"You can do that, right Mom?"

Um...  Sure.  Sure I can. 

You certainly seem to think so, anyway.  So let's see if you're right.

We have a geriatric dove named Gracie who dutifully lays eggs for us every two weeks or so.  The fairies are fascinated with her as she has been a fixture for them their whole lives.  They are rarely allowed to handle her and love her from afar.  Secunda took my design notebook this morning and drew up a little sketch of her Gracie.  And then the question:  "You can do that, right Mom?"

I looked up to Big Daddy grinning at me.  "Right, Mom?" he asked. 

Umm... Sure.  Sure I can.  Because I love you so much, I will risk failure.  And disappointing you.  So here goes.

Here's the preliminary sketch Secunda approved (and Tertia was nice enough to put her own name on it).  I wanted to just use some muslin and Secunda chose the buttons. 

Buttons for beak, eyes, and wings. Chosen by the artist.  There's even a Gracie feather in the shot!

I wanted the wings to button on and off, just to make it more interesting.  I free-handed the whole thing and got it completed in about 45 minutes. 

Nothing fancy, but made with so much love. 

How could I say no to those eyes? 

And this Gracie can PLAY!!  Yaaaays!!

Fizzing Fairy Chests! (Baking Soda and Vinegar and PINK)

It was Science/Reading day yesterday, so I decided the girls should have some fun.  The day before, Prima and I got to work with the Scientist part of Mad Scientist:

We had to have treasures for our Fairy Chests.

And Fairy Chest raw materials.

Prima mixed the goop with the ratios found on the amazing fun-a-day website.  She was so careful and really got into it after the magical watermelon jello, because PINK.

Measure measure.

Stir stir.

 

I filled them with fairy treasures...

They froze beautifully overnight, and yesterday morning, we had this:

 

I got a gallon of white vinegar (surely that would be enough) and we headed outside with bowl, spoons, plates, and boots.  To say the least, it was a smashing success.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

 

 

She really wanted to eat it.

We talked about the gas produced, why it was strong at first then got weaker, how chemical changes happen and why, what a catalyst is and how it does not apply here, etc. 

YAY, Tertia!  I love you!

A DIAMOND for Secunda! I love you!

Plus, treasures!

Crafteriffic Crap-a-Roonie 1

 HOME-MADE FINGER PAINTS!

This was so fun and an excellent lesson in what too many choices can do to playtime.  I used a fantastic and easy recipe found here from The Imagination Tree.  It cooked up just like she said and it was EASY.  For REAL.  

Prima helped the whole time and mixed all the colors too.

 Lots of bowls of really cool colors.  I was THRILLED with the results.

I sent everyone outside and plopped the paint on paper and let them have at it.  The weirdest thing happened: 

No one wanted to touch it.  They are used to two colors, maybe three and I went a little nuts with the variety.  Totally overwhelmed the poor things.  I ended up putting most of it back in zipper bags for later. 

Good lesson for me on how Minimalism as a philosophy has impacted the wee ones.  I'm proud of them for feeling slightly uncomfortable with all the excess. 

Fair does not mean equal. Part 1.

Why I let Prima wear makeup and her sisters can't...
Our eldest child is going to be 6 this September.  She's all girl: princesses, pink, fluffy, Disney-fied to a fare-thee-well. This was none of my doing.  I declared a moratorium on any "girly" colors for anything when she was born.  She played with trucks and Matchbox cars as often as she played with dolls.  I DID MY PART, HERE.

She also deals with some mental health issues.  Part of being brilliant can be some instability and we love who she is as much as we hate that she has to deal with it.  She has two younger sisters (twins Secunda and Tertia) that are the bane of her existence as well as her closest allies.

As Prima is the eldest, she gets all the fun stuff first and has the dubious distinction of being our Stunt Child.  Also, we have to really pick our battles.  One battle I refused to have when she was a teenager was cosmetics.  Why, with all the sexualization of young girls, am I allowing a typically "mature" privilege?

Because she is still listening to me.  If I want some influence in this milestone, I need to set the groundwork for rules, limits, and expectations around it.  I chose the colors, the types, the styles of makeup I'd accept.  I choose when and where she wears it.  She can paint herself up like a $2 hooker if she wants while we're at home.  

Because she is not being sexualized.  She dresses very conservatively and makes respectful and respectable choices around this.  Until she doesn't, she has the makeup privilege. 

She gets it out of her system.  By the time she's 12 and her friends are just discovering it, she'll be over it.  And no doubt on to something more terrifying for me :).  

Will I allow her sisters to behave the same way?  Absolutely not.  Because they are radically different children.  Because fair does not mean equal.