Rondel declared he wasn’t tired and began a huge list of all the things he was doing instead of acting tired, about five of which included Limerick. When they were showering off after the beach yesterday, Rondel started bopping Limerick with one of his floaties and then stuck his belly out so Limerick could bop him back with the other floaty. And when Rondel was crying hysterically in the car earlier today (because we only had cold water for him instead of ice water – he was really tired), he was only able to calm himself down when I asked him if he could try to calm down for Limerick, since the crying was starting to scare Limerick. He really loves his little brother, in a caring and self-denying way as well as in a playful companion way.

When I read the quote about a new sibling being one of the best gifts you can give to your child, I look at the relationship between Rondel and Limerick and feel that in this case at least it is very, very true. Rondel has matured in so many ways through being an older brother, and had so many happy experiences as well. I have no doubt that our new baby will only expand and deepen the friendship and joy within our family, especially since the boys are already anticipating his or her arrival with great excitement and periodically hug my belly as proxy for hugging the baby, and I am looking forward to watching those relationships unfold as well. And for now, I will enjoy the closeness between my boys and pray that it stays that way for years to come.