I often wonder if I do enough for the kids on a daily basis. I know I do enough as far as necessities for survival and they are always presentable when we go places and they get fed and have hygienic living conditions. But I see what other parents do and I know there are families out there who don't "do TV" or who do "homeschool preschool" for their kids and I definitely fall short in those areas. There is ALOT of TV watched in this house and the kids see a lot of stupid commercials and say they want everything they see. My snacks are often processed crap like teddy grahams. I regularly deflect requests to play games or help with puzzles because I am "working on the computer" (sometimes I really am doing work but not always!) and I often just clean up their messes myself because I don't have the energy for a battle. But every once and a while...I TOTALLY AMAZE MYSELF! One of those days is today.
This morning I was at a friend's house with a some other moms and kids and she was telling her son no, they couldn't get out the rainbow beans. Rainbow beans? My kids love playing with various commodities. Corn, beans, it doesn't matter! Apparently, you can die white beans with food coloring and she had some extra beans and she gave them to me.
Of course, we had to dye the beans as soon as we walked in the door of our house. You place the beans in ziplock bags and add around fifteen drops of food coloring and shake them up. Then you spread them out to dry for several hours.
Oh yeah...check out those rainbow beans! I'm even excited to play with them! Each kid did four colors and the turquoise in the middle there was my creation. I looked at Pinterest and there were lots of articles about making these and apparently the color stays intact after they dry and they last for a long time. I can't wait to find these strewn around the house for the next several months.
We had a crazy weekend around here. Justin was ice fishing at Lake of the Woods with college friends (They go every winter and know they there was no alcohol, gambling, or tobacco involved so don't worry...) so I was home alone with the crazies for three nights. I am used to being on my own with them but this time I had to do the unthinkable...tackle a kids pool party with all three kids. Yes, another weekend and another hotel pool adventure. It was for Ben's friend from school and he was so excited and talked about it for weeks so not going was not an option. It was OK. Ben swam around the pool on his own with his friends really well in his lifejacket so I mostly only had to worry about the younger two. I was exhausted after that adventure but the kids had fun and it was fun to get together with the other preschool parents. If I had been able to just take Ben I could have kicked back with a few beverages but...maybe next time. I wish I had some pictures from swimming but I wasn't able to use my phone while holding two little kids. I saw a few the other parents took and Ben has the biggest grin on his face in all of them so it was worth it.
Another thing, and this should actually have its own post but I am getting behind...we registered Ben for Kindergarten last week! In my childhood I don't remember a registration for Kindergarten. In my hometown, and I actually didn't attend Kindergarten there but my brother and sister did, they had a "roundup" day but each class had on average 15- 20 students so it wasn't a big deal. Here they have probably 2,000 kids starting kindergarten next year so they have a several week long appointment event where you go to the central public school office and fill out the paperwork and set up your bussing needs. Ben was at preschool when I scheduled ours but I had the younger two kids with me and Milo chose that time to act like a horrible toddler for the first time ever. He screamed, cried and tried to run away the whole time and the lady could not even read my handwriting on the forms because I was wrestling with him while filling them out. At the end of the appointment Tessa started crying for no reason too. There were several other families there and they were all staring at me with the pitiful look people give moms with multiple kids in public places. But anyway, he is registered.
They did fortunately have amenities for kids at the appointment. There were markers and paper on the tables and Tessa colored this picture. The lady asked what she drew and she said it was "rocks with ropes tied to them".
She's a strange one, isn't she? The cutting was done to the paper after we were home. Ben and Tessa are both into scissors right now after Ben started bringing paper snowflakes home from school.
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