On the Subject of Bathrooms

1.  Only parents of boys will understand the pit that comes with hearing, "MOM! I PEED ALL OVER THE BATHROOM!" Even better, 6:15am on a Saturday.

2.  At the swim meet today the facilities for women were a little limited. No matter what there was always a line at least 4 deep for the 2 stalls. When I went in one stall was occupied (and apparently had been for a while) by a very young girl singing her lungs out to "Let It Go" from Frozen. On one hand it was totally annoying because, you know, we all had to go, on the other it was gratifying to know that my child isn't the only one who will sit on the pot for thirty minutes singing and telling stories to himself.

Summer Science #2

At the end of last summer both F and I felt like we'd frittered our summer away. We did lots of fun camps, but somehow never got around to doing all the fun excursions, experiments, and exciting things we thought we'd get squeezed in to our short three month break. This year I MADE A PLAN (who's laughing at the freaky planner?). We've got a summer bucket list and F and pal Emma both asked if we could do some experiments. I browsed the web and some of my old camp/school planning workbooks. I knew I'd get hung up trying to get all over town for supplies, so I took my list of projects and spent half an hour on amazon gathering all the supplies we'd need.

Last week we did the mentos/diet coke experiment. Kiddos learned that the CO2 in the soda interacts with the "dimples, like on a golf ball" that are found on mentos, causing the "explosion." We compared A&W root beer and Diet Coke and determined they're both fun to blow up.

This week we're learning about fluorescence and the light spectrum. We talked about infrared light and ultraviolet light and the light we can see and the light we can't see. We didn't get much deeper than that, but we sure had a good time with glow water.

We grew some water beads, a control group in plain water and our test group in glow water.

For the glow water recipe, and a whole list of other fun recipes, click here

First we made a sign with a yellow highlighter and a yellow marker. We talked about how the highlighter glows or, fluoresces, in the black light but the marker just looks black because it's not reflecting the yellow we normally see in the visible spectrum. our beads, using regular water in the while bowls and glow water in the blue bowls. Then we made our glow beads using regular water and plain water. The kids wrote their hypothesis on which ones might glow under the glow light.

 It took a couple hours for our beads to soak up all the water, and then we headed to the basement!

 They had a great time trying to figure out what color the beads were in regular vs. black light. We turned on the lights to check it out. Same handful of beads, both times.

 I have a feeling there might be drips of glow water all over the basement now. The kids splashed around for a while, I'm thinking we should save the water and make some glowing Ooblek next.

Spring Piano 2014

As requested by his grandmas, FFM's Spring Recital performance.

He was thrilled to lead off the performance, and this year's recital was the best one yet. At the beginning of the year his teacher decided to leave the school where she had been teaching and a few students followed her for private instruction. Because we've done both group and solo lessons with Kelly for 2.5 years now we knew almost every other student at the recital. It's way more fun to listen to kids you know than strangers! The kids all did very well, and it was obvious they are all enjoying their music. No two kids repeated songs (unlike days of old), and the evening went by in a flash.

I missed the introduction, but here's Amazing Grace and Star Wars Main Title.
(a side note, Ms. Kelly's piano is a couple hundred years old and has a unique sound. Because a lot of these kids listen carefully when they play several of them fumbled around for a note that sounded different on her concert piano than on her practice one or the one they have at home. Normally I don't hear any of these kids stumble during a performance, it's good practice to play on all kinds of pianos!)

Spring DIY

Spring DIY is all about yard work. We've been remodeling our landscaping since the summer of 2010 and we're taking a year off of massive earthmoving. No spring would be complete without shoveling a few rocks, though, and this year was no exception.

After taking out a massive spruce tree that was threatening to take over our house we had a naked spot on the corner of our house. It's a southwest corner, so the shade from the tree was nice in the summer but made it very dark in the winter. "Plant something deciduous!" said FFM, so we did.

Planting our new magnolia took a little rock and earth moving, less than an afternoon. It looks a little ragged in the final photo, we had some good precipitation last night and everything is soggy this morning.

One of our goals for this summer was to have room for more tomato plants. We had tomatoes in our garden plot last year, but everyone's favorites were the ones that we had in pots right of the edge of our deck. The kids and Travis would grab a handful and munch every time they walked past. Travis got busy and built a large planter specifically for tomatoes so we could have all our plants within easy reach of the deck this year.

We also started a lot of seeds this year. We have in years past, but have been hampered in our effort by various circumstances like travel, surgery, and not enough lights. This year we were home and healthy and all our seedlings thrived. So much that they started taking over our basement and had to be moved outside where they could get enough light (they got too tall for our grow lights). Being Colorado it's still chilly at night, which tomato and pepper plants really don't like. I had a quiet day at work one day and drew up some plans for a quick and easy greenhouse. On the way home I swung by Home Depot and by the time Travis came home mid afternoon I'd built the whole thing less the plastic covering.

The plants are very happy and I can lift up the trap doors on the top to let in full strength sunlight when it's warm enough. It's chilly this morning so I've covered up the vent gap in the middle with a towel until it warms up.

We started radishes, lettuce, and carrots in our garden plot, but recent reports are that there is a hole in the fence and rabbits have munched all our sprouts. If the weather cooperates we'll replant again this weekend, patch the holes, and hope for better luck.

Addiction

It was just a matter of time.
FFM has become addicted to books. He hauls one around most places we go and finds a cozy corner to read everywhere. The coup  de gras came a couple of nights ago when we caught him waaaay after bedtime with a flashlight under the covers. My mother will appreciate the parenting irony, many a night I snuck a flashlight or insisted my closet light stay on do I could read late into the night. We compromised with a set amount of time to read in bed (with flashlight or book light) before final lights out. Last night I set his timer incorrectly and promptly forgot about it. A little after 9pm Travis walked by F's room and he was still reading away, struggling to keep his head up and his eyes open. We are one little guy,  I totally understand!