Sensory Rice Box!

As I mentioned in my previous post, my son, the Caveman, has become a wretched unappeasable beast. I had to do something, and popcicles alone were not cutting the mustard.  Therefore, building on the Caveman's outdoor sandbox affinity, inspired by a model from The Dreamer's Kindergarten classroom, we embarked on a mission to create a sensory rice box for our home. I hoped that this idea might be just the ticket to instill a calm over our harried home.

To begin, I bought three, 10 lb. (4.54 kg) bags of long grained rice and dumped them into a 10 gallon (38 L) tub that measured 25 3/8" long  x 18 3/8" wide x 7 1/8" deep.  It filled the tub about 3/4 of the way full with rice.  A perfect amount.

For toys, I picked up some dollar containers and scoops, threw in some plastic cups that we had hanging around, and the Caveman and Dreamer chose some little plastic creatures who would now call the rice tub their home.

The Caveman was pleased, and, more importantly, overcome by a quiet engagement with his new play area. 

The Dreamer joined in the fun, and the two baked, mixed, poured and buried for the rest of the evening.

Success. Peace. Happiness.

Hellion Changeling!

Last week, the Caveman was exhibiting the telltale signs of one who has contracted one of the many common cold viruses.  Coincidently, since that time, we have been subjected to physical and violent outbursts from him multiple times a day, each and every day. These wrought outbursts can be recognized by the following actions:

     1. deafening screaming

     2. clawing at my legs to be held 

         (while yelling)

     3. rolling around on the floor

     4. sliding body off of surfaces by 

         tensing muscles while arching 

         back

     5. kicking any and everything within 

         reach

     6. slamming doors                           

     7. yanking the Dreamer's long 

         tresses

Until this morning, I had succeeded in convincing myself that this new tantrum prone individual was only visiting for the temporary duration of the cold infection.  Apparently, that assumption was incorrect, and I must face the music (or rather, face the shrieking) and accept the fact that, along with contracting a cold and a growth spurt, the Caveman has also contracted a new personality.  My fantasies of this stage arriving simply because of the discomfort caused by his post nasal drip, hoarse cough, and the runny eyes of infirmity, were sadly, exactly that--fantasies.  

Therefore, due to my son being replaced by a changeling, Mister and I have decided that we must come up with a set of rules or guidelines for surviving while sharing a home with this wretched cantankerous time bomb.  Our plans are threefold, wish us luck:

     1. DO NOT ANGER IT! (most 

         important of the guidelines, yet, 

         most difficult one to follow, as 

         we are; as of yet, uncertain of 

         the exact triggers of one of 

         these epic fits)

     2. FEED THE BEAST (food, or lack 

         thereof, seems to cause chaos

         under our rooftop; plus, with 

         something in his mouth, the 

         Caveman is less likely to reach 

         such incredible volumes while 

         screaming in my face

     3. WAIT IT OUT! when all else fails, 

         we quietly sit on the sidelines 

         and wait for exhaustion to 

         overcome the beast, we then 

         take him in our arms and hug 

         him, hoping to squeeze all of 

         that harsh anger right out of his 

         little being and find that lost little   

         boy whose favorite pastime is 

         searching for earthworms...

Fairy Fun Box!

The Dreamer was recently invited to a birthday party of a fellow classmate. Because both she and the Caveman love their needle felted toys, she suggested that we create a gift for the girl similar to a project that we had completed before embarking on a small vacation last spring.

Last spring, after becoming inspired by a wonderful find on Pinterest, we succeeded in creating our own version of a "gnome fun box" to be used for travel.  I ended up creating 2 boxes, one for each of my children, and these containers have weaseled their way into cars, restaurants, beds, couches, and outdoors. They encourage an imaginative approach to play and are small sized and self-contained.  They provide the perfect dose of excitement for bored children who are trapped in a monotonous adult environment.

According to the Dreamer, however, a "gnome" fun box would never ever do for this particular birthday girl, due to her disdain for gnomes.  Instead, she dictated, we must accommodate for this by creating a "fairy" fun box.

We bought a small, shallow, square wooden box and began our project.  The first task at hand was to create a ribbon stop inside of the box in order to allow what we would later designate as our sky portion, to sit in an upright fashion during play.  I cut a scrap of 1 inch wide white and pink polka dot ribbon and hot glued it to the top and bottom of the box.  Now the box operated perfectly.

The Next step of the project at hand, was the creation of the fairy habitat.  I wanted to use wool felt to allow for needling details onto the surface.  I opted to buy both a sheet of blue and a sheet of green wool to serve as the backdrops for our sky and grassy landscapes.  I then trimmed them to the perfect size square shapes to fit into their places within the fun box, and it was time to decorate.  

Onto the blue sky, I needled a simple yellow circle for a sun, along with two white clouds.  For the grassy half, I decided on a blue pond complete with lily  pads made from the scrap cuttings of the green sheet of wool and a pinch of pink needled on as the water lily blossom.  I also felted a gray cavern hidey hole.  I used hot glue to attach the wool sheets to the wooden box covering my earlier ribbon attachment in the process.

All that was left to add were the characters.  Following the completion of a little brown rabbit, I launched into the fairy forming.  Unsure quite where to begin, I decide to go with a peg doll based invention.

I felted a rectangular shape of pink wool and wrapped it around the lower (body) half of the peg.  This was secured by needling at the seam, and also by adding a few drops from the hot glue gun between the wood of the peg and the wool of the dress. 

For the hairdo, I choose to braid 3 sections of wool into a long thin braid that I proceeded to wrap in a circular fashion from what was to be the crown to the outer edges needling as I went.  At the end, I shaped it as needed and reinforced my felting before attaching to the head of the peg again settling for hot glue.

To finish, I added a petal from an artificial flower as the wings via a mixture of needling and glue, although, in the future, I believe I may just attach this part by sewing to ensure a more secure attachment of the wings.  One extra touch of a rosette was glued over the hole in the flower petal, and we were all very pleased with the sweet, whimsy results.

A ribbon for wrapping, and our gift was complete!

Pompoms, a Mother's Dream Come True!

Pompoms are a marvelous invention, at least, in the opinions of the Dreamer and the Caveman. The two cannot get enough of gluing interesting and tactile objects to sheets of paper, thus, my purchase on a whim of the extra large package of assorted size, multicolored felt pompoms from the local Hobby Lobby proved to be a stroke of genius.

For the Dreamer, the intrigue in attaching pompoms and other materials to sheets of paper lies in the combining of art forms and media into a super collage of sorts of which she can, and does (usually without hesitation) display on the kitchen refrigerator.  So many of these such creations adorn our fridge, in fact, that Mister takes on the weekly task of sorting through the plethora of pieces until he succeeds in both appeasing the artist and exposing the hidden doors of the fridge beneath. This is no small task, I might add; the slightest mistake can reek havoc upon the household in the form of a disgruntled miniature Matisse.

Mister must properly attend to each piece that is removed from display and handle it with the utmost care and respect, all the while expressing his awe and gratitude for the artwork being retired.  He must walk a tightrope of presiding over the job, yet convincing the Dreamer that she is actually taking the reins of the duty.  His valiant efforts allow us to have a couple of days reprieve each week from the perpetual gallery until another Monday morning rolls around, he goes off to work, and the cycle resumes.

When it comes to the Caveman, however, the lure of the activity resides in the process of squeezing exorbitant quantities of glue onto a page.  Pride and confidence show in the form of physical strength perceived by the Caveman about himself at the moments when he is successful in extracting outrageous emissions of white craft glue from the Elmer's bottle.  He then attaches the media of his choice, after which, he again wields the glue and completes his work by drizzling a sticky glaze atop his assemblage.

Crafting at their very own work table allows the spawn to engage in an introspective and somewhat meditative activity that seems to quiet their souls following active play such as that of being outdoors searching for earthworms...

Raspberries, Glorious Raspberries!

"It's Summer", sing the flora of our yard! The Tiger Lilies greet us with their newly opened buds, the Daisies sway on long stems in the rare relief that comes in the form of a sigh from the sky above us.  The season has now officially arrived and brought with it insects, flowers, and eatables!

Although we love the fleeting aesthetic pleasures of the blossoms, the raspberries, glorious raspberries, are those who have stolen our hearts! Ripe and plump, they sit quietly on their vines awaiting human discovery and consumption.

 

Four years ago, I acquired 4 raspberry shoots from my mother's own glorious patch.  My, how they have multiplied, sending their root systems into the soil to areas of the underground that are nourished by a population of creatures who squirm and wriggle their way through the earth below our feet.  The Dreamer and the Caveman have hopes of stumbling upon their elusive bodies in an overturned clod of dirt from shovels, spades, and hoes as we prod from above searching for earthworms...

The Trouble with Bees

Last evening, following a full first day of summer, proved to be the setting for an unanticipated life lesson about bees.  The Dreamer and the Caveman were outside with the boy next door, engaging in a series of activities in hopes of curing their end-of-the-day case of fatigue and boredom. 

The three invented game that they entitled, "flying cats", and it consisted of throwing stuffed animal cats into the air, all the while, hollering at the top of their lungs.  Although this idea held their attention and enthralled them to no end, unfortunately, it was quickly brought to a halt as Neighbor Boy's hurled ball of stuffed feline, named Carlos, soared to a resting place on the roof of the house adjacent to the driveway in which they were playing their little game.  Following the customary amount of griping, whining, and begging for a parental figure to fetch the lost toy from its rooftop observatory, Mister dragged out the extension ladder, made the ascent, collected Carlos, and returned him safely to the arms of his very grateful and humbled owner.

With the end of "flying cats" came the beginning of a new and improved game complete with risk and danger! The three ran to the sidewalk path and positioned themselves directly in front of a flowerbed that was home to a family of carpenter bees.  As the Dreamer sat quietly to the side, the Caveman and Neighbor Boy began taunting the bees. They dramatically waved their arms, yelled war cries, wielded sticks as choice munitions, and perpetually harassed the poor carpenter bee until it became so enraged that it flitted over to the Dreamer, who, naturally, was daydreaming unawares; and it stung her fiercely on the scalp!  

Needless to say, the Caveman and Neighbor Boy swiftly fled the scene with guilty expressions, and I was left to tend to the innocent victim, now a sobbing mess of a lump leaning against my body. We went inside for the evening, applied a baking soda and water salve to the site of the sting (which took more than a moment to locate within the tangle of 6 year old hair), dosed the victim with a liquid antihistamine and some ibuprofen, and applied a cold pack to the wound.  

Later that night, as I tucked my spawn snugly into their covers, one on the bottom bunk and one on the top; I could feel their regret as it clung in the atmosphere of their room. Their unspoken thoughts almost formed an audible sentiment--what were we doing messing about with bees when we could've just gone searching for earthworms...

Yay for Stuffed Camels!

Since the beginning of the year, my brother, uncle to the Dreamer and the Caveman, has been deployed in Afghanistan. We all miss him terribly and worry very much about his safety. We wear genuine replicas of his dog tags on necklaces and keychains and try to send him mail often.  The Dreamer usually spends an unreasonable amount of time elaborately decorating a page with swirls, designs, pictures, phonetically spelled sentiments, and a variety of glued objects such as pompoms, fabric scraps salvaged from beneath my sewing table, or single sticks of gum.  She is very serious about her creations and easily angered by any outside suggestion or interference.

The Caveman, on the other hand, always intrigued by demolition, usually opts for destructive projects. After scribbling like a madman for exactly 3 and 1/2 seconds, he takes scissors to his abstract artwork.  Beginning by cutting a decorative fringed edge in one corner of the paper, he slowly works his way around his paper before really digging in and finishing with a collected mess of personalized confetti that we zip up into a plastic sandwich bag and complete with a handwritten explanation in permanent marker that reads something similar to the following: 

            Paper Cuttings for you, 

        With love from the Caveman!

My poor brother has received more than a fair share of such offerings from my spawn during the duration of his deployment thus far, and he lovingly accepts them all, even sending some glorious surprises our way...

A large box addressed to the Dreamer and the Caveman was delivered to our doorstep by the mailman the other day, and when we read that it had travelled to us all of the way across the ocean from Afghanistan, the level of excitement was palpable. I quickly grabbed some kitchen shears and tore into the box to discover 2 very soft, furry, and marvelous plush camels! They donned military style camouflaged hats which were quickly discarded by the recipients who are huge fans of nudity not only when it comes to their toy community, but also themselves. They love their camels who are appropriately deemed Spitterson and Mr. Spits. 

                 Riding the camels

The spawn could not be more thrilled with the new stuffed family members. Receiving a special package from their wonderful uncle made for the perfect afternoon. We had a wonderful evening imagining life in the desert as opposed to here at home, in our lush green backyard where we spend our time searching for earthworms...

Hello!!

Welcome to Searching for Earthworms! This is my first experience with blogging, and I am so eager to inundate my new page with my stories, experiences and adventures, projects, and struggles! My hopes are to inspire, entertain, and to record some of the many episodes that fill my days, both heartfelt and absurd! 

Please allow me to introduce myself and the major players in my family unit: 

This is me! I spend my days as a wife and mother primarily, and strive to be successful as a freelance artist.  I am a perfectionist who becomes easily frustrated and I can be overly critical. I am notorious for having a multitude of unfinished projects all under construction at one time, and I am often guilty of becoming so engrossed in an idea that it verges on maniacal. It is during these times that I am very thankful for my husband who is very laid back, easy going and all around the governor for my overstimulated machine of a brain.

Meet my husband, I have always called him Mister, as a nickname, so I believe that this will be his online pseudonym.  He is kind, hardworking, and gregarious. We have two children, a daughter and son.

The Dreamer, our 6 year old daughter, is just that, a little girl who cannot exit her fantasy world of imagination for any reason whatsoever. She dances through life with her head in the clouds, always imagining she is some type of whimsical entity oblivious to the goings on in her physical environment.  Her unwillingness to exist outside of her own fictional paradise can be very aggravating when it comes to the practical demands of reality.  Many of these collisions with reality are brought upon her by her 2 year old brother.

The Caveman, is our son. He is his own compacted ball of fury and fire.  Every activity he engages in, be it constructive, playful, or even violent, is approached with an all or nothing attitude.  He is an interesting creature, who can be shy and quiet, patient (for a toddler) and respectful of others, but also possesses and aggressive hunger for learning and attempting. He is rarely deterred by failure and is stubborn and determined.  These traits make him a lovable disaster.  

This is my family! I hope you enjoy hearing about our everyday lives as we march off in pursuit of fun always seeking small adventures such as those found by searching for earthworms...