After bemoaning yesterday that it was spring and we hadn’t had any snow this year, the kids got to put on their snowsuits over their pajamas (or in Piper’s case, instead of pj’s) this morning before school.

 

Such hard play deserves a special breakfast—cheerio’s, ham, and hot chocolate.

Phrases that escape his mouth too often:

“Listen to me.”

“Mom.        Me.” (He take mommy and makes it into two very distinct, impatient sentences, and adds a dash of aggravation.)

“Mom.       Me.   Listen to me!”

“This is so deLISHous.”

“That’s my favorite.  But I don’t weally like it.”  (?!)

*****

Wesley has been completely diaper-free for a while, and has had just one or two accidents at night.  Until the other night.  Dwayne was out and the kids were wound up well after I had put them to bed. Then I found out they were playing drinking games.  Yes, read that again.  My kids discovered drinking games.  Luckily, they have not discovered alcohol, but they were drinking a lot of tap water.  I came upstairs, sent them all to the potty, then to their own rooms (a killer punishment for them on a Saturday night).  Wesley just couldn’t settle, so I decided to go to bed and read and let him sleep with me.  He fell asleep right away, curled up against my back.  Twenty minutes later, I was soaked.  He peed the bed so much I had to change my underwear (and everything else).   He peed so much, I had to change the waterproof mattress cover.  He peed so much, the mattress was soaked under the waterproof mattress cover, which I didn’t realize at first, and I had to change into my third set of PJ’s for the night.  He peed so much that after I showered while still holding his sleeping self in my arms, and put him in a last remaining diaper, I had to put in next to a sleeping Piper because Dwayne and I had to sleep in his bed for the next two nights while I cleaned and dried our mattress.  It was so epic that it’s actually worth bragging about.   If one can call  complaining “bragging”.

*****

After over a year of not napping, Wesley has started taking naps again if we are ever in the car for than 10 minutes in the afternoon.  This afternoon, he was still sleeping when we got home.  After getting the girls settled, I returned to the car with the tablet so I could read in peace.  He woke up, wanted to be held, then immediately went back to sleep in my arms.  While he was sleeping, he laughed, smiling so happily with his eyes shut.  While he was snoring, I kept reading all the updates about the local teenage girl who went missing two days ago.  While he shifted in my arms and grabbed my hand in his sleep, I read that the helicopter above our home earlier that morning was part of the search team I had seen right outside our neighborhood.  While he snuggled deeper into my arms, I opened the email from a neighbor who is always the first to find things out—no point in praying any more.  When he yawned, I found out that the police were contacting her parents, who live just one street over from ours, before publicly declaring that her remains had been found a stone’s throw from Kyla’s school.  No foul play suspected, she “passed away unexpectedly”.  Yeah, suicide.   It was a good day to hold my sleeping child for two hours.  And hug them all a bit extra.

It’s been a while since I did a real science experiment with the  kids. With Dr. Seuss’s recent birthday, I found an article about how to make oobleck.

It looked awesome so I bought an extra box of generic corn starch. To make oobleck (a.k.a. gloop) is simple.

2 parts water

3 parts corn starch

food coloring

I used 1/2 cup water to 3/4 cup corn starch for each of the three bowls, but f0und I had to sprinkle more a few more teaspoons of  cornstarch before it was gloopy enough.

Once it’s mixed, it’s both liquid and solid, depending upon how much pressure is applied.  It is fascinating!  If you poke it quickly, it is solid and your finger bounces off it.  If you poke it slowly, you finger sinks to the bottom.  If you roll it between your hands, it is as hard as a ball.  If you stop for a second, it immediately liquefies and runs off  your hands.   The girls—and their mother—played with it for about an hour. It get’s really fun when you take a spoonful of your sister’s gloop and pour it on top of yours! (Oddly, Wes didn’t like it much.)  While the clean up is actually pretty easy, I would still wait for a warm day and do this outside next time.)

 

Here’s the science behind it.  But do it because it’s fun and brings out your inner child and your outer child in.  (I wish that made sense, but brilliant writing doesn’t always.  Just ask James Joyce.)

Wesley and Piper decided to get the paints off the top shelf in the hall closet.  They cleaned up their own mess (they spilled the green paint right away)…with the white bath towels stored on a middle shelf in the same closet. 

I know we are done with diapers in our house, but maybe I should get some for myself.

We decided to get a membership this weekend so that we can do a little more of this

 

and this (the girls and I are just about to go on the Blue Angels simulator, which they loved, of course). 

In a time when most dolls in the toy store are slutty or skanky (when did Barbie get to be a solid feminist choice?), I loved reading this article.  I have a new crush on the inventor.

From the Seattle Times Business Section today:

*   *   *   *   *   *

GoldieBlox hopes young girls find playing engineer ‘just right’

Meet Goldie, a female-engineer character who invents, designs and builds to inspire young girls to be scientists or engineers.

By Heather Somerville

San Jose Mercury News

Laura A. Oda / Contra Costa Times

Debbie Sterling, founder of GoldieBlox, poses with stacks of her new toy that teaches girls basic engineering principles. The Stanford University engineering graduate wants to nurture girls’ interest in STEM careers.

Move over, Barbie; there’s a new girl in town.

She goes by GoldieBlox, and unlike her namesake, Goldilocks, she doesn’t get into mishaps with three bears. This Goldie is a female engineer character who invents, designs and builds to inspire a future generation of women engineers.

GoldieBlox is the brainchild of Stanford University graduate and engineer-turned-entrepreneur Debbie Sterling. She created GoldieBlox — which includes a construction toy set and storybook starring the tool-wielding Goldie — to teach girls basic engineering skills and open more pathways for women to pursue jobs in the male-dominated industry.

“I’m trying to give girls something more than just dolls and princesses,” she said.

Sterling, 30, hopes that the soon-to-be-released GoldieBlox will teach more girls to love tech-heavy disciplines and open their minds to engineering. And if it can shake up the old-school toy industry, which for years has offered girls little more than busty dolls and pink Legos, all the better, she said.

But this isn’t just a plug for girl power. Oakland, Calif.-based GoldieBlox has caught the attention of researchers and educators across the country who say the toy could help engage more girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, an education priority for the Obama administration.

The GoldieBlox book, written and illustrated by Sterling, follows Goldie as she invents machines and solves problems with a cast of animal friends that includes a Spanish-speaking dog, Nacho, and a tutu-wearing pink dolphin.

The pegboard and tool kit allow kids to build whatever Goldie is building in the book, and to learn engineering concepts, like how a wheel and axle work and the basics of tension, force and friction.

“I can’t wait to have her sitting there on store shelves in her overalls and her tool belt, because I think that that sends a strong message,” Sterling said.

The message is this: Engineering isn’t just for boys.

Toys are a crucial entry point for kids to get exposure to STEM disciplines, and girls miss out on some of the early playtime experiences necessary to develop those skills, said Yvonne Ng, who heads St. Catherine University’s National Center for STEM Elementary Education.

“We’re not engaging girls. We’re still thinking in very male terms,” Ng said.

Sterling, who earned her engineering degree in 2005, developed GoldieBlox with help from Kickstarter, an online crowd-funding platform for creative projects. She raised $286,000 — almost twice her goal — in about a month.

After her fundraising video went viral on social media, she received about 22,000 online pre-orders for the toy, which brought in money to start production.

According to studies by the American Association of University Women, about 87 percent of professional engineers are men.

Sterling hopes GoldieBlox will change that statistic. The toy, which sells for $30, lands on store shelves next month, but the first 18,000 pre-ordered copies are set to be delivered this week.

Already, Sterling has plans to make GoldieBlox into a series and says she’s set to launch an interactive digital version for the Apple iPad late this year.

The successes, or failures, of GoldieBlox will be carefully tracked by a Pennsylvania State University professor and graduate student. Lynn Liben, a distinguished professor of psychology who is leading the research, said GoldieBlox is one of the few toys that breaks the gender stereotypes reinforced by the toy industry.

“Many toy companies are still marketing to boys versus girls,” Liben said. “It tells people that boys and girls are different when it comes to playing or building or getting dirty. That can be problematic because not every kid fits that gender tendency that might be typical.”

Dwayne and I finished our taxes last night.  Crossing my fingers I didn’t make another $6K mistake!  (Dwayne did almost all the work on it this year, so I have every reason to be optimistic.)