Bee Sting Catastrophe

Wanting to be a good mom and daycare provider, I wanted to take the kids outside before lunch. I was hungry already and Ethan really wanted to stay inside, but I thought they really needed to be outside on a nice fall day. So, I insisted. As the kids got their shoes and coats on they went out the garage. Zach, Cruz, and I were the last 3 out to discover the other 3 had dumped a wagon full of dirt and weeds on the garage floor. I told them to start cleaning it up; they tried to do so with plastic shovels and hoes. Then, they darted off to the trail to play. Zach, Cruz and I stayed behind sweeping up the mess. Cruz decided he'd have more fun in the trail and joined the other 3. Zach and I started making our way toward the front of the house to hear screaming and crying. Initially I thought they were crying over unshared toys. The first thing I heard was Ethan screaming, "I poked my eye." Then, I realized they were all crying and saying their poked their eyes. I was trying to figure out how they could all have poked their eyes. As soon as they come out of the trail one of them said they were stung by bees. Sure enough. Cruz still had some on his sweatshirt. In my attempt to get them off I was stung twice in my leg. I ripped off my pants in the front yard! Quickly we all ran to the garage and started ripping off clothes. I didn't even know what to do. I was so overwhelmed with so many kids (all but Zach) screaming and I didn't know who to help first. I called April's cell and just said, "can you come here?" while she was hearing screaming in the background. After a few minutes I realized we didn't need to be standing close to naked in the garage, that we could actually go in the house. April came and helped out, bless her heart. Cruz's mom came for a while, too. April told me that on her way over she didn't know what to think that had happened--a finger severed, a nose broke (her real thoughts).

Missy: 2 thigh stings
Ethan: 1 upper cheek/below the eye sting and 1 wrist sting
Emmett: 1 ear sting (pictured above hours after the swelling started to go down)
Brayden: 1 or 2 on his front below the shoulder and 1 or 2 on his shoulder blade
Cruz: 1 on his finger and 1 on his chin

It really sounded just awful here. Everyone but Cruz ate lunch shortly afterward. We put clothes back on and watched a little Thomas. Cruz fell asleep instantly watching the show. Brayden, Ethan and Emmett helped make Halloween sugar cookies (the bribe for Brayden to let April go back to work and him stay here). I think we'll be looking at an early bedtime today!

All My Boys

I just had to take advantage of all the boys sitting so still and in one spot ... we always try for a picture like this and never get it! Finally! And, even with one extra (Cruz). But, he is just like part of the family. The trick: put on a video!

What we Did this Morning

We've been quite busy this morning. I asked the boys as I was pouring their milk where we get milk. Emmett said, "cows!" Ethan said, "We can make butter from milk!" He knows this from a recent Thomas episode where Thomas drove the milk too fast and the shaking turned it to butter. So, I called my mom and asked if all we had to do was shake up some cream; she checked online and confirmed. So, we tried it in a baby food jar. We took turns shaking while we were eating and we sang a song while each child shook ... ABC's, Days of the Weeks, The Continents and The Oceans. Here is Ethan shaking and Cruz showing off our final product.




We then went into Emmett's room for our Circle Time. I found a great book at the library last night, Peak with Books: An Early Child Resource for Balanced Literacy. This contains units for many, many children's books. So, I checked out Rosie's Walk and we did some of the activities from this book this morning. After reading and discussing the book, we acted it out. First, we had to find objects to represent things in the story. The dresser was the hen house, the papasan mattress was the pond, the beanbag was the haystack, a pillow was the mill, the chairs were the fence and the table was the beehives. This activity allowed them to act out the story as well as work on their directional words: around, over, past, through, under etc. They had a blast doing this. Here's the boys waiting to hear the story and acting out the story.





Next, we did did our Tape Activity from the blog contest we won on Merranda's blog. Contrary to her experience, this was not a wonderful time for us. It started out that way, but it quickly deteriorated. Ethan and Brayden had a great time stringing the tape ... Brayden really did a great job. Emmett, Cruz and Zach, though got quite discouraged when they would get stuck in the tape. Emmett also got angry when the tape he put up would fall down. I had to step in to make it "really cool". As Merranda said, though, they LOVED to make it into a ball and then we played catch with that for a while.



The last thing we did, also inspired from a book I found last night, was some craft stick activities. We had sticks that we had to match the colors, we had sticks that had patterns to match and sticks that made little puzzles. The kids loved the new materials to manipulate. Brayden and Ethan of course wanted to use them as swords! But, they all did want to complete the task set before them. Here is Ethan with his pairs, all of them working so well together, and Cruz and Emmett with their finished puzzles (that, honestly, I pretty much did).






After all that stimulation I thought they could afford to play alone a while while I posted this so their parents could see what we did today. Now, I will bid you farewell and go clean up a crazy mess which I would show a picture of, but that would just take longer!

Cute Kid Creating

Here are some pictures too cute to not share. April and the boys stopped by one night on a bike ride and the boys tore off to the trail. Here's a cute picture of Zach, the only one not moving too fast for me to capture a picture.



We tried to make stepping stones with misc. materials and quick crete. They didn't turn out, though, I think I added too much water. They were really cute too. But, here is Emmett making a silly face.




One of the first things the boys do when we go outside is dig in the sand where we one day hope to have a deck. I even bought sand to put in their turtle sandbox, and they took most of it shovelfull by shovelfull to this area instead. Here's just a great picture of two cute little boys, Ethan and Brayden.




I have found that painting outside is much less stressful than painting in the house. Yesterday we did it the easy way ... with the paint with water paintbooks, which turned out to not be easy with the wind blowing and Zachary spilling our water bowl numerous times. What I love about this picture is Emmett's little body ... I know it won't be like this for long.




And, here is Zach at the beach today. We made a little pond and Zach sat down in it. We caught him even trying to drink that murky, muddy water!