Fun Filled Days With Sweet Little Children

It is February. My Father always called February the two-month period between January and March. In February, you are officially getting a little tired of continually bundling up just to go to the mailbox and you begin to fondly dream of mud. (Remind me of that in another 1 ½ months!) You start looking for sounds, sights and smells of spring. So, to chase away the lethargy that threatens to creep in you’ve got to find something fun!

Fortunately, I have four highly energetic, super cute, and very fun filled children. So, what have we been doing?

Well, we learned about tastes – salty, sweet, sour and bitter. After identifying the four tastes (using salt, sugar, lemon and grapefruit seed extract, respectively) I had the kids try a whole bunch of different foods and categorize them. You should have seen the faces! Liam likes the unsweetened cocoa mixed with bakers chocolate (bitter); Phin prefers honey and really doesn’t like the rosehips (texture has always been a big thing for him); Abigail likes salty things – she wanted to eat the whole pile of baking soda after one small lick! And NONE of them likes the dried hops I had them suck on: they put it on their tongues and waited for the flavor to greet them. Simultaneously the hops flowers reappeared on the table as little hands reached for their water.

We’ve been learning the alphabet – well, the sign language alphabet. Believe it or not, Liam is the most fascinated. He can’t really make his hands do what he wants, but he is frequently coming to me with twisted little fingers saying, “A” or “B” or some other letter he fancies. The refrigerator letters are facilitating this nicely!

In spite of the cold, we do go outside fairly regularly – especially when the sun is peeking through the dreary gray clouds. The other day Abbi invented shadow tag: she kept chasing after me saying, “I’m gonna step on your shadow!” I would run away and yelp when she finally stomped on it. The funny thing is that I remember doing that same thing when I was a kid! Now, I don’t have a lot of memories from my childhood, but watching my children has brought a few of them back.

Abigail has been learning to cook (much to the stretching of my patience) and Phin has taken an interest in vacuuming – but only if he gets to use Papa’s little battery operated shop vac. Very handy for getting the ladybugs rounded up and the stairs and baseboards cleaned. This morning, Andrew reminded me that “Boys are task oriented and they thrive on legitimate praise for a job well done.” We will have to get out that vacuum again today!

So, combine the above activities with lots of book-reading, drawing, swinging, running, jumping on the couch, and (of course) folding laundry, and you have a recipe for fun-filled days with sweet little children! (Anyone want to come and visit?

And, for the record the nemesis is conquered – for now. Wanna know how I know? The kids’ drawers are so full that they are hard to open. Maybe now I wont have to do laundry for another week!!! Hooray!!