A year on with Painting

About a year ago I shared about Addie's first foray into the world of painting. She was about 17 months  old and had a ball. I've greedily hoarded her paintings since that time, but recently she's made some exciting advances. 

So, she still likes to paint with her clothes off. Who am I to complain? A bath is much quicker and easier than trying to get paint out of clothes. I know, I learned the hard way. Also, smocks are good, but somehow the paint always finds its way to the clothes even still. So naked it is. 

Today Addie painted while her sister was in bed asleep. We can't quite paint around Clementine yet. She just doesn't 'get' it yet so she just wrecks everything instead. Give it a few months though and we can all get our paint on. 

Addie now knows her colours - getting them right about 90% of the time. So today she actually asked if she could paint with red yellow and orange. I also gave her a few more colours to paint with. I had no orange though, so she asked for it specifically again. I showed her how to mix yellow and red. She doesn't understand that of course, but one day she will. 

Addie no longer paints until the paint runs out. Today she used separate brushes for the different colours, and put them back when she got a new one. She was respecting her tools. She looked at her picture, deciding what to do next, and thoughtfully loaded her brush with colour. 

Her strokes were also planned, and she talked about what shapes she thought she was drawing. I was pretty amazed to watch her put down the blue brush that she had been using for circles, pick up the red brush, do two ticks, and put the red away. 

Addie is not a neat child, and certainly not an organised one. Respecting her things is totally foreign for her, so I was pleasantly shocked at all of this. Even more shocking is that she sat at this activity for half an hour!

 And then of course it turned into this. She said to me "Look mummy! Colours on Addie!" After painting her toes on both feet and putting what she called "spots" on the top of her feet, she proclaimed "Ta-da!! All done"

Her master pieces.

Then and now. The baby turned girl.

You CAN be a kitchen superstar (or at least chop up a whole chicken) in a few easy steps.

Woolies had free range chickens on special this week, and having just seen a Stay At Home Mum vid on how to chop up a whole chicken, I imagined myself having some mad skills, and decided to get 3 and practice. Here's how it went.

A whole Chicken - minus it's feet, head & neck, guts - you know, straight out of the packet!

Cut up into recognisable cuts, and yep, so easy you should try it.

3 chickens cut and bagged, minus the thighs and carcass.

The thighs + one breast became a curry for dinner.

The carcasses went into the slow cooker to make up my first stock. I'm not sure if it is any good? How do you tell those sorts of things? I let it evaporate off and reduce down, it's in the fridge getting nice and cool so I can put it in ice cubes in the freezer. Hopefully I remember to use it one day, but to be honest, I've not really used liquid stock so it sounds a bit daunting. I just felt bad chucking out the left over bits of chicken body once I'd cut it all up.

 

Anyway, it's surprisingly quick and easy, so why not watch the video and give it a go hey?

 

The Other Witching Hour

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”
― Roald Dahl, The Bfg

These days it more commonly means that time between afternoon tea and bed time for the kids when you are preparing tea and needing them to be calm gentle and lovely, but instead they become small naked savages that even their grandparents don't find adorable.

Let me submit however that there is Another Witching Hour. If you've got or have had kids I think you will know it well. The half hour before or after you go to bed ready to recharge with a few hours sleep, and the child who has hitherto (if you're lucky) slept peacefully wakes and needs a drink/cuddle/DVD/iPad/piece of cucumber. If you are super blessed like I am, more than one kid wakes and getting them back to bed peacefully is no longer an option.

Obviously we try to resettle, give drinks of milk, talk softly (though Addie's volume is stuck on yelling after 11pm) keep the lights off or low but it doesn't always do the trick. So now we play the waiting game - hoping that they quickly shake their sillies out and go back to bed so that we can get some sleep.

 

Here are my precious zombie children at midnight tonight.

 

(ps, when I say "we" it means "Me, on behalf of Andrew and myself")

 

 

Night Sequence Cards

Night times have gone a touch crazy at Chez Schultz. Clementine had an ear infection that kept her awake a whole 24hrs (and I thought my wake-a-thons died with my teens!) and Addie developed a sudden and severe aversion to her bed, her potty, her nappies and sleep. Happy days! We are working on bringing sanity to our evenings, so this is my cunning plan to take back the night by establishing a toddler routine that gives her control. Sneaky no?

So I found this idea on Pinterest, given as a chore chart but totally applicable for my plans. Addie's night sequence includes:

> Clean teeth
> Nappy on
> Pyjamas on
> Read a story
> Talk to God
> Give mum or dad a cuddle
> Go to bed

When she has done each task she will turn the card over and it has a picture of the moon and stars. Addie loves the moon and stars so I hope that it will be incentive for her, and the whole thing will feed the toddler hunger for control and predictability. Wish us luck and happy bedtimes.

A trip to the dump

I felt inspired to go to the town dump today, where they have a shed selling stuff the workers have deemed still 'good'. It's known as the tip shop or mitre 11.

Andrew wasn't keen, but being the good man that he is, humoured me by coming. Thanks Andrew :D I'm not sure that he still thinks it was a good idea but I think it was inspired!

Walking in I saw a case that I could smell a sewing machine in. A beautiful elegant old Huskvarna, with manuals included. The tip lady said $5 but she doesn't know if it works. I put it aside so no one else could buy it. Then I found a wooden crate, an old hand driven meat slicer (will be awesome for Andrew's work lunches), a couple if books, a baby swing like I'd been after for both girls but never found. It was a treasure haul!!

Andrew found two teensy folding chairs, which Addie declared should be church chairs and I found the coolest junk ever, a pay telephone stand!!! Does it get better than that? I had to pull many "I love it so much id trade a child for it" faces including well rehearsed googley eyes and I got a grudging approval to get a price for taking home all this :) $20 later and we owned all the junk and somehow loaded it into the car.

It didn't quite end there as the car had a flat battery (doh!) my roadside assistance had run out (oops) the girls were hot, bothered and surrounded by my treasures- we very narrowly avoided a nuclear meltdown from Addie thanks to the iPhone, and got home safe and sound in the end.

Now where to put this stuff?

Things you can learn from my two year old.

It doesn't matter what you wear, as long as you wear it with conviction.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, bar none.

You always need to have your best friend close by.

Bananas, chocolate, cake, wheetbix, cheese and milk are a balanced diet.

You're more likely to get what you want if it looks like you're thinking about others (eg. "mummy, Addie, Tiny like some cheese? Please?")

Fairies are real and you can find them everywhere.

You should get excited every time you see the moon and stars.

Sometimes you just need to go sit on your bed for 15 min while the world sorts itself out, then it is safe to return.

Water tastes better from a fairy cup or blue drink bottle.

Never pass up an opportunity to wear a costume or pretty dress- even if you're just going to get mud on it.

Make long lists of things that you love and thank God for them.

Thank the Chooks who lay our eggs.

Stories should always begin with ' once upon a time'.

Painting is best done while naked.

Skype a la Babies

I dont think that Andrew's parents got as much out of yesterday's Skype session as Tiny did. Addie was invoking her two year old right to wear no pants and say no to everything, so the extent of her interaction with her grandparents was to moon them.

Given that we let Tiny have full reign with the iPad. This resulted in a whole lot of touching noses on the screen and lots of kissing and hugging the iPad as well as holding it right up to her face in the way that kids are compelled to do that.

Skype is so valuable to us in enabling the girls to remember their grandparents on both sides because they only physically see them a few times a year. It's nice for the grandparents to see them and certainly reduces the 'send us pictures' pressure that we'd otherwise get, but primarily it's for the kids.

It's both adorable and heart breaking when Addie tries to reach through the screen to hug someone. The singing and tickling games are pretty hilarious and in short the girls get to have some of the relationship with their ancestors that they would otherwise miss because of distance.

FYI our iPad wears a kid proof case called Drop Tech iPad case by Gumdrop. It is fantastic and more than worth the $70 it cost.