Belly Contest

Last night Dylan and Noah made up their first game together. It was called Belly Contest. Here's how you play:

1. Dylan chants, "Let's have a belly contest!"
2. Dylan lifts up her shirt, exposing her belly.
3. Dylan encourages, "Noah, lift up your shirt! Lift up your shirt!"
4. Noah lifts up his shirt, exposing his belly.
5. They rub bellies together, laughing hysterically.
6. Hugging ensues.

Everyone wins.

"Backyard" by Dylan S. Rhodes

"Backyard" by Dylan S. Rhodes

We were testing out the idea of studying backyards in our hope to incorporate the Project Approach at home. I'm reading this awesome book, Teach Your Child to Love Learning which I HIGHLY recommend for any parent who wants to get a little more intentional (yet still be organic) about learning at home. It's a super easy to follow, functional book. I'm still trying to figure out what our first project should be...and I'm pretty convinced we're going with "trees," but like I said, we were testing to see if backyards was a good idea. Above is Dylan's initial drawing of what a backyard looks like to her. She was very detailed with it, and as the book suggests, we used a felt-tip black pen and we labeled all the pieces of the drawing after she was finished. I am enamored with the drawing and my favorite part is the picnic blanket with the little grape tomatoes in the bowl. Click on the picture and you can see an enlarged version if it's too small to make out what everything is.

when i grow up...

I want to be a firefighter.

Or so we pretended today. My friend Megan set up a visit to the Evergreen Park Firehouse this afternoon for our playgroup. What a blast the kiddos had - and us adults learned a thing or too as well.

Here are a few highlights:

Ruby (Megan's daughter) and Noah sitting in the classroom at the firehouse, listening to Fireman Ed.

Noah gets his first look at all the fire trucks.

The overall highlight of Noah's visit. The dress-up. Here he casually turns for a candid.

This is the picture I was really hoping for when I saw those dress-up firefighter outfits laying there on the floor. Wow, this is one happy-photographer-who-likes-posey-pictures moment.

Noah did NOT want to take the firefighter outfit off. This is to show how thrilled he was with the whole thing - even that hot sticky smelly mask (and I didn't tell you it was 85degrees and humid out during all of this...)


Fireman Ed lets the kids see inside a Firefighter's Ambulance. Wow...


Now for Dylan's highlight: sitting in the firefighter's recliners watching their gigantic TV. Seriously - see how everyone else is standing up - note my two sloths making a home in the easy chairs. Fireman Ed tells about how this is their favorite room...my kids concur.

We also got to go inside a fire engine. Learning moment: Fire engines are the trucks that carry the hoses. Fire trucks are the ones with the ladders (no hoses). Thanks Fireman Ed.

NOW.

I can be a bit spontaneous sometimes. Not in the buy a ticket to Europe on a whim kind of way, but in the I've made up my mind in the last 20 seconds about this and I need to do it...NOW. Call it a craving for instant gratification.

This is why I never spend less than $100 when I go to Target. Why I buy three bags of Brach's Mellowcreme Pumpkins at Walgreens on August 29th. And why I never make advance appointments for haircuts. I delay, put off, don't think about it...and then when I want it...I want it now.

I am this way with my own hair, and now my children's hair. So Dylan has a new haircut...this was after I asked my sister on the phone (about 20 minutes before the scissors were cutting off the first lock) - do you think I should cut Dylan's hair? Then I proceeded to convince myself that it should be done (while not really giving you a chance to say your opinion much...sorry Lara). And then I drove straight to a hair salon in Hyde Park and called them like a stalker from outside the salon, reading their phone number off the front door. No appointments. Drive to next salon, call them... Me:When do you have any appointments in the now-ish future? Them: How about 4:00 (it was 3:15). Me: How about now? Them: Ok, come on in.

And so Miss Rita cut her hair, did a marvelous job and I love it. Even though when I paid on the way out...they said "How old is HE?" hmmmm...and I never thought I'd be "that mom" who cut their daughter's hair boy-short. C'est la vie.

Oh yeah, and I bribed her with a lollipop. No shame.