Weekend Activities

My plan is working: I've been asking John to help me unload the dishwasher for more than a month now. That makes Mary insist that she's a Big Girl who can do it too. And Mary trying to assist makes John possessive of "his" chore. So this morning an elbow-shoving fight broke out over who could unload the dishwasher for Mama, and I got to assure them that both of them could do it.

And speaking of Miss Independent, Mary has been drinking out of a regular, small cup most of the time since she was introduced to water after six months old or so. First I helped her. Then she insisted on holding the cup herself, even way before she could handle it, so we had many spills. Sometimes she'd let me help her (if she was absolutely parched), but most of the time screamed at me if I tried to help and turned away, rather to go thirsty than to let me hold the cup. Now she's fairly proficient at drinking from a cup. This morning I poured her some cow's milk to see if she's interested in it yet (no need to introduce cow's milk to a nursing baby). For whatever strange reason, I put the milk in a sippy cup. Mary doesn't drink out of a sippy cup. So when I handed it to her, she went to the play kitchen, got a lovely ceramic tea cup, and proceeded to pour the milk into the tea cup and drink it from there like a proper young lady. Just don't try to insult the girl, that's all I can say.

I remember when I introduced John to a bin full of clothes pins (but I'm too lazy to try to find that blog post). Yesterday Mary kept pointing to an item on the homeschooling shelf until I discerned that it was the clothes pins. Kept her occupied for a long while!

We receive many free items in the mail from Catholic organizations seeking donations. I save all the greeting cards (as above, holy cards, anything with religious images, and innumerable address label stickers for the children to use for crafts. The address labels in particular help satisfy their hunger to use hundreds of stickers without my wasting money.

Who needs a kiddie pool when we have this great wagon our friends gave us when they moved away? The children adore it. Yesterday they splashed for about an hour and a half. Toward the end, they had filled the pool with small leaves that they called baby fish. But the baby fish were lonely, so then were added large leaves to be the mama and daddy fish.

Mary is starting to take a real interest in dolls, which is precious. Of course, she hasn't really picked up the old-fashioned, yarn-hair doll I researched at length and lovingly chose for her at Christmas or her birthday (I forget which), and not so much the sweet pink dolly her aunt gave her. She has latched on to this battered old plastic doll I bought for two dollars at a consignment sale (the one my friend Meghan told me to buy because she loved one just like it as a little girl!). Mary carries it around (even up and down stairs and even in the car on outings), calling it her baby, and taking the clothes off, then screaming for me to put them back on.

I simply have to share that my dad won blue ribbon first prize for his pomegranate-cranberry jelly at the California State Fair. California is a huge state, so I'm sure he had tough competition! Each Christmas, we have been tickled to receive one precious jar of dad's pomegranate jelly in the mail and it is so fabulously better than any jelly I've bought commercially. (Do you know how laborious it is to process by hand pomegranates, with their hundreds of seed pod thingies inside?) I've tried telling Chris that dad is my father, so the jelly is rightfully all mine. I've tried hiding it at the back of the refrigerator. Nothing has worked and I've had to share! It's the one time of year we eat jelly with our breakfast every morning until it runs out. Congratulations, Dad!

Sunday evening we had fun at our parish feast day tailgate party. People parked in the parking lot and brought their own dinners, eating on their tailgates, while the children all ran around in the center of the lot. John finally climbed a tree successfully by himself, up and down, up and down. There was a parishioner wandering around playing the accordion, so our two children followed him like the pied piper, dancing to the music. (Their Pop-Pops plays the accordion, so it was very exciting for them to meet "another pop-pops" who plays the instrument.) Afterwards the parish showed a movie and served popcorn in the gymnasium, but we headed home before that. Fun was had by all.