It's a good thing I can use ASL...

... because I haven't got a voice right now... not even a whisper really! Luckily my children and I are all learning American Sign Language.

My ASL skills are beginner at best, as are Em and Ro's. Since my voice has temporarily vanished, we've gone through the morning routine of saying GOOD MORNING, HUNGRY YOU?, TABLE SIT PLEASE all entirely understood in ASL.

Ro is saying WHAT?

I actually read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in sign language this morning... well, actually it would be considered Manually Coded English since I was following the format of the authors' story and not actually speaking. The ASL format is much more beautifully complex than MCE, but my children have not learned much more than I -- yet.

The day will continue with ASL and I feel secure in knowing I will be able to properly communicate with my kids (and hubby when he comes home) because we are all learning together. I really like the fact that we, as a family, have taken on the task of all learning the same thing at the same time!

Em is saying COOKIE

Have you done anything similar? A language or another skill? I'd love to hear about it!

Working on the store

One of my New Year's Resolutions for myself was to open my own online store. This is my first logo... the store will open on May 25th-- one short month away! I'm pretty excited. Stay tuned for more info!!

Celtic Mommy's Munchkins

You can still guess in the blog below who is who...

Tally so far: 3 right, 4 wrong

Here they are now.

Ro on his second birthday at Lake Balboa. We took a walk around the lake, fed the birds, picked up trash (resolution #6), had a snack and laughed and laughed. Ro's verbal and ASL vocabulary is expanding daily! His observances at the park on the different ducks, geese and birds (and their colors) was wonderful to behold. In the evening, we read "On the Night You Were Born" by Nancy Tillman.

Em on his fourth birthday. We had lunch with Daddy, made a yummy vanilla cake and picked out a spiffy new bike to replace the trike. Everywhere we went, he greeted everyone with "I'm FOUR!" rather than hello and his giggling was contagious to all. In the evening, we read "On the Day You Were Born" by Debra Frasier.

Finished blankie

I recently wrote about a Freecycler who graciously gave me 2 1/2 gigantic garbage bags full of scraps and the blanket I was making with some of them. After sorting them out and divvying up the scraps between several on and off continent friends, I set out to finish this fun blanket. Ro is transitioning from "the baby" to a toddler and I wanted to freshen up his room with some new accents. Over the next few months I'll blog about all the ideas as they come to fruition... here is the first one! (click on the pic to enlarge for a better view)The front of the blanket is entirely made with scraps from Angie (a.k.a. The Freecycler) and the back is a big piece of cocoa brown fleece I already had on hand. I used thread from my stash and the love in making it is, of course, free... so the blanket technically didn't cost much! I guess you could say it was about 1.50 for the thread, 1.50 for the gas to pick up the fabric, and .75 for the piece of fleece that I bought out of the remnant bin many months ago. $3.75 in cash but priceless when you add in the doing for the love of your child!! It fits perfectly in his crib-- but it doesn't stay there unless he's asleep. Usually it is with him. I think he likes it!

What do you do with your fabric scraps??