Eggs, Crystal Climbers and Julia

Eggs

The little boy is very determined to decorate for Easter.

Everyday, he makes me cut out eggs from colored construction paper – dozens and dozens of eggs.

He scribbles little words or pictures on some and on the others, he wants “Mommy words.”

He frequently interrupts my writing and asks me to add a word or even to write something else entirely.

Because of that, the eggs don’t always make a lot of sense.

He writes his name on most of them and then insists on reading each one aloud.

It has actually been a great way to help him learn some new words.

His reading has improved by leaps and bounds this school year.

He loves this egg activity and we’ve done it every afternoon for a week now.

One day, I felt so wasteful that I pulled my traffic school pages out of the recycle bin and cut eggs from them too.

He decorated their plain sides, but he taped them backwards, so now we have California traffic code on our wall.

I don’t know what he remembers or believes about the Easter Bunny, but he sure has holiday spirit.

He decorates for every season and seems very invested in cutting and pasting and taping and stapling.

Every bit of it goes up on the wall or hangs from the chandelier.

It’s serious business.

As much as I don’t prefer the look of our front room a lot of the time, I am cheered by his purposeful effort to make our house into a home.

He puts his stamp on everything and takes pride in his work.

How can I be bothered by that?

♥

Crystal Climbers

For Christmas, we got him a box of Crystal Climbers from Lakeshore Learning.

He plays with them once a week or so.

They’re not a hugely exciting toy, but he makes the most of them.

Last week, he was quietly playing with them in the front room while I was busy in the kitchen.

When I walked back to see how he was doing, he was just coming down the stairs.

He had gone to get the tape from my sewing table.

Groovy, man.

Getting the tape out of his hair made us both laugh.

Oh, how I love this little boy.

Happy Wednesday!

♥

P.S.  Have any of you read The Reader?  Is it worth keeping in my someday pile?  You know, that’s the ginormous heap of books on top of the piano that I’d like to get to, but probably never will.  I have one friend who didn’t like the book or the movie.  What do you think?

P.P.S.  Julia Child is alive and well and showing her stuff, right in our own front yard.  Lovely.

♥♥

Rainbow, Coronado, Dr. Seuss, Llama & a Geyser

It rained a lot last week.  I had to drive in it a couple of times.  This was the gift for my efforts:

♥

Monday before last, I took the little boy to Coronado.

We went to our favorite park and then walked along the bay to the Coronado Cupcakery.

The plain white cupcake was just as good as I remember, but our to-die-for selection this time was a chocolately blob of goodness with a cheesecake layer on top.  And chocolate chips mixed in.  Oh my.

You’ll have to get your own.  I’m not sharing.  🙂

The boy had some fun, but he ran out of steam pretty fast.  It was late in the afternoon and he wasn’t really his best.

I tried to climb up the side of an old wooden play structure.   I didn’t make it.  😳  I lost my footing, scraped my palm and came home with a fat black bruise on my shin.  Fun.

It was a cold, clear, and beautiful day.  The bruise was a small price to pay for that view.

♥

Yesterday, the school held a chalk festival to put some steam behind literacy week.  Each classroom was given an illustration from a Dr. Seuss book and tasked with recreating it on the sidewalk.

The kids all worked really hard and clearly had a great time participating.  Our class did a page from The Cat In The Hat.  The little boy helped to color in Thing 1 and Thing 2.  😀

Oh, and speaking of Dr. Seuss and kids and literacy and all that, the little boy read two books to me this week.  Two!

He read Go Dog Go by P.D. Eastman and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  He read them out loud, with very little assistance.

This is huge.  HUGE.

My son doesn’t like to read books to me.  He generally becomes annoyed if I try to read them to him.

This time, he selected the books and he wanted to read.  WANTED.  TO.  READ.

Be still, my book collecting heart.  ♥ 🙂

♥

This morning, we saw a geyser on the way to school.

Someone drove her minivan over a hydrant.  😦

The water pressure was kind of shocking – forty feet in the air.  You could see the top half of the geyser way above the buildings.

It spewed for over twenty minutes.  All that precious water just flowed into the street.  Sad.  Chaotic.

The traffic was a little dicey at the usually empty intersection.  The little boy didn’t seem to notice the red lights.  Hmmm, maybe I can arrange for a geyser every morning.

♥

On Monday, I drove Mom and Lou out to Simpsons Nursery.  Lou is a llama whisperer.   He got some great pictures.

Sweet.

BIG.

Charming.

♥

We also picked up a couple of Yellow Jasmine vines.  They are really fragrant.

Can’t wait to plant them.  😀

♥

That kind of sums up the last ten days or so…

That, and a bit of marital strife, a couple of tantrums, a tad of depression, a crock pot full of delicious potato soup (thank you, Traci!) and some 80’s music.

Yeah, that about covers it.  😀

What did YOU do this week?

♥♥