Shred much?

Some of Bearhug's handiwork:


That used to be a plastic bag.

He just has the urge to shred sometimes. For the most part, we let him as long as it's something we don't need or can easily replace and he has to clean up the mess. In this case he was pacing around the house looking for something to shred and I suggested the bag because we have a ton of them.

That same evening, I also found this in the kitchen:



We've talked about not picking at cups from the bottom because it makes a hole and ends up leaking. Found that out the hard way when he did that in the car not too long ago. This one wasn't quite to that point yet... but still. There was a separate almost-hole at the top too, so maybe he remembered to pick at the top after he got started?

We find things shredded or picked at fairly often. Bar soap (we put liquid soap in their bathroom now), candles, paper towels, food, you name it.

Do your kids feel the urge to tear, shred, or pick at things? What have you found to be acceptable options or alternatives?

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Bitty's latest creative outlet

It all started when I tried to get creative in convincing Bitty it was time to stop chasing the neighbor's cat and come home. I was trying to get him to come willingly and avoid a wrestling match.

I had taken a picture of said cat just a couple of weeks earlier, so I asked Bitty if he wanted to see a picture of "White Socks." I didn't really think he'd jump at the chance to come look at a picture of the cat when he had the real thing right there in front of him, but it was worth a shot. To my surprise, his eyes lit up. "Yes!" he exclaimed, and took my hand to go see the picture.

He was thrilled, and wanted to print it out to paste into his journal (that's another post). Then he asked to take pictures of some of his trains and cards. And then he wanted to print those out too. And he was hooked.

He wanted me to take pictures of various scenes and toys from his Baby Einstein videos. First 7, then 17, then I lost count. I started printing them out smaller in an effort to conserve paper, and then he discovered photo paper.



Every day when I got home from work, he greeted me with, "you take pictures?" We were taking over 100 pictures a day.

(this is just a few)

He cuts them all out (great fine motor exercise!), but instead of pasting them into his journal, he started making his own "timelines" (construction paper booklets) to put his pictures in.

I started letting him use my old camera so he could take some pictures on his own. He loves that :).

We ran out of glue sticks.

We ran out of tape.

So he started using staples (or more accurately, he started having me staple his pictures into his books). He was very particular about which ones should go where. When we finished all of our current pictures if we had space left, he'd start pulling pictures out of his previous books to put them into his new book. On Saturday he wanted me to un-staple all the pictures so he could stack them up (I don't know why). We ended up with a desk full of little stacks of pictures, sort of what you might expect a Baby Einstein stalker's desk to look like (haha).

We ran out of photo paper and he started printing on construction paper.

Then we ran out of yellow ink (not sure why that one ran out before the others) and apparently the printer refuses to print if any one of the cartridges is completely empty.

So his photo books are on hold at the moment. He is not happy about this, but after the first day of screaming to fix the printer because "I WANT TO PRRRIIIIINNNTTTT!!!!" he has come to accept that it's not possible until we get more ink.

I've been taking my time on that, hoping he might move on to something else in the meantime. But he asks every day if we have ink yet so we finally ordered some. I need to get some more paper too...

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Spring

Posted some spring pictures over at my photo blog, thought I'd share a couple of them here too :). The cherry blossoms never last long but I love them so I take a bunch of pictures every spring. These were taken a couple of months ago. You can see the rest here.

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American Revolution, as told by two 4th graders

(I'm really grateful our boys go to a school where they still teach this stuff - very cool)

Bearhug and Cuddlebug's class made ABC books about the Revolutionary War. For each letter of the alphabet, they chose one item from their study of the American Revolution and wrote their description of it, along with an illustration. In some cases, they each chose the same item for a particular letter, but not always (and even when they chose the same item, they each had their own take on it).

I love their perspectives on history and the drawings are really cute and funny. :) Each of them included an "about the author" page also. In the interest of space, I pulled out just 10 pages from each of their books to share below (click to enlarge any of the pages):

These were at the end of the books, but I'll start with the "about the author" pages :)

Cuddlebug
I asked Cuddlebug about the "he loves war" part and he said he meant he loves learning about war (ie. wars in history).

Bearhug
"Wacko & Weirdo" is a comic series that Bearhug has been writing. I need to post some here, they're really cute and funny :).

I love how they both listed their age as "9 3/4 years." :)

And here are some of the book pages:

(by Cuddlebug)
"Whatta fail" LOL.


(by Bearhug)
hee hee, "King George eventually went ballistic, so he taxed more!"


(by Cuddlebug)

(by Bearhug)
a little embellishment there with "he also maybe then ripped it in half," that drawing made me laugh :). I assured the boys that the Declaration of Independence is actually still in one piece.


(by Bearhug)

(by Cuddlebug)
Wow that is a lot of British soldiers with some serious firepower coming after Patrick Henry, brave guy!

(by Cuddlebug)

(by Cuddlebug)

(by Bearhug)
I love the time sequence showing the guy getting ready in a minute :)


(by Cuddlebug)

(by Bearhug)

(by Cuddlebug)


(by Bearhug)
It's a little small there, but the picture shows the prices going up (was $0.20, now $2.00) as a result of more taxes from King George.

(by Bearhug)
We've been reading scriptures as a family, and we started with the story of Nephi and his family in the Book of Mormon.

(by Bearhug)


(by Cuddlebug)
LOL, this cracks me up. Bearhug had the same thing for X. X is nothing. :)

(by Cuddlebug)
LOL, "King George III had a lot of zeal to tax the colonists."


(by Bearhug)
I love his interpretation of "zeal." :)

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Science fair

Bearhug and Cuddlebug signed up to participate in their school's science fair. They did great and worked hard on their projects. I'm really proud of them!

Cuddlebug tested several cereals to see which ones stay crunchy the longest. Among the ones we tested, Cinnamon Toast Crunch (both name brand and generic) was the most crunchy after 5 minutes.





Bearhug's experiment looked at how to best cool a soda. Turns out if you have a room temperature Coke the fastest way to make it cold (at least between fridge, freezer, ice chest, or ice water) is to submerge it in ice water.




It was a lot of effort but they had a great experience and are already thinking up ideas for next year :).

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Keep arguing, and other quotes

We were watching a western movie on tv and dh told the boys, "back in the old west, they used to settle their arguments with gunfights."

Cuddlebug thought about that for a second and then replied, "they should have just kept arguing."

lol :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I told dh he's hot and Bearhug (who is forever eavesdropping and inserting himself into conversations) jumped in with, "yeah, Dad, you look sweaty!"

Not exactly what I meant. ;) lol

(and in dh's defense, he didn't look sweaty at all, we were in the car with the a/c on)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bitty is obsessed with fireworks (mainly the avoidance of them) and constantly reminding me that it's not July, we're not going to fireworks on the 4th of July, and New Year's is over.

Yep. Got it. Can't argue with any of that and in order to ease his anxiety, I have already promised that we will stay home on the 4th of July. What I haven't mentioned yet though, is that dh and our neighbors will probably be putting on their own fireworks display right out in the street. Yeah, I'm going to save that conversation for another day.

Anyway, so during one of these conversations, Bitty told me "fireworks live in the night." He was reassuring himself that, being daytime, he had no need to be concerned about fireworks. Another time he told me, "fireworks live in space."

I just think it's cute the way he words it :).

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Love Letter

I found this in Bitty's backpack when he came home from school on his birthday:



I cropped out the names for privacy reasons, but this was from the little girl in his class "A", who is one of the few people in his class that he mentions at home. She had written her name and his on the bottom. How cute is that?

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