Friday, October 31, 2008

Fall, fall, fall

A most perfect fall this year, and we are enjoying it by riding and walking and jogging!



We made ghosts using plastic grocery bags and marker stuffed with newspaper. They were "ooooo"ing when I took the picture, and we hung them on the porch where they swayed in the wind.


We made critters out of old pine cones and nut shells, except Rugger make a snowman out of Styrofoam balls...


For Pumpkin's birthday, she wanted a castle cake from Family Fun Magazine:

Crafts

Corn husk dolls:


Paper mache pumpkins: (Pumpkin's is a "baby pumpkin", which is why it's green.)


Other side of pumpkins: (Rugger didn't like his and asked me to draw another face on the other side...)

Cut apples before we dried them. These were our first ones, which rotted, but I had a picture. The next group I dried in the oven,


And they turned out like this:



I've always wanted to play with toothpicks and marshmallows:

Newsprint & More

The babies having fun on a new desk from our church's hand-me-down store (which is run by volunteers and gives the proceeds back to the community - lots of cool stuff!) Birdie is barefoot by choice :) Usually she's topless, as well!


A fort from rolled up newspapers:


And a sword and cardboard shield with a t-shirt cape:

Lots of Photos

Okay, I'm actually going to break this up into several posts for ease in case you don't have a fast connection. But some of these go all the way back to August...

Back around the time of Rugger's birthday, Boom made him a chainsaw out of wood:



For Rugger's birthday, I made this cake from Family Fun Magazine:


And the kids wanted to frost some cookies, so we made these:

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Her First Cartoon!

Pumpkin loves cartoons. Well, most people do. But she has been asking about how they move and who makes them talk and such for over a year now.

So I felt it my duty to show her how stop motion animation works, and let her draw her own cartoon:



Yes, she has a somewhat sadistic sort of humor (*wink*). Seriously, though, like most young kids she finds most things funny that in real life would not be, including potty humor. It's just a kid thing, trust me.

Speaking of trust...I have been rolling ideas about in my head for weeks now regarding Radical Unschooling (as opposed to just academic unschooling.) I went on a well-known RU forum on Yahoo Groups, but unfortunately I didn't know the rules, or rather, the "culture" of the forum. I'm not part of many forums that DON'T either post rules or just let you come in and chat, so I was unfamiliar with their particular style of discussion, and long story short I got my feelings hurt.

But they'll be quick to tell you it's not their job to see about my feelings, but to discuss unschooling. And so I got over the jab to my emotions (mostly) and have been lurking and learning now. We have been mostly RUing for our whole time as a family since Pumpkin was born, but now I'm trying to be even more trusting with our children, and it's an interesting mind shift.

We did finish some of the crafts I had planned on trying, and when I get my pics transferred, I'll post them. I also came up with the idea today to make colored ice cubes to make a mini ice sculpture. Alas, I filled one of the trays up too full and all the colors merged into brown when I picked up the tray to put it in the freezer. But I'll do it at least two more times so they have plenty of blocks, and next time I'll be sure not to fill it too full.

I think I'm starting a new hobby!!! I ordered some needle felting supplies and I'm going to attmept to make sculptures from wool. I also have been brainstorming some ideas that I might actually be able to sell, which would be great! I specialize in dreams, though, so who knows?

Today my midwife called me up and I might be going with her to see one of her Amish new mothers tomorrow to encourage and advise her with breastfeeding her infant. I have wanted to become a post-partum doula someday, when the kids are older, and so I look forward to this visit. I get nervous, though, because I never want people to feel "less than" when I talk about what they can do to help themselves. I like to cheer people up, make them happy. But I also like to see them succeed.

This is where I differ from the owner of the RU forum I was on. She also wants to see people succeed, but she doesn't have the goal of cheering them up. There have been many messages in my life this week that have made me realize that this is okay. She is who she is, and I am who I am. She wasn't wrong, and I wasn't wrong. We both look at things differently. In the end, her advice is still the same, and in the end, I still get to choose if I want to take it, or not. And that's the beauty of it all...

On a sad note, I think some people very close to us are making some very unwise decisions. They've been making some unwise decisions for awhile now, but it's getting to the point where they will be hurting their kids for the rest of their lives. And I feel angry, and hurt, and just plain saddened that they can't see through their own pain to the pain they are causing their children. Their children didn't CHOOSE to be born. They didn't CHOOSE to live with this family. And so it is the parents' responsibility to make sure that their lives are secure, and so far they are doing lousy at it. I love these people VERY much. And BECAUSE of that, I hate to see what's happening. The irony this time is that the mother wants to "simplify" her life by being by herself and with "her" kids. I wonder if she hasn't noticed that most single mom's lives are far from being "simple."