A Peanut Butter Sandwich

Someday I will write about my mild obsession (I'd call it mild, my hubby wouldn't) with books. My love of books began very early... like at birth! And so I have kept my books and love of reading to pass on to my children.

Reading to my boys is always a fantastic time for me. I use different voices and faces - different accents and shouts and whispers - I am a one woman three ring circus of reading enjoyment! (Probably a holdover from high school drama and speech competitions.) We read everything... and with April having been National Poetry Month, we added reading several poems each night before our books. (Yes, this is a super late blog to be writing about April's poetry month in the middle of May-- sorry 'bout that.)


So one night, I was reading to Em and flipping through one of my favorite poetry books as a kid-- and I come to the "Peanut-Butter Sandwich" poem by Shel Silverstein. Immediately I flash back to 3rd grade with Miss Palai and what I remember to be my very first speaking engagement! I chose to do this very poem because my dad is obsessed with peanut butter sandwiches. If you click on the picture of the book above, you can actually see my writing (I know, bad girl for writing in books, but hey I was 9) of how I handled the poem... speaking fast here, making faces there. And I guess my mom timed me that I read the poem in 1 minute and 55 seconds.


Back to the present... Em is listening to me, with giant wide eyes and slightly rapid breathing as I tell about the "silly young king" and his peanut-butter sandwich dilemma. I am loving it! He's hooked in and I am so happy he's loving it too! The poem ended with him finishing the last line and a big guffaw laugh and "AGAIN Momma, read it AGAIN!!!" It really is a great poem.


If you like reading to your children and would like to be more animated, Mem Fox has a wonderful book called Reading Magic and her site gives some commandments to follow to help your child learn to love and appreciate reading also. Mem Fox is the author of that one book that every parent I know seems to have and love and memorize in their child's' baby and toddler years... "It's time for bed little mouse little mouse, darkness in falling all over the house..."


If you have Where the Sidewalk Ends, try reading the peanut-butter poem and also "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out" aloud. It is a tongue twisting fun!

Homemade Bath Salts for Mother's Day

A quick craft your kids can make for the special women in their lives! (Green week on Unplug Your Kids!!!)

1- Pulse Epsom Salts 6 - 10 times so grains are still big but not gigantic

2- Add vitamin E oil, dried melon and cucumber, then natural dye and fragrance

3- Pulse another 6 - 10 times to combine

4- Clean glass containers with alcohol and then fill with mixture

5- Affix super cute custom labels

6- Add ribbon and wrap!

(Click on the picture for larger viewing)

I found many recipes very easily for scrubs, bath salts... all kinds of pampering goodies.

The labeling and container can be as easy or as complex as you want to make it. Ingredients are readily available at hobby and drug stores (Epsom salts are MUCH cheaper at a drug store!) and the scents you use can be pretty much anything you can imagine.

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??