Challenge Day 10- The weather is DIVINE!

We started the morning with the rice we dyed and the light table. They had jars and beakers and petri dishes. They had a blast with the table. They love anything colored. They're such imaginative children! They love to pretend to cook. They'll make anything and everything you ask for. And some things you don't.

We played for a little while but the NEED to get outside in the 60 degree weather was killing all of us. I wanted to try this invitation I saw this morning on Play At Home Mom's blog. You mix corn starch with baking soda and food coloring for a paint slurry. You then pour/spray it with vinegar and it bubbles up like crazy! Well, for us, this was a total bust. Jey touched it for all of 5 minutes, dumped the baking soda all over and watched until the bubbles died and was over it. LOL Oh well, we wanted to play soccer anyways.

Doesn't Mia look AWESOME?!

We all went to the side yard to play. Bell had no interest in playing. She was busy exploring and finding the first flowers of spring. Mia sat and collected and munched on pine straw, in her horribly mis-matched outfit. It was so ugly it was hilarious. Honestly, I was too excited to get outside to care what she was wearing. I just needed her to be warm. The wind here is always strong. That was my only concern.

Daddy and Jeremiah were practicing soccer techniques. Then I decided to jump in and try to show Daddy up. I was holding my own, as best I could. Then my body laughed at me. My chest tightened up and I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. My body was like "AHAHAHAH Did you forget you had asthma?!". I went inside, grabbed my inhaler and sat the rest of the time out and played with the baby. OH DARN!

We had so much fun outside, it's ridiculous. As much as I LOVE the winter, I'm looking forward to playing outside more with these kids!

Challenge Day 9- A Rough Day

It was a rough day. A REALLY rough day. It started with the baby being up vomiting all night, so I had another night with virtually no sleep.  This was coupled by the fact that I was out of coffee creamer. I LITERALLY cannot function without caffeine. I remember a few short years ago, making fun of my parents b/c they NEEDED caffeine to function. I was like "Just wean yourself off!". Enter 3 kids in 5 years and my addiction to caffeine. So I'm running on no sleep, worried about my puking infant and have no caffeine to help me through the day.

I'm not even going to attempt to lie. I put movies on for the kids ALL day. I can try to make it sound good and be like "We had a movie day!", but let's be realistic. The TV was my baby sitter today. I HATE saying that, but it's true. I TRIED to function, but it really wasn't possible.

I did actually MAKE lunch for the kids. We made tacos. They enjoyed helping with that. They both love tacos. Then again, who doesn't?

I laid on the couch and tried to gather the motivation to do, well, anything. I just couldn't. The caffeine headache was also imminent. Daddy was working night shift... I didn't even pack him any food to take to work. I mean, NOTHING. He ate tacos at lunch and then went to work with nothing. WIFE FAIL. He understood, and assured me it was okay. What a sweet man.

Once Daddy left, I HAD to muster up some energy to feed the muchkins. I made a combination of my chili and black bean soup. So? Black Bean Chili? It was good, not great. Everyone ate it, which is the important part.

While I was cooking, I DID set up an invitation for Bella with the colored ride we made the day before. I gave her rice and paper and glue and let her go at it. She had fun and made me some beautiful artwork. LOL

She had fun :)

There was rice and glue everywhere, but she enjoyed it. That's what mattered.

Jeremiah got to play his Wii during this time. He doesn't get to play much, so he was thrilled. He will also whoop our butts at any Wii game.

So the day pretty much stunk. Television and video games. Part of me wants to feel like a failure, but the other part realizes that EVERYONE has days like this.

Aiming for a better day today!

And the aftermath and artwork :D

Challenge Day 8- Fun with Friends

On this day I had 5 kids, ages 5 and under in my house. Needless to say I'm exhausted at the moment. I was watching the children of a dear friend, so she could go on a retreat with the youth ministry she leads.

I had NO idea what to give the kids as an invitation. I WANTED to take them all outside, but about an hour after we woke up, it started snowing. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to play in. Just enough to keep us indoors.

Bell looks thrilled

I knew the kids would all love cloud dough, but I didn't know how her children would do with it. They're great kids, don't get me wrong, but I would probably lose my cool if flour was ground into my couch or was being thrown. I don't know. My kids are messy with it, so it probably would have been fine. But, my mind went to like worst case scenario. I'm learning to allow the messes, but you've got to crawl before you can walk. I also, was not comfortable bathing her children (b/c they WOULD have needed it), without her permission.

I decided to play with something clean! Shaving cream paint! I made two trays of paint and put it in the middle of the table and told them to go at it. Jeremiah immediately dug in. Isabella, as always, wouldn't touch it. Lily and Ali had a little bit of a reservation, but in the end had fun.

WHEW! That was a fun 5 minutes. You know kids... monkey see, monkey do. Lily decided she was done after 5 minutes, so the others followed suit. ::sigh:: OK, let's get cleaned up.

The kids washed up and ran off to play. Later on we tried another invitation, one I've been DYING to try. Home made Play Dough! It was a recipe you cooked and then I kneaded color into it. I let each of the kids take turn putting ingredients into the pot and stirring. They quickly lost interest and went off to play again.

Once the dough was made, I kneaded in the coloring. I divided the batch into quarters and made blue, red, yellow, and green. I divided each of the colors into quarters as well and rolled them into balls. Each kid had a small lump of each color. I set it on the table and didn't say anything. It took them a couple minutes to notice it, but it finally piqued their interest.

They all climbed up to the table and started exploring. "What IS it?" Jeremiah asked. "Well, what does it feel like?" I replied. He said it was soft, warm, pretty, round, and of course, squishy! Once I was like "Yes, it is. Just like play dough!" You could see the light bulbs turn on and they all immediately started squishing and molding like tiny artists.

Why is it hard for me to watch my kids play with something in a way that I would not? For example, Jeremiah squished all his colors together until it looked like a hot mess. I was thoroughly annoyed by this. How could he? I JUST made that? Now he doesn't have 'colors'... just a nasty mess. I had to step back and breathe. There's NOTHING... I repeat... NOT. A. DANG. THING. wrong with what he did. But, why did it annoy me so much? Then I realized, it's b/c it was not the way I would have done it. Learning that about myself will definitely help on this journey. He's just a kid, and to him, the possibilities are endless! He isn't limited by not having separate colored dough. He now has a NEW color and the biggest blob of dough on the table! He proceeded to make a snowman :)

Lily, again, lost interest. She went and sat on the couch, kind of moping. I went and sat with her to talk to her. She wasn't feeling well, and she was obviously missing her mama. I took her temperature and with a low grade under arm temperature, I gave her the tylenol her mom had left for her. I pointed out to her, that her and Jeremiah do not get to see each other very often and she should play AS MUCH as she could. With that, she seemed to perk up a bit and went off to play with the other kids.

Not long after this, we started getting ready for Breezy to make her way back and get the girls. We gathered their things and deflated the air mattress. Breezy came, we made dinner and they got on the road to go home.

Daddy and I were enjoying the silence after 2 days with 5 kids. Mia was playing with the kids earlier in the day, so she fell asleep about 5 o'clock, maybe sooner. Around 9, I had Daddy go get Mia so she could be awake for a bit (so she would sleep tonight), and to eat her dinner. I gave Mia her bowl of carbonara and she gobbled it down.

Unfortunately for us, about a half hour after Mia ate, she projectile vomited all over me and the couch. We quickly cleaned her up and made sure she was ok. I got the little machine and cleaned the upholstery on the couch. She nursed and drank some water and stayed up for a bit longer, until she started rubbing her eyes. I called Breezy and asked about Lactose Intolerance.  The carbonara had Parmesan cheese in it. We normally avoid giving Mia dairy b/c she was sensitive to the dairy I would eat, when she was younger. She has had trace amounts of dairy before. And even had Mac & Cheese the other day, and was fine. But I could not think of what else it could be. Luckily, we happen to have an appointment with an allergist on Thursday, for Mia anyways. I'll talk to them about it.

I crawled into bed around 1 and no more than 30 seconds after I crawl into bed, I hear couching and gurgling from her (she's about a foot from me). She is vomiting in her sleep. I sit her up and it just keeps coming. All over me, all over both of our beds (our crib is sidecarred to our bed), and all over her. Daddy rushed down stairs to get some towels. I clean her up the best I can. Daddy, trying to not get sick himself, picks her up out of the bed, so I can strip the bed and wash everything.

Anyways, Mia and I ended up on the couch. No more instances, as of yet. Thank the Lord. So, I'm EXHAUSTED. Truly...  just a walking zombie at this point. Hopefully, the other kids won't get it, if it is a bug. Time to go make some coffee!

Challenge Day 7- Cookies and Glow sticks

So the kids have really been digging these cookies, that I found on Pinterest. They've been asking for them again so our invitation today was baking :)

 

We didn't have any bananas, like the recipe called for... So we cut up a giant apple and sauteed it and mashed it up. We also added mini chocolate chips. NOM NOM NOM

Both the kids LOVE baking so this was a total hit. They love measuring and pouring and mixing. Watching the mixer is always quite an event too. (I've named my mixer Frederick, by the way. I just thought you would like to know that. It is quite the love affair)

We measured and poured and mixed. LOTS of Blankenship fun. We all love to eat so cooking is such a natural extension of that, that I'm thrilled to share with my children. I hope they learn to love to cook and bake like I do. Or at the very least be ABLE to cook for themselves as adults.

 Bella poured in the dry ingredients, while Jeremiah mixed the coconut oil into the apples and added the vanilla. Then he added the wet ingredients to the mixer. Jeremiah added some craisins and Bell added the chocolate chips. There was definitely some craisin/chocolate chip stealing going on. But I didn't mind. I joined right in. Well, with the chocolate anyways.

The cookies turned out great. Unfortunately, I was busy preparing the house for guests, that I forgot to snap pictures of all the cookie nomming going on. Everyone said they were delicious :) I wouldn't know. I'm not a oatmeal cookie person.

Not long after the cookies were done our dear friend, Breezy arrived with her two girls, Alice and Lily.

Breezy was chaperoning a teen girl retreat of some sort in the next town over and asked me to watch the girls overnight. No problem! My kids don't get very much interaction with other children, because we only know one family up here. We were all excited to see them.

When they arrived, we got everyone settled and I got dinner started. Mac and Cheese was the dish of the evening, because I know her girls don't eat some of the stuff we do. They're sensitive to spice and unfamiliar things, so I played it safe. You cannot go wrong with Mac and Cheese, after all!

After dinner it started to get dark and our evening invitation was about to begin. I wanted to WEAR THE KIDS DOWN before bed. The girls were going to sleep in Jeremiah's room, hoping to make it easier on them that mom was not present. So I knew there would be no sleep for anyone, unless they were exhausted when they laid down. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

I cracked open about 50 glow sticks and turned off all the lights. I turned on some Veggie Tales music and let them go. They were HILARIOUS. They were throwing them in the air, waving them around and watching in awe as the stick could make one solid mass of color in front of them. At one point we put a glow stick on every appendage of each child. Since they could now "see" each other... a game of cat and mouse was in hot pursuit. They ran laps around my kitchen/dining room/ living room area.  They all were running and laughing while slamming into walls and each other. They had a blast and Daddy and I couldn't stop laughing at them.

We eventually woke Mia up from her nap, to join the fun and eat her dinner. She wasn't so sure about the glow sticks at first but eventually was waving them around, like the other kiddos.

Challenge Day 6- My Little Scientists

My petri dishes and test tubes came in the mail, along with my window crayons. I was SO excited. I knew I HAD to do a rocking Light Table invitation. This is what it ended up being:

(Colored water, petri dishes, dropper and syringe, q-tips and cotton balls and colored corn)

Jeremiah found the invitation first. Bell was lounging on the couch with a belly full of cereal. He looks at the table, then at me and goes "Huh? WHAT?! What am I supposed to do with this?" I replied with "Whatever you want!" He did a little leap of joy and got right to exploring it all.

So serious!

Bell soon realized there was fun being had that she was left out of and scampered off to find her brother. She ran over to the table and said "WHAT. IS. THIS?! Hooray!" lol They make me laugh. She got right in there with Jeremiah. They were being very serious and very meticulous. I think they were plotting to take over the world.

I thought I had another picture of the table semi "lived in", but I must have deleted it. :( All I have now is one of the aftermath.

I'm not sure why it's hard for me to watch them play with things NOT in the way I think they should. Or the way I would. They wanted nothing to do with the petri dishes, for the most part. They instead, spent the entire time dumping the corn and cotton balls INTO the cups of colored water (several more cups were later added to keep the party going). We had cups filled of sludge by the end of it. But, they loved it. They also ended up using about half of a bag of cotton balls. LOL They were Bella's favorite part. Bella eventually bored and Jeremiah decided to hoard all the corn.

This was what he concocted

I thought I saw painted/colored corn on the Play At Home Mom blog, that I love so very much, but by the end of this, most of the paint was coming off of the corn. Granted I used washable paint. But, in my defense, I wasn't expecting them to mix the water and corn. Silly me. Do not underestimate your children's imaginations! So, now I have all normal colored corn again and I need to find a new way to color it... if that's even possible.

After this came lunch and then nap. Well, the older two were offered a nap and the baby woke up. The days of all 3 napping at the same time are long gone. However, Bella will stay in her room and play quietly for about an hour.

Since the window crayons showed up shortly after nap time, Jeremiah was chomping at the bit to get to use them. So, I told him to go at it.

OK, these were SERIOUSLY fun.

Eventually Jeremiah got cranky and he took a nap. Around the same time Mia went down. But oh wait! Bell was ready to come out of her room. LOL We let her have a go at the window crayons. She loved them too. I forgot to snap a picture. Mia decided she wasn't tired after all, so we took the girls outside to play, since the weather was like, in the 60's. We didn't realize however that there were Gale force winds. The wind was knocking Bella over and pushing Mia's walker all over the place. It was absolutely hilarious! We had intended to stay out and play for a while and have Jey come join us when he woke up, but Bella really did not like it. We ended up staying outside for all of about 10 minutes. We came inside and started straightening up and getting ready to cook dinner. 

SO WINDY!

 Overall the day was wonderful. There were the normal, every day meltdowns. But I realized that we had not really gotten on to the kids in well.. Gee... about 6 days. I don't think we've had but one timeout. HOORAY! I HATE timeout. I don't think they're particularly effective nor do they address the issue, but sometimes, I'm at a lack of how to handle the situation. The kids don't seem to be fighting as much and are interacting more.

Who would have thought!?! ME, playing with the kids would make them behave better... It makes PERFECT sense, but I never thought about it. WHY don't people tell you these things? This past week has been fantastic and I cannot WAIT to keep playing with my beautiful family!

That being said, I'm expecting an epic melt down day, any time now. Because this seems too good to be true!

God is good and I'm so incredibly grateful to have the amazing family that I do <3

Challenge Day 5- Sponge Paint

It looks like I will be writing each days blog the day after. I fell asleep again last night, while watching TV...

I'm quickly learning that taking on this challenge and wanting to do all of the stuff I see online very challenging, on a military budget. There is SO much I want to do with them, but we just DO NOT have the supplies, nor the money to get them. I will just be buying a little bit with each pay check, the way any military family buys anything.

I'm also less enthused about this, than I was on day 1 and 2. NOT that I don't love playing with them. I've REALLY been enjoying it. But trying to think of invitations with supplies we have has proven... challenging. I know once I'm more used to this, I'll start thinking outside the box more. But as of now, I'm a little frustrated. Yesterday I was at a complete loss of an idea we hadn't already done. I was also lacking motivation to figure one out. I resorted to hand painting after seeing a project on Pinterest.

Jeremiah's Shamrock

So, I whipped out the paint and we got started. I should have known that Bella would not be down for the activity I had planned. It involved painting their hands and making Shamrocks. Then they could just finger paint.

Your Majesty demanded brushes of some sort. So, I ran down stairs and grabbed the sponges from mini paint rollers. (You know, the ones for edging?)

Those worked. She was ready to play. Phew! They giggled and played and smeared paint everywhere.

The mess no longer bothers me. Which is AWESOME! I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not a great housekeeper. They're is always stuff EVERYWHERE. But it's generally not DIRTY. Just messy and cluttered. So allowing them to get things dirty was a big step for me. Allowing them to be kids and make more work for me was a huge surrender of control. As I sit here writing this, I hear Bella dumping out colored water all over the light table and splashing in it. It makes me cringe. But, it will be cleaned up in like 3 minutes, once they're done with today's invitation. So, I let it go.

sponge painting

They're having fun and I'm learning to let the little things go and have FUN with them! I cannot wait to write about today's invitation, tomorrow! Get out there and Let Them PLAY!

Challenge Day 4- Neon Bath

I'm writing this post on the morning of Day 5, because I fell asleep at 9 o'clock last night, watching The Biggest Loser. Apparently I was tired.

Anyways... I wouldn't call yesterday a bust... but It wasn't anything terribly exciting. At least not during the day. I woke up tired and cranky as always and for the life of me could not think of a new activity I had the supplies for on hand. I'll insert here that I have spent the last 5 years keeping messy anything out of my house, as well as any small trinket toys. Well, now that comes back to bite me. lol I've ordered a bunch of things on Amazon and am not so patiently awaiting their arrival to have more fun with the kiddos.

That being said, I HAD to go to the grocery store. Daddy ate the last can of tuna for lunch and the kids had spaghetti. I had cheese and crackers. We were desperately in need of a grocery trip. So, I spent most of the day meal planning b/c I'd been to distracted playing the last few days, to even think about it. The kids were still enthralled with the light table in general, so they played with it all morning.

That's one cute baby!

 Mia and I packed up and headed to the grocery while the older two "napped". Ha Ha. Yea... Right.

 The grocery trip was successful and fun with my sweet girl.

I return home to get dinner started and work on our evening "invitation". (This is a term from Play At Home Mom that I will be using a lot. Click the link, right ^ there, for an explanation.)

 (I'm going to ask you in advance to forgive the HORRIBLE picture quality in these first few blog posts. All the pictures are taken with our cell phones, because I seem to have lost my SD card for my good camera.)

I had purchased a mess ton of glow sticks from Target when I was there. I had seen a glow stick balloon  idea on PAHM the other day and decided to take a cue from that.

While the kids were eating, I went a filled up the tub and cracked about 20 glow sticks. I hung some up, sat some on the edge of the tub and put some in the bottom of the tub. OK, I must say... by then end of this... Donny and I wanted to get into the tub!

Mia is in bed, all tuckered out from the shopping trip and the kids finish up eating. They get undressed and patiently wait outside the bathroom door for their bath. I open the door....

Cool, right!?

They gasp and screech and Jey is jumping up and down. He excitedly climbs into the tub followed by a semi-hesitant Bella. They both get in and it's game on. They're splashing and trading the bracelets, until they get the colors they want. Bell ends up with the purples and blues and Jey with the yellows and greens.

They were amazed at how when the glow sticks went under the water, the whole tub lit up. They played for probably 30 or 45 minutes before I head Bella's monstrous foot steps through the house like a single woman stampede. Then we here laughing and "I'm so COLD!". They come running into the living room. Jey is wrapped in a towel and Bell is dragging her towel behind her. She is surprisingly dry.

We get them dressed for bed and do their bedtime routine. We tuck them in, with their new glow bracelets of course. We explain they will no longer work by morning but they can play in their rooms while they're still glowing, if they would like. They both choose to do so. They finally tucker out and go to sleep. I promptly followed while watching The Biggest Loser.

Ah well. Another fun day :)