The first week of 2017 is looking promising weather-wise. One to three inches of snow is forecast for our Georgia town! Eight year-old Eli hasn't seen sled-able snow since 2014, so he's not taking any chances! We had heard about folk beliefs that kids put into practice to bring on the fluffy white stuff. We decided to try them all! (Sorry for the dark photos. I recently upgraded my hard drive and now my photo editing software won't work.)
Place a spoon under your bed and a penny under your pillow.
In each toilet in your home, place one ice cube for every inch of snow wanted.
Shake a snow globe.
Eat ice cream. (We didn't have any! Surely Cool Whip will do.)
Yell "Snow Day!" into the freezer.
Place a white crayon on every window sill. (One white colored pencil will have to suffice!)
Run around the dining room twelve times.
Drink root beer with a straw.
Wear a colored sock on your left foot but not on your right.
Do a snow dance.
Say prayers.
Wear your pajamas inside out and backwards. (We used fuzzy footie PJs because they are the funniest! But he will sleep in an easier set.)
As Halloween approaches, there are some great ideas flying around on social media. I was in awe of one in particular -- molding edible Jello worms inside bendy straws. You use raspberry gelatin mixed with green-tinted cream for opaque wiggly worms. Eli and I decided we had to try it.
Eli straightened out three packs of soda straws and stood them up in a Mason jar. (See our Lego haunted house?)
Eli mixed the gelatin.
Pink plus green equals icky brown.
I slowly poured the mixture in. As the liquid evened out across the straws it made weird slurpy sounds like pudding in a pipe organ. We had a good laugh over that part.
Eli was excited about squeezing the worms out of the straws after they had chilled eight hours. Unfortunately, it was too hard for his small hands.
There were about 120 worms. With each one I had to hold the straw under hot water to loosen it, wipe the straw dry, then squeeze out the worm. After unmolding about a quarter of them, I hit on using pliers to help me hold on to the back of the straw. Much easier! (Eli took this picture. He did a good job, didn't he?)
We made our worms on a warm day and it took so long to unmold them that the hot water was making them soft. I nested my worm container on top of some ice water, and that helped the worms stay solid while I finished.
Ta da! Here are our wiggly raspberry worms. They smelled much nicer than they looked. And after we added a sprinkling of crushed Oreo "dirt," they tasted yummy too. We served some to Granddad and Grandma for our special early Halloween supper, and then Eli took the rest to school. His teachers are such good sports and let all the kids have some.
A few weeks ago Eli and I agreed that the book he loved so much from the school library had to be returned so other kids could read it. Ginjer Clarke's book Gross Out: Animals That Do Disgusting Things had been hanging around our house for ages. But I did tell Eli that we could make the funny recipe that appears in the back of the book. Owls, you see, eat mice and other small critters whole. Whatever the owl cannot digest -- fur, claws, teeth, skulls, bones, etc. -- are later regurgitated in a ball or pellet. The "Owl Barf Balls" recipe transformed such ingredients as peanut butter*, sugar, cocoa, and oats into something that looked like owl pellets complete with pretzel "bones."
I asked Eli's teachers if we could make the Owl Barf Balls for the class and was given the green light. It never occurred to me that they would turn it into a funny prank, but.... One of the teachers read the passage from the book about owl pellets and then announced that they had some. Would anyone like to try one and experience firsthand what an owl tastes? Eli raised his hand and was called to the front where he theatrically hesitated before taking a big bite.
"What did the kids say?" I asked. "Nothing! They just stared at me and some of them gasped."
When Eli got home from school, we had a good laugh about it. I thought the laughs were over until the teacher handed me a packet a few days later. The teachers used the owl pellets to teach the class about thank you letters. Here are a few favorites (with surnames removed for privacy)...
As if that weren't enough, some kids made wonderful drawings of Eli and me in the kitchen, the Owl Barf Balls at school, and owls in the act of expelling pellets...
We love Eli's school and teachers so much!
*Peanut butter is a controversial ingredient because so many kids today have peanut allergies. Eli's teachers gave us the go-ahead to use it as there aren't any allergic kids in Eli's class. (After the Owl Barf Ball activity, they made sure the kids washed their hands before going to shared spaces such as the playground.) The recipe in the book would probably work well with Sun Butter made from sunflower seeds or you may be able to omit this ingredient. If you add broken pretzel sticks to THIS RECIPE, it would also look like owl pellets.
My dad used to call me "Snaggletooth" when I was in the process of losing my baby teeth. The day Eli lost his second top tooth, that nickname popped right back into my head.
Eli's two front teeth gone at the same time filled me with a goofy sort of happy. I've always loved it when kids are missing those top two at the same time, but it doesn't always coincide. An extra complication was that when Eli was a toddler he had an accident and it was touch-and-go for a while if his right top tooth would fall out or turn dark. When his tooth hung in there, I was overjoyed. Still, his dentist mentioned that an injury could put a tooth on a different time schedule, so Eli might lose that tooth very early or very late. Thus Eli losing his two front teeth at the same time was a victory after a victory. I took him right to a photo studio!
As the vacation miles rolled by between Georgia and North Carolina, Eli heard Harry Potter for the first time via audiobook. He loved it -- classic good vs. evil with some laughs (and deep friendships) sprinkled in.
As the final chapter came to a close, I reached into my bag and pulled out a surprise. I'd brought along a small box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans inspired by the book series. For those who don't know much about Harry Potter, there are several comical moments about these candies -- little jelly beans that include not only the usual fruit flavors but also awful flavors such as earthworm, grass, dirt, and soap. I challenged Eli to take turns with me eating one jelly bean at a time. There was a "map" of flavors on the back of the box, but many of the pleasant flavors looked identical to the rotten ones. We agreed that when it was our turn, we'd accept whatever bean rolled out next and take a full bite.
Picture a mama and a 6.5 year-old rolling down Interstate 95 at sunset, passing the little rattling box back and forth, each warily inspecting the next bean before taking a hopeful bite -- a very strange (yet kid-friendly) version of Russian roulette. "Lemon!" we'd crow. Or "It's just orange this time!" I'm only sorry that we were separated front seat and back seat so I couldn't get a clear look at Little Guy's face when tasting the bad ones. I'd hear a sputtering cough followed by a huge guffaw as Eli scrambled to roll down the window. In a rush of swirling hot air, yet one more sticky, half-chewed piece of candy was ejected to the asphalt. (With my awful jelly beans -- and, trust me, some were simply disgusting -- I opened my window to spit them like watermelon seeds that vanished behind us instantly at 70 MPH. "Oh, Mama! That's cool!") Finally, the box now empty, we stopped at a rest stop so Eli could brush teeth and put on jammies. When I opened his car door, I found several wads of slimy beans that didn't make it out his window -- which just made us laugh like banshees all over again.
There are so many times as an adult that you have to do the hard thing, be the mature grown-up. I'm so grateful for the times when parenting also means you get to be downright silly.
One of the bizarre things about becoming a parent is that you unknowingly accept the role of Cultural Tour Guide. The first year of your child's life that role isn't even on your radar, but soon after they start talking you realize just how much they don't understand about the world. Take jokes, for instance. Even wee tots get slapstick comedy, but so much of humor is based on puns, irony, pop culture, and the like. Unfortunately, by the time you pick apart a joke or reference to explain to your kid why it is funny, it usually isn't funny anymore. Still, someone taking the time to explain is part of how kids develop a sense of humor.
And a sense of humor is pretty important in life.
When Eli got old enough to ask what was for dinner, I started to dread the question. Unless the answer was "pizza," I often got a frown and a downtrodden "Aw." That's not much positive feedback to go on when you're halfway through a new gourmet recipe complete with hand-selected organic produce. So I applied humor and started answering "What's for dinner?" with the cheerful reply: "Monkey brains!"
Eli didn't get the joke at first. What in the heck did Mama mean by "monkey brains"? Then the day came when I saw a look of shock and revulsion on his face. He got it! He understood! But it was still a little bit longer before I got a grin as a response. That told me that he not only understood my words, but he got the joke. Gross! Mama would never really serve up the brains of a monkey. Ha! Ha!
Sadly, the reaction to the monkey brains joke continued to evolve. Before long, Eli would ask what was for supper and immediately rush in with the added words, "And don't say 'monkey brains'!" When I kept using my stale old joke anyway, Eli switched tactics. His response became an irked glare or a dry, "Oh, ha ha, Mama."
Ah, but then today the skies parted and rays of humor shone down. I was making Eli's lunch for school this morning while he was eating his cereal. I wasn't sure how much he was paying attention to me, but I muttered aloud, "Hmmm. Lunch for Eli. How can I chop these monkey brains small enough to fit into his lunchbox?" Without missing a beat, Eli deadpanned, "Don't forget the swamp water!"
My goofball, complete with antennae and a face painting of a snake...
Our Vtech Kidizoom camera has always been fairly popular with Eli and his buddies. I'll admit that Eli loves the games on it and uses that feature the most, but he will also take it on trips and walks. I like picking it up now and then to see Eli's pictures. It is a rare chance to see what captures his attention, a kindergartener's eye view.
There's one feature, however, that has now suddenly captured Eli's imagination. It sends him into breathless guffaws but also absorbs him in an hour or more of play. When the camera is in picture-taking mode, moving the thumb toggle left or right engages a series of special effects that kids can see right through the lens and that will appear as part of the photo. These include borders, "accessories" for people in portraits, and fun house mirror-type special effects. Awesome. Here's a sampling...
Update on My Earlier Review: Our Vtech Kidizoom camera is a 2013 model with 1.3 megapixels and 4x digital zoom. The camera takes four AA batteries that last quite a while and the memory can hold about 160 pictures before it needs to be emptied/erased. (This admittedly isn't a lot if a kid is in a shutterbug mood, but it usually gets us through a hike or a playground visit.) The photos are usually between 250k and 800k. It is sturdy and easy to use. The one drawback is that it has no flash, so using it indoors means that the user needs to have a very steady hand or the image will blur -- and this isn't a fast camera anyway. I let Eli use my camera (with close supervision) for important things, but the Kidizoom is great for free play with young kids!
I came across these photos a few weeks ago and had to laugh. I'd forgotten all about this Halloween prank.
When I was a manuscripts archivist, I was put in charge of my institution's artifacts collection. For a history geek like me, it was terribly fun. We had some bizarre artifacts. In the early years of the pre-Civil War organization, it tended to collect anything old or interesting rather than sticking to a scholarly or topic-based collection plan. Some old gent would find a weird object while traveling the world and soon donate it.
Trying to sort out the records for over a century and a half of artifacts was dizzying. There were many times that I found records for the organization acquiring something a century before but then not being able to find the object in question. One such artifact was a mummy's hand. There was no record of it being sold or donated elsewhere, yet it hadn't been seen in decades. Everybody on staff was intrigued and periodically it would come up in conversations, folks wondering what became of it. Hmmm.
It was too good to resist. One October I tracked down a library book with life size images of the bones in the human hand. I cut wooden dowels to fit the finger bones and then screwed them together using small hardware loops/eyes. I screwed the wrist portion of the hand to a small board and glued it into the bottom of a shallow cardboard box. I ran fishing line up the "bones" and then out the corner of the box. Next, I covered the bones with brown Fimo clay. I used cream and brown acrylic paint to make some Lee Press On fake fingernails look creepy and then pressed them into the Fimo. For a last step, I dyed some cheesecloth with tea to make it look old and also splashed some tea stains on cream-colored tissue paper to nestle around the hand. It looked pretty good, if I say so myself -- dessicated, wrinkly, and gaunt. But my favorite part was that I could pull on the transparent strings coming out the bottom of the box to suddenly make the hand move and draw up.
On Halloween, I sneaked the box into work, waited about an hour, and then excitedly "found" the missing mummy's hand in the artifacts storage area. I took it around the building to show folks and would wait until they were quietly leaning over for close scrutiny before pulling on strings to make the mummy hand move. The shrieks were worth all the work.
All good fun comes to an end. Time moved on and everybody had seen my creation. What to do with it? When I left the organization for another job, I quietly stashed the box in a storage area. To this day, I have no idea if anybody else found it or not. I can only imagine somebody years later pulling out the unmarked box and finding the creepy thing inside. I hope it earned a few more shrieks.
JourneyLeaf is a tool to help me appreciate, preserve, and share those raggedy yet shining moments in everyday life. Joy requires practice. (To read more, click above on the word "ABOUT.")
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My primary camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel T5 with a Sigma DC 18-200mm lens (1:3.5-6.3) or Canon EFS 18-55mm lens. On occasion I also use my iPhone 6. For crisper images (when I'm not in a hurry to grab the shot), I use a Dolica Proline B100 tripod. I often tweak my images using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.
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