My baby!

When there are lots of siblings to help, younger kids tend to grow up fast. Most of our kids started walking within a couple weeks of their first birthday. Kyra is 9 months and thanks to lots of patient help (and in spite of my best efforts to stop it) the other kids have taught her how to stand on her own for 10-15 seconds at a time. And I can't make her stop! Her scrunchy smiles when she steadies herself are adorable... but I'm not quite ready to have another person to chase down!

Messy Party!

For the official friend party (the ones that only happen on even birthdays) Sada and Mom came up with a half-dozen activities that normally don't get done in one week, let alone one day.

We started out with giving everyone white t-shirts so they wouldn't get their regular clothes stained with all the pain and food coloring that was sure to be plashed around. Then they sat down on the front sidewalk to build sculptures out of packing peanuts and water - yes, it's possible, if you have popcorn packing peanuts that dissolve into mush when they get soaked. But if you barely dip the ends in water, they stick to each other and make amazing animals, barns, corrals, skyscrapers, robots, you name it. After most of the girls arrived, we headed to the back to mix together plaster bug fossils - or at least put the plastic bugs in the creamy cement they made and set them aside to dry.

Next they got to paint with shaving cream on black plastic... then added tempera paint on top and swirled it in. Putting card stock on top of that makes beautiful rainbow stationary once the whipped peaks are wiped off. We hosed down the table and got out colored bubble mixtures and straws so they could blow bubbles in the containers and touch thin paper to the spheres, popping them and making designs on more papers to take home.

The next experiment was silly putty/goo with glue and borax - they made up three different colors in three teams then divided them all so everyone was able to take home some of each color. The stuff is really fun to play with, and slightly mind-boggling because two liquids mix together to make a very bouncy solid - mad science strikes again.

We kept going with the paint theme and painted water color paint onto regular paper and sprinkled salt lightly over the painting. Try it - the texture's amazing. By then, most of the fossils were dry, so we extracted the bugs and got out the brown paint, watered it down, and dipped paper towels in it to antique the dragonfly, grasshopper, spider, and fly imprints they'd made. They turned out AMAZING! They sat over by the side to dry and we got out the cupcake makings.

Gel food coloring does a marvelous job of turning play dough into really cool colors and with essential oils added the cupcake makers made incredible masterpieces. They each stuck a candle on top and sang Happy Birthday so Sada could blow them all out and made her wish (still a secret). This "claydough" recipe dries into sculptures really well without cracking. We may have these cupcakes around for years to come if they don't get squished before they're dry. They each had extra, too, so the girls took home their own cupcakes plus a few balls to make more creatures later.

It must have been a great 2 hours, because after it was all cleaned up, Sada declared it an enormous success!

Happy Birthday, bug!

For Sada's special day, she took Alexis, Dad and Mom up to the BYU Museum of Art to see the I Spy exhibit and flying packing peanuts next to a 20' blown up sculpture of trash bags. If we had a million dollars, we'd have both of them in the art gallery at home. The packing peanuts get blown around the room at random times by carpet drying fans. The I Spy models and photos were REALLY fun - the author of all the books had explanations about how he made the models, examples from most of the books, and really fun optical illusions. Hanging out there for two hours made us all hungry so we went to Carrabba's for dinner - the only place around that has a truly carb/sugar free menu. Both girls downed their huge entrees and giganto salads, and Kyra ate an entire lemon slice. After getting home we played board games for two more hours, Sada was sung to more than a few times on the phone, and they went to bed by 11:15... a little late, but it was a birthday after all!

Hippo birdie two ewes

We passed out Sada's birthday invitations for her "Messy Party" this weekend. She's been planning it since February, and has a billion ideas, along with a billion more that she'll do another time because they don't rank high enough up on the fun list.

I'm wheedling down the list to activities that don't involve shooting or throwing (she already gets bonked constantly without peripheral vision) and knocking off games that might create more than 10 or so pieces of garbage on the ground. If it can get sprayed off, blown away, or cleaned up in under 30 seconds, it's got a green light. If you've ever played something that fits the bill, let me know before Saturday's hoopla!

The most interesting conundrum is how to blow out candles without eatting anything that has carbohydrates or any type of sugar. Since I'm sure most kids would run at the sight of a cheese ball and veggies or even grilled asparagus, looks like the cake this year is going to be turned into cupcake playdough creations, and we'll have everyone make their own, stick in a candle, have Sada blow them all out with bubbles or something, then let the guests take home their masterpieces to dry or remold into something else. Creative genius!

Waaaaater!

Since it was 96 fantabulous degrees outside (according to our thermamometer) everyone got to go sprinkling and swimming in the blow-up fishy pool today. OK, tonight. Until 8:30 when dinner was finally served outdoors picnic-style and all mermaid lips had turned blue. Jason called it a night an hour earlier when he started to shiver after the sun set on the pool. There's a lot to be said for water splashing all around when the sun is HOT!

A couple of amazing neighbors stopped by for a couple hours and helped dig out our flowerbed - literally. Their weed pulling was easily a month's worth of work for Jeff and I since it takes so much time just keeping Sada going with her stuff and feeding a baby the rest of the time. You can actually see most of the flowers around the curvy sidewalk - and that relieves my stress level muchly!

Tooth Doc

Today we went to the dentist (tooth doctor). When we got there, it wasn't very busy. I found the new Highlights magazine and started reading it. Mom went in to get her teeth cleaned first. I kept reading. Then Alexis went in after she had been holding Kyra and it was my turn to hold her so I couldn't read anymore. Dad told me to take her to the bead playground in the corner and she decided she wanted to stand up without holding onto anything. She stood up NO HANDS for about 10 or 15 seconds. When it was my turn to go in, one of the tooth cleaners asked about my December. I told her about Christmas in the hospital. Then it was time for the tooth cleaning. I chose orange toothpaste. She put it on the electronic toothbrush and polished everything. After my bottom right side was done, she used the vacuum cleaner and used it the rest of the time. The hygienist came in with Captain Hook's ultrasonic hook to clean off the plaque - that's the same kind of instrument the neurosurgeon used to break up the tumor. Les came in after to check for cavities. I'm going to get sealants next week to stop any cavities in back from EVER making life miserable. We all got tokens for being good patients and I got an icky sticky spider. We all went home with new toothbrushes. The End.

Imagine That!?!

Summer sunshine has this tendency to push bedtime back way too late for little people who need more than 8 hours of sleep each night. Last night we started early, and thanks to blackout shades in all bedrooms, little heads were on little pillows by 8pm. At 9pm, Paige came out cradling her pointer in her other hand and informed the world that Jason just bit her finger. Paige is pretty honest, but only gives the complete story after sympathy loves are received. I skipped right past the hugs, checked for bloodage - none, good thing since I'm not sure Jason is up on his rabies shots - and asked while herding her back to the bedroom, "What was your finger doing in Jason's mouth?"

"Well, I thought it would be a good idea, but actually, it wasn't."

One more set of tucks and kisses on the nose, then all lights out and both she and the boy were snoring within minutes.

Happy Mother's Day

Sada and Alexis sewed their incredibly fabulously amazing mom a purse and embroidered patches for Muver's Day. Apparently they've spent every hyperbaric sewing their little fingers off for the past week. And they did a great job! We have stupendous kids - must take after their parents.

Purple mountains' majesty

There are definite benefits to living in Utah - including being lost in the mountains less than 15 minutes after pulling out of the driveway. We went on an adventure, took a detour and found a brand new trail up the canyon that was full of dragonflies, butterflies, grasshoppers, and waterfalls (in the river next to the trail). Gorgeous! And lots of sticks to throw in the high run-off to make instant canoes. Sada almost did better walking on uneven ground than she did walking on the pavement in the parking lot... who knew?

That's where Mommy's marbles went

Sada had a test to show she still had full possession of her smarts. For the rest of the kids we have to rely on our astounding observational powers. For example, Jason's unintentional funnies.

We were driving along and the back seaters decided to play "I Spy." Jason said he wanted to be first fastest, so he started the game. "I spy with my little eye something that is green."

Alexis: "Is it the tree leaves?"

Jason looked out the window and nonchalantly said, "You're a denius." He hasn 't quite mastered the soft G sound, but still knows how to get his point across. Good dob, boy.

There's somethin in that noggin

A big white envelope came in the mail with the neuro-psychological test results... and they made me roll my eyes. Jeff just chuckled. We had her take the IQ test to get a baseline of where she is now, having had one surgery on her melon, just in case she has to have any additional treatments in the future that could scramble her thinker even more.

Seems like the normally 3-4 hour test took over 5 hours because Sada maxed out on the reading/comprehension/vocabulary part. That is to say, she went to the end of the test questions and could go no further (greater than 12th grade, 9th month). Math wasn't quite as high, but the psychologist did mention that she could miss 2-3 years of school and would still be way ahead when she went back. The written comprehension did lower her overall score, but they attributed it to left-side weakness. After writing for 15 minutes, Sada was really working hard to write legibly and it took a LONG time to get her written responses completed, even though her completed answers were more on level with higher grades and her oral answers were somewhere up in the stratosphere, too. They had some suggestions for that (typing, non-timed written tests, more multiple choice) if it's still a problem in higher grades, but physical therapy should take care of it before it becomes a real concern.

The testers were shaking their heads each time they came out to talk to me because she was so intent on trying every problem whether she knew how to do it or not, and actually enjoyed the tougher sections. They're so used to kids bouncing off the walls and not focusing on anything that they were a little shocked that Sada kept asking for more time to finish the harder patterns and puzzles.

The most telling part of the whole report was the suggestion that teachers need to stay ahead of her and give her fun projects (not more homework) when she finishes with her regular assignments. That's been the story of her life here and at school. She learns so fast and understands so quickly no one can keep up with her! Makes me appreciate our 4 bookshelves of "vintage" 25-cent library books even more (a hazard of having a child teach herself to read at age 3).