Celebrating Spring 2009 – Day 5

DAY 5: EDIBLE “BIRD’S NESTS”

These are quick, yummy, AND a great way to use that Easter candy that you bought for 50% off the day after Easter.

HOW TO:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 cups chow mein noodles
• jelly beans (we used the miniature “Jelly Belly” type)
• marshmallow “peeps”

1. Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.
2. Place chocolate chips and peanut butter in a microwave-safe container. Heat on 50% power for 1 minute. Stir, and repeat, until chocolate chips are melted.
3. Stir in chow mein noodles until fully coated.
4. Drop by tablespoonsful onto prepared baking sheet, forming a nest shape with your fingers.
5. Place a few jelly beans in the center of each nest for eggs.
6. Top the nest with a marshmallow “peep”.
7. Refrigerate until firm.

Cricket’s Birthday

My little “Cricket” had a birthday this month. She turned 7!!!

Her puppy cake was lovingly made by her big brother, Gator (14). Didn’t he do a great job?!

The rest of these photos amuse me. I was loading photos off my camera when I noticed a series of photos that made me chuckle. Here are a few of them. Notice “Boo”, the sister to the right of Cricket. I think she was having a battle with the little green monster that day.  As they say, “a picture’s worth a thousand words”.

Happy Birthday, Cricket!

Celebrating Spring 2009 – Day 4

DAY 4: A SPRING WINDOW MURAL

This was a fun collaborative art project that developed  in our house on a recent spring afternoon — a painted spring mural on our sliding glass door!

The children had loads of fun with this, each adding his or her own elements and touches. We had trees, birds, butterflies, flowers, clouds, a lake, a bright yellow sunshine…(Lefty even added his own personal touch — a bird flying over, pooping…BOYS! {roll eyes}).

HOW TO:

Only two supplies needed: clear dishwashing liquid and liquid tempera paints!

For each of the paint colors, mix about 1 tablespoon of dishwashing liquid with 1/2 tablespoon of paint (the mixture should have the creamy consistency of house paint).

I chose to have the children paint on the outside of the window, so it would be easy to hose off the project after a few days, but this can easily be done on the inside as well, making it a great rainy day activity — but make sure you avoid drips on carpets and furniture.

To remove the dried paint or fix a mistake, simply wipe it off with a moist paper towel.

Rey – Ever the clown!

Below: Recycling

The boys had the innovative idea of using water bottles, cut in half, as paint cups. This worked very well!
The top half of the bottle became a hand-held paint cup with a “handle”,
while the bottom half worked well for a tabletop paint cup.

Our Baby Girl – 8 to 12 Weeks

Yes, Miss Persnickety is 12 weeks old already. Time flies!

Thankfully, she is having longer periods of happiness these days (we refer to it as her “happy time”).

March 23, 2009 – 8 Weeks, 1 Day

And she definitely has her “favorite” people now. There are certain siblings that she really doesn’t want to have hold her at all, or only for a very limited time. She strongly favors other siblings; in particular “Cricket” (7) and “Boo” (8).  And “Gator” (14) is her favorite entertainer. He speaks to her in funny voices and makes silly faces at her, always resulting in big toothless smiles!

Being carried by Cricket, her favored sibling

April 5, 2009 – 10 Weeks

First Trip to the Beach
April 18, 2009
11 Weeks, 6 days

While, not officially her first trip to the beach (she had briefly visited once before), this was baby’s first trip to the beach in which she was actually awake and alert.

When I dipped her feet into the ocean for the first time, and let her little toes feel the squishy wet sand, I expected some sort of response — a smile, a look of surprise, a whine of protest…but no, nothing.  Her expression didn’t change one bit!  So I don’t know if we have a another beach baby in the making or not.

As for baby “DeeDee’s” food allergies, I am certain, as I mentioned before, that we have found the culprit as far as the colic is concerned — casein (the protein found in cow’s milk products). When I eliminate everything containing casein from my diet, “DeeDee” is colic free.

Well, I *think* (crossing my fingers and being cautiously optimistic here) that we have found the culprit for the rashes — corn. I have noticed that, although she always seems to have a bit of a rash (which makes sense, as it seems everything contains as least trace amounts of corn, in the form of corn syrup or corn starch or corn oil), she tends to break out really really bad when I eat corn chips or popcorn. So now I have to be ever more diligent in reading food labels, and can have absolutely no processed or convenience foods.

Now we wait and see. If this (the elimination of corn) doesn’t solve the problem completely, it’s off to a total allergy elimination diet. (I still fear that wheat may play a part as well.)

Out of the Mouths of Babes

A Self-Chiropractic Adjustment

Since our car accident back in July, we’ve had to go to the chiropractor three days a week. Curly-Top (5) decided last week that she didn’t want to leave the pool to go to the chiropractor. She begged me not to make her go, stating that she’d give herself a chiropractic adjustment instead.

“I know how to pop my own neck, and to pop my back I’ll just lie down on my stomach and have one of the other kids jump on me.”

“Two”

I was eating some bagel crisps the other day when Rey (3) spied me and decided he wanted some.

Rey: “I want one!”
Me: “You didn’t ask properly.”
Rey: “I want TWO!”

World’s Longest Sentence

Lefty (9): “I am going to break the World’s Record for the longest sentence.”
Me: “Oh really? What will it say?”
Lefty: “I don’t know. I haven’t written it yet.”

Freezing to Death

Cricket (6): “Dad? If you freeze to death, could you die?”

(Huh?)

Frog Eyes

My oldest daughter is known for saying some off-the-wall things. We even have a name for these crazy sayings; we call them Audrey-isms. So tonight at supper when the topic of frogs came up, we all thought what she had to say was quite humorous…until I looked it up and found it to be true!

Audrey: “Frogs actually use their eyes to eat.”
The Siblings: Laughter
Audrey: “No, seriously. They push the food down their throats with their eyes.”
The Siblings: More Laughter
Me: “I’ll look it up.”

So I google “frog+eyes+food” and find:

Frogs’ eyes also play an important role in eating. Frogs don’t have the skull structure or the necessary muscles to chew their food. Instead, they have to swallow their prey in a couple of gulps. This is tricky since, unlike people, their tongues aren’t usually anchored in the back of their mouths. That means a frog can’t use its tongue to push food down its throat and toward its stomach. For this reason, when a frog swallows, its eyes sink down into its skull to help push the food along.

Wow. Who knew?

Wordless Wednesday – Springtime

Celebrating Spring 2009 – Day 3

DAY 3: EXPLORING NATURE

It had been a while since we had actually gone on our neighborhood nature trail strictly for the purpose of observation. I tend to enjoy going at least once during each season so we can see the changes, so I figured, what better way to welcome spring!

When we embarked on the trail last week, I was shocked at what I saw — very little water! Things definitely looked different than in the photos that I posted of that same nature trail in November 2007. I knew we were under some serious drought conditions, but had no idea it was THIS bad!

The Drought

The Wetlands that Once Were
Nothing but dirt. This all used to be under water.
(You can tell where the water level once *was* by the water line on the trees)

Above:  a view from the side of the big bridge
Below: I wonder who once lived here, when it was underwater

Below: Conditions are so dry that even the air plants are suffering; showing very little traces of green

Signs of Life

Despite all, thankfully, there were still some ponds that had not completely dried up, and some signs of green along the trail.

The girls wanted me to take photos of all the flowers, so we could come home and look them up. (How many do you already know?)

Thistle was abundant in all its’ stages – from bud…

to bloom…

…to thistledown.

You can always count on the little ol’ pine tree for some spring color.

Strangely enough, we didn’t see many birds on this outing; just one hawk, an aningha, and a couple of cranes.

We did see other wildlife though:

This guy was smiling at us from across the pond,
but the mole cricket (below) creeps me out far more

Other Florida Wildlife

The Water Which Remains

I just love the beauty of the Florida Wetlands

Crayola Giveaway!

Crayola is giving away over $80 of products from their new Spring/Summer line!  You can enter to win this prize at:

• Mudpies and Mary Janes
• I Never Grew Up
• Gruntlings
• This Full House

My Monthly Generic Update

Where does the time go? The year is already 1/4 of the way over. “DeeDee” is almost 10 weeks old!

March was a somewhat uneventful month. We’ve been celebrating the longer, milder, sunny days of spring with fun and activities. (I need to blog about some of the other things we’ve done, beyond days one and two, but I have spent the last couple of days trying to manage some nasty computer woes instead — more about that later.)

Baby “DeeDee” with an allergic reaction

Baby DeeDee is growing quickly, and is much more pleasant since my last update.  She is still “needy” — preferring to be constantly held, day and night, but she isn’t as grumpy. She smiles a lot and is trying to “talk”. I just love it.  Her change in demeanor probably has a lot to do with my becoming much stricter with her (my, rather) diet.

I have mentioned before that she seems to have a very strong reaction (colic) to cow’s milk products, so I gave them up. Or so I thought. In reality, I didn’t realize the vast degree to which cow’s milk products infiltrated our food supply, until I started reading labels. Yikes! Even things like bread crumbs contain milk! Once I started reading labels and being extremely careful with avoiding anything associated with milk, DeeDee’s colic disappeared. Her tummy no longer gurgles. She no longer draws her legs up in pain, and she is much more pleasant. There is still a hidden allergy that we haven’t identified, however. She is allergic to something that causes her face, head, and neck to spontaneously break out for several hours at a time. Sometimes it’s a faint rash, while other times it is similar to hives. If this breaking out persists for another week (giving adequate time to work all traces of casein out of her/my system), then I plan on going on a complete allergy elimination diet until I can figure out what the trigger is. (Not fun…but worth it in the long run; especially given the family history of auto-immune disorders. I will do anything I can to possibly prevent another child of mine from developing asthma or autism).

“DeeDee” with hives on her face, head, neck, and arms.
I *think* the culprit, in this case, was wheat, as I had eaten a “gluten-heavy” meal prior to the break-out –
But in my limited research I have found the reaction to an allergy could take hours or DAYS to present…
so I have no way of knowing for sure.

Speaking of autism, that’s Audrey in the photo above (holding DeeDee). Notice the pirate shirt that she is wearing. It was one of the giveaways she received for participating in her first 5K.

Audrey, who thinks SHE has an allergy — to exercise!  joined, under our coersion (we bribed her with money), a “couch to 5K” program. Twice a week, for (I think) 8 weeks, she trained with some other individuals from our neighborhood. They started by just walking, and worked their way up to running, until the day of the race. I didn’t expect Audrey to come close to winning, but she DID participate and finish (which was the goal), and we are very proud of her! She even lost close to 20 lbs. in the process!

The Team – Audrey is on the far left

Other than those things I have actually taken the time to blog about lately, we have been doing our best to spend as much time outdoors as possible, enjoying Florida’s very brief springtime.

The last couple of days I have barely been online, trying instead (as I mentioned before), to rescue our horrible computers.

I know I may sound like a broken record, but I HATE VISTA. I HATE MICROSOFT!!! How many times have I stated that here over the years? I have gone through four (or is it five) different laptops in the last five years. I know people who have been using the same Mac during that same duration. But I *still* haven’t been able to convince Rob that I need a Mac. He still hasn’t complied with my wishes in that regard, so I am preparing to bury yet another laptop. Aaaghh!!!

I have already been forced to restore to factory settings twice, and now, as of this week, my internal card reader has stopped working. That isn’t acceptable considering the number of pictures I take. I use it DAILY. So I have attempted to load my photos onto Audrey’s laptop instead and found her computer to be so corrupted that I had to restore IT to factory settings. To top it off, my tired old secondary drive has stopped functioning properly, my NOD32 has expired, and we haven’t installed Microsoft updates on either laptop (because I don’t trust them — they alwas mess up more than they fix), so we were wide-open for an attack from that conflicker virus…so I have been installing updates and running scans with software that I don’t have as much faith in as the NOD32. But…so far it appears that both systems are clean. I’m not sure about the aforementioned tired old external drive — it won’t even scan without locking up. Ugh!

So, with my card reader not functioning, I am currently using Audrey’s laptop with the sticky keys (namely the r and y), so if it seems like this former English major and exemplary speller has suddenly lost her mind — it’s not ME; I may be sleep-deprived, but I can still spell. Just ignore any missing “R”s and “Y”s for now.