Make-It Monday, January 28

(Edited to add: please forgive the typos and lack of captions. I don't know why Blogger won't let me edit them. I'll keep trying! Also - Bennett had several costume changes as the day progressed. I promise these were all taken today.)

Since Bennett is in school five mornings a week, we have all afternoon to play and learn together. We survived last week without any prior planning or organization, although it wasn't really pretty. Over the weekend, I decided that we needed to put a little effort into what we do each afternoon. Neither one of us does well with lack of structure!

I've decided to try organizing the week like this:
Make-It Monday: Every Monday afternoon we'll take on some sort of "making" project. Today's effort will be detailed below. I've got ideas for Valentine's Day, baking/cooking, building, etc.
To You Tuesday: We'll practice letter writing. Don't be surprised if you find something fun in your mailbox! If you're a non-family reader, send me your mailing address - we'll surprise you too!
Library Wednesday: We've been going to the library on Wednesday afternoons for a while and will continue this tradition. (Need a clever name, though . . . )
Thursdays are Oma Dates: Bennett spends Thursday afternoons with Oma and Grandpa. Yay for everyone !!
Go There Friday: We'll visit a local place - park, museum, hiking trail, creek, etc.

So - today we made yogurt and pear sauce. My mom gave us her yogurt maker when we were visiting over Christmas. Bennett has been talking about making yogurt ever since. I finally got up the nerve to try and got the supplies we needed this week. It is going to take several hours to be finished - it's so hard to wait!

First step was to heat the milk until it "climbed" the sides of our pot. I got distracted, so our milk boiled over - ACK! I'm really hoping it doesn't affect the outcome.

Second - had to let the milk cool to room temp.

Third - we had to strain the cooked and cooled milk. Oh my that made a serious mess. Thank goodness Bennett likes to help me clean!

Fourth - mix a little cooled milk with "natural yogurt". We used plain greek yogurt that we had in the fridge. Again, a variation that I really hope doesn't affect the final product!

Fifth - mix that mixture into the rest of the cooled milk.

Sixth - pour the milk/yogurt into the seven jars and place in the yogurt cooker, cover and turn it on. Then leave it alone! Like a souffle, you have to be careful that you don't jar the maker while it's cooking. I'm not sure what will happen if it gets bumped, but I"m trying really hard not to learn.

Final product - write review here!

While we were in the process of waiting for the milk to cool, Bennett wanted to help me wash the dishes. He loves playing in the water so much! As you can see, there's was a lot of clean up from the cleaning. It means that my floor got washed, right?

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Parlez Vous??

Part of Bennett's Montessori education is French class once a week. He's been to two so far. Last week, he said, "Bonjour!" when he came home from school. Yesterday, he looked at me and asked, "Mom, do you know what a French fish says when he burps under water?" I was totally expecting a punchline.
I said, "No honey, what does a French fish say?"
He says, "Excuse moi! Not 'excuse me'."

Just proof positive that kids his age are at their absolute ripest for language acquisition. I love it! Now I've got to go learn some Francais, I suppose.

Neighbors

Monday is the night that Brian curls after work. He and three other guys have a match at either 5:30 or 7:45, so Bennett and I have the entire day to ourselves. After school, we have fun thinking of what we can do together to pass the time. Today, we spent the first hour after school looking for Arm & Hammer Washing Soda so that I can start making my own laundry detergent. This has been nearly impossible to find, so we gave up that quest and came home to have a snack before heading outside to play in the snow.

We had a nice snack and then got all bundled up in snow pants, thick coats, snow boots and hats & mitts. We went out the back so we could scrape the snow off the ice rink and deck. I didn't take my keys or phone with me because we were just going to be in the backyard. I didn't want my phone to distract me from having fun with Bennett and I didn't figure I'd need my keys if we were just on the back deck, right? Wrong.

As I closed the sliding glass door, I watched the lock slip down into place. Holy shit! Did I think to unlock the front door before we went out, just in case? I ran around to the front to check. Nopes. Locked tightly. Nice and secure. I'm wracking my brain trying to think of where we might have hidden a key. Of course, we hadn't gotten around to that yet. We've got one hidden now, you can bet on that.

I played with Bennett for a few minutes, but then I started to get chilly. Bear in mind that it was about 14 degrees F with a wind chill factor of probably 0F. Cold, cold, cold. I was super thankful that I'd had us put on snow pants at the last minute. So, I decided to check with the neighbors. We walked around the corner to neighbors that I figured would be home - at least the wife is usually outside smoking every other hour. We walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. Darn it! Who do we try next? Lots of cars are missing from driveways, so I assume that most neighbors are at work. Which is surprising, because I thought that most of them were retired! We tried the young gals who live right next to us thinking that they may have been given a key by the previous owners of our house. They weren't home. Finally, we tried two other neighbors before we found someone smoking in his back yard. He let us borrow his phone and I called Brian, who came right home to let us in. Whew.

I shouldn't be embarrassed, but I am. I am a grown woman and I can't believe I locked my baby and myself out of our house in this frigid weather. Bennett handled it like a pro and was so excited to see Daddy come home in the middle of the day. You can be sure that I'll have my house keys and my phone on me every time I leave the house now. And we'd better tighten up that locking mechanism on the sliding glass door too.

Sidenote - that first neighbor who wasn't home? She really was. I saw her outside smoking not ten minutes later. I really miss southern hospitality.

Dinner Bravery

My brother and mother will be happy to learn that I made Quinoa tonight as the side dish for dinner. I'm quite proud of the fact that it was delicious (I liked it even better than Ben's, but don't tell him!) and complimented the lemon-pepper baked tilapia to boot!

An even more awesome accomplishment? Hearing Bennett say, "I want some fish, mama!" and then eating it. I had to give up half of my serving because I hadn't figured he'd eat it and I didn't want to waste a filet by making one for him to leave cold on his plate. It was the easiest sacrifice of the day. Especially to hear him announce to Brian when he got home from work and sat down to eat, "Daddy! I tried fish tonight and I LIKED it!" Full of grins and truly proud of himself. (Brian ate his dinner in sixty seconds flat, so I feel safe in saying that this meal will be seen again.)

Bon Appetit! everyone!!!

Holidays have come and gone

We just got back from a week long visit in North Carolina. We had so much fun, I'm quite certain we wore Granna and Daddy-o out. Also, I think we might have provided Gunkle Ben with all the birth control he'd ever want.

One of the really neat things about visiting North Carolina is that when we go there, we always stay at 'The Cabin', which is really a nice sized house tucked in the woods near a small lake/pond, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's my mom and dad's retreat, but their home is too small for all of us to stay together. Sometimes, it feels like we're all on top of each other at the cabin too, but at least we have enough toilets and beds to go around. The real plus is that Bennett sleeps very well there! YAY!

At the cabin, Bennett gets to spend as much time outside as he wants. There is no worry of car traffic (especially in the winter), and even though we're surrounded by woods, we don't worry about wildlife. He is in hog heaven! This time, he and Daddy-o built two bird houses, re-planted a blueberry bush, secured the anti-deer fencing around said bushes and the fruit trees, hiked all the way up to the top of Bull Head Mountain, went sledding on the road (the only place there was enough snow), and fiddled in the "garage", which is what Bennett calls Daddy-o's shed.

Brian and I got to read, watch movies, chat with family and I kicked his and Ben's butts at Dominoes. That's right. Call it beginner's luck if you wish, but I dominated. I wasn't so great at Mexican Train, but it was still fun. I also taught Bennett how to play Connect Four. He liked making the checkers drop and "blocking" me more than actually playing, but I think he'll get the hang of it soon.

For New Year's Eve, we went to the local bowling alley and played one game before taking a break for dinner. We had to eat on the "porch" of this restaurant because they were busier than anticipated. My burger wasn't cooked all the way and Brian was surprised that his "meal" didn't come with anything other than a burger. Not the greatest food experience, but we had fun with the family. After dinner, we went back to the bowling alley and played some arcade games. Bennett went to turn in his tickets (I think he had thirty total) and the sweet girl behind the counter let him have his pick of the prizes. He chose something worth 200 tickets and she handed it over without any fuss. So generous!

It is always sad to leave The Cabin, but leave we did. We had excellent driving conditions on the way home and made it from Sparta, NC to London, ON in 14.5 hours. Bennett was a most excellent passenger - we are so very fortunate! Before we left London at the beginning of our journey, I threw together a travel pillow for Bennett to use in his car seat in case he took a nap (and also because we had planned to drive through the night on our way down there - that's another story!) because I didn't want his head bobbing around as it usually does. That pillow worked wonders! His head didn't flop once, despite the fact that he pulled a lot of the stuffing out after he picked one of the seams.

We came home to several inches of snow - Bennett has already been skating, sledding and snow hiking. This kid is a lover of the outdoors!

Sleep - it does a family good

"Yesterday was plain awful!
You can say that again.
Yesterday was plain awful!
But that's not now, that's then."

I have been singing that line from Annie most of the day today. Bennett and I had a horrible day yesterday. There's no need to re-hash it in detail, it was just bad. Lots of tears, lots of yelling, lots of frustration. He was hungry, he wasn't hungry, he was tired, he wasn't tired. I was exhausted.

He started to get droopy around 5:30, but I worked all of my magic to keep him awake until he had a chance to eat dinner, and until it was a reasonable hour to go to sleep. We lasted until 7:30, just long enough to see Brian for a few minutes after he got home from work. We read one super hero comic and the littlest super hero was down for the count.

He woke up this morning at 8:15, when I woke him up to go to school.

Today, he's been generally peaceful, playful and cheerful. He's remembering his manners. Quiet time happened without much fuss, except here near the end when he told me he was wet from the humidifier. I went to check on things and not only had he turned the humidifier over on our wood floor, he'd dismantled one of my necklaces and unbent an earring that were on my night stand. I knew it was too quiet up there!

Here's hoping for another good night's sleep and happy boy tomorrow.

I can't believe it

But we are one minute away from having our first ever fully successful QUIET TIME! Nearly two full hours of Bennett playing upstairs by himself while I laid on the couch trying to pick a photo for our Christmas card, updated our blog (just a little), read a chapter in my book and drank a cup of coffee. HUZZAH! He only asked me every thirty minutes if quiet time was over. Usually, he's asking every two minutes. Gotta go let him know he survived!