Conversations

Gemma was in the kitchen playing and fell off a chair. She made a beeline for mama with big crocodile tears steaming down her face. She looked so sad I thought my heart might break.

Amelia: mom?
Mama: yes Amelia?
Amelia: mom! Gemma is crying!
Mama: yes, she bumped her head and she is crying. (Ohhhh, what a sweet, kind, caring big sister she is! I am mother of the year and it is only JANUARY!)
Amelia: Gemma's face looks all weird when she cries.
Mama: what?!? (What happened to my caring child?)
Amelia: when she cries, her face gets all weird. And it is loud. Does she have to cry so loud?
Mama: Amelia! She is hurt!
Amelia: (big sigh). Ok. I just don't know why she has to make that weird face all the time when she cries.

(I may have to do some more work to fully earn that mother of the year badge.....)
Sent from my iPhone

In the last week, Gemma has shown some interest in the one puzzle I have upstairs. Before now, she liked to throw the pieces around, but never really sat down to figure out how it worked. We have about 30 other wooden puzzles, but who needs that many pieces to pick up at the end of every day?

This morning, I went down to grab 2 puzzles I thought might be a little more challenging for her and brought them up.

She was delighted. She did this farm puzzle over and over again. This evening, John got this video of her working the puzzle. Keep in mind, she has has this puzzle for less that 1 day!

I don't know what is up with the jacket. She loves it and insists on wearing it all the time. She brings it to someone and follows them around until they help her into it. If her first pick for help doesn't work out, she'll bring it to someone else who will.
This morning, Amelia put the jacket on Gemma at least twice (I won't let her eat with it on) while I was working on other things.

Williams science fair

We have been plugging away at Williams science fair project. He is learning about the conditions for best making a fossil by experimenting with soil types and amounts of water. So far so good!

Snow-cream

We made snow cream yesterday with some of the 10 inches of snow that fell. After shoveling, I collected 8 cups of the pristine-est snow I could find. Back inside, I separated it into 2 bowls for William and Amelia to mix up.

Then we added to each bowl:
1 cup of half and half
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

It was delicious! Everyone enjoyed it. The only problem was there wasn't really room in the freezer for the container. I just stuck the container out the back door and left it on the deck until after dinner (I planned on letting the kids finish it up). When I came back, the container was completely buried in the snow! I ended up just making more snow cream for everyone!

Pancake pencil

John got to use his Christmas gift yesterday: a pancake pencil! He made letters, dinosaurs, shapes and other UIPS (unidentified pancake shapes). The kids loved it and I even let Gemma in on the action, although I elected to not give her the syrupy part.

Grout, no doubt

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a picture in our bathroom without showing the messy connected closet or the chaos that is the cabinet missing the door? No? I'll tell you it takes a precise angle!

I completed the grout today- hooray!! The grout is messy and ...messy. I think I have some bruises on my knee caps from kneeling on the hard tile floor for the last three days. I'm so glad to be done!

The room is far from done though. We still need to:
Doors back on cabinet
Paint trim (I'm still undecided)
Put in trim
Clean dust out of cabinets
Reinstall toilet
Reinstall doors x2
Clean up closet and room from tools
Clean bathroom from dust/paint/cement
Discuss shelving/towel holders/cabinet hardware/light fixture situation.

Bathroom redo

The tile is totally installed and the grout is setting. Or curing. Or resting. Or whatever it is that grout does. I didn't realize how big of a room this was until I wasn't even halfway done putting down tile and wanted to quit. Everything hurt and with the kiddos it just wasn't possible to get it all done in one day. Disappointing. John and I tag team a lot, but the time constraints just got to be too much. The mortar needs to be used within 2 hours and then you need fresh stuff.

The way it works is : John mixes mortar for me (FYI: many, many Mordor references were made this week, which was very amusing. Every single time.).

Kelly installs the tiles using the mortar. John is too much an engineer for this job. He likes it to be perfect and will spend too much time on one area. The one area will be perfect, but then wall will be crooked causing John's perfect work to be for naught. Kelly can make it look good enough and isn't so worried about perfection.

John's next job is to cut all the pieces of tile to size for the corners/edges/doors/etc. this is a messy job because a tile saw shoots water for some reason (ask John, I'm sure he can explain. In fact, I'm sure he has explained it to me at least once.). Now that our basement is finished, we don't have a great place inside where he can go and cut tiles. This week it meant John was cutting tiles in the garage. This normally wouldn't be too bad except the temperatures this week were record setting cold. We kept bringing hot water out to keep the saw from freezing and John's giant work light with a heat bulb pointed at the saw. It was still really cold. So cold that John decided he was tired of getting all wet and so he made himself a poncho so he would be drier and warmer.

Last night I helped him clean up in the garage after putting in the last tile and when I picked up a piece of the saw, it stuck to my skin. My hand was damp from cleaning up a bucket of mortar and the metal stuck to my skin. That hasn't happened to me in years! I was so surprised!