One month old!

That's right! Snuggle-bug is already one month old, and her cheeks are getting chunky and the double chin is starting!


Going back in time...Honey at one month: (interesting, Hubby thought her eyes were brown at birth, but looking back, they were the same dark blue that Snuggle-bug's are!)
Speedy:
And Princess, pre-digital (I so wish we'd had a digital camera when she was born, we bought one when she was about 3 1/2 months old):

Ironic, isn't it?

That the diaper bag so carefully stocked with interesting-we-only-get-to-play-with-these-in-church items hardly keeps anyone's attention for more than 5 minutes or keeps anyone quiet.

But, said diaper bag keeps Honey incredibly occupied scattering the contents all over her room when she gets into it at naptime. I guess she has mastered unzipping. :)

She is also saying many new words. Like 'nose.' Except she really emphasizes the sss, like 'noss.' So just imagine her repeating noss over and over while doing this:

Fun at the Gym

Once again, we got to head to a local gymnastics building for a PAT sponsored fun morning.

Honey looks sheepish, because she had just poked her head out when someone walking by ran into her. I didn't know she could retreat so fast!
Yeah, the digital timing. I even allowed for the lag, but was still too late to catch Princess jumping in. See her hair flying in the bottom right corner? This happened twice, then she was too tired to let me try again. I can't blame her--have you ever tried climbing out of one of these foam-filled pits??
Just hangin' around...
Cheese!
All right, caught Speedy jumping in! He couldn't quite get the concept of working his way to the side to climb out, and kept climbing out right where kids were trying to jump in. :)
It's interesting the new titles that have come with the 4th child: 'Amazing.' 'Supermom.' 'Veteran mother.' 'Experienced.' and my favorite, 'Crazy!'

No-fry potato doughnuts

These are very yummy, and the hardest part is having some extra mashed potatoes ready to use. This is how easy the dough is to work with:
Princess rolled and cut out a whole pan by herself while I was feeding Snuggle-bug!

Speedy helped, too. :) Honey had to be distracted from snitching dough.

Let me know if you'd like the recipe, and maybe I can get it added later.

Winter Wonderland

We haven't done a lot in the way of school and activities lately, but I'm trying to get back in some kind of groove! We had some snow last week, so made Winter W's. I also brought a dishpan of snow inside for the kids to play with in the sink. We made a snowball and put it on a plate to see what happened, then the kids got spoons out and chowed down. Silly me, I thought they'd mush and mash it. We read 'The Snowy Day' by Ezra Jack Keats.

This week we tried salt-water painting. It was supposed to leave crystals on the paper as it dried, but it flopped. I must not have put enough salt in it!
Then we made some snow-dough. (I'll put the recipe at the bottom of the post.) I halved it, and I'm not sure what happened, but it was about like playing with mashed potatoes. Really sticky ones.

So we added flour. Honey ate some and made a face. Who wouldn't? It is cornstarch, salt & water. You can't tell that she already had blue around her mouth from eating a crayon. And she kept licking and eating the dough. We do feed this child, in case you had doubts!
The flour helped, and it was finally something we could work with. I don't think the kids minded the sticky mess at all, and enjoyed kneading their flour in. And silver glitter. I think next time I'd use some of the white/iridescent glitter instead.
He's not called Speedy for nothin'--look at those hands go! :) (I'm still working on getting the photos I want.)
Some of Princess's finished products--she left them out to dry. And after supper Speedy proceeded to poke fingerprints in most of them and mash the snowman down. Grr.
Some of the books we read:
Tracks in the Snow was very cute; Names for Snow was not up my alley. The names were like 'harmonica, when it whistles in the trees,' etc. Hibernation and Migration were very simple, but covered a LOT of different animals that hibernate and migrate!

More books:
Three Snow Bears is a take of Goldilocks; Katy and the Big Snow is a classic the kids love; SNOW is a new favorite, very simple, but they like repeating the words.

We sang a couple songs about what animals do in winter.

Here's the mashed potato, I mean snow-dough recipe:

SNOW DOUGH
calls for melted snow water, but you can substitute tap water. :)

1. Mix 1 1/3 cups snow water with 2 c kosher salt (I just used table salt, same thing??) and bring to a boil. Simmer several minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

2. Mix 1/2 c snow water with 1 c cornstarch (this makes a very interesting, not quite solid, not quite liquid combo) and add to salt water. Stir well, then let cool. Store snow dough in an airtight container.

3. For extra shine, add silver glitter to dough. Pound flat and make cookie-cutter shapes, or sculpt snow creatures. Dough will harden within 36 hours. (but not fast enough to keep little brother's fingers out of it...)

Girl, Interrupted

The story of my life. All day, I have witty and clever blog posts going through my head, things to remember, funny things the kids do. If I'm lucky, I can remember them until I get some computer time. If I'm even luckier, the kids aren't constantly interrupting me and the internet is not down. I wondered if I should get one of those 'note-to-self' tape recorders. But when would I have time to listen to it??

There's so many things I'd like to to, but I don't know where the time goes! Or if I have a minute, I can't remember what it was I was going to do when I had the time! There's a deal at 2peas right now--upload 20 projects and earn $20 to spend in their store! How could I pass that up? Hopefully I'll get to it. :) There was a call for journal-bloggers at Blissfully Domestic that piqued my interest. Maybe I'll get to that, too. Or my lonely scrapbooks.

My 3 and 5 year olds are already telling me they're bored and there's nothing to do. Oh dear. Just another confirmation that we have too much stuff. I've been wanting to declutter and organize, but this also falls into the interrupted category.

Speedy likes to make idle threats when I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do or won't let him watch yet another cartoon. He needs to work on things that might actually be meaningful to me, though. Here's one of his threats this week: 'If you don't let me ___, then I'm going to throw all my toys OUTSIDE!' (Hmm, that wouldn't really bother me! Less to pick up!) Another one, 'I'm not eating EVER AGAIN!' (Again, doesn't really bother me, I seriously doubt he would last for even one meal!)

On the plus side, the 3 older kids all had rags and spray bottles in hand to help me clean this morning. We're still working on which household items can be cleaned with what. Like, let's not squirt vinegar-water on the computer mouse to clean it. But thanks for helping!

I've been enjoying seeing Snuggle-bug change already. Her cheeks are plumping up, her eyelashes are getting longer, she's looking at more things (albeit cross-eyed). I never get tired of checking out the baby features. And wishing they would never get bigger. But at the same time wanting to be done changing diapers. (after 5+ years straight of it!)

Honey has started getting reprimanded. She just gets crushed, but she definitely knows what she's doing. She's just so cute and animated in her facial expressions and what she tries to say and do. She has an adorable gallop-a-skippity-hop she does around the house. We like to say she just toodles all over. :)

More Sister Love

Princess loves to hold Snuggle-bug.