Hair success!!!

 Look at those curls!!!  We had our best hair detangling session this past Sunday!!!  I got my Tangle Teezer (see below) and used the Kinky Curly leave-in/detangler.  That and the movie "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang" made everything perfect.  Terefech even said later that she didn't notice me combing out her hair.  That is high praise where hair detangling is usually met with a scowl.  I am a parent of an Ethiopian child that doesn't style her child's hair because she will have none of that.  I can't imagine trying to convince her to sit for hours....maybe someday but not know.  And I am good with that.  She likes to wear it curly, with a headband.  I am so thrilled we found these products (thank you www.happygirlhair.com).  Now, today the hair didn't look as good.  Think I needed to put something in after the detangling.  But we were so excited that I didn't.  Lesson learned!

Rich turns the big 4....2

 Here are Rich's 2 favorite gifts from his favorite 2 short people.  A jersey to match Declan's.  We love DeAngelo Williams at our house.  Now if the Panthers could win a game or 2 this season, we would remember we loved the whole team!  And his penguin buna (Amharic for coffe) mug from Terefech that she painted.  She wanted to make a mug for him and when she saw this...we knew it was perfect.  

Happy Birthday Rich!!!!!

Playing marbles with Papa

And the gardening begins....

Strawberries are in the ground!

The garden is really Rich's thing.  I appreciate the bounty but it is a project he does with the kids.  They planted some more strawberry plants about a week ago.  This little raised bed is now completely strawberries.  The kids love being able to pick fresh strawberries for dinner or a snack.  This week we'll start the other crops:  carrots, potatoes, who knows what else!

Terefech loves to help plant and is a natural.  It is obvious that she has done all of this before.  And she loves eating strawberries so she is happy to help!

Declan likes to help turn up the dirt which is a feat here in Charlotte.  Realize we have red clay for soil so that dirt you see is man made.  We have a composter that we utilize as well as Rich has had to buy dirt to bring in.  Even with that, we had very short carrots last year because once they hit the clay, it was over.  Unfortunately for us, our dog loves to eat the compost and can jump the fence we put around the garden to keep critters out.  It is yummy when she comes in with dirt all over her face and licking her chops!  Yuck!

Wedgie

Ya know how your kid learns a new word but uses it all wrong.  Well, we had that experience today and it was funny.  We knew when he was using the word wedgie as we ate free italian ice at Rita's that he wasn't all that sure what it meant.  When we asked, he said he didn't know just that Lucas at school was saying it. He threw it around like a noun as he taught it to his friend Maggie (you are welcome Jess!).  On the way home, he was discussing with us that were statues of the wedgie everywhere.  What do they look like?  I asked.  Like a sea anemone he said.  And then this is the story he told us....

The Borg made the wedgie  They put the wedgie on the porch as they always do.  The wedgie wiggled his tentacle, hopped off the porch, and left the Kingdom of the Borg.  Then he went to the Kingdom of Nod and then he went to the Pecksbergstenian Nature Preserve.  He was sure there was no one there to fight against him.  The wedgie decided to start his own kingdom.  He still is trying to start his own kingdom but the armies aren’t letting him because he is a citizen of the Land of the Borg. 

I had to type it up for him when we got home.  Yep, I furiously wrote it down in the car on one of those paper CD cases.  The follow up discussion was about his writing in class.  Rich asked him if other kids wrote such creative stories.  No, just short ones.  His last one was 42 pages (one sentence on each page with a picture).  I reminded him that they were trying to expand their topic ideas.  He said, I have it....I will write about the wedgie tomorrow.  We told him that we knew his teacher would love it...I am sending her the link to this!!!  And no, we didn't tell him what a wedgie is.  Although oddly he knows what the Borg is, not sure how.  He never watches anything remotely scary!

Weekend fun!

Alex came to visit...wanted to try out the space helmet.

Alex brought Terefech's Christmas present...penguin stuffed animal.  She was thrilled!

Sorry about the sideways picture!  I bought the wood cross in Ethiopia and had been trying to figure out what to do with them.  So, made them into a necklace with some beads I got at Ten Thousand Villages.

Playing soccer with Daddy!

Much of the day was spent playing with moon sand.  

Art Crawl

This past Friday was an art crawl at Declan's school, Corvian Community School.  The kids have been learning about different artists.  Part of having this in the curriculum is teaching some character education that actually is embedded in the curriculum.  The kids learn that artists have to persevere when working on their pieces and that often it is not easy.  They did a program about what they had learned and sang some songs.  As all things that your kid is in, they were spectacular.  Then we got to see all the art work they have been working. 

Declan's fresco.  They mixed plaster of paris and painted on it while it was still wet, much like Michalangelo.

Declan's soap sculpture...titled Niagara Falls.

Declan's part of the shape mural the class did.

Imitating the works of Kadinsky.

Evidently Monet liked to doodle in class and at times got in trouble for that.  The kids practiced crazy doodles!

They also studied Mary Cassatt, an artist from Pennsylvania.  She often did portraits of mothers and their children.

Water lilies.

The kids made shirts to wear using a technique called mono printing that Mary Cassatt used.

The class performing...this part of the song is about painting like Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel.

Full view of the shape mural.

The kids actually painted like Michelangelo one day.  There was paper taped to the underside of the tables and the kids laid on their backs to paint.  Lots of paint was in hair and on clothes but they had a blast.  For the art crawl, the paintings were on the ceiling.  Here is Declan's!  We are so proud of him.  It is amazing how much he knows about the artists and how much it has inspired him!

Scoot...

Declan and Terefech got scooters for Christmas.  I was too excited at first because I figured it was just one more thing that they would be different about and that results in hurt feelings.  Well, it started out that way.  T jumped right on and zipped away.  Took her a couple of times to figure it all out but she loved it and off she went.  Declan struggled more.  We had to have a couple of "meetings" to discuss his progress.  I finally said that if you give up when things get hard, you are going to miss out on so much in life.  That seemed to do the trick and he really started trying.  And now....they are scooter fanatics.  They both can turn corners, brake and zip up and down the street.  If a day goes by and they haven't ridden, they beg to go out for even just a few minutes before bedtime.  Tonight they got in a few minutes before bath....

Here Terefech is doing one of Declan's signature moves.  He doesn't like to put his pushing foot behind him, he holds it out to the side doing all kinds of funky moves.  Makes it challenging but for some reason, it is his thing!

Just had to put this in.  They are great fallers, almost never any tears unless they are actually warranted.  It usually is a fall and then lots of giggles!  Helmets really are a good thing, they have been handy several times!

Calling all princesses....

We have loved Amazing Grace and Boundless Grace by Mary Hoffman.  I wasn't so sure about Princess Grace.  I had not previewed it but my chances of not getting it were slim when Terefech knew the title at the library.  We got home and she was eager to read.  It starts with Grace wanting to be a princess, the pink, fluffy, frilly kind like in all the fairytales she reads.  But the story takes a great turn and focuses on other kinds of princesses out there.  They could have spent more time on those kind of princesses but the point is made and I loved it.  Princesses are warriors and leaders and athletes and spy and basically anything they want to be.  Check out the book for the princess in your life!  All right that sounded like an ad for the book but I really liked it.  I really don't like all this bubble gum pink stuff.  It is soooo drippy!  I was happy to find something that showed a princess in a different light!

All in a days work...

 Declan takes drum lessons.  He loves it and he is actually pretty good.  He often surprises his teacher with his love of music.  Declan loves all genres, from Louis Armstrong to Flogging Molly to Bach.  We have worked on getting him to practice and he is actually doing it voluntarily these days.  

 A miraculous thing has happened at our house...Terefech is actually eating a breakfast food for breakfast.  She has found a true love of the waffle.  And since we try not to buy processed food, we are making them ourselves.  Here is Rich making a quadrupled batch of waffles that will hopefully last us through the week.  He realized part way through he was going to have to switch from the mixing bowl to the largest stock pot we had.  I am excited to have breakfast for breakfast!

The kids had a fun day at home with Daddy while I hung out with a friend!

 Spring has sprung in North Carolina!

 You have to admit, they are awfully cute...and smart looking.

 Declan and Teddy.  Teddy is my favorite of Declan's stuffed animals.  Our neighbor gave it to him as a baby and I hoped they would be lifelong friends.  

The King and Queen.  They really do love each other and play really well together.  Our conflicts usually arise from language issues.  She says something, he decides she said one thing but she really meant something else and it spirals downward!  They love to ride scooters together, build forts and Legos, tickle Daddy, write stories, paint, and just generally make mayhem.  

My amazing kids...

The Emperor of all Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies....My dad gave me this book for Christmas.  It is a biography of cancer.  Kind of odd, I know, he wrote that inside the book.  I am guessing he bought it because he heard about it on NPR and my mom has survived breast cancer and he loves to buy hardcover books, really any bok.  But I have to admit I loved it.  Almost to the point of page turning book like.  It gives the history of cancer from the beginning, the first written mention of it, to present day interspersed with personal experiences the author has with patients.  The author recounts all of the research that has been done for hundreds of years.  He is an oncologist so he has had and is having lots of experiences.

I had to quit reading the book for awhile.  I guess it hit too personal of a note in Janaury.

For many years, I have followed the story of a little boy named Liam Witt who had Neuroblastoma.  Mostly because Liam's mom is friend of my friend Renee.  When Gretchen, Liam's mom, first started her charity Cookies for Kids' Cancer, I ordered cookies.  And I read her blog.  And I cried every time I read it.  Every time.  Whether it was good news or bad.  I cried.  I was amazed at her resiliency, Liam's spunk, her capacity to get up every morning, his ability to just keep on trucking through it and then Gretchen's ability to describe that all to me. And I guess it was all too real.  Liam was just a little older than Declan.  And you think...that could be...how can she live through this, how can she do this?  Through their struggle, I kept reading.  I kind of felt like I was supposed to, to be supportive.  I didn't know this family but somehow I felt as though every time I heard of their struggles, I felt more for them.

This past January, Liam had a scan that revealed that he was not winning his fight against Neuroblastoma.  I stopped reading the book.  It almost felt like a betrayal to be reading about cancer.  Kind of like reading a book about a celebrity who does something horrible.  Do you really want to support them by reading about them?  I was only about half way so I wanted to look up to see when they would mention Neuroblastoma.  I checked the index, only 2 places.  And really, they were just mentions.  There was no information in the book about Neuroblastoma, none.

Liam died January 24, 2011.  His mother is now pushing to raise 10 million dollars for research into pediatric cancer because so little money is being spent to find a cure or treatments for pediatric cancers.  Even through their grief, their most ardent wish is that another family not have to go through this.  And as you can see....they want to have 700 bake sales in May to honor what would have been Liam's 7th birthday.  So, if you feel it in your heart, have a bake sale.  It doesn't have to be big or small or earn tons of money.  Help this mother who so desperately wants to help others.