I Learned Something on Facebook Today

I have developed a bit of a routine by now, for visiting my favorite web sites, checking in on Facebook, following a couple of blogs, and checking e-mail. And when I have a few free minutes and want to fritter away a little time I'll linger in Facebook and play a little.

Well, one of the things that I like to do there is work on jigsaw puzzles. There is an application called "puzzlebee" and you can complete puzzles based on a variety of criteria, or you can upload your own picture (which is how most of the puzzles were created) and turn it into a puzzle. I uploaded a picture of Patrick doing his lobster impersonation and made a puzzle out of it. That was fun.

So I have been doing these puzzles for a couple of weeks now (not every day) and it suddenly dawned on me; (light bulb) I like to do puzzles. I really enjoy them.

Now, Katherine, as it turns out, also likes to do puzzles, but most of hers are...(boring) pretty easy. Then, for her birthday this week, she got two puzzles (thank you Oma); one is a floor puzzle of the United States and the other is a smaller "regular" puzzle of a coral reef (when Mama does the shopping, Mama gets to pick). She has owned them for two days and we have completed them somewhere in the neighborhood of eight times each (this may cure me of my puzzle enjoyment).

Seriously though, it's often difficult to find something that both parent and preschooler can enjoy together (case in point; Patrick liked worms and snakes, and other creepy crawlies - and still does - and Mama, not so much) so this is a real coup. Katherine and I can do puzzles together. And you know something else? She's actually pretty good at them. Now, of course, that Katherine and I have found this common interest Patrick has joined in and likes to work on them with us.

Oh well. Some families play cards, others play board games...we (for the moment) do puzzles, and it's all thanks to Facebook (in a weird, long-story kind of way).

Worth a Grin

Today we spent the afternoon winterizing. Joerg winterized the camper while Patrick, Katherine, and I raked up the leaves and then hauled them into the forest. Patrick, who now drives the tractor and can run the leaf rake trailer, lets Katherine sit on the tractor with him and I keep raking until he comes back to the dumping pile to unload the rake.

Eventually we had raked the entire yard and were ready to start moving the leaves into the forest. So we unhooked the leaf rake and drove into the forest to get the wagon. Patrick was content to sit in the trailer with Katherine, but eventually I offered him an opportunity to drive the tractor. We picked up a load of leaves and I drove into the forest (with Patrick and Katherine sitting in the leaves) and then Patrick would drive out of the forest and Katherine and I would sit in the wagon together.

Now, this all sounds fun, I know. What you have to realize is that when we finished building the house we had our excavator come back with some extra rocks to help build a bridge of stones from where our yard ends into the forest. At the point where our yard enters the forest we have an area of soft ground where water can stand. This area is typically quite wet unless we are in drought conditions (which we are not). So, every time the tractor passes that area the ground gets chewed up and the tractor gets muddy. Our hope was that by adding rocks we could create a more solid area that would not sink down into the mud and destroy the yard. The rocks they brought are HUGE (many are larger than my fist) so driving over them with the tractor is like going seriously off-road.

So I turn the tractor over to Patrick so that he can drive us out of the forest, and Katherine and I sit in the wagon. Patrick drives nicely through the forest and then guns it right before he hits the rocks. I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose, but as you can imagine, the ride was quite bumpy. The first time through the rocks I was caught unprepared. The second time through - and every time after that - I wrapped my arms around Katherine, leaned forward (so the trailer sides wouldn't hurt my back) and put my head down with my eyes closed. Each time we would hit the rocks the ride seemed to go on forever. If I didn't know we were 'just' going over rocks I would have thought the end was here...it was SOOOO bumpy.

Anyway, I was struck by the torturous nature of this activity and had to grin; is my little angel driving fast over these rocks ON PURPOSE? Is he *trying* to kill me? Or is he just having fun? I did, after all, tell him he could go as fast as he was able to still control the tractor without hitting anything. He didn't hit anything.

Oh well. Some day this tractor will be traded in for an actual car, but I have seven years to work up my nerve for that. For now I think I'll just bring extra padding for the next ride.

Vote for Erika

I just received this video clip from my fan club (bet you didn't know I had a fan club). Check it out.

Spell Pudding

In an effort to find creative ways to help Patrick learn what he needs to learn, to take some of the drudgery out of homework and spelling practice, to introduce a little tactile learning into his kinesthetic brain, and offer some motivation to complete the tasks I introduced pudding.

Rather than making him write all his spelling words on paper (how boring!) he spells each word in chocolate pudding. For each word he spells correctly he gets to lick his finger. If he spells it incorrectly he doesn't get to lick. It worked rather well. Katherine even got in on it and wrote the letters that she knows..."K - for Katherine".

Patrick liked it so well he BEGS me to do spelling words with him. Hmm. I wonder what we can use for alphabetical ordering.