All Things Supercinski

Can you believe Sugar-girl is already four?! We celebrated on her birthday with a small party of grandparents and sweet girls around her age. These are other homeschooled friends that we enjoy playing with during the school year. When our kids are together, they always end up playing “Little House on the Prairie.” I love it!

When I asked Sugar what kind of birthday party she wanted to have, she did not hesitate to say she wanted a Rapunzel (Tangled movie) party. Tangled party ideas abound over the world wide web, so this was rather easy to plan and pull off. I had to keep things simple due to my commitments at our annual Classical Conversations Parent Practicum the week prior to the party.

I printed banners similar to the ones all over the Tangled movie and strung them through the house. I also found these purple paper lanterns at Hobby Lobby, and Sugar and Bud thought they were perfect.

The girls made some crowns like Rapunzels (did you know they make sticker jewels? I was in awe!) and sported them for the remainder of the celebration.

In Tangled, Rapunzel is trapped in her tower all day long and spends a lot of time painting the walls inside. Thomas rigged up a tower in the driveway for the girls to paint. They painted the outside and this kept them busy for quite some time.

Then we came inside and made these adorable Pascal blowers. They were a hit.

Then we had lunch and cake. In planning her party, Sugar and I looked at many, many different Tangled-themed birthday cakes in trying to decide which one she wanted. She picked the most simple one out there, and I was not about to say no. She only ate marshmallows. I think next year, I am going to make her and ice cream cake. She never eats anything but frosting anyway, and this year she didn’t even eat that!

Later, Sugar opened presents. Her grandparents were very generous. Nana made her another princess dress, and I think this was her best replica yet.

After everyone left, I suggested that I dress up with Sugar and we have a tea party (just like in “Annie and Snowball and the Teacup Club” that Bud had read to Sugar the night before). I had an old prom dress that my mom had kept, and we sipped on tea (water) and then had a dance party.

Sugar ended the day with a trip to Rosa’s and fell asleep in the car on the way home. Turning four is rough!

Our littlest guy is changing so much and turning into quite the curious little mess maker. As I was picking out pictures for this post, I thought it could be more appropriately titled, “Messes Speedy Made.” Our calendar has found a new location on a higher wall where Speedy cannot remove the dates.

At nine months, Speedy is crawling everywhere and very quickly. He goes on hands and knees for the first 4-5 paces and then resorts to his spidery army crawl. Did I mention how fast he is? He pulls up to standing on most anything and will cruise along holding to furniture, ledges, people’s legs, etc. This is the face he makes when he is about to grab the camera.

He takes two naps a day, one around 9 a.m. for about 1.5 hours and another around 1 p.m. for 1.5-2 hours. He is our early bird and doesn’t stay up past 7 without a lot of fuss. He prefers to be in bed around 6:30, but this can be difficult some days. He wakes up twice in the night and is up for the day at 6:30 or 7 a.m. One day, Speedy fought his morning nap for ages. I thought he would never go to sleep. When he finally did, I peeked into his room as saw this. The quilt is is laying on was previously attached to the wall by his crib. I had no idea he could reach it (his crib is pulled away from the wall a few inches) or that he was strong enough to pull it down.

Speedy got his two top teeth in last month, within a week of each other. There was one epic night of fussing and frequent waking, but the next day, the first one broke through. I am so thankful since those two top teeth were the worst for Sugar.

Speedy is eating baby food much better and will actually finish about half a stage 2 jar at a feeding. He figured out how to drink out of a sippy cup, just in time for the hot summer starting. He also started swallowing some Cheerios or cut up food. His pincer grasp is really good, but rather than using it to eat finger foods, he prefers bits of paper, tiny rocks and dirt. His favorite finger foods are watermelon bits and a strip of steak. He will gnaw on steak happily for a long time. Yes, my poor third child is wearing a pink bib. Sometimes he wears pink diapers, too. Shhh….

I haven’t bothered to look up the other kids nine month updates, but I think Speedy is quite advanced in his vocabulary. He says, “Mama” and means me. He will whine it as he crawls across a room to me. He will say, “Dada” and mean Thomas. He also says “ah ah ah” to mean “uh oh”. If you ask him to say his big brother’s name, he says, “Ya ya.” He waves bye-bye all the time and will wave bye-bye and say “Nigh nigh” as he is going off to bed. No signs yet, but I blame myself for a lack of consistency.

We took Speedy to the splashpad with us twice this month, and he loved it. The hardest part is making sure he doesn’t get trampled by other children. He likes the pool, but manages to hoist himself out of his flotation device, face first into the water. He much prefers crawling around and finding rocks, dirt, etc. to eat.

Just in case you think I seem to have it all together, here is a snippet from my real life today.

For the past two weeks or so, I had noticed that my bottomless pit of a diaper bag was smelling faintly like apples (though in a good way). I had thrown out a baggie with moldy apple slices, but assumed that the smell was just lingering. It didn’t smell bad, so I didn’t really think much of it. Then I stumbled upon this, and it all made sense.

I believe this lovely apple had been at the bottom of my bag for at least a month. Those are pennies buried in the sides. I have cleaned and reorganized my bag, so hopefully there will never be a repeat of this unfortunate incident.

Thomas surprised me with a brand new dishwasher for Mother’s Day. Our old one worked, but it was the loudest dishwasher ever. So loud that we couldn’t run it if we were home unless we were asleep, otherwise everyone was having to yell over the noise. Three kids + extra loud noise in the background = Two crazy parents.

The dishwasher also came in a huge box which was turned into a clubhouse for the big kids. They spent two hours decorating it this morning. TWO WHOLE HOURS!!! Yes, I am yelling! I worked out, took a shower, worked on some stuff on the computer, and they were still working. They are back out there right now, hard at work. Get yourselves some big boxes and markers, people!

Two gifts in one!

Now they are wanting to add a roof, but that dishwasher needs to get finished first. Good thing my installation guy isn’t protesting his working conditions.

11. Monster in the Hollows by Andrew Peterson – This was the third book in the Wingfeather saga that I read to myself and then again aloud to the big kids. We all loved this book. I cried reading the final chapters to them, it is such a great story. If you have kids my kids ages or older, you have got to get these books! We are trying to be patient waiting for the final book to be written.

12. Green Leaf in Drought by Isobel Kuhn – This book has been quoted so many times that I have had it in my mental “to read” list for a long time. I was so happy to see it on the shelf in our church library. It was a great little book, full of truths and lessons in faith.

13. Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder – This book tells the story of a Berundian man name Deo who escapes genocide in Berundi to Rwanda, as the genocide begins there. He miraculously makes it to America. His story is amazing, and the history of those parts of Africa was helpful to learn, while tragic.

My “to read” pile is getting smaller, and I am not very excited about those books. Does anyone have any recommendations for me?

It seems like every year, April flies by at a breakneck pace. Every weekend was full of activities and events, and our weeks were full of wrapping up our different homeschool groups and cramming for Subject Masters at CC.

Some of our neighbors invited us out to their parents’ land in North Bryan to watch their kids and friends play polo. On real horses. With real mallets and everything. It was fun and beautiful weather. It was so sweet of them to invite us–the kids also had a blast and were so brave around the dogs!

We had our last day of Classical Conversations for the year. This is our campus picture. Bud worked really hard and memorized all 24 history sentences and 24 English grammar facts. He could have done geography (all the US states, capitals, and physical features like rivers, mountains, terrains, etc.), but he did not want to proof with his tutor. I didn’t want to fight that battle too hard.

Thomas ran in the Run for Compassion and got first in his age division. Later that morning, we went to his company’s annual family picnic. We all had a great time, and once, again, our kids made the clowns earn their money.

Our PE Co-op ended the year with a bang with a field day. I manned a ball-bucket toss game that was a hit with the boys (I think only two girls played it the whole time), and Sugar hovered near the balloon mom.

Also in April, my half-sister got married and we lived it up at her wedding. The kids wore themselves out and were asleep within 15 minutes of leaving–which was great since we had about a two hour drive home. This is me and my sister (not the bride). We are looking much more like sisters these days, in my opinion.

We spent an afternoon visiting some pygmy goats and their babies at one of my Bradley couple’s house. The kids had a great time, and I was so impressed with how sweet the little goats were.

We harvested our carrots and lots of broccoli, lettuce, kale and chard from the garden and planted zucchini, butternut squash, and some tomatoes and peppers.

The kids also got electric toothbrushes one day at HEB. They were only $5 and they have revolutionized the toothbrushing protests at our house. I highly recommend them.

We also had a celebratory potluck for one of the men in our weekly Bible study who defended his dissertation. Thomas and the kids did a little fishing, but mostly fed the fish our worms.

The last weekend in April, we babysat some of our friends’ kids while they had a night away for their anniversary. I felt like SuperMom watching 6 kids ages 7, 6, 5, almost 4, 3, and 8 months. Whew! What a month. I am looking forward to a little slower pace in May.

I love this age! Speedy is so curious, so happy, and so social these days. He loves being around lots of people and also plays happily on his own for several minutes at a time.

He is little Mr. Curious, always finding something new to get into and explore. He is crawling (on his hands and knees for a few paces, then on his tummy) so fast. He digs his little toes into the ground and flies across the floor. The fastest crawling occurs when the refrigerator is open or a door to outside. The other morning, he tore across the kitchen into the garage as Thomas was leaving for work. I let him keep going just to see what he would do. He stopped a few times to check out things in the garage, but made it over halfway down the driveway before I got him.

Speaking of outdoors, Speedy loves being outside. He will chill in his baby swing outside for a long time, long enough for me to grill some dinner, do a few things in the garden, and such as long as I go push him every few minutes and he has an older sibling to watch.

His older siblings have learned how to pick him up under his arms and now deliver him to me around the house or move him from their belongings, the toilet, etc. Sometimes this is helpful, but mostly, it is unnecessary. Sugar picks up a happily playing baby and deposits him at my feet while I am cooking. She loves this new trick.

Speedy is pulling up on everything–tables, chairs, laundry baskets, the wall, the side of the bathtub, you name it. He has some surprises with cabinet doors that open while he is pulling on the handles or laundry baskets that tip over, but he is getting so good at catching himself. He loves the bath, but spends 90% of the time standing on the side, not even playing in the water, silly boy!

He takes two naps a day, and I think he took three naps once or twice last month, but he is nearly impossible to put down for a third nap, even if he needs it. He goes to bed around 6:30 or 7 and wakes up around 7 in the morning. He still wakes twice a night to nurse. He finally stopped staying awake for an hour during some of those night wakings. I thought he would never stop singing in his bed in the middle of the night!

Speedy got his first cold and ear infection this month, but he was a trooper and still happy most of the time, unless I was sucking his nose out. He is eating a little more these days, but still not very much baby food at each sitting. He eats lunch and dinner with us, and prefers vegetables like sweet potatoes, carrots, and squash. He is also experimenting with finger foods, but moves them around his mouth for a few seconds and then spits them onto his bib. He is a fan of Puffs, but will pick up anything and try it and seems to like meat. He is a huge mess after every meal and I often spot dried yellow-orange mash in his eyebrows, ears, and hair after I was certain he was clean. Perhaps it his vehement resistance to face wiping?