A cool registry website

I'm loving My Registry. With the help of the website you are able to make one registry that pulls from many different websites. I've added the button to my toolbar so I can easily add things when I see them. You can even add things from Etsy which is really great. I'm using it to keep track of the things I want to buy for Husband, the kids, and myself. I'll probably pass the link out to interested parties (a.k.a. my mom, sister, and brother who are forever buying my children gifts) this Christmas which should probably help cut down on the "whatever shall I get them that is an approved toy" (no lead, no MIC, etc.) dance that starts November 1^st and lasts through the holidays. I especially like the tags option so that you can put the person's name down. I often forget if something that I bookmark is supposed to be for my kids or for other random people which the tags option should help cut out.

 

Belle can speak!

Did you know about the risks of BPA in your canned foods, including canned baby food and formula?

Belle did the cutest thing yesterday. She said "mama"! Ok, so it wasn't actually "mama", it sounded more like "Mom" but she was trying to crawl to me (she's doing a scoot/crawl/roll thing to get around these days) and she started crying because it was too much work for her and she looked at me and said "Mam". Of course I picked her up immediately and started celebrating (and maybe rubbing it in the Husband's face a little as well!) She's not yet four months old so it is really cool. She's got a weird little thing going on with her hair though. The sides of her head have these patches of almost baldness where she sleeps on them. Hopefully that'll grow in soon.

Tomorrow we'll be doing origami dinosaurs!

You Tube Videos Made Easy

With my beautiful new app, YouPlayer, I'm able to watch things in a sidebar while I'm surfing the internet. I've added a few German clips to my playlist and now the kids are able to watch that while I'm typing away at what. Very, very cool.

Playing with my Add-Ons

I just tried the clip mark add-on that I downloaded for Firefox. I don't think that it even posted to my blog which is odd. However, right now I'm typing this in a ScribeFire add-on and watching Janet Jackson's "Feedback" video in a sidebar through my YouPlayer add-on. Both are really cool. I love add-ons. I love Firefox!

Christmas List in the Making

Though it is only June, I'm working on the Christmas lists for the kids. Most of the patterns that I'm getting are through Ravelry but some are from Crochet Pattern Central. So far…

… I'm going to crochet:

1. Pikachu (Pokemon)
   
2. Mew (Pokemon)
   
3. Jigglypuff (Pokemon)
   
4. Hello Kitty
   
5. S'mores
   
6. Bowl of Ramen noodles
   
7. Mushroom house
   
8. Hot dog
   
9. Turtle
   
10. Owl
    
11. Dog
    
12. Strawberries
    
13. Bat
    
14. Butterfly
    
15. Fish
    
16. Lots of balls (different textures)
    
17. Kitten
    
18. Teddy bear
    
19. Cactus
    
20. Frog
    
21. Banana
    
22. DNA Model
    
23. Rocket ship
    
24. Penguin
    
25. Celestine
    
26. Traffic light
    
27. Pig
    
28. Cherry pie
    
29. Tartlets
    
30. Lemon meringue pie
    
31. Super Mario star
    
32. Elephant
    
33. Octopus
    
34. Gnome home
    
35. Gnomes
    
36. Eggs
    
37. Various dinosaurs
    
38. Bunny
    
39. Hot cocoa in mugs
    
40. Cookies
    
41. Ducks
    
42. Shark
    
43. Ice cream cones
    
44. Dragonfly
    
45. Cow
    
46. Hippo
    
47. Dragon
    
48. Manta ray
    
49. Alien
    
50. Caterpillar
    
51. Panda
    
52. Birthday cake
    
53. Popcorn
    
54. Lion
    
55. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    
56. Crowns
    
57. Dolphin
    
58. Jellyfish
    
59. Pygmy Puffs
    
60. Apples
    
61. Rattle
    
62. Cupcake
    
63. Sun
    
64. Lamb
    
65. Pear
    
66. Squirrel
    
67. Meercat
    
68. Airplanes
    
69. Horse
    
70. Pac-man characters
    
71. Finger puppets
    
72. Totoro
    
73. Flamingo
    
74. Golden snitch
    
75. Crab
    
76. Lobster
    
77. Alligator
    
78. Fried egg
    
79. Dodo
    
80. Snake
    
81. Fortune cookie
    

…I'm going to (try to) knit:

1. Toy boat
   
2. Ring
   
3. Screwdriver
   
4. Tooth fairy pillows
   
5. Elmo
   
6. Cookie monster
   
7. Doughnut
   
8. Bee
   
9. Hot cross buns
   
10. Cherries
    
11. Various dinosaurs
    
12. Olives
    
13. Felted alphabet blocks
    
14. Goat
    
15. Giraffe
    
16. Torus (rings for grabbing)
    
17. Nativity scene
    
18. Celery
    
19. Slapstick pie
    
20. Jelly doughnut
    
21. Corn
    
22. Doll
    
23. Balls (lots)
    
24. Lemon/lime
    
25. Kiwi bird
    
26. Grass
    
27. Sushi
    
28. Toy block
    

In addition to these things (which are all for my kids!), I want to:

Crochet:

1. Mitten or gloves and hat sets for my kids, the Husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, and my in-laws.
   
2. Afghans for my kids, the Husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother.
   
3. A purse/bag for my mom, my sister, and my nieces.
   
4. A wine holder (in which I'll put a bottle of nice wine) for my in-laws and my parents.
   
5. A scarf for my brother and my sister.
   
6. 20 preemie hats in acrylic and 20 preemie hats in cotton for a local hospital or charity.
   
7. A few things for an online charity I keep meaning to join each year.
   

So obviously, some of this stuff isn't going to get done. I'm going to try and narrow down this list a bit as the year goes on. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to get started on first. I'm going to do the toys in either acrylic or cotton. I have some green (various shades), blue, pink, and purple acrylic right now. I'm thinking that I can make some of the balls and/or blocks right now. I want to make blocks in various sizes and make a lot of them. I remember that my cousin had these big foam blocks that looked like bricks when we were kids and I loved pulling those out and playing with them when I went to her house. I'd love to make some of those for my kids. Maybe like twenty blocks, even more if I could do it.

We’ll Have Some Spanish With Our Letter of the Week, Please!

The baby will be three months in just a few days which means I'll be starting The Letter of the Week Nursery Program in the next week or so with her.

I've decided to officially add Spanish to our languages. I wasn't going to do it but we have so much access to Spanish materials and there is such a huge part of our population that speaks Spanish that it is just senseless to ignore it. Money is tight right now so I haven't been able to order books/music/dvds in German like I was planning on and there is no where that I've found, even in bordering cities, where I can buy materials in German other than the same old, dry textbooks. I'm still going to keep at German but it just makes sense to introduce Spanish as I can find a ton of stuff for that easily and free. So for each Letter of the Week book that I order from the library, I'll also order the Spanish version (easily done as the books are filled with popular hits).

We're studying dinosaurs right now. Each week or so we check out ten to fifteen books on the subject that we're studying. This week I've ordered:

1. Dinosaurs All Around by Caroline Arnold
   
2. The Visual Dictionary of Dinosaurs
   
3. Dinosaur Valley by Mitsuhiro Kurokawa
   
4. Where to Look for a Dinosaur by Bernard Most
   
5. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs by Byron Barton
   
6. Dinosaurs, Asteroids, and Superstars by Franklyn Mansfield Branley
   
7. The Way to Draw and Color Dinosaurs by Don Bolognese
   
8. I Wonder Why Triceratops Had Horns and Other Questions About Dinosaurs by Rod Theodorou
   
9. Creatures of Long Ago: Dinosaurs by John Sibbick
   
10. Origami dinosaurs by Yoshihide Momotami
    
11. Drawing Dinosaurs by Jerome Goyallon
    
12. If Dinosaurs Came to Town by Dom Mansell
    

So hopefully those will all come in soon and we can get started. The book that Fin and I are working on this week is Little Dinosaur by David Kinefield. I'm writing out the words on note cards for him and will also work with him on them each day. My goal is to work through a small book each week so that by the end of the week, he can read it with ease.

I have yet to find a homeschool planner that I've found meets my standards. I have three kids and I want to look at all three's work for the week in one blow. I did find one site with some cool planner pages but it isn't exactly what I want. So I think I might be drafting my own in Word when I can find the time.

The Ridiculous Things People Say

"How will they ever learn to get along with people?" So many things are wrong with this statement. Schools are designed to separate children into odd little groups of people of all the same age and, in some schools, the same abilities. When else in life will one be surrounded by only their age mates, even spending "breaks" with only people of the same age? This doesn't teach children to get along in society, it contributes to society's ills. When people ask this question of me I always want to question whether they've read "Lord of the Flies".

"They'll be behind all the other children!" Right now, my four year old is reading. Not everything, he wouldn't be able to read this blog for instance, but he'd be able to pick out many of the words in it. His birthday is in the winter which means that he wouldn't be entering kindergarten this year, he'd have to wait until next year. When I was a kid, kindergarten consisted of review of the basics and then basic reading. I learned to read in an experimental preschool program when I was two so I was bored out of my mind and my birthday is late in the school year so I was one of the young kids in the class. I can only imagine the utter tedium that my almost six year old would face in a setting such as this with the level he is at now when he's four. So they most certainly won't be behind.