Prince charming

As I've mentioned before, Jordan is developing into quite the climber. He falls and clunks his head all the time, but gets right back up and does it again after a little cry.

I've been removing things here and there that he could climb on and hurt himself, like the three-tier plant stand (too tall) and the gliding footstool that goes with my glider rocker (it doesn't lock in one position like some do, and I caught the little monkey standing up and "surfing" on it several times!).

Other things, like the little blue chairs that go with the little blue kids' table in my kitchen are still there. He climbs them constantly.

Well, he was playing in his room the other day --a safe zone, I thought-- and I peeked in to discover he'd managed to climb up onto Granny's rocker. The most precious part was, he got a book up there, too, and was sitting there "reading" it. This is where we read books at bedtime.





I was incredibly charmed. Especially when he looked up and caught me photographing him and gave me this sweet smile.



Then, he shoved the book to the floor, turned himself around, stood up, gripped the bars and began rocking the chair while standing up on it.







When I reprimanded him, he sank to his knees and gave me this look.
"Who, me? I wasn't doing anything wrong, Mom!"



Little imp!

A really cool find

I love local history, and I love books, so when I went to the library today and found this antique arithmetic book just sitting there I had to pick it up and bring it home, if just so I can display it on a shelf.



The book was sitting in the little area between the inner door and outer door of the library where people often dump books or magazines they don't want anymore. There were three boxes of old textbooks sitting there, but this one caught my eye because it looked SO old.

It is. In fact, it was published in 1877! See?



Here's the title page



The book apparently came from the U.D. Bristol Druggist and Bookseller of Lapeer, Mich. according to the sticker inside the front cover.



This book was apparently the property of a Charles Ryan of Elba (Elba is a township here in Lapeer County, Michigan). He enjoyed writing his name in the book. I LOVE the old-style handwriting done with pen and ink, although some of the writing is in pencil. I can't believe how legible the pencil writing still is!





He used it in 1881, I see.



Someone with the initial "M." wrote Charles (who also apparently went by Charley and Chas.) a little verse on April 9, 1889.

It reads:
"May your life be sweet
And your home be neat
And your floor be patted
With many little feet."



So, did Charles use the SAME math book from 1881 to 1889? Hmmm...

I guess Kate Ryan used the book, too, in 1889 (as you can see, where she wrote below the verse pictured above). She wrote her name in there a few other times as well.



And someone else, who left a cryptic message, also used the book:
"If my name you wish to find
Look on page 109."



On page 109, all I could find were these initials



The date Jan. 30th '90 and 1890 is scrawled inside the front as well. Possibly from the person who left their initials on P. 109?



And there are three rubbings of old coins inside the book, too. An 1880 (I think) penny and a nickel.







For its age, the book is in decent condition, at least I think it is. I find all the scribbles in it fascinating and even the math problems in it are worded in really neat ways.

Anyway, this find was the highlight of my afternoon. I hope I can find out a little more about the Ryan children who used this book.

Judge not...

I used to roll my eyes when I'd see Angelina Jolie with Maddox and Pax trailing behind her with their blue-painted mohawk haircuts. Anytime I saw a parent with a mohawk-wearing kid, I inwardly groaned. Why would they do that to their kid?

Well, recently, Logan began BEGGING me to give him a mohawk. He really wants one. A real one.

Uh, no.

BUT MOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM I realllllllllllllllly want one!

No.

You're the meanest mom ever, I hate you, I don't know why you have to be so mean, why are you being so mean to me, you never let me do anything.

Yes, this, coming from a five-year-old.

Well, finally I told him we could try a FAUX-hawk. Now all of a sudden, this kid who would never, ever let me make his hair spiky is allowing me to put all sorts of goo in there and pull on it to make his short little hairs go into a really stupid-looking faux-hawk.

And he's so proud of it. He starts asking me, every morning as soon as he gets up, to do his hair up in a faux-hawk.









And then, of course, we had to give Jordan one, too, even though he has precious little hair. He has a few long ones on top, lending him a Kewpie doll effect.

This occurred after lunch one day, when peanut butter and oranges ended up in his hair. They might just be an amazing all-natural replacement for hair gel, although they'd probably attract bees.







My lesson learned: Judge not, lest your son ask for a mohawk too.

1 lb at a time: Week 3

Still waiting for that one pound!

Seriously, though, I need to do something.

Yesterday I found myself eating all sorts of weird stuff, and my belly was so big, my jeans were cutting into me. Well, Ma Nature surprised me last night, so it all made sense. I forgot to put the little red dot on my calendar last month so I wasn't exactly sure when I was going to start (which was driving me nuts) but the state of my skin should have been a big tip-off! Also my tendency to overreact this past weekend. I get emotionally weird. Those people that say PMS is just an excuse are full of it. I can actually use my moods as a gauge that Auntie Flo's about to visit. (So can Hubby, poor guy!)

Anyway, yeah. So. That's that.

This week's post at This Mommy Works is about water. Am I drinking enough?

We all know the answer to that one. NO! I never drink enough. I walk around dehydrated all the time.

Don't know what's so hard about drinking water for me. I just don't do it much aside from when I'm working out. Not only that, I'm not drinking anything else, either. Bad, I know. The weird thing is, every time I get up at night, I chug a glass of water. It's like I try to make up for it at night. THAT's when I want to drink. Odd.

So, we're supposed to set a water goal for this week and keep track. I have a Sigg bottle that is 32 ounces. My goal is to drink 2-3 a day. I want to say 3, but even 2 would be way better than what I'm getting now. Plus, that's in addition to whatever I drink while working out.

There's a new Crystal Light that doesn't have "artificial sweeteners" in it. Well, it has Stevia, which to me is an artificial sweetener (even though it's natural). It tastes nasty to me in full-strength, but if I use one packet in my 32-ounce bottle (one packet is supposed to go into a 16-ounce bottle), it tastes decent, so I plan to use one packet a day to help get my water in.

Gotta work on finding some motivation to actually, really, truly diet, too, or that dress is going to look like crap on me in July.

Have a great week!

Finger painting

After I read this recent post over at Mama Notes and saw the recipe for homemade finger paints by Raine @ Mama Rants in the comment section, I decided to try to make the paints and see how they worked.

The recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 Tb white sugar
1/2 cup dry cornstarch
1/2 tsp table salt
1 cup cold water
food coloring

Mix the first 4 ingredients in an old pot and cook/stir over low heat for about 10 minutes, until it thickens up, then stir in food coloring and put in containers for painting (baby food jars or apple sauce cups are great).

I mixed up the paint base and made red, blue and yellow paints in some yogurt containers out of the recycling bin. I think I might have let it thicken a tad too much on the stove, though. The first color I mixed was red, and it mixed smoothly. The base had started to kind of "set" while I mixed the red, so the yellow was harder to mix and had lumps in it. The blue I mixed last was even harder to mix and lumpier. I had to keep adding water. I'll keep that in mind for next time.



After I had the paints mixed, I let the boys give them a try.

Logan has NEVER liked finger painting. He hates getting his hands messy. He gave it a tentative try, though



and then gave up and requested brushes, so I gave him my basting brushes.



Jordan wasn't afraid to get in there, though. He dug right in there and had fun making his pictures.











And, as expected, he wanted to taste it. Actually, he wanted to eat it like frosting. I tasted it and it was nasty. I actually did try to keep him from eating too much, but evidence in the next day's diapers indicated he did, in fact, ingest a decent amount of food coloring!





After tasting it, he painted his feet



his legs



his ear



and his paci, which I had originally given him in hopes of keeping his mouth occupied so he WOULDN'T eat paint. No such luck.



The homemade paint unfortunately didn't dry into nice, keepable pictures. It was too thick and cracked and flaked off the pages. Maybe if I thinned it out more, next time it would work better.

Anyway, it was fun, it was messy and it was a great pre-breakfast project.

If you find this project interesting, you also might want to check out the time we made homemade watercolor paints.

Ugh, yard work

I'm kinda sore today due to ripping out an old weeded-over garden bed yesterday. The crabgrass was so thick, there was just no way to get it out. It was insanity. I spent a lot of time digging and ripping that crap out and my lower back was screaming last night so I decided today would be an off day for the gym.

Decided not to try to maintain it as a garden anymore. Too much work, and time I just don't have right now. Instead, I put in an evergreen shrub and a couple smaller ground cover type plants. They look rather silly right now, as they're quite small, but once they grow and fill in, I think it will be nice. We're also going to do something about that old signpost. It's ugly. Maybe something a little more decorative for our house number sign, since we don't put it on the mailbox anymore due to the snowplows knocking it off every winter.

Also, I didn't get enough mulch to fill in the whole patch, and that old yucca plant? Not sure if I want to keep it or not. It looks scrubby right now, but when it's in good shape, it's kinda pretty. We'll see. Anyway, here's a before and after, and keep in mind it's a work in progress.





I took the retaining wall blocks and dirt that I removed from that garden bed and ringed a pine tree up by our house, and then I planted some hostas in there. That, too, looks kind of silly right now but should look better when the hostas get bigger.

Before and after





Either way, they're both an improvement.

While planting the tree ring today I found a toad in the dirt. Logan loved him! He wanted to keep him and I knew he'd mess with the poor thing forever, so I suggested we pull out one of the Toad Cottages we made for him. We got it set up and then put the toad in it, then I convinced Logan to leave him alone so he wouldn't be afraid, and maybe he'd stick around. Hopefully he does!



I have tons more yard work to do and I hate it. One step at a time, though. Maybe one of these days I'll have the beautiful, essentially maintenance-free yard I dream of!

What's in a name?

When you’re expecting a child, there are a lot of big decisions to make, not the least of which is what to name the kid.

After all, he or she will be stuck with this name for the rest of his or her life, so it better be a good one. Something that will fit a child as well as a grown-up. Something that will hopefully not cause your child to become the butt of jokes on the playground. Something that, perhaps, sounds great with “Dr.” or “President” in front of it.

There are dozens of books and websites out there to help parents choose a name. Many of them offer a “meaning” to go with the name.

Hubby and I never really considered the meanings of our boys’ names. I came up with Logan Christopher and he liked it, plus it had his name as Logan’s middle name, which is kind of a tradition in Hubby’s family.

When it came time to name Jordan, I was at a loss. When I found out I was having another boy, I just couldn’t seem to find any names I really liked. Hubby spent some time with the baby name books and one day when I was lamenting the fact that our baby still had no name (mind you, I was probably only four or five months along at this time) he said “I kind of like Jordan Thomas.”

Boom, there it was.

I loved it. I had never even considered Jordan, though I had breezed past it in the baby books many a time. And Thomas is my dad’s name, so I liked that tribute to my father as well. Plus, it rolled nicely off the tongue: Jordan Thomas Johns.

Yeah.

So, Jordan was born, and a little while later, my parents gave us these framed name descriptions for the boys. I’m not sure where my mom picked them up, but they do seem to be quite accurate.

Logan’s says, “Loveable and charming, this child is intelligent and has the ability to make quick decisions. He has an engaging grin and a winning attitude. A capable child, he will develop into a good leader.”

That’s pretty much spot on for my little Logan. He is incredibly smart and often charms people with the things he says. The way his mind works amazes me sometimes. And as for the winning attitude part, we’re working on that!

Jordan’s reads, “A mischievous imp. One who is sometimes labeled a prankster. He is witty and bright, often leading others into trouble while he somehow manages to look innocent. Innovative and imaginative. Able to excel in creative endeavors.”

Well. He’s only 15 months old, so much is yet to be seen about his personality, but the first part is unbelievably accurate. It’s like the phrase “mischievous imp” was written while the author was looking at Jordan as he gets into something he KNOWS he’s not supposed to get into. He gives you that sideways look with that insanely adorable grin that tells you he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Mischievous imp, indeed!

In fact, we’ve taken to calling him an imp, just because of this framed description. It’s perfectly fitting.

Hubby was telling a friend at work about the name descriptions lately, and how well they fit the boys, especially the imp part. His friend suggested we promptly remove the frames from the house so Jordan doesn’t grow up and use it as an excuse to misbehave. I had to giggle when I heard that.

I don’t know if there’s anything to this whole name meaning business, but it’s kind of like a horoscope, I think. You can often make things fit if you try hard enough.

Still, it’s fun to see if people’s names seem to fit their personality.

Now, please excuse me. I have an imp to corral.