Note to Self: Remember This

Happy Earth Day!

Rowan just LOVES Earth Day, and we are thrilled with how much she loves it. She clumps it in with all the other major holidays of the year (on the same level as Halloween and Easter), and has been planning a trash clean-up for weeks. When she was 2 we picked up trash along our road on Earth Day and it made a big impression. Since then she loves to get on her soapbox and rant about how people can't just throw garbage everywhere because that's not helping the earth. While flying a kite with Aaron at the Town Commons last month they saw a box of trash someone had left behind, so they decided this Earth Day they would clean up the park.

We spent the day visiting one of a friend in Portland, and on the way home we took a quick detour and stopped at the DeLorme Map Store so that the girls could see Eartha for the first time. Rowan was in awe of this huge globe. We looked at it from different angles, different heights, pointed out places we'd been and of course, where Santa lives. A perfect Earth Day pit-stop on the way home. Then while riding home she started asking me all these questions and we got into a heavy discussion about destruction of the rainforests and air pollution, and whether the things in the story of The Lorax really happen on our planet. I just adore watching the gears turning in her head and seeing her get fired up about something. We got home in time for a quick supper but she was ready to put on her Captain Planet cape and tackle her park project. We all bundled up for a chilly sunset trash pick-up of the park and our road, finished off by what else but The Lorax for a bedtime story. A budding activist and/or environmentalist? Maybe/I hope so...regardless, I love her spunk and spirit!

And lastly, a cute video of she and Aaron reading her book and an important public service announcement.

Retta Through the Months

I meant to have this made and post this back at Retta's birthday, but a lady can't do it all. So here it is a few weeks late, nonetheless cute. These month by month onesies were one of my favorite shower gifts- a fun tradition to take a photo marking each month!

Chicks!

A couple of weeks ago we got five new chicks--we figured it would be pretty great to get them in conjunction with Easter. My original thought was to surprise the girls with a chick in their Easter basket, but remembering how much they poop and having someone recently remind me that you have to be careful of salmonella with kids and the handling of chicks, we decided to tell Rowan about our plan and that way she got to enjoy going to the farm to pick out our new flock. Excited she was-- she has been very good about feeding them each day and wants to continually hold them.The first name she came up with was Whoopie Pie, which we all liked. There's also Ladybug Girl, Big Bird, Rose, and Attila the Hen. It is still a little too cold for the chicks to be out in the coop at night so they've been living in a box in our upstairs bathroom, and each night we fall asleep to the sounds of "cheep, cheep, cheep!" Retta finds the chicks mystifying and woke up and pointed toward the bathroom this morning and said, "Cheeks! Cheeks!" wanting to see the chicks. I just can't wait until Whoopie Pie and company start laying those fresh eggs.

Rowan's Spectacular Spectacles

Rowan's new book obsession is the Fancy Nancy series. At first I thought, "Oh great...another bunch of books about a girl with a princess complex," but it turns out Nancy is fancy because she has an excellent vocabulary and is always using big, fancy words. Rowan is particularly in love with the book, Fancy Nancy's Spectacular Spectacles, which is about how Nancy is jealous of her friend who gets sparkly eyeglasses. She wants glasses too, but her mom assures her it is better to have good eyesight, and then they use an old pair of sunglasses to make her own pair of spectacular spectacles. So Rowan and I made some spectacles with some of my old beads, hot glue and a pair of her old sunglasses. According to Rowan , the result is most definitely...spectacular!

The Feel Better Basket

Our family's Feel Better Basket: a hot water bottle, honey sticks and organic lollipops for sore throats, Vap-O-Rub, a back massager, a microwaveable rice-sock, and homemade handkerchiefs for runny noses.

I've been meaning to share this for a while- the idea of making a feel-better basket for your home. We are (knock on wood) finally coming out of the cold/flu season, but nonetheless, this basket has been a great addition to our medicine cabinet. I think I had read about this idea in one of Amanda Blake Soule's books, and a few weeks back in the doldrums of late winter, it was a fun little project to put together. I took an unused basket and put our family's favorite comfort items in there for times when someone is feeling under the weather. I made some simple kid-sized flannel handkerchiefs in fun prints, which has been great- Rowan loves having her own special handkerchief that she now uses when she has a runny nose. It has significantly cut down on how many tissues we were going through too. We also have honey sticks and sort-of-healthy (?) lollipops for sore throats, back massagers, a hot water bottle, and the the "family heart" which is a soft heart you can give to someone to hug when they aren't feeling well or need extra encouragement. It has a pocket in the front for little love notes as well. The idea behind this basket was to make something the girls could have access to not only to help themselves, but to encourage nurturing of other family members. Rowan has really gotten on board with getting the feel-better-basket out to tend to the sick. If you have young kids I highly recommend making one for your family and putting in whatever brings you comfort!