A little school

I decided that today, I was going to work with my munchkins and see how much school we could do.

So I found an age-appropriate Bible story book, and we read a few out of that. Then I printed out some letter and number coloring pages from a nifty website I found. I busted out the markers, and they had a grand time coloring the letter A, and various pictures starting with A.

Once they had finished those, I got out the raisins and we did math. Of course, they ate the math problems once they had solved them. (Or Alex did. Holly just ate raisins and we counted them as she ate them.) Then we did a dot-the-dot and colored it.

After that, I was out of ideas, and they were wiggly, so I put on our Dance Playlist and we did funny marches around the living room. (Remember Hamster Dance? Remember the Radio Disney version? I knew it would come in handy someday!)

Then we had lunch and took naps. I was exhausted. Alex has walked around with his little "A" book all day and talks about nothing but school. I think it was a big hit.

First-School Preschool activities and crafts

Wednesday Words of weight "loss"

I'm doing a linkup with Patrice at Everyday Ruralty for her Words of Weight Loss. Except I'm going to do it a little differently. I'm seven months pregnant, and I'm not real worried about losing weight at this point.

In fact, I really want to gain some weight, because I have to have SOME fat on my body if I'm going to breastfeed. If I told you my weight now, you would laugh.

So I'm going to answer the weight-loss questions with a spin toward gaining, not losing. Hee hee. I hope I don't get disqualified.

Questions:
1.Have you tried various diets or programs? What works best for you?

Not really, but I picked up a lot of healthy habits from my mom over the years. So right now, my secret hide-it-from-the-kids dessert snack is some kind of flavored Yoplait yogurt poured over cottage cheese. Yes. I'm so naughty.

2. Have you ever dieted or exercised with a buddy?

I almost can't exercise unless it's with someone else. I walked with my mom when I was single, I walk with my husband and kids now. The only thing I can do alone is exercise videos, because you still feel like somebody's egging you on.

3. What's your favorite type of salad?

You know those pre-assembled bagged ones? I just love the southwest taco salad mix. With the salsa/sour cream dressing and the little multicolored tortilla strips.

4. What's the first place you start to notice that you're losing weight? (ie. tummy, arms)

My thighs, generally. My pants start fitting weird. But then, I also tend to only gain weight while pregnant, which makes my pants fit weird in general.

5. What's one thing you can do to pamper yourself this week?

Go out for ice cream. :-)

Food cravings

I've been craving ice cream lately.

I've read that that's a really common food to crave while pregnant. But see, it's not that I crave ice cream. It's the WAY that I crave ice cream.

When I've been on my feet a lot all day, right before dinner, I have this weird crash. I know I need to eat, but I don't want food. Food makes me gag. All I want is something cold and sweet ... something like ice cream.

I actually had ice cream for dinner a few nights in a row, then realized that I was headed down a very bad road (a rocky road?). So I made myself rest more and snack more, and reset my appetite to be hungry for food at dinner.

And I did research.

I found this spiffy page all about food cravings. Turns out food cravings aren't limited to just pregnant women. If you crave certain things, it means your body is actually needing something different.

If you crave chocolate, chances are you're in dire need of protein. (This seems to be the case with me.) If you crave other kinds of sweets (like hard candy), you might be in need of minerals or carbs. Or it might just be that your yeast is off.

If you crave salt, you might be in need of good fats and oils, like the kind in nuts, seeds, fish, and avocados. Or it might mean you're deficient in iodine or potassium.

I found this extremely interesting, and there's more detail in the article.

Beating Food Cravings

Girl time

I put Holly's dangly clip-on earrings on her, then put her up in front of the bathroom mirror.

Then I put her hair in a ponytail.

She loved having a bit of girl time. But she also really wanted to see what was in the medicine cabinet.

The earrings and ponytail only stayed in about ten minutes, but they were sure cute while they lasted. :-)

Reducing clutter

Problem: we like to read.

Problem: our bookcase is too small.

Especially when you throw in all the toys on top that had to get put somewhere high.

Anyway, we went down to the Goodwill store yesterday to see if they had anything we could use as a bookcase.

The Goodwill store is AWESOME. And while we found armchairs for five bucks and lots of entertainment centers for thirty-five, there were no bookcases. (But I want to go back and browse their clothes. They have even more hilarious clothes than the clearance rack at Ross!)

Anyway, my mom got wind of this. She's been dying to get rid of some of her bookcases, so she offered us one. And after an afternoon of unloading, moving, vacuuming, dusting, and reloading, we wound up with this:

*Heavenly choir*

The old bookcase has been relocated to the bedroom, where it now holds all the toys formerly on top of it, as well as all my diapers. :-)

Microclimate strikes again

Blues and greens are the rain.

Red circle is Bakersfield.

Weather system is moving east. Notice how it's splitting to go around Bakersfield in the north and south.

This happens so often it's something of a joke. MICROCLIMATE STRIKES AGAIN!

A little under the weather

Been a little under the weather lately ... had a bunch of pregnancy-related bloodwork done on Monday and haven't really been myself since.

Anyway, feeling a bit better today, and thought I'd share something funny I saw the other day.

First off, there was a really spiffy sky that morning, so I went out to snap some pictures of it.

I noticed a small black dog go running by. A lot of people in the apartments around us have small dogs and cats, and these animals all seem to escape in the morning, right after their owners leave for work. I don't know if they escape or are let out, but lots of them get stolen or wind up as roadkill.

Anyway, I hadn't seen this black dog before, but he was trotting like he knew where he was going, and he ignored me.

Then I saw these two cats come tearing around the side of the building.

They were after that dog. The dog looked over his shoulder, saw them, and took off running with his tail between his legs. He stopped once, and these cats both arched their backs at him and hissed, and he ran for it again. They chased him all the way down to the end of the buildings, where you could see their territory ended, because then they got all smug and walked back where they had come from.

It happened so fast I never did get a picture of the dog, just the cats. But you can see that they're total thugs.