Goodbye Training Wheels!

Last weekend, while I sat waiting for the Tumbleweed's dance class to finish, I received a phone call. On the other end was the Dandelion with something exciting to tell me, "Mommy, I rode my bike with no training wheels!"

Sure enough, Mike had taken him over to the park so he could ride his bike on the paved track. After a few laps, he decided the Dandelion was ready and took off his training wheels and petals. Apparently he was a quick study because only a short time later he got his petals back and was riding around the track.

And after a week of rain, I finally got to see him in action...



He was one proud little boy!



Meanwhile, the Tumbleweed was also riding laps around the track learning to use the hand breaks and change gears on her new bike.


They both look so grown up compared to last year.

Movie Merchandising in the Grocery Store

If you have met my son, by now you know that he likes the movie Cars and anything to do with it. And if you have seen us recently, whether you know us or not, you also know that the new Cars 2 movie happens to be opening on his 4th birthday, June 24th. In 38 days, to be exact.

And since Cars 2 is the latest Disney-Pixar movie, we are now under attack. Disney has got to be #1 in getting their name/characters on "stuff" and Cars 2 is no exception. In fact, I think it is worse than Toy Story 3 last year at this time. Here are the latest grocery items they have taken over...


Fruit snacks are almost always available. Cheez-Its and Mac & Cheese I had expected after they were themed with Toy Story last spring. Go-Gurt and pretzels (in a nut-free brand) were a nice surprise. But Cars 2 Cereal and 9 different flavors of Juicy Juice, each with different characters on the box?!?! I even saw an ad for chicken nuggets shaped like Cars!

What will they think of next? Well, I hope it will be "Mater's Tomaters" (grape tomatoes), "McQueen's Lightning Bolts" (carrots cut like lightning bolts), or "Fillmore's Organic Fruit & Veggie Fuel" (any number of different ways you could go with that). It seems like a shame to put all of the money into "junk food" when they could actually help us parents out by putting kids favorite characters on the foods/packaging that we are begging them to eat! Come on Disney, give us a hand!

Kids Tri Too

The Tumbleweed kicked off the triathlon season with a splash. She had been working hard in her swimming lessons to do the two lengths without assistance (bubbles/noodles). Early on we figured out that her best stroke was probably backstroke. This is pretty ironic because swimming on her back used to be a huge battle.

At the race she did exactly what she had planned - backstroke, no noodle! From there she was off to transition, where unlike last year she did not need any help. She mounted her bike and off she went!


She finished strong with the Dandelion running much of the way along side her (he so badly wanted to be in the race!)

Long Jumper

The Dandelion is taking an All Sports class at the YMCA this spring. They started off the first week with a track & field theme. Week 1 was running and hurdles, and this week, Week 2, is jumping and throwing. Of course the running week was a big hit with the Dandelion, but I could not have predicted how much he took to the long jump!

When the teacher explained how the kids were to run up and jump onto the mats, the 3 & 4 year olds sat along the wall and waited for a turn. The first couple of pairs of kids took their turns, but didn't really jump and just ran across the mats. With no one before him actually jumping, I think the teacher was a bit concerned that her long jump idea was going to be a flop. But have no fear, the Dandelion got up for his turn and, when she said go, he did exactly what they were supposed to do. He ran about 8-10 steps, took off from one foot before the mat, flew about 3.5 or 4 feet (to the 3rd color panel) and landed feet first before flopping forwards, just like they do in the Olympics. You would think he'd actually seen it or done it before!

Since I didn't have my camera ready during the original attempts, we took a few pictures after class.

in the air

feet down

forward momentum

Gonna Find A Rainbow

I have decided we need a theme song for Monday mornings at our house. I have selected The Brady Bunch singing "Gonna Find a Rainbow", because each and every Monday morning the Tumbleweed has to find clothes to wear that have every color of the rainbow on them. Thankfully we have numerous different ones to choose from.

Why, you ask? Because Monday is Art Day.

Not enough of a reason?

No, they aren't required to wear multi-colored outfits for inspiration or to disguise spills. The Tumbleweed wants to wear every color because the teacher calls colors to decide the order the kids get to pick their seats and she wants to be first.

It's competitive seating, and she wants to win each and every week so bring on the colors!

Carving Treasures

It is finally spring & the kids are excited about going letterboxing again. We took our first trip of the season afterschool on a nice afternoon, and the kids have been asking about it since. Unfortunately, our schedule and the weather haven't lined up properly, so we have begun doing some indoor letterboxing preparation.

In a couple weeks we will be introducing the Tumbleweed's Daisy Girl Scout troop to letterboxing so we decided to prepare a new stamp to hide for our trip. I have only carved a couple of stamps myself, but since the Tumbleweed was so eager to try I let her help me carve the "Daisy Learning Petals" stamp. She did a great job :)



We have picked up stamp pads in each of the colors of the Daisy Girl Scout learning petals for the girls to use on our hike. They look great with the stamp :) I will be heading out to hide the new letterbox before the event in a temporary location, then afterward we will move it to a permanent location. I am participating in a letterboxing challenge to plant 100 Girl Scout themed letterboxes in Connecticut before the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts next year, so the box will eventually find a home in northeastern Connecticut.

It's About Time

Some projects tend to get pushed aside. What seemed like a pressing thing at one point in time gradually gets put off and practically forgotten. That is what happened to my kitchen chairs.


Notice how they chair fabric doesn't match the curtains or floor? Well I noticed that too. In the summer of 2006 when we moved into our house.

I picked out the blue and yellow chair fabric in 2000. I didn't have a kitchen yet, but in my dream world it would match my future kitchen. And it did match our townhouse kitchen from 2001-2004. And it worked fine in our apartment from 2004-2006. But when we purchased our house I knew it was time to go, so I bought some fabric. And that is as far as I got...

Some days I didn't mind the old fabric. Those were the days when the kids were spilling chocolate milk on them. Some days I would look at them and think, "I really need to get to that project!"

Well, almost 5 years after I bought the fabric I have finally recovered the chairs. Tada!

Chair Close-up

The finished kitchen!

Thanks to my sister for the blog post of her refinished kitchen table that reminded me that my kitchen need a little facelift too. Thanks to the Eagle for taking the kids on a little overnight so I could get out the staple gun. And thank you to my organizer, who told me I should get rid of the fabric if I was never going to use it, which reminded me I should move the project up on my to do list!

Breakfast Elves

Yesterday morning, much to my surprise, I walked into the kitchen to find this:


the Dandelion making his own breakfast, and his sister's!

How cool is that? Do you know what is cooler? He did it again this morning with no help. And while he did that, the Tumbleweed made my breakfast (cereal & milk). The Tumbleweed is working on an activity for Girl Scouts where she does nice things for other people and leave a little paper behind that says "A Girl Scout was here". External motivation or not, I could really get used to this!

First Race of 2011

The Tumbleweed kicked off the 2011 race season this week, participating in a 1 mine fun run at her school. The race was a fundraiser for a group running in the Boston Marathon in a couple weeks and it was the perfect way to start the year, except for the fact that it was at the same time as the Tumbleweed's gymnastics practice.

Initially, I said no. She already had a commitment and there would be other races to run. Which was the truth. Having already read the notice that came home from school about the race, she was really upset and asked why we couldn't skip gymnastics just this once. Parenting dilemma - is this the time to discuss "commitment" or is this a time to say "okay, if it means that much to you we'll change our plan"?

Since she has been at every gymnastics practice all year except one (strep throat in October), I decided to compromise. She could run the race, but we couldn't stay for the whole event, we would leave when she finished and head straight to gymnastics for the second half of practice. A stressful plan for me, but she was thrilled.


She was even more thrilled with how she finished the race. She won 3rd place in the 6-7 age group! Having just celebrated her birthday, she was probably one of the youngest in that group too. She got a 3rd place award sticker, which she refused to stick to her shirt so she could save it "forever".

We made to gymnastics a little later than I would have liked, but better late than never.

Gallery Wall

My mom and my sister got me thinking about wall photo galleries with their recent blog posts. If you have been to my house, you've probably seen my wall gallery in the family room.


A combination of matted professional photos from the kids' first birthdays and Photoshop collages of them as babies, it is our own little time capsule.

*See this blog post on The Inspired Room Gallery Wall link party.

Family Workout Time

aka Mommy Gets to Sleep In Time

Yesterday the Eagle decided to try taking the kids down to his workout space in the basement while he got a training ride in. He put the TV on Nick Jr and set them up with some chairs and breakfast. Before long, the kids were asking to exercise too. And "Family Workout Time" was started.

This morning, despite the fact that they had already woken me up, they asked the Eagle if they could do it again. So off they went to put on sneakers and I got to see what they did yesterday...

The Tumbleweed showed me her chin-up practice with the TRX bungees:


The Dandelion walked on the treadmill while he watched TV, under the control panel!


Then the Tumbleweed got on the treadmill and cranked up the speed to a run


Amazingly, they don't seem tired after an hour of "treadmilling" (the Dandelion's term).

Progress Report

The kids have each gotten good reports from their teachers recently. The Tumbleweed was selected to receive the "Excellent Effort" award for her class based on the improvement she has made on her handwriting recently.

The Dandelion and I went to a special award's ceremony where we got to see her receive her certificate from the school principal.


Since the beginning of the school year, one thing that the Tumbleweed has been working on is her handwriting. It was something that her teachers did not focus on enough last year, leaving her a little behind the others in her class this year. While she was able to effectively communicate her message, she didn't always use capitals and lowercases correctly and hadn't learned to leave spaces between words. She also has a tendency to rush through her work.

But after some concentrated effort, she has been producing school work like this:



The Dandelion has also made progress by leaps & bounds at school over the past month. Recently, I wrote about how he doesn't like to write anything. Well, apparently my reverse psychology (which he did not even know about) worked.

The last two Thursdays I have picked him up from school and the teacher has said that he had a "fantastic day!" I could tell she meant it because she went out of her way to tell me about his day and all the things he had tried. Usually, I try to catch one of the teachers and ask "how is he doing?" from time to time, and I get a simple answer. But not over the past two weeks. She told me that he had participated in all of the stations, had made every craft, and even tried writing his name.

Here is one paper he came home with, the first one where I have seen him write more than the "C" in his name:


We are so proud of both of them!

Old Enough

Our local YMCA has a nice rock wall in plain view of just about everyone in the building. You can see it from both floors and we have been passing it for nearly 5 years on our way to various Early Childhood classes & swim lessons. For the past 2, maybe 3, the Tumbleweed has been asking to climb it. She has been able to try climbing at Attitash in the summers, but the rules at the Y say you have to be 6 years old to climb.

So just as 16 year-olds get their permits on their 16th birthday, 18 year-olds buy lottery tickets and 21 year-olds go out for a drink, the Tumbleweed wanted to climb the rock wall as soon as she turned 6. Due to our schedule and the available class times, she finally got to take the required safety course (and climb the wall) just about two weeks after her birthday. She loved it!

Since she is a very focused kid, she is constantly asking to go to the Y to climb. Well that and to make crochet projects.

The Bat Signal

The Dandelion is branching out! Don't get me wrong, he is still *very* into Cars but he is starting show interest in some other things. Sometimes that includes the Toy Story gang and, most recently, Batman. Apparently he was really in a Batman mode when he got his first ever design done in his hair at the barber shop. I couldn't believe he didn't get a Cars design!


Then he followed up the hair cut with his "bat face" while at a birthday party.


My little boy is growing up!

Her First Crochet Project

On one of the many snow days this winter, the Tumbleweed taught herself to finger knit from an American Girl magazine. She spent days knitting every last bit of yarn we had in the house into long chains. Belts, bracelets, jump ropes, there was yarn everywhere.

For her birthday, the Tumbleweed got a crochet instruction book for kids. It is a bit of a delicate balance between what she is capable of at six and what she thinks she is capable of. She wants to make the projects in the book, but she doesn't want to make any mistakes. She got the hang of creating a chain quickly and wanted to tackle the next project. The book is designed to progressively teach kids, but the Tumbleweed still needed a bit of help understanding the instructions and finding the stitches she was supposed to stitch into.

Together we made this ---


I think I am going to have to study more before we move on, because we have exhausted my crochet knowledge ;)

Time Flies

When you're having fun.

It seems like it was a long time ago that the Tumbleweed got a Lite Brite for her birthday. Really it was only two years, but boy have times changed. At the time it was one of her "quiet time activities" - things she could only do while her brother was napping. The Dandelion was not yet two and still puts all kinds of little things in his mouth.

Fast forward to today... the Lite Brite is something they both can do. And they can do it together (mostly) successfully. Well fed, well rested and in a good mood helps!

Thunny Fings

When the Tumbleweed was not quite four she would drop the "s" off the beginning of words when she spoke. And as I predicted, she outgrew it. It was cute :)

The Dandelion also has a few odd tendencies when he talks. He switches some of his consonants around. Not randomly though, he has very specific sounds that he switches.

F <-> Th: Free (=Three), Thruit, Thlamily

V <-> B : Banilla, Bacation, Vafing Suit, Pribacy, Cuvvy (=cubby @school), Neighvors


The switches don't make the words sound too unrecognizable, so he is not hard to understand most of the time. I love it when a cute word comes out :)

A few other cute word mix-ups he uses:

"Commander Oranges" = Mandarin oranges
"Toilet" = Toilet paper (he calls a toilet, "potty")
"Usually" = really
"Pacific" = specific
"Mercurtory" = Mercury
"The Hug" = The Hub TV Channel
"Twenty Ten, Twenty eleven..." = 30, 31... (he counts "twenty nine, twenty ten....")


But despite his mixed up words, he seems to be mastering his letters and sounds at school. He recognizes all of the letters upper and lowercase and knows most of the sounds. He will correctly identify that "B says 'buh'" so I guess he will be surprised that vanilla is spelled with a 'v'. And while he can identify his letters, he has no interest in writing them, especially at school. The teachers tell me that he never wants to go to the stations that involve writing, tracing, or coloring. At this point they don't think it is a problem, just a desire to do the more active stations. Only time will tell I guess.

Cookies, Cookies and More Cookies!

Customer: "What kinds do you have?"

The Tumbleweed, listing them in the order of the rainbow colored boxes: "Thank You Berry Munch, Tagalongs, Do-Si-Dos, Lemon Chalet Cremes. They're my favorite. Dulce de Leche, Thin Mints, Trefoils. They're my brother's favorite. And Samoas." (Note - Dulce de Leche was a tough one to learn and if you asked her in January, she said "delech deleach")

To say that the Tumbleweed was obsessed with selling Girl Scout cookies is putting it mildly. I don't think I have ever seen her put so much energy into something for such an extended period of time. From the day they passed out the order cards at the beginning of January until we turned in the money this week, she has been talking about cookies. "I have to take my order sheet to school today. I haven't gotten to ask the [art, music, computer] teacher if s/he wants any cookies." or "Ooh, there is nothing on the schedule after school today. Can we do a cookie booth?" She made phone calls to relatives, stepped carefully over icy sidewalks in the neighborhood, took her order card to school no less than 8 times, asked all of her coaches/instructors and worked at 4 different cookie booths.

And when all was said and done, she sold 332 boxes of cookies. Thank you to all of our family, friends & acquaintances who supported her!

Island Fun

Another year has gone by and the Tumbleweed was excited to celebrate her 6th birthday. After very little convincing, we settled on an Island Luau party (not the previously mentioned Barbie Thumbelina party). And while the theme was pretty easy to arrive at, and to come up with things to do, making a guest list was a little more complicated. Each year her parties have gotten bigger, and at times I find myself wondering if I should put my foot down and limit the number to the number of guests we had last year. But I don't, and the number of kids rises by a few more. But the kids are also a little older and the numbers have been pretty manageable.

We had a great time, but my time estimates during the party were a little off. I guess as they get older it doesn't take as long to do stuff. We had done a craft, 2 games, pinata, had cake and opened all of the presents and there were still 45 minutes left! Yikes. I had been so worried that we would still be opening presents when the parents came to pick-up that we had finished too early. But it all worked out and I don't think the kids noticed ;)

Perhaps I should start planning the Dandelion's birthday...

Another Year, Another Cake

By now most people who know me know that I like to make the kids' birthday cakes. The Tumbleweed's 6th birthday was no exception, however unlike previous years, I did not have a specific idea in my head. Usually I look through the cake books at the grocery store or see a cake creation on the internet that inspires me. This year it was less than a week until the party and I did not have inspiration.

I tried searching the internet, but I really didn't find many luau/beach/island cakes but the couple I did find provided enough inspiration for this:


Along the way I came across the Cake Wrecks Blog. It is a hilarious collection of messed up cakes, and on Sundays they have a post with really well done cakes. A word of warning though, they occasionally have some posts that are a little distasteful.