Quail Eggs, Bus Rides & Dorm Rooms

Little man and I made quail eggs, courtesy of Grandma Faiola's generosity. It was really fun to try mini eggs. Grandpa Faiola even figured out how to boil them and make mini deviled eggs. 

It turns out that quail eggs taste a lot like chicken eggs and nutritionally, are pretty much the same but c'mon, they're teensy tiny. #cutealert

  

Jamisen and I recently grew a full on grass-head that has sprouted so much that it needs regular trims!

One of our favorite activities when the weather starts to clear up is to take the bus downtown. The kids love exploring downtown (hello delightful animal stores and sugar emporiums in the form of ice cream shops).

Chris typically will drive his car downtown and then run home. It's a perfect 3-5 mile run depending on the route he takes home. Then, we wander our little family the mile down to the bus station and wait between 5 and 20 minutes for the bus. Luckily, we've never had to wait the longest stretch possible (45 minutes) but if we did hit that window, the grocery store is right near by as is another sugar emporium (gelato and fudge).

The kiddos are big fans of anything frozen and in fact, that's their main form of veggies right now: frozen peas and carrots. They'll eat bowls of them so long as they're frozen. They also love broccoli 'chips' (burned broccoli from the stove), kale chips (dehyrated), cauliflower (Jamisen only) and carrots (both kids, though Lily less so). You can't tell how much he loves his veggies from the hilarious scowl Jamisen has on his face but really, that's all about not wanting another photo taken and not so much about what's in his bowl.

Lately, Lily has been waking up at night again. We're not sure what it's about but suspect night terrors. Sometimes, she'll make it halfway down the stairs, heading downstairs with her blankets, whimpering all the way, before we reach her. Usually, she lays in her bed and cries until one of us rushes in to pat her back, cover her back up and back slowly out of the room. We're hoping it's a phase because it sure is hard to see our little girl sad. And, the parentals wake up tired! =)

I recently flew to Tennessee to speak at the 2x4Live Conference, a small group, two day session on growing your business. I spoke on a panel and answered questions from the audience as well as gave a 60 minute talk on 'The Power of Small & the Beauty of the Trudge'. Day two was all about breaking the 49 participants into small groups and then round tabling on the different topics each speaker talked about.

It was good though exhausting - and of course, it's always tough to be away from the babies. It's especially tough to be away when you're staying in a dorm room with shared bathrooms (really; that happened). The conference took place at Vanderbilt University. It was a beautiful campus with a nice 1 mile running loop that went right by Starbucks (convenient). =)

Jamisen's Birthday Party Video Invite

Some Bunny Loves Easter

Our little bunnies LOVE Easter. They are super enamored with the holiday for many reasons, the prime one being family time. Our kiddos are so joy-filled with the house is filled with people that love them, interact with them and generally make them feel supported and secure. This time, we had Uncle Erik, Aunt Cheriss, Baby Alise, and Grandma and Grandpa Faiola.

Another reason for them to love Easter? The science! The experiments around boiling versus baking eggs; the coloration station (with 3 different types of colorants and styles); the mystery of if brown eggs would dye as well as white eggs. It was all fun for our burgeoning scientist. 

Our eggs turned out great! It turns out that organic brown eggs make a fantastic palette for coloring. There was some skepticism by all present but, I kept the faith and was rewarded for it. 

Jamisen is really turning out to be such a loving and kind older brother and cousin. Today, Lily fell off a chair and hit her head on the table. He immediately ran to the freezer, shouting "Ice Pack! Ice Pack" and delivered an ice pack to Lily, who promptly went all princess on him, crying, "No, not that ice pack! Not that ice pack!" so he gallantly headed back to the freezer for yet another ice pack of a different color. He presented the new blue ice pack to her (apparently, the pink ice pack was offensive) and was rewarded with a 'Thank You' from Lily and effusive praise from his Mama.

Baby Alise had her own area for eggs. In the photo above, I'm hopeful that Jamisen is merely pointing out eggs to Alise and not actually stealing candy from a baby.

Jamisen had been planning for Easter all morning, drawing up signs and planning on how he would tell the kids 'Ready, Set, Go.' When that didn't happen because no other adults besides his Mother had been let in on the plan (yes, yes, I get it; major fail on Mom's part to not tell anyone), he did not adjust well. He missed the first half of the egg hunt because he was off pouting, hiding, and generally being a poorly-behaved 4 year old. Lucky for him, his sister was not the world's fastest egg hunter so he was able to still fill his basket after he regained his emotional equilibrium.

We had a rare and awesome not-Easter Saturday; it was SO sunny which was amazing this early in the year. We did Easter on Saturday because of the weather and Erik's shift work and it turned out perfectly because Sunday was a mush pit of rain.

Little Lily picked out her own outfit. I love her in dresses but she doesn't love wearing them so it was nice that she dressed up for the Easter Bunny's appearance.

Grandma Faiola loves her grandbabies. We are all so thankful that she comes up to spend extra time with all the grandbabies. She reads to them and spends lots of time outdoors with them.

Easter was so fun and laughter-filled. We love our family and we love any opportunity to get together and celebrate.  =)

Creative Kids are Happy Kids

I emphasize the concept of speaking positively to the kids with phrases like, "Thoughts become things" and other gems like that. This morning, Jamisen said "Boom!" and then turned to me and said, "Mama, I don't think you saying 'boom' too much blew the house up.' He then suggested that we "build a model house with a boiler to try and see if we can figure out why the boiler blew up". The kid is a born engineer / skeptic. 

These little kiddos are excavating their dinosaur eggs. I told them that a dinosaur came by and dropped their eggs in the yard and they were so excited to go find them, though my born skeptic asked me about 26184 times if a dinosaur really had come by, questioning me closely about if I had really seen the dinosaur. Thankfully, I had run by a man walking a man in a dinosaur suit (really, you cannot make this stuff up) down at Boulevard Park on the same day as the dinosaur excavation AND had managed to take a video of the guy so I was able to show the video to our resident skeptic.

Lily handled the mallet like a pro. Eventually we had to switch them out to the big guns (actual hammers) because plaster is very hard to crack with tiny little hammers that have no real leverage.

Jamisen was very helpful with Lily and eventually, both of them were rewarded with little dinosaur bones. What was fascinating is that Lily's dinosaur bones were green and neither of them seemed to notice that bones aren't usually green. Jamisen is sleeping with his dino bones and the rest of his egg by his bed along with his excavation tools. You never know when the next egg might drop. 

 

We love our Home Depot trips. Who knew that a hardware store would become a large part of our family life?! =)

Joy is learning to be self-sufficient and use tools.

Happiness is learning to do it together, as a family.

The kids also learned how to make their own stuffed animals with two socks, a hot glue gun and a lot of cotton stuffing. They really do good with scissors - both of them - and Jamisen has been given scissor privileges again after the Lily-hair-cutting incident.

 

Montessori School Visit

I was so excited to do a school visit with Jamisen. Chris did a school visit a couple months ago and came away so excited by how much Jamisen was learning and how he interacted within the school. It's fun to see a different side of him - the little man side of him =)  Right now, he's learning letters, numbers and the fundamentals of math and reading. He is doing great (!).

His teacher Yuki (above) complimented us on working on Jamisen's letters and numbers and sounds at home. I felt proud when she said that. =)

The kiddos visited me at work and loved being big helpers. They're a fan of my office because there is always hidden candy, toys and so much activity =)

It's never too early to start talking to the kids about planning their families for timing and spacing so this morning, I was talking to Jamisen about how all the best things in life take planning (like his birthday party ... when he asked me why there were wrapped presents in the garage a month before his birthday). I said something like, "Another thing that Daddy and I planned for was you and Lily. We wanted to have children and talked about it for a long time and planned when it would be best to have you." And Jamisen looked up and said, "Mama, I thought about joining your family for a long time too."

Books remain a huge part of our household - though we did just go through and find the board books that the kids had outgrown to give away or resell. Of course, we will carefully and lovingly go through and find some to save for our own grandkids and store. =)