Go Fly a Kite!

Or try one of my other top ten picks for what to do next time you are in Seaside, Oregon.  I've been going there since I was itsty-bitsy.  My daughter (who is somehow almost one already!!) has already been there five times.  Anyhow, you would think that doing the same stuff would get old, but somehow it never does. 

1.  Read a Book.     I saw one wise woman laying on a beach towel with a blanket over her, head toward the ocean, reading.  Looked pretty cozy!  Yes, I know, some of you are thinking that people should be wearing bikinis at the beach in June, not blankets. Yet somehow I still prefer a blanket. 

I have made some good finds at Beach Books, including Beach by Elisha Cooper.  It has amazing illustrations that kids could pour over all day if you are patient enough to let them.  My other recent beachy pick is Bears at the Beach by Niki Yektai which I found at Under the Big Top Toys.

On this trip I managed to read a book in three days.  That has to be some kind of record for a person with two little kids.  I started and finished Novella Carpenter's book Farm City while curled up in bed with a little person snoozing away and a view of the ocean.  And our favorite storytime reads courtesy of King County Library were Dunk Skunk by Michael Rex and Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis.  Both are simple enough for young children to read along with you. We had to laugh when we were at the beach and noticed that I was telling Sawyer, "Be careful with that stick!" and he looked at me and said, "It's not a stick, it's a rocket!"

2.  Make a Castle.  It's risky building castles with preschoolers around. They like to destroy them as much or more as they like to build them.  We reached a compromise, Sawyer agreed to only destroy the castles that I built for that purpose and to leave the rest of my creations undisturbed.  This strategy worked great, until Peyton crawled right into the middle and smushed the whole thing anyhow.  Darn.

This time we built our castles using a variety of recycled containers as forms.  Buckets work great, but so do old "snack pack" tubs (Teddy Grahams, Ritz Bits, you know the ones?) and plastic easter eggs.  We also went on a hunt around the beach for wood, feathers, shells, things to decorate and use as drawbridges.  The gathering was just as fun as the embellishing. 

3.  Fly a Kite.  Always fun on a windy day.  Plus lots of running in the fresh air might equal a long nap which will allow you to accomplish # 1 (see above).

4.  Ride a Bike.  Up and down the prom.  To town and back. To the swings and back. Or for a change of scenery head past the aging Tides motel at the South end along the residential streets and over to the cove.  Head up the hill to the Tillamook Head trail head (to Ecola state park and Cannon Beach) if you need a workout.

5.  Eat.  Specifically the Cheesy Shrimp Bread at Harbor Bites.  It's a fun, neighboorhoody place at the opposite end of town from everything else.  They have live music on Tuesdays and more often in the summer and you can eat, enjoy a pitcher of beer (or a soda) with your kids in tow, and then walk or ride your bike home.

6.  Ride the Carousel.  It spins pretty quickly so beginners should start with the Ostrich or Giraffe which don't go up and down. $1.50 a person.  Adults are free if they are riding with a paying child.  The train across the street is fun but it's not consistently open which can lead to dashed hopes and thus tears.  Free rides are available on the beach swings, the ones near the turn around get crowded so head to the ones that are further down the prom.

7.  Eat More.  Fudge. Tom and Larry's. Enough said.

8.  Play.  Skee ball.  Air hockey.  Pin Ball.  And what the heck- Dance Dance Revolution.  All at the arcade.

9.  Eat.  Popcorn.  Phillip's candies. Caramel or Cheese? Sweet or salty or a little of both?  Take your pick and some napkins (especially if you choose the cheese).  And beware- the sizes are decieving because they pack it up over the box and let it spill into a little clear bag around the box that they seal with a twist-tie.

10.  Play Ten Tiny Tees.  At $3.00 a pop, this is a mini-golf bargain.  It hasn't changed since I was a kid so there's plenty of chance for mastery.  The only problem is that kids under 6 aren't allowed to play on their own.  You can however play together (meaning: you hold the club, they get to help).

Oh, and a little known secret, Seaside has an awesome public swimming pool.  Non-residents pay $3.00 a person for Open Swim.  There is a warm water pool and a jacuzzi, and in the big, cold pool there is a slide, rock climbing wall, and rope swing.  And the locker rooms even have suit spinners!  There are regular Kinder-splash times for the 3 and under set as well as regular lap swim hours.  Call to check the schedule- Sunset Empire Parks and Rec.  The pool is located on the other side of the highway near Safeway, the library, and Broadway Park (which has a new play structure and a skate park).

Tee-Ball Morning

Clock says green.

Let's get up and go.

Books.

Breakfast.

Showers for two.

Clock says we're doing fine,

on time.

T-Shirts.

Tears.

"Find your glove!"

Shoes on.

Come on,

come on,

come on!

In the car.

Not going far.

That's great.

Because guess what?
We're running late.

2, 4, 6, 8, Who do we appreciate?

Moms, and teachers!  Lucky me, I happen to be both! 

We celebrated my son's teachers with flowers.  In fact, we took lilacs in to school not one but two different days because I saw the Teacher Appreciation email and swung into action.  Many thanks to Arlene's mom who saw me with flowers in the parking lot and told me that I was a week early.  But you can never have too many lilacs!  And you can never appreciate teachers too much either!

And we also made them some homemade artwork.  I let Sawyer take the lead on this one.  This is where not minding having an easel and art supplies and paper all over my kitchen pays off.  He wanted to do a box painting which we've done before at home (I wrote about it in one of the early Mess Fest posts!) and they have done it at school as well.  So I grabbed a box from the laundry room and we got started.  He found the objects to "paint" with, a potato and a rock from the kitchen counter.  He chose the colors of paint, rolled it around, and told me which teacher each painting was for. 

Then apparently he wasn't done because he picked up the strips of paper that I had trimmed off in order to fit the papers in the box and started making prints on them off of the original paintings.  Then we went with that idea and put some paint down on a new sheet of paper in order to print on the other strips. Which with a little lamination became bookmarks for his teachers.  Thanks Kinkos!

Two more ideas that came from The Children's Studio!  My darling mother's day gift from Sawyer was a portable hug, created by tracing his arm span on paper, cutting it out and rolling it up.  It was packaged with a ribbon and a tag that said "Happiness is unexpected hugs."  And it was delivered with a real hug and chocolate kiss.

I think I might make two more for the grandmas to go with the rainbow handprints we made.  A week or two ago, one of the teachers at school was doing this as a project with one child at a time.  Sawyer, as usual, was not interested in doing an art project at school, with so many other cool things to explore.  But a couple days later, at home, he decided he wanted to do rainbow handprints. 

When I do handprints, I always have babywipes on hand because they wipe the paint right off when you finish.  I painted each finger and the palm of his hand a different color, then asked him to spread his fingers wide, and pressed his hand down.  Then pulled his hand straight up.  Presto!  We reapplied the paint so we would have one for each grandma, then we switched hands and repeated the process.  He also enjoyed doing several prints without reapplying the paint.  That made a cool banner that I am keeping for myself!

Although I never got around to actually writing a love letter to his teachers, I did manage to put my thoughts together in a poem for them.  We put the poem on the back side of the bookmarks, and he was super excited to show it off to each of them. 

Here it is, my poem celebrating Lindsey, Linda, Rebecca, and Kim!  Inspired by the growth I've seen in Sawyer this year in his imagination, memory, speech, silliness and confidence.  And by the way that his teachers let the environment of the school do the work!  They provide what the kids need.  And the kids grow.

teachers

preparing soil
planting seeds
sprinkling water

letting the sun shine
the plants grow
always watching
waiting

children
deep roots growing
strong stems shooting up
turning their true leaves
             toward the sun


thriving

Ready or Not Here I Come

Who doesn't love a good game of Hide and Seek?  Especially when you are playing with a young child where "hiding" means they can't see you.  Usually they hide in the same place over and over again, tell you where they are hiding, or hide where they just found you.  Now I love playing this game with my kids, but I recently discovered a way to play this game with food.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It's time to play Hide and Seek with your food.

Hide and Seek Muffins. 
This is another big hit from Mollie Katzen, author of Pretend Soup.  Which I am happily cooking my way through.

You measure and dump and mix and pour muffin batter in the pan just like usual, then you take strawberries, roll them in sugar to add some sparkle factor, and hide one in each muffin.  When we hid ours, they were still poking out a bit.  But we were also a bit low on batter after a baby on the loose grabbed the mixing bowl and sloshed some of the ingredients out.  We didn't know exactly how much of which ingredients we lost so we just continued as though nothing had happened.  So, maybe your berries will be all the way hidden at this point. 

Then while we weren't looking, our muffin batter baked itself right up over the berries and hid them inside.  Well, in our case it was more like a Peek-a-Boo situation, where not much berry was showing.  But I'm interested to try again and see if they are all the way covered up next time!

These muffins taste just like strawberry shortcake. Yummers!  And while you are eating them you get to "seek" the treasure in the middle.  Sawyer always chose to eat the muffin that had the least berry showing because he loved the surprise of finding the berry in the middle after a few bites. 

Love in LaConner

I am not talking about a romantic weekend away kind of love. I am talking about my son's LOVE of tractors. 

We embarked this morning on an adventure, an early celebration of Earth Day (Coming up on April 22nd.).  I thought I'd do what I wanted which was to see the tulip fields, take some cute photos of the kids, and check out some of the places featured in the April issue of Sunset magazine.  So imagine Sawyer's excitement when I pointed out this sign (as we drove through Conway, after exiting I-5 at Exit 221) . . .

While I was busy explaining over and over again why we might need to share the road with tractors (and with bicycles, which were everywhere), we started to see them.  Some were parked in fields that had been recently plowed, but as I started pointing them out we started to see wheels rolling.  And for the rest of the day we saw tractors.  Everywhere.  Working alone.  Working together (one field had at least 6 all plowing at the same time). Plowing.  Planting. Aparantly tulip season is also tractor season. 

So I got my cute photos.

And Sawyer got to see evidence of tractors . . .

followed by an actual tractor planting and refilling with seed and fertilizer.

Then we headed to lunch in LaConner at the La Conner Fruit & Produce Market which I was worried would be overrun with people since I had just read about it in Sunset.  We miraculously found a parking space right in front of the restaurant and transfered the sleeping baby and tired toddler from the car to the restaurant.  Then the tough part, deciding what to order!  After much deliberating, I decided on a pulled pork sandwich and a peanut butter cookie covered with chocolate chips, Sawyer got the kids grilled cheese and a sugar cookie with m&m's, and my mom ordered the reuben.  All of us were VERY happy and VERY full!  I will be going back to try a chocolate peanut butter milkshake and a strawberry shortcake bar cookie. 

The food was awesome, but so was the view!  While my mom stood in line and ordered our food, I nabbed a table by the window where we could see the waterway with the iconic orange bridge and boats passing.   Sawyer was observing the seagulls that were perched on the porch when a friendly employee invited him to go outside with her to feed them.  She gave him some bread and together they placed it on the railing and returned inside to watch the birds feast.  Then as we were waiting for our food, watching boats coming and going, a float plane landed right in front of us with a huge splash and made it's way to the dock.   We took our time eating and before we left, the float plane loaded new passengers, pushed off the dock, and took off again.

I can't go anywhere without visiting a bookstore so our next stop was the Next Chapter Bookstore.  I spent most of my time upstairs in the loft of children's books where I found 



and as I was on my way out I noticed both 

 and  which are now on my "To Read" list.

We made our way back to the car, set off for home, and spotted tons more tractors on our way out of town.  Then to top it all off, just before we got back to I-5, the red lights started flashing and a freight train passed right in front of us.  Those of you who drive around noticing excavators, cranes, fire trucks, and all sorts of other things that your kids love know that it just doesn't get any better!

If you give a Baby a Blueberry Pancake . . .

She’ll eat the whole thing.  And she'll want to help cook more, so you'll have to distract her from "helping" by giving her a whisk.  But giving her a whisk will make her think she's going to get to mix the batter, pour the batter, eat the batter.  You see where this is heading . . .  a big MESS and a HAPPY baby.

Anyhow, you will love this recipe because it involves BUTTER! Lots of it. You add melted butter to the batter. And then later you add a slice of butter to the pan each time you start a new pancake. This explains why these blueberry pancakes were so good that we didn’t even use the syrup. I didn’t even think about the syrup. And neither did my kids.

Two new and exciting cooking skills were introduced in this recipe.

1) Cracking eggs! Yup, I let Sawyer do it by himself. Or at least I was ready to, but he didn’t really want to get egg on his fingers. So he cracked it and then I pulled it apart. Usually, I don’t even let him hold the eggs so this was a big step.

2) Flipping with a spatula! I know we don’t even think about this being tricky because as adults we do it all the time. But Sawyer was as excited about getting to do the flipping as I would be if I learned how to toss pizza crust in the air without messing it up. (Sidenote: our favorite places to watch pizza pros at work are Flying Pie Pizzaria in downtown Issaquah, Zeeks Pizza in the Issaquah Highlands, and Tutta Bella off Gilman.)

Seriously, he talked about how he got to flip the pancakes himself ALL DAY. “Me put-ed butter in the pan, me pour batter in and it cook-ed for a little while, me put-ed blueberries, mom put-ed the spatula under, and me flip-ed it over!”

He was a little worried about the hot pan when we started off. So I had him practice the flipping motion with the spatula before he tried it with the heat and the actual pancake. And we did the first one with my hand over his. But he did the rest himself- I was having visions of myself reading at the kitchen table, feet up, chai latte in hand, while he cooks me breakfast! The secret to his flipping success was following Mollie’s advice and cooking only one pancake at a time so that there was plenty of room to maneuver the spatula and a larger area for the uncooked side of the pancake to land.

Another genius piece of cooking wisdom was Mollie’s plan of pouring the milk into a smaller pitcher and having kids pour it into the measuring cups over a pie pan. It worked like a charm. I used the pitcher from Sawyer’s tea set which was just the right size and weight for him to be able to pour on his own.

And as you can see he had a blast dropping the butter into the hot pan and watching it melt, dumping the batter into the pan, and especially dropping the 6 blueberries onto the pancake as it cooked. If only I was this excited to cook dinner every night.

So, if you let your child flip their own pancakes . . .
they will want to make them every day. And they will eat them all up!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, EAT

When I told Sawyer we were making Number Salad, his first response was, "But I don't like salad."  What he meant was, "I don't like lettuce."  When I explained that the ingredients that we were using were actually all fruit and cheese he was at least willing to give it a try. 

We started off with all the ingredients in separate bowls like the set up for making bagel faces.  This led to lots of snacking while cooking, just with fruit this time instead of veggies.  Let your child do as much of the cutting themselves as possible.  The melon and banana are good candidates for slicing with a table knife.

Mollie's recipe is:


1 handful of coconut

2 Tablespoons of OJ concentrate

3 slices of Orange

4 slices of apple

5 cubes of cheese

6 slices of banana

7 pieces of melon

8 grapes

Stir 9 times

EAT.

I thought this was a pretty tasty fruit salad.  I loved the mix of fruit with the Monterey Jack cheese.  Just a warning:  Sawyer didn't touch his salad once it was all mixed together.  But, he did eat a lot of each ingredient individually. 

 

Counting out the pieces for each step was good practice.  Get some extra counting practice by making several servings.  Also, you could do countdown salad and start at 10 working backwards.  You could let your child determine which ingredients to use for each number so they would end up with more of the things they prefer to eat.  And best of all you could make "Number Salad" with whatever ingredients you have around- fruits or veggies.  I want to try one that has more berries and some mango.  Or try making "Number Trail Mix" using dry ingredients.

 

Happy counting!