Free Range Kids

One of my favorite blogs of late is Free Range Kids. It's basically a site dedicated to the freeing of our children and allowing them to be kids rather than being guarded 24/7. I love reading the positive storied of parents whose children are independent and responsible. I am a big fan of my kids being "free range". I think it's very important that they learn how to navigate the world without constant adult direction. We live in a town that could be seen as half and half. Half free range parent, half hover parents. You can see it on the average trip to the playground. There are the parents that sit and talk to one another while their kids play with other kids and there are the parents who are two feet behind their 4 year old on the way to the slide. Some people may be thinking "I'd rather look silly on the slide than have anything happen to my kid." And I can respect that, but that's not my philosophy in life. Kids (just like adults) learn from mistakes. They have to be allowed to do some things wrong, go the wrong way and sometimes, god forbid, hurt themselves (gasp)! Kids fall, my kids fall, your kids fall, all kids fall, but from that fall they learn that if you run too fast before you make the leap you'll be moving too fast when you hit the ground! Slow down next time. A valuable lesson. For example, when it's warm, I go walk in a park near our house. The kids ride their bikes. Bijou (who was three at the time) loves riding her bike down the hills. Yes, I could jog along next to her in case she tips, or find a new route with less hills, but she LOVES the hills. This particular day she was riding down one of the longer hills, squealing in excitement the entire time, and something in her mind said "hey if I wobble the handle bars as I go it'll be EXTRA fun!" I saw the fall coming from the top of the hill. Needless to say, she fell and scraped her elbow pretty good. I don't even think she cried. We washed the blood off at the water fountain and she rode her bike the rest of the way around the park and we went home. The next time we went to the park she rode down the same hills and squealed with the same delight, but she hasn't wobbled the handle bars since! Lesson learned.

Winter wonderland party and other stuff

Okay, here are some pictures from Bijou's birthday party. It turned out exactly the way I pictured it. Well, I pictured it in a nice clean room, painted a nice soft blue, with maybe just a fireplace with a mirror over it or something. But it was just as nice in our rather cluttered school/dining/multi purpose room. I lost my camera in the house halfway through the party, so there are no pictures of Bijou blowing out the candles. But here are some birthday party pics and some other stuff that has happened over the past few weeks.

The morning of Bijou's birthday. I made her birthday shirt the night before. I stenciled the sneaker and ironed some rhinestones on (the girls loves her sparkle).

These are the goodie bags from the party. They included the crayons (from and earlier post) and a handmade finger puppet (either owl or fox).

I made shortbread cookies with lemon icing for the kids to decorate. We had snowmen and snowflakes!

The cupcakes were chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting. I used snowflake stencils and sprinkled cinnamon over them to create the shapes on top. Everyone had their own mug for hot chocolate with a little tag with their names on it.

I love between meal parties (after lunch before dinner) because I don't have to try to prepare food. We had popcorn, pretzels and hot chocolate!

The bigger girls helped cut snowflakes out of coffee filters to decorate the windows. We pulled a branch from the backyard and hung snowflakes from it. This was a VERY low budget party.

Okay, off of the birthday party.... the dollar store had these piggy banks! YAY! So I bought one for each of the girls...

...and let Bijou go wild with Sharpies. The older girls painted theirs.

And this was my latest cool Goodwill find. Zion rides it around the house and I don't have to worry about having to push her around on the tricycle anymore when it gets warm. This on is just her size. It was $7 well spent.


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A new year...

It's a new year and we started it off with a bang....well, not really a bang. Bijou's winter wonderland party went off without a hitch (pictures forthcoming). Unfortunately half of her friends were sick this weekend (she and her sisters were all sick last week) so there were only half of the expected guests, but it was fun all the same.

Today marks the first day of our 2011 school year. Technically the older girls started 3rd and 4th grade work a couple of months ago, but we still like to treat January like a fresh start to a new school year. Today was Bijou's first day of kindergarten though. She's been eager to become a part of our school day. I will figure out to how to handle three different grades as I go I guess (but if anyone has suggestions I'm open!!!). This year we are going to tackle some long term projects. This is what we have planned:

1. A monthly newsletter/newspaper - The girls will each write an article on a topic that they will research, an article on a current event, a creative writing piece (story, poem, joke, etc) and include any artwork or photos that they may have created over that month. We'll print our one for them to keep and maybe email it to family.

2. A quarterly biography - They will have three months to study and learn about a significant person of their choice. This person can be living, historical, a family member or whoever they want. Each quarter they will create a trifold display for their person of choice.

3. A monthly book report - We started having a book of the month to encourage the girls to read more books from our own personal library (which has hundreds of kids books). They read a lot from the library, but our personal library was being neglected. So they have to choose one of our books each month to read and write a very simple book report about.

4. A short animated movie - Jena has been very interested in making an animated movie, so we decided that she and Ashni should write a story and create some characters and we will work with my cousin to create a short animated movie. They are excited about this one.

So the rest of the school day is pretty much the same. I will juggle a few things to make time to work on the additional projects, but I think it will be good for the girls. I also think we will spend a little more time with science this year. The kids LOVE science but it always gets put on the back burner for math and reading and writing. So this year, MORE SCIENCE - more experiments, more machines, more nature and animals and biology and habitats. More of it all. We'll see how it goes, but right now, our schooling future looks bright! (Oh, yeah and my friend from Senegal who is a fabulous musician and fluent in several languages has offered to teach the girls french AND give them guitar lesson! YAY!)

Birthday party sneak peak...

So the winter wonderland birthday party is just a couple of weeks away and preparations are in full swing! Snowflakes are being skillfully snipped from coffee filters, crayons have been melted into fun shapes and bagged, components for snow globes, snowmen and shortbread cookies have been gathered and the last invitation was delivered today! Who's on the ball?? I'm on the ball!! Anywho... I thought I'd share pictures of the invitations. Needless to say that Bijou is very excited about her upcoming party, but little does she know that I have a few other birthday surprises up my sleeve...

(this is what happens when you take pictures at night...they are much brighter and sparklier <---just made that one up)

The plan was to make all of the crayons in the kind of snowflake-like shape at the top left, but the mold would not cooperate, so hearts and stars it is. These are the kids favorite pass time. There's something cathartic about stripping the crayons of their paper and snapping them into tiny pieces.

Ah-too-toos and other Zionisms

Zion was always my least verbal baby. She didn't really say much for the better portion of the last 22 months, but a few months ago, she really had a verbal boom. Now she talk just as much as her sisters and is pretty easy to understand - most of the time. Now like most almost two year olds, she does have her own language that only close family members can understand. So, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites...

1. Ah-too-too - dinosaur ("Mommy, read. Ah-too-too book.")

2. Menonite - lemonade ("Drink menonite")

3. Poopoo dar - people in a car ("Mommy, look, poopoo dar!")

4. erewhere - underwear ("Pee ina erewhere")

5. Dalla - daddy ("Dalla beer." HA)

She is such a quirky, personable kid and I love seeing her personality come out more and more everyday. She is definitely the resident comedian.

Bijou is turning FOUR!

I can hardly believe it, Bijou is turning four. Yes, the time does fly by, but what I can hardly believe is that she ONLY turning four. She seems like she's been here FOREVER!!! I love her - don't know what my life would be like without her. But this has be a looooong four years. A four years full of laughter and tears and almost constant conversation. This kids talks nonstop until the moment her eyes close for the night. I love that she so verbal (well, sometimes I love it, other times...well....).

She's been asking about her birthday for months now. I think back in September I told her that she couldn't ask about her birthday anymore until December. Well, hello December! Her birthday is all she can talk about with anyone. And it's kind of a big deal in our house. Four is the first year of the big birthday party. But because she has a winter birthday and the thought of 35 kids confined in our small house makes me feel nauseous, she will be having a scaled down party with just friends her age (which will be about 6 or 7 kids). Four her first big girl bash we will be having a winter wonderland themed party. The great thing about having a smaller party is being able to make everything just a little nicer. For example, this will be the first year that I make goodie bags for the party. I think they will include a handmade finger puppet, snowflake shaped rainbow crayons, snow globes (that will be made at the birthday party) and snowflake shaped shortbread cookies (that will be decorated at the party). There will definitely be pictures to share when the party's over.

Jena and Ashni both wanted to make gifts for Bijou. I mentioned in an earlier post (I think) that Jena has taken up embroidery, so she really wanted to embroider a shirt for Bijou. She picked a stegosaurus (Bijou's favorite dinosaur) design from the internet and lovely, bright yellow shirt and there is a stegosaurus t-shirt in the making. I think I will let Ashni draw a picture and we will transfer it to a shirt - maybe a stencil.

Now as soon as I find the cord for my camera I can post pictures of the very cute invitations that I made.

RUN!!!!

I decided a few days ago that I should start running again. I say that as if I just stopped running a few months ago or even right after Zion was born. If you were thinking that, well....thanks, but no. I haven't run in probably 15 years. Yes, 15 years!! That's back in high school. Honestly, I've been having body image issues since having Zion and holding on to a large portion of the weight. Well, Zion is almost two and I have finally gotten to the place where I figure, this is the body that I have, I may as well dress it and clothing that flatter it. Oddly enough, what comes along with my new found acceptance of my current shape is an overwhelming desire to be in better shape. It's strange how that happens (and it's not the first time it's happened). So today, I ran - for the first time in 15 years. I have to say that I am NOT 17 anymore. I think I may have eaten that 17 year old at some point in the last two years (possibly wrapped in a buttermilk biscuit or covered in melted cheese and sour cream). But it felt good. It hurt (ALOT), but it was good. I think I'll do it again...