Christmas is Coming!!!

AND WE ARE NOT READY!!!!!!

I’m sure that comes as a surprise to no one! It certainly is no surprise to me! We have been crazy busy since I went back to work, but it’s been a good kind of busy!

I’m really enjoying working again, although I DON’T love getting up before the sun every morning! I’ll be glad when I no longer have to drive to work in the dark!

The kids are LOVING preschool! There’s always so much for them to do and so many other kids to play with! They are so social; it’s really been great for them to be back in a classroom!

Cute preschool-related story: Reagan and Zachary lucked out and got in the same preschool class as a little girl they went to preschool with last year! Since she already knew them, she (and her mom most importantly) also knew Thomas and Jonathan even though they are in a different class. So when this little girl had a birthday party last weekend and invited all the other kids in her preschool class, she also invited T and J from the other class! (Yea! No explaining why Z and R get to go to a birthday party, but T and J don’t! We dread that day!) Anyway, we went to the party, and everyone had a great time, but Jim and I were MOST entertained by Zachary who spent almost the entire party following another little girl around! It was SO CUTE! He kept chasing after her, yelling her name. Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind!

Now, I’m going to attempt to shoot out a quick series of posts that will likely be heavy on pictures and short on words! Enjoy!

Drum Roll, Please

After months of debating and weighing all the options and lots of waiting…

I’m going back to work!

You thought I was going to say I was pregnant, didn’t you!

No, no new baby. At least, not for me! There is a new baby on the way for my friend whose teaching position I am taking over. I’m so excited for her and so excited for this new chapter in our lives!

I start work on Monday teaching senior and sophomore English and will finish out the school year. The kids start all-day preschool on Monday, and they are super-excited too! I think they have really missed preschool this year. I know Reagan has especially missed having other little girls to play with!

So our lives are about to change DRAMATICALLY, probably in ways we haven’t even thought of yet (and believe me, we’ve thought about this A LOT!)

So please keep us all in your prayers as we adjust to this new phase in our lives. I will continue to update the blog as best I can, but don’t be surprised if large chunks of time go by without a new post. We’re going to be SO BUSY!

Nature Nook: The Mystery Bean

Once upon a time, there were four children who came home from preschool with mystery beans. The beans were a mystery because they were hidden inside damp paper towels sealed within Ziploc bags, and you couldn’t see them at all. Now I know I could have opened the bags, unfolded the paper towels , and looked at the beans, but at the time, it didn’t occur to me to do so.

There were no instructions.

I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so like any busy mom of quads, I piled them on the kitchen counter and told myself I’d figure it out later.

Weeks later.

Finally, I decided I was tired enough of moving them from one spot on the counter to another and I was going to throw them away. After all, they’d been sealed away from air FOREVER so they must be dead by now, right? But before I tossed them in the trash, my curiosity forced me to open them up and take a look.

THEY WERE ALIVE! THEY HAD SPROUTED! THERE WERE ROOTS!!

So they were saved from the trash can and planted instead. I was so excited they had actually grown that I didn’t pay any attention to whatever remnants there were of the original beans. Were they green? White? Who knows?

Zachary’s bean was the only one that survived the first planting. It had grown the most and had the most roots in the bag. So when the garden was built, the mystery bean went from houseplant to potential garden veggie.

I don’t know if we’ll actually get any beans from it, but it is flowering!

We’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Clowning Around

Not long ago, the kids came home from preschool on a Friday with instructions to dress up like clowns the coming Tuesday. Now this wouldn’t have been a problem on most weekends, in fact I loved the idea, but this was a particularly busy weekend, so I didn’t have time to sew even the simplest of clown costumes.

We had one clown wig already. I was pretty sure there was a ruffly clown collar in the attic somewhere, but that was it. I sent out a call for help via Facebook and was able to get one more clown wig (Thanks, Kim!) On searching the attic, I discovered the clown collar was MIA, but in its place there was the actual clown costume that went with the collar! Score!

But what about the other kids?

So in the absence of anything better, I pulled together a hodgepodge of clothing and did my best to create four clowns out of it. I don’t think the results are too bad!

Jonathan

Reagan

Thomas

You may notice that Zachary is wearing no clown makeup. He refused to let me put any on him. Not a surprise!

All in all, I don’t think they turned out too bad! The kids certainly enjoyed the dressing up! Hurrah for Clown Day!

The Christmas Chain Gang

Here is a picture of the Christmas countdown chain I mentioned in an earlier post. You can see the smiley face we added so we could also countdown to the day we left for Bud and KayKay’s house. The kids really loved removing a link each day. I wrote their initials on the links so we would have no arguments over whose turn it was to take the link off. (They each got a chain at preschool, but I used the other three as decorations in the playroom. I just didn’t have a good space for four countdown chains!)

This chain worked really well as a visual way for the kids to understand how many days there were until Christmas. It was also a good way to practice counting! If you’re like me and not lucky enough to have a beautiful countdown calendar that can be reused every year, this is a nice, easy, super cheap alternative that you might want to consider for next year!

A First!

As I’ve mentioned before, when the kids get in the car after preschool, I ask them what they did that day, and they tell me about all the things they ate. Well, a week or so ago, I finally got a new answer! What could it have been? The thing so wonderful it knocked the lunchtime food stats down a notch?

Pumpkin Pie Playdough!

The kids were so excited about having made playdough at preschool that day, they could hardly stop talking about it! Since it was such a hit, and since the teacher conveniently included the recipe with the other papers that came home that day, I thought I’d share it with all of you!

Pumpkin Pie Playdough

5 1/2 cups flour

2 cups salt

8 tsp cream of tartar

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 (1 1/2 oz) container pumpkin pie spice

orange food coloring (2 parts yellow, 1 part red)

4 cups water

Mix all of the ingredients together. Cook and stir over medium heat until all lumps disappear. Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is smooth. Store in an airtight container.

The best part about it is the smell! It’s so perfect for fall! And I love that this recipe could easily be modified for other holidays. Specifically, I can envision mint-scented Christmas playdough. Enjoy!

Who Knew Eating Would Be the Highlight of Their Day?

The kids are cracking me up over preschool! They LOVE preschool! When they wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing they ask about.

Are we going to pweschool today?!?

If I answer yes, they jump out of bed and head for the potty, ready to get the day started. (Well, everyone but Zachary. He’d rather sleep a little longer!) If I answer no, they start crying. And then they want to know where we’re going to go instead or who is coming to play at our house that day because heaven forbid they are stuck at home all day with just boring mom to play with!

When I pick them up after preschool, I always ask them what they did that day, and they always have the same answer:

We ate!

Then they list off all the food they ate that day and whether or not they finished all their sandwich or their peaches or whatever I happened to pack for them. When they are finally done giving me the lunchtime stats, I might be able to wrangle out some other info about coloring or playing a game, but often my question, “What else did you do?” gets answered with more food consumption statistics.

Once a week, they are supposed to bring in a Show and Share item (like show and tell, but with the understanding that the item will be passed around and shared with all the other kids). The day before this event, I remind my kids that the next day is Show and Share and they need to pick what they want to take. Every one of them will then start scanning the room and grab the first object their eyes fall upon and clutch it like it’s a prized possession. Then I spend the rest of the afternoon in conversations like this one:

Child: I want to take THIS!

Mom: Honey, that’s a spoon. Why don’t you take this tambourine? All the kids can take turns making music with it!

Child: No, I want to take this spoon! It’s my favorite! I love it!

The first time, Reagan attached herself to a little plastic puppy which I feel certain she had never once played with before. It came as an accessory to a Strawberry Shortcake doll which she has also never played with. But she swore it was the best thing ever, refused to be talked into taking something else, carried the puppy around with her the rest of the day, had a meltdown when I wanted to put it in her school bag that night so we wouldn’t forget it, insisted on taking it to bed with her, and remembered it the second she woke up the next morning so she could put it in her bag herself.

We’ll be picking new items this afternoon. I want to take this block! I’m going to share this empty envelope! I want to take this Mr. Potato Head arm! I’m going to take this ball of fuzz! (That last one will be Zachary. He likes fuzz.)

The Quiet of an Empty House

I stand in my living room and listen to the eerie quiet of my house. It’s different from the quiet of naptime. Naptime can be a quiet time, but always with the knowledge that a child’s voice could burst through the quiet at any moment. There is no chance of that on this particular day while I stand in my living room. There are no children in my house. They aren’t just sleeping. They aren’t out back playing under the supervision of someone not me. They aren’t here…at all.

They are at preschool!

Last Friday marked the end of the kids’ first week of preschool. This is a whole new chapter of life for them and for me, but we have all embraced it with joy! The kids love it! I wake them up in the morning and they squeal excitedly, “Are we going to school today?!?” (Okay, it’s really just Reagan who squeals excitedly. The boys don’t wake up quite as perkily as she does!)

We have developed a pretty nice morning routine, one that is time-efficient. This is important since I have to get up between 6:30 and 6:45 in order for us to get to school on time. Before I even enter their room, I am ready to go and so are their lunches and school bags. I take their breakfast with me into their bedroom, but they can’t have any until they have used the potty. This makes the pottying process much faster! While they eat breakfast, I pick out their clothes and lay the outfits on the appropriate bed. When they finish eating, they get dressed. They can’t leave the room until their shoes are on. Then it’s just a matter of combing hair and we’re ready to go. So far it has been a very smooth process. Yea!

Here are the kids on their very first day, so proud with their new bags!

Jonathan, Reagan, Thomas, Zachary

I swear it was totally a coincidence that the boys’ outfits matched their bags! The bags are a little big for them, but we had a hard time finding any that came in three coordinated but not identical boy versions. We really prefer for the boys not to be identical. My wonderful friend Michelle took on the mighty task of bag-hunting (as their birthday presents) and would call me to relate her frustrations: one style of bag with 2 vehicle designs, one style in 2 primary colors, one style with 2 cartoon character choices, never with three! And then she happened to find these at Old Navy. They are perfectly suited to the kids’ selves, if not their sizes. Jonathan’s has a crest on it, perfect for the first-born! Thomas’ is camo like his bib and some of his outfits. Zachary’s has 2 guitars on the front, perfect for Mr. Every-Object-I-Pick-Up-Becomes-A-Guitar. And Reagan, well, as long as it’s pink, she’s delighted!

The kids go to school 3 days a week. When I drop them off, they leave me with barely a glance back. They are SO excited to be there! No crying, no leg-clinging, no dragging them in kicking and screaming while they beg me not to leave. And I’m quite okay with it! We did the cry-every-time-Mommy-leaves thing at the church nursery, and I much prefer this! I know it doesn’t mean they don’t love me! I’m glad that they are confident enough in their own abilities and the belief that I will indeed return for them that they can simply go enjoy themselves.

And I don’t cry either. I know what a fabulous experience this is for them and for me. I am so grateful to all the people who have helped to make this possible (because preschool for four kids isn’t cheap folks!), and I don’t want to take one second away from their happiness and excitement by being weepy myself.

Whether I will be so strong when they start kindergarten remains to be seen!

And so I stand in the living room of my quiet empty house with all the possibilites of time at home to myself, and I get busy with the many projects I have swirling in my mind.

But first, I turn on the radio!