DeLancey's Do Earth Day

For Earth Day, we made a trip in to Berkeley, land of the tree huggers, to join in their festivities.  It was a small laid back festival, but it was something to do and got us out of Tracy and into the Bay Area, so it was a great day!

RJ was quick to try out the slack lines they had set up.

Logan also insisted on trying the slack line since he now does " 'nastics " too!

RJ sorted ocean animals at a display for a traveling marine biologist (she did programs for schools).  Too bad she didn't seem to have any patience for children whatsoever.  There was no one waiting and yet she seemed to be rushing RJ, who didn't want to just sort a few and be off, opting rather to sort every.single.one.  We were ready to move on, but had the respect for his process to let him be.  Yeah, I didn't pass her card on to RJ's preschool.  

The festival was on a city square that also featured a playground.

The kids both liked chasing each other and Daddy around this tree.

After the small festival, we ended up in Alameda looking for a restaurant (I have no recollection of why we changed locations as Berkeley has many great restaurants for us to try, but maybe a short nap for the kids in the car was our plan?)  I spotted a sign for "Farm Fresh Thai Food" and we decided to try it out, even though its name was a little weird for a Thai restaurant, Homeroom Racing Cafe.  HOLY CRAP!!  It was an awesome find, particularly for RJ.  Not only was the sign accurate and the food delicious and fresh, but the place happened to also feature slot car racing in the back room.  So while waiting for dinner, the boys mostly hung out back there, watching what was going on at the track.    

March in Pictures

March was pretty busy with lots of separate events discussed in their own posts, so there aren't a lot of random pictures to share.

We planted some seeds and made a small greenhouse for them

Ethan chasing Logan at the park

RJ pushing Logan in Lightning when the batteries were dead

RJ is still loving gymnastics.  He'll be ready to move up to the next level after his birthday!

Truck play in the sand

We FINALLY got glass for the beautiful frame Uncle Luke made for RJ's Madagascar print

The roses started blooming.  The red rosebush is incredibly prolific and it seems to bloom from March through  November with huge dark red roses when I do next to nothing for it other than occasionally cut some roses to put in a vase.  This is only the first bud.  The bush is now covered in blooms even after cutting over a dozen for my vase. 

Sheep to Shawl - March 31, 2012

I'm sure I've mentioned here before that we are CSA members at a local(ish) farm; Live Earth Farm.  We get a weekly veggie box and know exactly where our organic veggies are from.  Another perk of our CSA membership is that there are fun community events at the farm, like when we went tomato picking in August.  But not all the events are related to food!  The Sheep to Shawl event was an educational event that not only showed the process that wool goes through, starting with shearing the sheep and ending with knitting, crocheting, weaving, and felting, but also let kids and adults participate in a lot of the steps (but not the actual shearing - that was left to the professional).

We arrived just as the first sheep was getting sheared, so we watched for a while.  It was a little rougher than I had imagined with the shearer pretty much tackling the sheep to get them clipped.  Some poor sheep even had big purple antiseptic spots where they had clearly been nicked with the clippers.  Ouch!








We were also able to pet the sheep in their pen, which the kids loved!  RJ especially loved the lambs that were running around with the big sheep (the lambs got to keep their wool though!).  Unfortunately he kept scaring them trying to pet them.  And they kept hiding behind the big sheep, which frustrated RJ and Logan.

The shorn wool was left around in a pile for exploration and relaxation.

The wool was also used in the processing stations.  RJ and Logan skipped the washing station where fresh wool was handwashed and dried but were interested in other aspects of processing.



RJ was more interested in carding the wool, where he had to pick knots and missed debris out of the wool and then brush it between what I can only describe as two wire cat fur brushes.  This made it nice and fluffy and separated the fibers. His friend Maddie also enjoyed carding as you'll see in the video below!

Then we were off to the dyeing station, where he took his newly carded wool, soaked it in vinegar, put it in a bag with food coloring, then microwaved it.  He repeated this entire process until he had one of each color (red, yellow, blue, green).

RJ was also fascinated by the woman making yarn at a spinning wheel.

We (really me) also made a wool ball using felting techniques.  I made the ball from wool, RJ added the orange wool, and then sprayed it with soap solution.  Then, I was charged with the task of gently petting the soapy wool ball until it was felted. It takes 3-4 hours, but I had to finish it later because my hands were freezing from being wet and soapy in the cold rainy weather.  (The event was held in the open air barn.)




Logan enjoyed seeing the sheep, particularly once he knew the name of the last sheep to be shorn: Tinkerbell.  He kept saying, "Tinkerbell get haircut!".  However, he was much more interested in the mud puddles from the rain and the big farm dog than the wool processing activities.  He was super happy when Ashley lent him Maddie's old boots that were in their car and could splash around in the big puddles (Yes, we're idiots and didn't bring the kids boots even though it was pretty evident that it was going to be a muddy rainy day - doh!) .

And finally, both RJ and Maddie learned how to finger knit at the knitting station.

Both kids also enjoyed talking to the sheep in the truck, as you'll see in the video below.

More pictures from Sheep to Shawl are here.

RJ & Logan Get a New Art Area

I am constantly trying to maximize the usability of the kids' environments, whether it is rearranging furniture and toys in the living room, moving toys back and forth between the living room and family room, or simply reorganizing where the toys go.  After Christmas and Logan's Birthday (i.e., after RJ & Logan got a few new toys), we got a toy shelf for RJ's room, moved some of his more advanced toys up there (although I had some reservations since I originally wanted to keep the kids' rooms relatively toy free so that the temptation to play instead of sleep wouldn't be there), and resorted the toys downstairs. I also added picture/word labels to the bins and boxes so that it was clear what went where.  So far, this reorganization worked pretty well, but my biggest issue wasn't solved because my biggest issue was the case of the exploding art supplies.

Lance thought that I needed to just put all the art supplies somewhere else, like in a closet or the laundry room or something, but I argued that I wanted them accessible so that we could do art at a moment's notice, when inspiration hit.  We settled on an annex for some of the art supplies and recycling materials that I was saving "just in case".  So, now there is an exploding shelving unit in the laundry room, which still isn't ideal, but did help with the living room clutter.  There was also the issue that our common art supplies (markers, crayons, scissors, etc.) were in assorted containers on top of my sewing cabinet and they needed to be moved every time I wanted to sew, and of course this would mean that the art supplies were displaced for a week or so when I was working on a sewing project.

Then it dawned on me that since we started eating in the dining room rather than the kitchen, we weren't using the kitchen table for anything (except a catchall for random crap).  And the kids' easel was attached to our learning tower (which lived in the kitchen), and there was the sliding glass door for another painting/window crayon area.  Another bonus was that I just moved the kid's play kitchen set into the kitchen behind the island (where the kitchen table is), so if Logan got bored with a project, he could play there until RJ was finished.

So after finding some inspiration from various preschool settings and the Play At Home Mom website, I bought some inexpensive planters and a paper sorter from Target and attached them to the wall next to the kitchen bookshelf and cart, cleared a spot for the art basket in the bookshelf, and pooled all the crayons and sorted by color in baby food jars, which I put in a shoebox for easy moving.  I also moved the coca-cola cooler that housed art supplies into the area.

 So, now the kids have easy access to their markers, crayons, and paper, AND the paintbrushes and paint are now near the easel.

So far, they love being able to grab their own paper and draw whenever they want.

However, the one drawback is that paint is more accessible, which leads to more mess...but it IS a ton of fun.

For a quick rundown of what we have available:
Left planter - paintbrushes of all shapes and sizes
Right planter - markers
Paper holder - paper of various colors, stencils
Animal Crackers container on floor - washable paint (there is another animal crackers container in the laundry room with acrylic paints)
Basket on Shelf - tape dispenser, scissors, dinosaur stamp set, box of window crayons and markers, pencils, glue bottles, colored sand in baby food jars, roll of easel paper
Coke Cooler in front of kitchen cart - various supplies such as feathers, yarn pieces, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, magnet strips, newspaper
Easel - paint pots, container of chalk
Table - shoe box of crayons sorted by color in baby food jars, some separate type crayons
Shelves in laundry room - boxes, baby food jars, yogurt cups (great for holding glue or paint), acrylic paints, paper plates, art flour, art salt, art cornstarch, sand, bulk glue for refills, etc.

RJ & Logan get a visit from a Leprechaun!

We didn't do much for St. Patrick's Day, but the leprechauns paid the kids a little visit.

They dumped Logan's toys and left green footprints on the dresser (on their way out the window, of course).

They messed up RJ's bed and dumped his clothes.

And left those pesky green footprints.

And left GREEN pee in the toilet!  Silly leprechauns!

RJ and Logan Get Wet

We had some friends over on a Friday (it's our one totally "free" day without preschool, co-op, gymnastics, etc.), and when (unfortunately) Krishawn and Baby Mikey had to leave, it was clear that RJ, Logan, and their buddy Ethan needed some outside time.  It was pretty cloudy out and it had rained earlier, but they really needed to run around, and despite how it looked, it was eerily not cold out.

They found the giant puddles in the floor hockey rink and the trip to the park became blog-worthy. It started out pretty innocuously with them splashing around fully clothed, but then the shoes came off so we wouldn't have to wait for them to dry later.

Then RJ's jacket came off (Logan's was soon to follow).

Then both kids managed to completely fall into the puddle (it was slippery after all), and since RJ hates wet clothes, he stripped down to his underwear.

Logan was fine with his wet clothes, but once RJ was in underwear, he too wanted to strip down and run around the park in his underwear.

Erika and I were a bit surprised that Ethan didn't also want to strip down, but he did get plenty wet.

Needless to say, there was a warm bathtub shared by the three boys after the underwear parade back to our house!

More pictures here.

RJ and Logan Host a Dr. Suess Playdate

I have always loved Dr. Suess.  In fact, many of the Dr. Suess books gracing the kids' bookshelves are mine, and I plan on keeping them when they outgrow them.  So when we were hosting our friends Ashlan and Natalie for a drop-off play date, AND we were having a mini celebration for Natalie's first birthday, AND the Lorax movie had just come out, AND it was just Dr. Suess' birthday, it was clear we were having a Dr. Suess themed play date.

We started out by reading "The Lorax", which is one of my absolute favorite Dr. Suess books, then we made our own truffula trees out of yarn, pipe cleaners, and play-doh.  Natalie basically enjoyed playing with a pile of yarn while the bigger kids wound yarn around cardboard squares to make their puff balls (and Logan did a little of each, winding and messing with the yarn).

We also made Lorax Masks with felt, yarn, and glue, but I didn't get a picture of that.  When all the crafts were finished, they had black bean and cheese waffles and fruit for lunch followed by Truffula tree cupcakes.

Here is a better look at the Truffula Tree cupcakes.  They were strawberry cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting and mint meringue cookies perched on top of vanilla pirouette cookies.  And while the mix of flavors might seem a bit much to mix together, it was a very complimentary palette of flavors.  My only regret was that I should've made the meringue cookies yellow instead of green.  I fixed that in the second batch (which the kids are eating in the picture - the playdate was postponed a week due to the girls having a stomach virus, so we had a week of Lorax cupcakes before I made them again for the playdate).

In any case, the playdate was a lot of fun and I now know that I can totally handle (and have fun with) a morning full of 4 kids at ages 1, 2, 3.9, and 4.75 years!

More pictures

DeLanceys Go to the Oakland Zoo In the Rain

A few weeks ago, I decided to take the kids to the zoo on a Sunday.  We're members and it was a great way of getting them out of the house so Lance could have some alone-in-the-house time (before you get too jealous, I *think* he spent the time doing our taxes).

This was a fabulous plan until we hit the exit before the zoo and I noticed that it was drizzling.  I didn't think it was a big deal, but I wasn't sure how the kids (read: RJ, the drama queen) would react to it.

As it turns out, the drizzle was BARELY a drizzle, I had the kids coats on, and Logan had the stroller shade too, so everyone was comfortable.  And quite a few other things worked out in our favor too.

1.) The lions were actually close enough to see (even though they were sleeping) 

2.) The zoo wasn't crowded so we could stay and watch any animal and talk about it as long as we wanted since we weren't in anyone's way.  Also, it seemed that the zoo keepers and volunteers were out in full force and very chatty, which RJ really enjoyed.  His favorite thing to learn was that lions don't typically eat elephants because one kick could kill a lion.  Lions do however try to kill baby elephants in the extremely rare event that they're not protected by the herd.

3.) The tiger was ACTUALLY awake and walking around instead of being MIA or  zonked out.  And as you can see here, it did get sunny by the end of the day!

and 4.) Logan seemed very into the animals this time.  Here is a short video of him talking about the animals with me.

More pictures 

Logan Goes to Gymnastics

Logan has been watching RJ do gymnastics for a year now.  Week after week, he has tried desperately to get through the gate and onto the floor.  He has succeeded in getting in a few times and I've had to chase him down.  Back in January, I was thinking that he was almost old enough to try the parent-tot class, which is conveniently scheduled on Wednesdays when RJ has preschool!  I was planning on signing him up for April, when the next 3-month session starts (they take a percentage off when you pay for 3 months at a time rather than month by month).  However, Classic Gymnastics (where RJ takes his class), decided to help me out even more with their "March Madness" offer, where they offered a whole month of the parent-tot class during March.  I signed him up immediately, because this way, I didn't have to pay to see if he would like it or not!  Logan's bff, Ethan also signed up, so now they're gymnastics buddies too!

I love this class.  And not just because I get to jump into the giant foam pit with Logan (although I would be lying if I didn't admit that is my favorite part!  It's a giant pit full of squishy foam squares...how could that be anything less than awesome?!).  Logan is learning real gymnastics skills at a level that's very appropriate for him.  The coach basically introduces the skills and we help our kids through them, usually in circuits so that the kids don't have to wait very long.  Logan LOVES it, so we signed up beyond the free trial!  Although it doesn't make waiting during RJ's class any easier since he is not convinced to stay out by my "but you get to come on Wednesdays with Ethan" mantra (RJ's class is on Mondays).

Logan and Ethan also enjoy their post-class Jamba Juice!

Sadly, I have no pictures of them actually in class because I'm busy with Logan, but hopefully I'll get some soon since Ethan's grandpa was snapping pictures during the last class!

RJ Compares Saturn and Earth

We've been doing a lot of Outer Space things, even though you might think we'd be tired of it after Logan's Birthday Party.  One day we were reading a book about Saturn (because seriously, what kid's favorite planet WASN'T Saturn?).  In the book (Exploring Saturn; Bartolotti, 2003), there was a section that mentioned that Saturn is the size of approximately 760 Earths.  This book is clearly for older kids (like 4th or 5th grade) and had a LOT of information in it, but RJ insisted on getting it from the library and insisted on reading it, so I did a lot of paraphrasing and skipping stuff that was too abstract.  But this particular piece of information seemed to stick with RJ and he of course wanted to do a project about it.  We together (with my friend Erika who was over for a playdate when we read this) brainstormed what we could do, but it had to wait for another day, because clearly this project was not going to work with 2 two-year olds also running around.

First, we counted out 760 pinto beans (now you see why having the two-year-olds around was not going to work).  We did it by making 76 piles of 10, and then I showed RJ how we can count by 10's.  He caught on and joined in the counting.  There is no reason why it had to be pinto beans.  They just happened to be the oldest beans in the back of the cupboard and weren't organic (we were not going to waste the more expensive organic beans).

I also had RJ write out 1 = Earth,  760 = Saturn.  It was good writing practice and he was willing, so we went with it!

Then for the fun part.  While you can see from our display of beans how much more 760 is from 1, it doesn't quite translate to the size of the planets.  So we got a balloon and filled it with 760 beans.  This is not an easy task.  I ended up using the adapter cylinder from the Kleen Kanteen sippy cup to hold the opening of the balloon open, and had to keep blowing it up a little to make the beans settle to add more [Note to self: You need a funnel.  How do we NOT have a funnel?].  But finally, all the 760 beans were in and we tied off the balloon and added a pipe cleaner (because Saturn needed rings!).

He was so excited, he HAD to take it to gymnastics that day (it was a Monday) to show Coach Josh.  This seemed weird to me at the time, but I went with it since he was excited.  However, it turned out to be more work for me because when he put Saturn back in my bag, he somehow poked the balloon with the pipe cleaner and when my bag shifted, Saturn split and my bag now contained 760 pinto beans.  And so I had to fill ANOTHER balloon with the 760 pinto beans I had to retrieve from my bag.  This time, I did NOT count them, and I'm sure we're probably a few short and I'm okay with that.  I double bagged Saturn this time, did a better job making sure the pipe cleaner wasn't poking it, and it's thankfully remained intact for a few weeks now.  It even survived a trip to preschool for share day, where he further impressed his teacher by explaining the whole thing AND added that Mars was the size of half of Earth, which meant it was half a bean.

I LOVE what hands on learning can do.  He really understands the size difference now, and is noting size differences everywhere now.  And this is an early intro to fractions as well with the concept of "half".

RJ Rocks the Monkey Bars

Earlier this month, I took the kids to Veteran's Park in Tracy.  It's actually one of my favorite parks because both structures are lower to the ground than some of the other parks in the area, and it inspires me to get exercise to get there since I put the kids into the bike trailer to go ( I could drive and be there in a few minutes, but that just seems wrong).  The kids love it because it has a sand pit and the spinney things that they run to first, every.single.time. The last time we went, RJ discovered that he can do the monkey bars! I credit the playground design (in addition to his strong arms from gymnastics) for giving him increased confidence to try them.  His feet were barely off the ground, so kudos to the designers of this playground for making a challenge for children that isn't so scary (for them and their parents).  But don't take my word for it.  Just watch the video.

We also took a picnic lunch that day too!