What's Your Function?

Jack walked in the house from running errands with John today and he was singing up a storm. I laughed hard when I figured out that he was singing, "Conjunction junction, what's your function..." from the old Schoolhouse Rock videos. We've been playing it as our standby video when we need some quick tantrum-calming entertainment.

Oh c'mon. I know you know it. If you watched Saturday morning cartoons between 1973 and 1986, you should be able to sing the Constitution Preamble, describe the process of passing a law in the U.S., and know what a conjunction is.



And now, I have reawakened the long lost lyrics in your head, and you will be humming this for the next week. I know, I'm evil!

For parents out there looking for a fun xmas gift, I highly recommend buying the full DVD. We have this in the car and it's perfect when we need just a short video as we're running errands to keep the kids from getting bored. And as is evidenced by my 4-year old humming the tunes, you're never too young to learn. Plus, you don't have to listen to Blue's Clues solve a puzzle for Steve for the millionth time.

All's quiet...

Yes, I've been missing. I've been on a sort of hiatus from blogging, trying to recharge my batteries for blogging. Plus, my mind was on a fabulous but tough yoga workshop that I was preparing for. I needed some silence in my brain to mentally prepare for it, so I put the blogs on the back burner.

But let's talk about a different silence. That's what it is in my house right now. Both the kids are asleep. And with a 4 and 1 year old, that rarely happens at the same time during the day. And there is nothing sweeter than the silence that comes in the middle of the day during naptime. Alexandra was struggling right after our morning swimming class and I knew she'd go right down to bed when we got home. But Jack, he's always trickier, only napping during the day about 50% of the time.

So I asked Jack to come back to my room and have quiet time. He brought some books and climbed into my bed and I closed my eyes. It would have taken me about 3 minutes to fall to sleep. Except that once Jack was done reading, he snuggled over to me and stroked my cheek with his hand, saying "I know, Mommy, I know." over and over. No, I have no idea what he was talking about. But it was a sweet gesture, and I just had to put up with it for about 10 minutes before his little brain shut his eyes and took him to dreamland.

Ahhh, silence. Wait, is that the baby I hear crying?

Shake your tailfeather!

We had a blast with Alexandra's costume this year. Again, let me state that I have no sewing skills whatsoever. Wait, I did earn a patch at camp for being able to sew on a button. So that is my level...button-sewing master.

Anyway, I got this idea in my head about a peacock. No way am I going to gather all those colors and attach them together. But I found someone who could. Picklebug on Etsy. She makes these awesome tutus with whatever colors you want. So I contacted her and asked her to do one in green, royal blue and purple. A few weeks later and there it was. I ordered some peacock feathers online and I was set to go.

Except, how do I attach these dang fathers to the tutu? Glue gun? Ummmm, not thinking that will turn out so pretty. Wait, I have a crafts jedi-master on my side...my mother-in-law This is the woman who made a pumpkin cake. No, not a pumpkin-flavored cake. A pumpkin-SHAPED cake, complete with stem and jack-o-lantern face. She is good! After consultation with my crafts jedi-master, we decided some quick stitches were the way to go to hold the feathers on. My MIL also made an adorable headband with some feathers.

All was set, except we discovered that Alex is not so keen on wearing tutus. So we began Tutu Indoctrination. She wore it for 5 minutes the first night, 10 the second, 20 the third and so on until she didn't want to take it off.

By Halloween day, she had even developed a strut when she walked down the hall to her class, shaking her tailfeathers as she went.

That's my girl!