Speaking of Hands On (I Promise I'll Stop After This)

Christian's teacher has a motto for her classroom; it is this famous saying from Confucius:

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.

Mrs. C. is big on her students doing whatever it is that they are studying.  Her class is very hands on, from seashells to dinosaurs (and I am not kidding-I have a shell imprinted in plaster and a giant brontosaurus that is a good six feet long and four feet high stuck up on a shelf in Christian's room), they do with their hands something that will help them understand what it is they are studying.

Just recently the class was learning about opposites.  For homework Christian had to come up with at least fifty opposite pairs (down/up; left/right; frown/smile) and bring them to class.  Then each student made an opposite book.  This, my dear friends, is too good not to share.  And so, I proudly present to you...

by:  Christian Walker

Big and Small     (please note how displeased "Small" is...bigger must indeed be better)

Boy and Girl     (the difference is, gratefully, in the hair; his take on the difference between the sexes made him declare that Shaun White was a girl when he took off his helmet after his snowboarding run) 

Bright and Dark

Cold and Hot     (one of my favorites; he makes his characters talk..."br" and "It's too hot outside!"  Also, someone inside is taunting the one who is outside with an obnoxious,"ha")

Dirty and Clean     (and long and lean)

Dumb and Smart     (I am so glad finally to know what all those little swirlies twirling around my head are!)

Dead and Alive     (The tongue...it is so telling, no?)

Fast and Slow     (another one of my favorites...I love the burst coming from the car's behind-ha)

Hard and Soft    

Loud and Quiet     (Please.  That mouth.  I know you can barely see it, but the loud guy has a giant circle for a mouth.)

Mountain and Valley     (Don't miss the unfortunate little guy plummeting to the earth, minus a parachute.  There is also an unhappy home owner.  In case you can't see the words, they are saying, respectively,"help I'm falling" and "hey, why do I have to have the smallest house.")  (I left the punctuation as it is on his paper.)

There were several other pages...this book made me smile and laugh.  I love seeing Christian's work.  He is so thoughtful, and I think his personality comes through in everything that he does.  He is a quirky, funny, creative fellow. 

And by the end of the year, our house will be full of his projects and his head will be full of understanding.

Hands On, Take Two

In true Christina fashion, I entered a photo in the I Heart Faces challenge that is actually not legitimate for me to enter.  I got so wrapped up in looking for pictures that had to do with hands, and told a good story, that I forgot that I am supposed to have taken the picture.  While I will say that I got through Eliana's birth fairly easily, I am not so tricky that I was able to take a picture of Mike, Eliana, and myself just after she was born. 

I went back to my choices and decided (and it was hard, I might do a post on the other pictures as well...they are all sweet) on this one...

Not only could Mike and I not wait to get our hands on Eliana, her big sister couldn't wait either!  She wanted to hold her all the time from the moment she saw her, and still loves to spend time with her little sister.  I also chose this picture because not only has Michaela loved to hold Eliana, but she has also been so very hands on with her.  She is always willing to spend time with Eliana, and loves to play with and care for her.  Michaela is a tenderhearted, loving girl, and she adores Eliana.  I'm so glad that they will have each other for life. 

There are so many lovely pictures people have shared at I Heart Faces...check it out.

Hands On

This week's challenge at I Heart Faces focuses on hands. (And by the way, I never know if I should write it "Iheartfaces" or "I Heart Faces", so it will probably never be the same two times in a row.  Or maybe I'll be consistent within a post, but not from post to post.  Just to drive everyone crazy, because I KNOW you are paying that close of attention to what I write.)  Before I realized that they were deviating from their normal look at faces and giving a little attention to hands, I perused our digital photo library looking for pictures that depicted their challenge title - "Hands On".

At first I was thinking hands on faces, like peek-a-boo or a look of surprise.  Then I thought it could mean a picture of something that is a hands on task or job.  I suppose it's always up for interpretation by those who enter the contests.  I picked out a bunch of photos to narrow down, and then saw on the website that the challenge was about hands, and did not need to include faces, although they could, of course.  I went back to all my choices (and I won't say that I didn't go back through a lot of the other pictures as well) and finally decided to crop one and focus on the hands that were in the picture.

For this picture, I'm going to tell the story...

Several years ago I lost two babies.  The first time I knew something was wrong, but waited it out, hoping and hoping that I was incorrect and worried about nothing; I miscarried at around eleven weeks.  Many months later I suspected I was pregnant again but there was some ostrich action; I did a little sticking of the head in the sand...I didn't want to face head-on the possibility that I might lose another pregnancy.  I talked with my sister-in-law about it quite a bit (while trying to hide from it!), since we were together at the beach, and we had had many conversations about why I might have lost the first baby.  One thing that came up was an imbalance in progesterone levels; she encouraged me to talk to my midwife about the possibility as well as what measures I could take if I got pregnant again.  (I really am trying to keep this short.  It's hard because I think it's a good story!)  In the end, I got a prescription for the progesterone, but I started it too late that particular time.  I ended up losing the baby one week after finding out that I was pregnant.  I felt guilty for not being more proactive.  I began taking the progesterone monthly, just in case, until one month I had a strange experience about which I will withhold all the details.  Let's just say it seemed  fairly obvious that I was not pregnant, and that I couldn't be. 

I did not continue with the progesterone at that time, since it seemed pointless.  I thought I would just save it for the next month.  One week later, however, I felt like I ought to take a pregnancy test.  My boobs were super sensitive just from putting my shirt on...something had to be up.  They were normally non-existent, much less not sensitive.  The test was positive before I even finished peeing on the stick.  All righty then.  At this point I was a week past the time when I should have started taking the progesterone...but I started it anyway.  Things progressed well, in spite of the late start with the medicine.  God showed us that He is truly in charge, and was weaving and forming something amazing, in my womb and in our lives.  Eight months later, there was this...

We were blessed with a baby girl.  We named her Eliana; it means "the Lord responds".  We cried out to Him and He did indeed hear our cries and answer.  Before she arrived, we couldn't wait to get our hands on her.   Once she was here we were able to put our hands on her right away.  And we were and are reminded that the Lord has His hands on, and over, and under, and around, us.

Just like faces, hands are full of stories to tell...head on over to I Heart Faces for more.

 

They Had Fun

Whenever the kids are doing something that normal people think is fun but that stresses me out, I take pictures.  It helps distract me from the stressing out part.  A little.

Michaela has been asking to make cookies for a long time.  Like, forever.  Yes, even from the beginning of time. 

I don't like making cookies.  It takes a long time and for me the results aren't as rewarding as making something like a cake or brownies.  Cookies pack a lot of calories in a tiny package (oh so unlike cake, you know).  It doesn't seem worth it to me. 

But yesterday I made a promise to Michaela that today we could make cookies; the look on her face made it worth it.  (Mostly.)

Guess who else likes making cookies?  If making them means eating them. 

I made some frosting for Michaela to use on her Easter egg.  (Just for your information, we also had some stars, some gingerbread girls and a boy, a Santa, a bell, and a pumpkin...I think she wanted to cover every holiday that we could since she knows deep down inside of her that the chance of another cookie making extravaganza any time soon is pretty much SLIM TO NONE.)

She worked so hard on that egg, and I did not get a picture of it when she was done.  It was really a lovely cookie.  I guess it was tasty, too.

My poor kids.  They get to do fun things but their experience could be likened to going to Disney World with Ebenezer Scrooge, pre-time travel.  And they take it in stride, all my weirdness.  I'm shifting gears here a little bit, but their love for me is so much like God's.  It isn't because I'm good, it's just because.  As I've said before...they teach me a thing or two.

Going for the Gold

I am procrastinating.  Surprise!

Seriously.  I have days worth of dishes to wash by hand, because I (brilliantly) tried to dispose of a glass in the disposal, which doesn't work all that well.  Now the disposal is out of order, and there is a big piece of glass in there that is blocking the drain from working properly which in turn affects the dishwasher draining (I think.  My husband said that might be the case, and when you mention something like that to an obsessive-compulsive person, then forget it.  He might as well have said,"It is a well-known fact that when you run the disposal with a glass in it then your dishwasher evaporates").

This story keeps going.  I tried to get the glass out, and yes, I did put something over my hand, but apparently it wasn't enough.  I cut the tip of my middle finger.  It was strange; I almost didn't feel any pain.  Just a prick, and then there was quite a bit of blood.  I got the blood flow under control pretty quickly, but since then I haven't been able to do the dishes because band-aids just don't stay on in the water (waterproof band-aids, you have a lot of answering to do!) and I couldn't do the dishes with nothing on my finger.  We've used a lot of paper plates the last few days.  And ALL of our glasses/cups/mugs/wine goblets are dirty.  (Have you ever seen a nine-year-old drink milk out of a wine glass.  It's something.)  I had no idea we had so many drinking vessels.  And now I have to wash them all. 

Some might say (like me, for instance) fixing the disposal sounds like a "man job".  Sorry if that sounds sexist.  There are some things, however, that I would like my hubby to do.  Taking out the garbage is one of them.  Fixing plumbing problems is another.   (I will say that I single-handedly fixed our toilet in Kentucky once when he was out of town...I rocked the toilet flapper chain, yes, I did.)  And I did try to fix this, at least a little, but it cut me!  I took some solace in not having to do the dishes for a while.  Until said dishes started threatening me with their towering height and dirty smelliness.  But now?  Now it's time to put my gloves on. 

(cue:  Eye of the Tiger, me running up the steps of our porch, panting and out of breath as I reach the top)

I went and got some gloves.  Not for fighting, although the sinkful of yuck deserves a good beating.  My gloves are for scrubbing.  The rubber yellow gloves will save my fingers from the suds-induced devastation that is sure to come from hours of scrubbing all of those glasses and pots and pans that have gathered as if for a dirty dishes convention.  OH!  And the silverware.  How I hate to handwash silverware!

Wait!  I was going to say more about this being a "man job" but I distracted myself.  The reason that Mike has not taken on the glass sliver in our disposal is because he is crazy-trying-to-finish a very important project.  That's all I'll say about that.  He is on a mission (I guess I have more to say, after all) and I am not going to deter him.  Later this weekend, I will have him figure out the best way to get that glass out of the disposal. 

Can you run your disposal ever again after chopping up some glass in there?  It didn't seem to like it very much that I did that.

I am hard on disposals.  I am not a friend.

Is there a moral to this story?  Check your disposal before you run it, I suppose.  Don't put small glasses and silverware in the side of your sink that has a disposal could be another.  At least I'm learning the lessons that are set before me.  Ah, the silver lining.  The better tomorrow.  The smarter Christina.

Well.  Maybe that's asking a bit too much.  You know what this just reminded me of?  The commercials that I've seen about double checking.  They are really funny, man.  Or maybe I'm just in desperate need of a laugh, but the guy smearing on the red lipstick and the guy eating the dog biscuit...I have to admit I laughed out loud when I saw them.

Suddenly it seems pretty obvious that I don't get out much.  But I did get to Target the other day and so on top of all the dishes I need to wash I have bags and bags of (what in the world did I buy in there, anyway?!) stuff to unpack.  Did I mention the laundry mountain?  No?  Well, that too. 

And a brownie to eat.  What a lot to accomplish!  I'll be a busy girl tonight.

Sorry about the pictureless post.  You do not want to see my dirty dishes, right?  I thought not.

Wait!  Here is how much of a procrastinator I am...a picture of my brownie.  It is the last one.  I ate almost all of them.  Gold medal potential, I tell you.

And here is the milk I'm having with my brownie.  Please note that I am drinking out of a jelly jar.  All of our glasses are dirty, remember?

And here is the stuff from Target that I need to put away...

Our hair dryer died, so I had to get a new one.  I also got a cookie sheet, because I didn't have one.  And some healthy Kashi snacks.  The Dr. Pepper is for Mike, I promise!  Okay, I had one, but I didn't have one today, and I'm back into the Resistance.  I can't remember what else is in there.  Sad, but true. 

So...we have learned that I not only rule at brownie-downing but also at procrastination.  Where do your gold-medal-winning skills lie?  Please share!