The Gamble Life

Merry Christmas!

When I first had Gus I was lucky enough to find a group of new moms all looking for friends too.     The group came together in a couple of different ways and has changed a little over the years when people joined us or moved away (or moved back, like me!), but the experience of those first few years of motherhood with this specific group of women and kids is going to remain one of the most important experiences of friendship in my life.

We don't get together multiple times every week anymore, we don't even all get along together anymore!  But we do make that effort to mark big occasions (like the second and third children most of us have had) and I think we all realize that whatever happens those years were so special and valuable. 

Our kids too seem to always know they are with good friends when we get together.  This week we held our annual Christmas Playgroup party and it was so relaxed and fun.  We've done a whole bunch of different crafts with the kids at these parties, from full-on decorated gingerbread houses, to gingerbread cookies, to little stockings, and this year I bought 6" grapevine wreaths, snips of greenery from our Christmas tree and our rosemary bush (smelled heavenly), and all the little garlands, random decorations and ribbons, and glitter glue I could find and let the kids go to town.

Some of the finished wreaths:

I think Vivian here is a Christina Hendricks lookalike in this picture!

 

I love how working with the exact same supplies the kids all made totally different wreaths!  Gus' wreath seems to me to be a pretty good reflection of his personality!  Look at that face, he knows it's wacky.

After they'd finished with wreaths the festive decorating spirit had awoken and all on their own they decorated my friend's playscape:

I hope you too have great friends in your life.  If you still have some ribbon or other decorations laying around how about tossing them to your kids and see what they do with them?  The playscape ended up surprisingly beautiful.

 

oh, I almost forgot, we do a gift exchange/name draw thing and my friend Kathryn made me so happy!

What could it be?

A butter dish!  The butter sits down in the bowl instead of sliding all over the plate.  I am so thrilled. 

Baby presents & old college memories

I finished a little baby vest today that is a present for a new baby.  Here's a peek (don't want to give it all away until it's delivered), and my picture of the day, number 80 (I've got all the others taken, I just need to put them up here, and at the 365project...).

Back in college I was on the rowing team and at our big end-of-the-year race (which was more of a tournament) the rowers from different schools would trade shirts.  The men would actually give their racing jersey to the winning squad...so at the end of the year if you were fast you had a collection of racing jerseys from all the teams you'd beaten.  The women's squad didn't do this, instead we (and almost all the other schools squads too) printed up t-shirts at the end of every year and then rowers would buy as many as they wanted and trade them with rowers from other schools.

I wore all of these for workouts in college and when college was over I didn't want to get rid of them.  I didn't want to wear them out.  Really, I wanted to keep them somehow, but I wasn't sure exactly what to do with them.  I had the idea of making a quilt out of them and spent a couple of years coming up with ever more elaborate designs (making the shape of a Y for Yale out of the shirts, that kind of thing) and carting them around with me from move to move.  Eventually I decided I would do some kind of quilt for our guest bedroom.  Well, we don't have a guest bedroom, and really, wouldn't that be kind of embarrassing?  Then, last summer we bought our awesome hammock on vacation.  Gus and I discovered that the hammock is a lot more comfortable with some blanket between the ropes and your flesh, so last night I FINALLY just did it.  Threw the t-shirts and some fleece together and didn't worry about it being clever or perfect or anything.  Just fun and DONE. 

The sewing is definitely wonky in places and I don't care at all.  It's finally finished, I can use and enjoy the shirts again and the next time we move I won't feel guilty about carting around a box of t-shirts from college and fleece I bought way back in 1997. 

Some of my favorite shirts:  a painted sweatshirt my mom made for me, a clever cartoon from a Boston University shirt (I think), and my year, my crew!

 

Any hey, go comment on Toy Truck!

10:365 The Besieged Artist, Age 6

On Sunday we took Gus to the "Flappet" workshop at the Museum of Life & Science, run and inspired by artist Steve Gerberich.  In 2008 Gus went to a different workshop, same artist, at which he made and raced a car.  If an exhibit by Steve Gerberich is coming to your town you should check it out and that goes double for one of his workshops!

Gus got to handle a battery drill, a glue gun, a battery jigsaw (no pictures of that -- I was too busy hovering in case a quick rescue was necessary!), and exercise his imagination.  He chose to make a Flappet Zooey (modeled after his aunt's dog) with ears and tail that move.  Apparently he got tired of my asking him to let me take pictures.  We decided to finish the painting at home, and I think we may do that after school today since dinner is already in the crock pot (yes!).

Scenes of Gus at work:

It's The Christmas Season!

Year two for the advent calendar/banner Gus and I made last year.  The boys have enjoyed two days starting with chocolate, what a surprise.  I've got some other things planned for future days (besides chocolate I mean), like:

-make wishes/predictions for 2010

-go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood

-go out for a hot chocolate and scone treat

-make paper snowflakes and hang them around the house

-stay up 15 minutes late reading Jan Brett Christmas stories

-make thumbprint Christmas cards (the drawings are done with thumbprints and pen)

What do you put in your advent calendar?

Like most years I'm trying to think of a new family tradition to do around the holidays...anyone have a great idea for me? 

I also think I'm going to host a little Christmas party/gift exchange for Abe's playgroup.  I'm going to sew a cute little crayon and notepad holder for Abe's gift to his buddies.  Cute so the parent doesn't mind carrying it around, contained and small so the little one can manipulate it, complete so nothing else is needed for a little impromptu entertainment at a restaurant or waiting in line or whatever.  I'll post details when I get them finished.

Plastic Bags

So I've noticed something at the grocery store.  Even though at least half the people who shop at my Whole Foods bring their own reusable cloth bags in they all still use the free plastic produce bags.  I can't think of a more useless one-time plastic except for plastic packaging on things you buy.  Also I hate putting my delicious produce in plastic! 

About a year ago I bought these organic cotton produce bags in the gallon size.  They are fantastic.  I wash them between uses with the rest of my kitchen linens and they are holding up fantastically well.  I really encourage you to get some, or make some, or just let your produce mingle in a larger shopping bag! They would have been very easy to sew myself but at the time Abe was still very young and I didn't want to have to hunt around for the right cotton fabric or any of that.  Here they are waiting to be taken out to the car with my grocery bags:

My other kitchen linens are kitchen towels and bibs/washcloths and placemats/napkins.  I have huge stacks of all of them.  We've used maybe one roll of paper towels since I started actually using my kitchen towels instead of just hoarding them.  I've found the after-Christmas sales at places like Crate & Barrel are really good times to get nice kitchen towels for only a few dollars.  Want to see the stack?  Sure you do!

And since I'm showing off all my fancy kitchen linens, why not a glimpse at the bib/washcloth pile?  Actually, I am about to sew a whole bunch of new bibs that are much BIGGER than the plain terry ones I'm currently using because they are quite inadequate for a determined self-feeding 16 month old.  I'll definitely show you what I come up with.  I knit all these washcloths using whatever free patterns take my fancy (there are hundreds of them out there) and I love them.  Nothing works better for getting Abe, the highchair, and the table clean.

More of the same

Yup, more socks.  I don't think I've shown you these yet...I finished them some time ago.

This is an up-close picture of a triangular-shaped shawl I knit recently.  The entire shawl is the same pattern, but only the border has the beads.

These were actually Mother's & Father's Day presents that FINALLY got mailed out.  The idea is straight from Handmade Home, but I didn't actually follow formal directions, just got the gist of it from looking at the pictures.  Gus made all creative decisions and I merely did the labor.  We actually made four more that aren't pictured, they'd been given away (to Meremere and his teachers) before I took pictures.

From left to right:  "Gus and Mommy", "Gus and Daddy", "Gus Working on Grandpa's Trailer", "Gus as a Tall Giraffe", and "Jack in a Box...Gus in a Box" (Gus sometimes plays jack in the box in our clothes hamper).  For his Meremere he drew another self-portrait and for his teachers he drew pictures of them.  I really wish I'd gotten pictures of them because they were great.  One teacher playing the didgeridoo, one making a funny face, and one helping a child.

I've finished some more books and have spending a lot of energy on helping Abe adjust to our new one-nap-a-day schedule and sleep later in the mornings.  We have a birthday party to head to this weekend and the weather is getting cooler.  Yay!

Cool Chemistry Concoctions!

As part of summer camp-at-home series Gus and I took a week to perform chemistry experiments, and this book was fabulous.  Cool Chemistry Concoctions by Rhatigan and Gunter is a great book:  full of all the easy and exciting chemistry experiments you vaguely remember from when you were a kid.  Easy to follow instructions and using supplies you probably already have at home or can easily pick up at Target or your grocery store.

This experiment was one of our favorites and in fact we did it over and over again.  Mixing baking soda and vinegar in a bottle capped with a balloon.

The whole book is full of fun, easy experiments like this and we've done lots and have plans to do more (I keep renewing it from the library).  I'm thinking I may buy a copy because I can see coming back to it for Abe and when Gus is older and can do some background learning about the processes involved.  Also, it's just really fun to do thinks like make a balloon fill up on its own (or turn an egg into "rubber")!

Camp at Home: Rock Week, Part 1

Well, we took a week off of camp at home, and the past two weeks have been a bit less thematic.  But we've done some great experiments and activities around rocks and chemistry.  This exercise was really fun, and messy!  The pan of flour with toys in it represents the earth.

The salt represents micrometeorites...they cause essentially no damage, very little impact.  Just like on earth.

Then he tested a marble, to represent a larger meteorite.

And a golf ball to represent a once in a billion years meteorite.  That was, unsurprisingly, the most fun.  Gus had a blast building mountains to see how much more earth would spread if the meteorite hit a mountain, and so on.

Abe definitely wanted in on the action.

We had a lot of fun with this, but it took a good strong rain to clear all that flour off the porch.

I also got some pictures books about kids who are rock collectors and some books on how to identify any rocks you find.  Unfortunately, none of the rock identifying books were that good--I would like to find a really good one to buy, so if anyone has a recommendation, let me know.

We're just past half way through the summer and I'm glad we didn't sign up Gus for lots of camps, but I do think he needs a little more kid time, so I'm working to set up more playdates and I signed him for half-day art camp next week.  Especially since last night was his last t-ball game.  The season was a success and I think he'll want to play again next year.

He (along with all the kids on the team) received a trophy which I thought was kind of dumb.  But I was wrong because he has been so incredibly happy about the trophy, I can't even tell you.  And he knows everyone got one, he's still thrilled.  He showed it to Abe, called his grandparents to tell them all about it, and just loves it.  He still hasn't decided on the perfect place to keep it.  I guess I thought the trophy was going to be "praise" which I don't believe is useful for a child.  But as it turns out I think the trophy is recognition, which vital for us all, especially children.  I'm glad he got it.

Dreamcatcher

Gus has been complaining of nightmares...now I don't know if he's really having them or if it's a great way to climb into mom & dad's best because he's never seemingly scared or upset and can't remember them.  Nevertheless, he had the idea to make a dream-catcher so we did.  It turned out to be a really fun and easy project and looks surprisingly (to me) good hanging over his bed. 

I used these directions for inspiration and to figure out the weaving, but we pretty much did our own thing.  I thought the "dream" bead was a nice touch.  We only purchased the embroidery hoop and suede lacing, everything else we already had in our art supplies.  I'm sure we could have used a yarn or ribbon instead of the suede with no ill effects. 

He hasn't complained about any nightmares since we hung it up so I guess it's working.

Summer Camp Home Edition: "We're Making Rain!"

So I mentioned that last summer Gus went to camp (day camps) pretty much all summer long at the local museum.  They were wonderful; he really enjoyed them and learned a lot.  But camps are really expensive, he's gone pretty much all day, and there is a lot of driving involved.  This summer I really wanted things to be more relaxed and I wanted to spend more time with Gus myself, and I wanted to save money.

So we sat down together and came up with a whole list of "Camp at Home" topic ideas.  Last week was our first official week and our topic was weather.  I bet you think I came up with that topic, right?  Nope, that was Gus.  I never would have thought weather was interesting enough for camp, but I would have been wrong.

I got two books from the library:  Can It Rain Cats and Dogs? and Weather Projects for Young Scientists.  The first is a question and answer book covering many, many weather topics.  It was great for just flipping through and finding questions that interested us and then reading the answers.  But the real highlight of the week was the second book.  I was a bit worried that its projects would be too difficult or complicated for us to do at home without buying a lot of stuff, or that Gus wouldn't get the point of the projects.  My worry was wasted--the book is wonderful!

Here Gus is proving that air has weight; this was super easy as it only required three identical pieces of paper and a pencil.

While Abe colored.

This next was my personal favorite experiment.  Gus proved that air has mass and occupies space.  This was so easy and perfect; I loved it.  First you pour water through a funnel into a bottle and talk about where the air that had been in the bottle went.  Then you create an air-tight seal (we used playdoh) around the neck of the bottle and the funnel and try again to pour water in.  Amazingly the water fills the funnel and stays put.  It was SO COOL! 

Here's Gus excitedly talking about how the water couldn't go in because the air couldn't get out!

Turns out this next project may have been Gus' favorite.  We showed, in water, how a hurricane moves.

We also explored the power of the sun by testing to see 1-what the sun will do to a piece of construction paper, and 2-what kinds of things will block some or all of the sun.

And really fun, I bought a package of Sun Prints and Gus made several.  He hasn't decided what to do with his finished sun prints...some kind of collage probably.

Finally, we did two experiments exploring the water cycle.  We looked at how hot and cold water react differently to a cold air source.

And we made rain!  Gus wasn't sure what this project was going to show (I didn't tell him, I just told him the steps), but we had just finished reading and talking about the water cycle, and as we were checking on our project, he figured it out:  "We're making rain!"

I am pretty sappy when it comes to seeing my kids learn, but man, this was really, really fun.  I can see how home schooling parents can enjoy themselves. 

This was all really easy, nothing too structured or too formal about any of it.  And I really do think Gus learned a few new things.  Even if your kids are in camp or school there is no reason you can't pick this book up, or a similar one, from your library or bookstore.  You'll have fun!