Growing

Dude, that wheatgrass is out of control.  That stuff grows crazy fast.  This is only the fourth day:

Unrelated, Charlie makes weird faces all the time, which completely crack me up.  Check out the face she made when I asked if I could take a picture of her:

What the hell, right?  She's also learned how to stick out her tongue at her sisters.  She's definitely a character.

Suncatchers

I'm trying to get the kids out of the habit of asking for cheap crap toys every time we go to the store.  So, last time, I offered for them to paint suncatchers as a project.  We skipped the toy aisle entirely. 

There may have been coercion involved.  I may have crossed my arms, and said something like, "It's this or nothing."  Maybe.  But the girls had a blast spilling paint everywhere, and are thrilled to see their art hanging in the window.

Wheatgrass

Saw this excellent tutorial from Mom in Madison (via The Crafty Crow, of course) and thought it looked perfect for the littles.  I ordered the seeds over the phone from Ultimate Nourishment and started soaking them right away. It's true, I was as excited about the project as the kids.

Everything is going fine so far (those seeds sprout fast!) but I think we may have mold due to overzealous watering.  I'm going to leave them be for a day and see what happens, but I bought a second bag of seeds if we have to start over. 

Weaver? I don't even know 'er.

I stumbled on this fabulous crafty blog for kids, and have bookmarked, like 12 of the posts.  It's great.  Phoebe came out one morning while I was checking my blogs, and we looked at some of the Crafty Crow posts together.  She was really interested in this post from Unplug Your Kids with the weaving loom, so I promised we'd get the supplies and set one up.

I accidentally bought a plastic frame instead of a wooden one, but not to be deterred, hammered some nails up in it anyway.  It was fine, but definitely not as sturdy as a wooden frame. Balls. Anyway, I tied some string on, and got it all set up for her. I showed her once or twice, and she grabbed it and took over.  It's love, and I'm seriously shocked that she's as good at it as she is. It is kind of complicated, but she got the hang of it right away.

She told me she's making a rug for her dollhouse.  She also said that she loves it, and I'm the best mom ever. Score!

Projects

Mr. Claus brought the littles an easel to share, and they play with it about a gajillion times a day. We were hesitant to break out the paints, because hello? Paint.  But we ended up giving in, and actually letting them play with their toy.  Man, we are nice.  Thankfully, clean-up was surprisingly easy.  I love the giant art creations.  Clearly, we need a bigger fridge.

A few days ago, Marissa made some cookie dough.  She does this for alot -- makes the dough for me, and then I bake the cookies myself.  I didn't check the dough when she was finished, and there was a slight miscalculation in the math for the chocolate chips.  The recipe called for 1 1/4 cups, and she read this as 11 * (1/4) cup.  Quite a difference.  The cookies had basically only enough dough to hold the chips together, but damn they're good.

Finally, I'm almost finished with Phoebe's sweater.  The one I started 800 years ago, that she's almost too big for.  Soli had chewed my plastic DPNs, so I couldn't finish the sleeve.  The talented, lovely, generous, and fabulous Godmother saved me by sending me a new set, so I didn't have to order $5 worth of needles, and pay $7 shipping on them.  I'm thisclose to being finished with the second sleeve.  ABOUT DAMN TIME.