Sometimes William gets an idea in his head and he forces the entire family to deal with it - either by listening to him cry until he gets over it, or by getting us to comply with whatever his fixation is. Today he was fixated on boats. We'd made newspaper boats a day or two ago. When he learned the paper would get soggy if you tried to float it, he insisted we figure out a way to make him a toy boat that won't get soggy. But it couldn't be tin foil... I tried an origami boat out of parchment paper, watching a YouTube tutorial which I had to put in slow motion to follow all the steps, only uttering "holy hell" once. But it got soggy.
 |
| My elegant yet unsatisfactory paper boat. |
Then we Googled "DIY easy wooden toy boats," and William and Jeremy found one with a rubber-band-powered paddle wheel that Jeremy thought was doable. Taiya, meanwhile was making paper "fortune tellers" at a rapid pace. She's up to ten now of all different colors and it planning on opening up a fortune teller store when the pandemic is over. She's quite the entrepreneur.
I was inside working while Jeremy and William worked on his boat on the porch, and could overhear Jeremy saying over and over, "Not yet, William," and "Just a minute, William," and other variations on that theme. They cut out the shape, sanded the edges, glued a backrest on for William's bunny Fluffy Tail, and then crafted the paddle wheel. All while William said, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I wanna tell you something. Daddy, Daddy, when can we paint it?" Jeremy exercised great patience during this project. I only heard him say, "Christ on a bike!" once.
 |
| Satisfactory wooden boat. |
I helped Taiya finish up some worksheets she was assigned. We finished up Monday's worksheets... on Friday. We now have to catch up on four days of worksheets over the weekend. She is a slow worker and is easily distracted by William, and William doesn't like being left out, which makes finishing all the worksheets the school has given her very difficult. We may need to talk to Taiya's teacher about more realistic amounts of work in the current circumstances.
My major project of the day led to multiple other projects. I decided since it was rainy and cold it would be a perfect day to make stock out of all the random frozen bones and bags of veggie scraps that were taking up space in the freezer. While digging out all the stock ingredients I could find, I unearthed some old frozen strawberries from a local farm so I figured I better do something with those too. I loaded one pot with the frozen bones and veggies and got that simmering, then put the strawberries in another pot and simmered those with sugar to make strawberry sauce. Having started the strawberry sauce, Taiya and William decided we should have shortcakes to go with it - wait, no, make that cupcakes. And if we make cupcakes, we need to make frosting too. Not just one color of frosting, though. Three colors. And we needed to use sprinkles. My day went from stock to sprinkles in a circuitous route, leaving me dizzy. All the while, the kids were playing, I was jumping on and off the computer keeping up with e-mails, and popping outside to play with Daisy so she wouldn't be forlorn.
 |
| ...which led to strawberry sauce... |
 |
| It all started with stock... |
 |
| ...which led to these beauties. |
It was a busy day, but as we were decorating cupcakes Taiya declared it to be the BEST DAY EVER! I am so glad she thought so. I think that means we're doing something right, even if it feels like chaos in a can most of the time.
Comments
Post a Comment