Happy Texas-giving! Thank you for hosting us, Apryl, Adam, Hazel & Punch! The boys had a great time taking advantage of Auntie Spice's amazing tolerance for loose glitter and mixing of bath color tablets. Connor's favorite part of the day was getting a squirt of shaving cream to play with. Graham's was the pie. We are all very thankful for great friends and loving families.
After a very early but surprisingly painless flight (thanks Apple!) out of NYC, we arrived at the Mathes-Shulman home to celebrate Thanksgiving. We had a great day of settling in, building forts, playing hide & seek, decorating aprons, and baking pumpkin pies. Hazel and Graham are getting along wonderfully. Connor is too busy playing with his hostess' toys (lots of puzzles and tiny figurines to sort) to acknowledge her presence.
Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Happy Thanksgiving":
Hi You All,
We began our week preparing for our family feast. We washed one potato, two potato, three potato, four. Then we boiled, peeled, and mashed our potatoes, using a hand mixer. Many children said they had used one at home and gave descriptions of their mixers. We used an orange mixer to mix our orange potatoes. We also took turns smelling and feeling cinnamon sticks. Two people guessed what they were correctly. We added a tiny bit of ground cinnamon. We tasted our sweet potatoes. Mmmmmmmmm. They were just right.
We sang Stirring Our Brew to our Jiffy cornbread as we took turns stirring and adding ingredients. The cornbread baked in the oven while we played in the yard. We used our sense of smell to know when it was done. During all the preparations we went to the kitchen in small groups to turn the oven on, put the potatoes in to boil, check the cornbread, and rinse and peel the potatoes.
We had to make lemonade, of course, to go with our family tree. Or rather, our lemon family tree. We squeezed and squeezed and squeezed lemons. We mixed. We stirred. We tasted.
Kim came in for our second family share. We saw pictures of Beanie and Tilly as babies, and we found out who was on top in the womb. Kim read a book and taught us two songs. We will sing them again if we can just remember the words.
The feast was yummy. We sang Way Down Yonder By The Lemon Tree while everyone hung their lemons on the tree with their families. The fruit didn't fall far from the tree. We ate, drank, and were merry. Then we went home to prepare the next meal.
Baby's first live symphony! Graham and I had a date this afternoon to see an interpretation of "Peter and the Wolf" performed at the Brooklyn Museum. Graham and the preschooler sitting by us spent part of the time debating plot points, but otherwise Graham was very attentive to the performance. He really wanted his picture taken with the giant mickeys in the entryway to the museum.
Both kids really enjoy play-doh. They make lots of "pasta" and "cookies," and do all sorts of questionable dental work with the play-doh dentist set.
They figured out the arm slide on the same day. Graham has been too nervous to try it for years, but got up the courage today, and Connor wants to do whatever Graham is doing.
Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "When life gives you lemons":
Hi everyone,
The children began this week reading Richard Scarry's The Best Word Book Ever. It was okay. We noticed on the grocery store page that among the fruits and vegetables, there were lemons. We looked at and named fruits and vegetables on our way to the snack table. The children identified several root vegetables. After snacks we painted our lemons for the lemon tree using alphabet sponges and guess what color paint. Then we read The Red Lemon. Red lemons?
On Tuesday we counted real lemons. We added two groups of four, and four groups of two. We practiced eyeing small groups of lemons to see if we could tell how many there were without counting. We cut the lemons in half, tasted them, and then counted the halves. There were as many as people in our class. We used the lemons to paint a mural. After it dried we painted the lemons red and made more stamps. We read The Red Lemon again.
In the yard some children played dead while others dug rivers in the sandbox. We examined seeds and leaves too. We have been comparing leaves to see how they're alike and different. We took turns matching alike leaves that we thought came from the same tree. When outside we tried to identify from which trees they fell. And still plenty of running, swinging, climbing, and jumping.
Our last yoga class was quiet. The children were seen lying on their backs with feet in the air. They returned to class with purple feathers. We are requesting a couple of more yoga classes for early December. Denise is fantastically calming.
While the children stilled their bodies in yoga, the rest of the class made butter. We predicted how long it would take. The answers ranged from a couple of shakes, to sixty-nine hours, to fifteen-hundred-one-and-two minutes. We read The Three Little Pigs and looked at the butter churn one of the little pigs used to escape the big bad wolf. Then we shook our butter containers and maracas simultaneously. We shook, high, low, patterns of three and four, circles, and every which way we could imagine. We shook ourselves silly. It was the opposite of yoga. The cream turned to butter in almost as many minutes as people in our class.
We talked to the class about bringing canned food for the hungry or for those who have no family. We read the church's grocery list together. Someone told us the bags say Key Food. They do.
Our feast will be Wednesday at 11:15am. We will begin by singing "Where Oh Where Oh Where Is (insert your child's name)" while that family hangs their lemon on the tree. Feel free to practice the song at home. Ask your offspring how the tune goes. The feasting part will immediately follow.
The children are making sweet potatoes, cornbread muffins, butter, and lemonade.
It was a pleasure talking with everyone in the conferences. Your kids are cute as buttons!
Connor and I met Audrey and Zelda at the new Children's Discovery Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens this morning. Our playdate was cut short when disaster struck--Connor leaned a little too far over the railing while scooping water from the pond and flipped himself overboard, into the water! He was fine but very surprised & soaking wet. He kept yelling, "Mama! Connor fell into the yucky water and Spiderman [his shirt] is all wet!" Connor recovered from the trauma in a couple minutes, but we needed to head home for dry clothes.
In the afternoon, both boys went to the dentist for a cleaning & check-up. It was Connor's first trip, and he was absolutely perfect. Graham was also very cooperative.
