Silas and the Pink Bath

What I Did On My Birthday

~Became 36
~Made a bird feeder out of a milk carton
~bought supplies for a small vegetable garden raised bed
~ate dinner at a mexican restaurant
~watched a new Survivor and a new Mythbusters (we totally have cable now!)
~that is about all

Some time ago I had planned on a Disneyland trip on my birthday, but that didn't pan out. Then there was supposed to be cheesecake and that didn't happen either. :( I think I might try to make the cheesecake happen today instead.

Rainbow Cupcakes

For St. Patrick's Day. With a cloud of frosting on top. We made them using these directions.

Around the House - Books

I bought some bookshelves to replace the crappy ones we were using before. These ones look fairly nice, but still aren't all that sturdy. I think one day it would be cool to just build some floor to ceiling ones, all along one wall. Or two! Or four! In some other house, of course.



I really like the bird decal that I put up there, but was disappointed that light reflected off it so easily, making it look like, um... a decal. We're calling this room the library. It's one of the superfluous rooms that make me feel first world guilty. Directly across from it is this:



That's a cat castle made by Saren. Eventually I'll put a couch there (most likely from freecycle or the thrift store, or maybe a hand-me-down), and then some more bookshelves along the other wall. Because those shelves I just put up are nearly full. And tax refund time means Amazon splurge.



Plus, I have found a lot of good books at the thrift store lately. Plus, we always have a huge pile out from the library.



And here's another source of inspiration for filling some small shelves in that room.

A Bunch of Random Pictures

Our backyard is a wide swath of dirt with a few trees at the edges, but there have been a few signs of spring nevertheless. We found a few little ladybugs.

There are tiny leaves popping up all over what the landlord tells us are two apple trees.

This is called Apricot Mallow or Desert Mallow and is a desert bloom that obviously nobody planted, but found its way into the yard nonetheless.

We made some cornstarch goop.

Irina liked it best.

We've decided against a gate for the stairs for the time being (and maybe always?), figuring that since we are always nearby and can stay with him going up or coming down, he'll become competent sooner and we won't feel as worried. That's the theory anyway. The last time we had stairs was when Harper was a baby and it wasn't really an issue. How come baby socks never stay on?

Over just the past few weeks really Silas has become VERY interested in food and has started eating a lot of things. He begs for a bite of anything that anyone else is eating (by loudly saying "MMMMMMMMMM") and it seems like he'll eat pretty much anything. He has a real fondness for floor food. I have relaxed immensely and stopped worrying so much about what he's "ready" for and he has surprised me with what he'll chow down on, always without mishap. Last night, seconds after waking up from a nap, he grabbed a piece of homemade pizza crust from my plate (with pizza sauce on it) and ate the whole of it while sitting in my lap.

Barbie parade!

This is what our mountain looked like the other day. It sure has been rainy this year.

Looking out the window.

Makeshift binoculars.

So disappointed.

That neighbor's supposed Twilight shirt actually says, "Jesus is the light."

:(

Still. He does wear it every day.

Utter Madness!!!!

I mentioned in my last post that our friends and fellow unschoolers, Tara, Justin, and Zeb, were preparing to leave Las Vegas for good and hit the road in their RV. Zeb wanted to have an all ages, co-ed, parents welcome sleep-over as a last hurrah, but their house was already empty, so Saren talked me into offering our house for the event. It almost got called off completely due to Irina getting sick, but we finally did manage to get it together for Tuesday night.

We had at the most 10 kids, I think. Some didn't stay the whole night. We had pizza, hot chocolate, a movie, and one neighbor complaint. (Funny thing about that neighbor: we've never seen him not wearing a black Twilight t-shirt.) It was wild and loud and chaotic, and... actually pretty fun.



If you know me pretty well, you'll know that doing this was stepping pretty far outside of my comfort zone. But I told myself that when we moved, I wanted to have more people over. At the old house, we almost never did. Partly due to our antisocial leanings, but also because of the house itself. It just made me feel self-conscious to have people in it unless I was very comfortable with them.

So, it was good and I'm glad we did it. I'm happy that we were part of making something cool and wild and crazy happen for Zeb as one of his final memories of the Life Learners. I also offered to take one of the kids to the park the next day with us, as his mom is not in town right now, and I discovered how well he gets along with all my kids, so I think perhaps more play-dates could be in our future. So that was a very good thing.

I had been thinking and worrying a lot lately that there was not enough social interaction in my girls' lives. Having this sleepover has helped me to see that maybe I'm just not doing enough to invite opportunities into our lives. But it hasn't been just this; new friends just seem to pop up when I'm open to it. I was worrying about the lack of girls around my girls' ages and then, all of a sudden, there were some. And then I realized that maybe they don't need girl friends quite as much as I thought they did. They all three of them had such a fun time with the boy who stayed after everyone else was gone.

For Saren, the sleepover was right up her alley. She had a blast. For Harper, not so much. She agreed to do it, even though I gave her the right to veto it. But once it was going on, she realized it was just too much for her, too many people, no way to escape. She made me promise to never do it again. Irina loved it too. But Irina has no off button. So after a day of gymnastics, followed by a couple hours with her cousins (who come over after school until their mom picks them up), followed by 16 hours with a bunch of unschooled kids in her house, followed by a couple hours at the park playing with a bunch of unschooled kids, well... she pretty much just crashed. This was the aftermath of Tuesday and Wednesday, us after we got home from the park, Pat after he got home from work.