Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Because of You…

For those who are new to my blog, welcome! Please note that I occasionally write letters to my kids, and email them to accounts I set up for each of them before they were born. They will receive the address and password to those accounts when they are adults.

April 2, 2016
Dear Becca,

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you, and I could honestly say it’s because I’ve been busy… But it wouldn’t be totally truthful if I didn’t tell you that it’s also because I’ve been getting pretty frustrated with you lately. Not only are you headstrong and independent, you like to whine. And well, “drama” could pretty much be your middle name right now. So why am I writing to you and saying these things? You are almost four. And when you’ll be reading this someday, you’ll need to know that I am already not yet four years into this gig very well aware of my imperfection in my mothering skills. I know I’m not very patient *most* days. I know that my frustration sometimes boils over into the realm of anger and bitterness. (I’m actually taking an online course right now to help me with that.) And I guess that’s the point of this letter.

I want to say thank you. Because in all the frustrations, you are making me a better person. Not just a better mom, but a better ME. Some days you drive me to my knees. God knew that being your mom would stretch me to my limits, and that would bring me closer to Him. But He also knew that you would make me laugh, and smile wider than I ever thought possible. And He knew that your kind heart would take me out of my comfort zone and lead me to meet others.

Yesterday you were so excited when our new neighbors had a moving truck at their house. You declared that they were “FINALLY!” moving in and that we “MUST MUST MUST bake them cookies!” So we did. We made them light pink heart shaped sugar cookies and a card with lots of sparkle stickers. When we went to deliver them, you rang the bell and axiously awaited that open door. When Mr Justin opened the door, you said “Hi! I’m Becca what’s your name?” And proceeded to walk right in. Thankfully our new neighbors are very friendly and have two adult daughters, so they have twice had an almost four year old little girl full of energy and enthusiasm. Mrs Debbie gave you a grand tour of their house – but the bonus? – you made ALL of us smile. You have that way about you. You have gone from a shy violet baby who didn’t want to be oggled over to this amazing social butterfly who has never met a stranger. You thanked them for moving in, and for the tour, and boldly invited them over to our house for dinner sometime soon. Because that’s what you do. You have a heart for hospitality.

And then today you stretched me in another way. You’ve been working on me for a while. Whether you know it or not, you and your brother are the reasons I go to the gym almost daily- the reasons I want to be healthy (and the reasons I need more energy!! HA!). I strive to set a healthy example for you, and I push myself to my limits because I refuse to be a person who lets an auto immune disease ruin my life. I want to show you what it means to be a fighter- an overcomer. Well, so today you ended up in the jogging stroller in front of me for my first 5k. I planned to jog some and mainly walk- not wanting to push the joints in my feet and ankles too far. We had some fun- you ran alongside a few times… And we had some frustration. You kept whining about this and that, and well, I finally got to the point where I sorta told you off and told you I was done listening. And that’s when you did the amazing thing that grew me as a person. You distracted me. Again. But throwing a little huffy fit in the stroller, and causing me to turn the music up in my earbuds, and shake my head… And miss the sign. The sign that pointed the 5k folks one direction, and pointed the 10k folks straight ahead. A few blocks down, I realized what I had done. And I could have been mad at you. Or I could have turned around and gone back. But that’s not who I am. That’s not who I’m teaching you to be. We Hinnant girls don’t give up, or turn around. We don’t get mad at someone else when we make a mistake ourselves. We press on. We work harder. Despite what your almost four year old self might think, we Hinnant girls don’t do whining and drama. We press on. We overcome. We meet a nice older lady sweeping her front porch and ask to use her potty because, after all, we Hinnant girls don’t pee in the grass on the side of the road! (Well, you don’t yet anyway. A few years of camping will get you that ability… but by that point, you’ll be too old to innocently pee on the side of the road… and you won’t have to because your bladder will be larger… but, I digressed.) I didn’t plan to do a 10k today. But I’m not mad at you. I’m glad you were with me. Because now I know I’m stronger than I thought. I know I can push your little 45+ pound body plus a stroller full of crap up hills and down hills and around town- a full 10k around town. And I learned something else about myself. I learned a little bit more about how much I love you and how much it matters to me the example that I set for you.

So thank you. You drive me crazy. But I love you more than you can ever make me crazy. And every time you push me to my limits, I learn that a little bit more. It’s not easy being your mom. But it’s the most amazing adventure ever. And I’m so glad God put us on the path together. The 10k path. Because girl, we kick bootee! And I wouldn’t have done the 10k without you. I wouldn’t have met the nice lady with the really nice bathroom without you. I wouldn’t have met our new neighbors without you. I wouldn’t be the me I am today, without you.

Watching you run across the finish line with the little rubber ducky you saved from the side of the road, my heart swelled with pride. No, you didn’t run (or even walk) the entire 10K in your fancy pink cowgirl boots, but you were right there with me every single step of the way, pushing me further than I’d ever gone before. You encouraged me to blast my music on my phone so our stroller could have a “radio,” which made me laugh. You… you… you. You are amazing. I love you. To the next galaxy and back an infinite number of times. Ha! I finally beat you at the “love you to the moon and back” game! I love you. Always. Forever. And so much more.

Love, Mommy

tour de castroville — left – in front of the waterfall at the river dam under HWY 90 / middle – running toward the beginning of the time – coat and all (it was COLD!) / right – running across the finish line! SO PROUD!!!

Magnet Exploration

I recently signed Gray up to take a class at The DoSeum – our local children’s museum that I have written about before. The class is called “Little Makers” and it’s basically a science and engineering class for toddlers 18-36 months old. Yesterday was our first class. Not only did Gray have a blast, I came away very inspired…
magnets at the dose

His teacher, Ms Cheryl, had all sorts of magnets for the kids to explore with. The invitation to play was simply a box of random items and a couple of magnet wands. Gray immediately dug in and was ready to explore! She had extension activities for those who were interested in sorting their magnetic vs non-magnetic items, and blank paper “journals” for any who wanted to draw/write their thoughts. Gray enjoyed sorting his magnetic/non-magnetic items, and eagerly sat in my lap to sort them! He enjoyed playing with magnets on the classroom divider wall, and of course he loved the story – Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site is one of our family favorites! (Aff link, thank you!) Then after class he enjoyed going to the Kaleidoscope play area and spending more time with the MagnaTiles there. (Aff link, thank you!) All of the magnet play inspired me, and we ended up purchasing our own set of MagnaTiles to take home with us.

While he napped, here’s what I set up for when we got home from picking up Sis from Mother’s Day Out:

magnets at home The invitation to play was simple – a box full of random items both magnetic and non-magnetic, and a bunch of MagnaTiles. When we got home, Becca immediately hopped up into her chair and started playing. Without me even showing her or telling her what to do, she started testing items to see if they are magnetic. Today, I’ll give her the same activity with a sheet of paper similar to what Gray had for sorting at the DoSeum and let her sort her items based on whether they are magnetic or not. Gray also immediately dove in and really enjoyed the activity again at home in our little variation.

reality check

Because I’m all about being honest with you and telling you what works and what doesn’t work, this is NOT an activity for your toddler to do unsupervised. I thought I’d take advantage of them being so engaged, and I’d do the dishes… well, then I looked over and he had something in his mouth. Thankfully, it was just a pompom – not a magnetic item, but because he’s cutting a couple of new teeth right now, I can’t give him the box unsupervised. This is an activity to do when I’m sitting right with him. To buy myself some more time, I simply removed the box from his reach and let him play with the MagnaTiles. He LOVES building with the MagnaTiles and that easily occupied him for the rest of the time I needed him to be occupied until I could join him at the table and let him have the box back with close supervision.

MAKING THE BOX
Here are some ideas of what you could put in your box. I used the following items that I had laying around randomly here:
-Colored Rice (non)
-Mixed beans and corn from an old fall sensory bin (non)
-Paperclips (magnetic)
-Paper brads (magnetic)
-Refrigerator magnets (magnetic)
-Feathers (non)
-Pipe cleaners, cut into pieces (magnetic)
-Jingle bells (magnetic)
-PomPoms (non)
-Play plastic coins (non)
-Foam blocks (non)
-Fruit pouch lids (non)
-Plastic stackers (non)

Here are some other fun magnet activity sets that we have and enjoy (Aff links, thank you!):
MindWare Imagination Patterns (Becca got this for Christmas and loves it! Gray has not used these… but easily could – they are large enough to be toddler safe, she’s just very possessive of them.) UPDATE: Gray loves playing with this set! There are a couple of small circles that I take out of the set when he plays with it.
Magz51 New Interlocking Toy Building Set (NOT toddler safe)
Magnetic Spinning Gears (Both kids LOVE this set!)
Lauri – Fun with Magnets (I have this set on order and can’t wait for it to arrive!)

more fun with magnets — update 4/7/16: He loves playing with the Imagination Patterns AND the MagnaTiles together because the Imagination Patterns board allows the MagnaTiles to stand upright for vertical fun!

Children’s books about magnets (Aff links, thank you!):
What Makes a Magnet?
What Magnets Can Do
Magnets: Pulling Together Pushing Apart

What fun magnetic activities have you done? The kids are totally enthralled and I’m looking forward to finding more fun magnet activities! I also think Becca would enjoy going on a magnetic hunt to test different household objects to see which are magnetic and non-magnetic… we may do that today!

Teaching Graphs

I’m not going to begin to put an age level on this lesson because I’ve sort of lost all realistic memory of when is the “right time” to do this type of activity. SO, I’ll say that if you think it might be time for your child, you might be right!

Graphing is so much fun. And it’s even more fun when you add in a technology element and work with your child to set them up in Excel or Numbers! I have a Mac, so our work was done in Numbers. The first step before creating any graphs, however, is to collect data.

I came across this insect survey free on TPT and thought, somehow I have to make this work for Becca even though there isn’t a class full of kids to survey! Enter social media. I polled Facebook through my page (thanks to several friends and family members who shared my post!) and we received over 30 responses!

tally sheet

As I scrolled through the responses, I would read them out to Becca, and she learned about making tally marks. She would mark the sheet, and then once we had recorded all of the answers, we counted the marks and I wrote how many of each insect had been “favorited” by our participants. Making tally marks was a new experience for her, and she wanted to circle the groups of four instead of making a line through them for five to group them together. Cody and I were both there for this lesson, and we had to explain to her that this isn’t something you can do however which way you want – to make tally marks, this IS the way to do it. No other options. She wasn’t real sure about that, which I dealt with again with her when we did our second grouping of data, which I’ll talk about later in this same post.

So, once we had the numbers for our insects, I pulled up Numbers and immediately set up a little data table. She read off the insect names to me and how many of each one. Then she decided what title we should put on our table. I knew that I wanted to teach her about pie graphs AND bar graphs (she has seen some bar graphs before, but it’s been a while), so I first put the information into a pie graph, and she was immediately intrigued – she helped me select the colors that she wanted, and was very pleased. She started asking questions about what % means… and I skirted around it by simply saying, it’s what part of the whole group it is – sort of like fractions. She said “oh” and was actually content with that. No doubt percentages will be entering our math time very soon. Then I let her select whether she wanted a vertical or horizontal bar graph, and she selected the color. She decided that she needed some pictures of her top favorite insect to make it look a little “happier,” so I pulled up Google images, and had her type in “butterfly.” She selected the image and I showed her how to save it. Then she also saved a dragonfly and a ladybug. I showed her how to import her photos into the document, and once I got them the right size, she dragged them to where she wanted them. I had her tell me about her graphs and typed her words onto the “poster” as well. We printed it out on card stock, and she was so proud to show her daddy!

becca w graph — Left: she typed in the words to save it to my computer, and was quite frustrated wanting to know what crazy person put the letters in the wrong order on the keyboard! HA!

Then, a couple days later, we colored Easter eggs with some dear friends. And we had ALL. THESE. DANG. EGGS! What to do with them all? So after she had spent a good amount of time sticking butterfly stickers all over them, we sat down and made a tally of how many eggs we had of each color, and I had her draw a bar graph on paper so she would have the physical concept of what the bars show. We talked about how “this is what three orange eggs look like in real life, and this is what they look like in tally marks, and this is what they look like on a bar graph!” She said “that’s cool let’s put them on your computer.” Hey, what can I say? It’s really fun to make “graph posters” on Numbers! So, for ease (and because it was almost bedtime) I pulled up her previous file, renamed and saved it as a new file, and then had her tell me the new data to type in. She was quick to notice that I needed to change my titles on the data table, and told me what names I needed. Instead of types of insects, I needed colors of eggs! She decided this poster needed different graph colors, and of course it needed Easter egg images. We also edited our text, and in about 7 minutes, we had a whole new graph poster about our Easter eggs! We printed it and she was so excited again to show it off to her Daddy!

eggs

This is a super simple way to get your child talking about Science and Math AND to incorporate the Technology aspect of STEM as well. Don’t have a computer or experience with Excel/Numbers? No problem! Drawing on paper can be awesome as well – you could draw on copy paper, cut them out, and post them onto a large sheet of construction paper! Clip photos from magazines, or illustrate yourself with paints and markers!

I’ve noticed since doing these graphs, Becca is much more interested in Math again – not shying away from addition and subtraction story problems, and excited to count and sit to learn new math concepts as well. Remember – Math HAS to be FUN!!! Make it that way!

insect survey

egg graphs

It’s Friday!

Wow. Where has the week gone? I had some huge aspirations for this week. I mean, come on ya’ll! Spring Break!! It’s the perfect time to re-organize the family room and clean up my office, right? A great break to finally make all the things happen that don’t happen during a regular work-school-housework week. HA!

Did the family room get organized? Nope. It’s still our wreck room. Yup, spelled W-R-E-C-K. HA! Did my office get cleaned up? Nope. Did the laundry room get re-organized and re-decorated? Nope.

Did we spend time playing outside for hours on end? You bet!
Did I laugh with my kids? You bet!
Did I do some form of artwork every. single. day? You betya I did!
Did I get so spend some time working on my blog? YAY!!! YES I DID!!
Did I spend time with my best friend? Of course! (The pedicure on Monday was an AMAZING way to start the week!)

spring break

All while still maintaining my exercise routine and keeping the housework controlled to it’s normal level. (Ya’ll, this morning I conquered Mt Laundry… it’s been growing since, well, Monday.. and amazingly, there is another mountain in the laundry room floor waiting to be washed. Maybe I will spend some time today working in there to make it a more inviting place where I actually want to spend some time…)

So was this Spring Break a success? You bet it was! And the best part is, it’s not over yet! I still have time to tackle the laundry room, laugh more with my kids, spend more time exploring outside with them, watch more tv with them (aka have more snuggle time!), and do more fun activities. We brought out some old favorite activity boxes this week, and I’m hoping this weekend to do some play in our water table outside! (aff link, thank you!)

Processed with MOLDIV

So what did you do this week? I’d love to see your pictures over on my Facebook page! If you aren’t following on Facebook, please do join us! Have a wonderful weekend!

Why I’m a Consignment Mommy

If you have kids – especially if you have more than one – you know that there are times when you’ve been standing there in the store and you’re looking at that super cute outfit and the price tag on it, thinking “but how long will it REALLY fit?” Kids grow. Some of them grow at astonishing rates. In the first eleven months of her life, Becca went from wearing a size newborn to wearing a 3T. No joke, ya’ll. Those baby shower gifts and hand-me-downs from friends that were supposed to last two or three years? Well… many never even got worn because she needed them at the wrong time of the year. When Grayson was born, I was prepped for similar growth. In the first year, he went from size newborn to size 2T, though he could still fit into some brands of 18-24 mos stuff. Thankfully Becca has slowed her growth quite a bit and we actually stayed in 5T for the vast majority of 2015 (the year she turned 3…) She even has a few 5T items that still fit her now! Thank the Lord, right? Because kids just grow so. dang. fast! And truly, the cost of growing up is INSANE!

So, how have we kept TWO kids in food, diapers, AND clothes for the past almost two years without totally breaking the bank? Well, that I credit to a friend of mine named Kim, and the consignment sale that she runs twice (and sometimes three times) a year. Here We Grow Again San Antonio has been on my radar since before Becca was born. I actually worked my first sale as a vendor alongside a friend – the spring of 2012 before she was born. I have assisted as a volunteer in every sale since then. I have consigned the clothes and toys my kids have outgrown in several sales as well. I truly feel like this sale has been such a blessing to our family, which is why I’m writing this post. (Kim isn’t giving me anything special or any monetary compensation for this post.) Every sale I’m more and more amazed by the quality and quantity of clothes, books, toys, and shoes I’m able to pick up for the kids at ROCK BOTTOM prices… and when I volunteer, I get paid in “grow bucks” that I can turn right around and spend during the sale on my kids! When I consign, I get a paycheck afterward for all of my stuff, and I chose to donate the rest of my items that don’t sell… and get a tax receipt for those items! It’s truly a win-win-win situation.

If you don’t know of a consignment sale in your area, you need to look around. (Check out that link, ya’ll. The Consignment Mommies website has an amazing region by region search engine!) There are several “brands” of consignment sales, and while I don’t think it matters which brand you go to, keep these things in mind and look for this in your sale:

Find out how long the sale has been in business. The longer it’s been around, the more experienced the owner(s) are in running the sale and the better your results will be.
If you are interested in consigning your items, VOLUNTEER FIRST. Work the sale a couple of seasons to see what sells, how pricing works, etc. (People that are proud of their stuff don’t end up with good pay checks because noone wants to pay $15 for a brand new shirt even though it is brand new and it is Gymboree! Slap some pants or a skirt with it, price it $9 and wahoo! You are set for a sale!)
Look at the location – where in town is the sale? Is it easy for folks to locate? Is it in a good part of town? This is important if you are going to consign your items. You want the most amount of shoppers viewing your items as possible… and you want the least likelihood of theft as possible!
Before you consign, talk to other consignors. Is there a Facebook group you can join to get tips? Do they offer training classes or videos? You want to be as successful as possible to make the most money possible.
Do they offer a starter kit? Do they make it clear how items must be hung up/labeled? What is the consignor fee? Is there a way to get that fee waved by inviting a friend to join you in consigning? Do they offer perks to volunteers like cash to use at the sale (and if so, are they competitive with other rates offered by other sales in the area)? What percentage do consignors make on their items?

I can’t say enough good about Kim and the Here We Grow Again sale in San Antonio. Are there glitches occasionally? EVERY company has glitches occasionally. It might be that the website is down at the moment I’m ready to make tags. Or perhaps the location for the sale doesn’t have a public restroom. But ya’ll, check out all the stuff I got… and check out my PROFITS on top of what I spent: I made (literal cash in my pocket to spend however I want) a PROFIT of $220! And this is what I got. No little glitches will keep me from these deals – EVER!

Boo clothes gray clothes books

So… yeah. If you haven’t found a consignment sale in your area, start googling. And if you’re in San Antonio, look no further! Here’s the Facebook page if you want to follow along for the most updated info. Again, I wasn’t asked to write this post, and I’m not receiving anything for it. Except that maybe if you’re in San Antonio and you go to the sale in the future because of this post, you might buy one of my items… and then I DO profit! 😉

If you have questions about consigning, volunteering etc – feel free to let me know. I’m happy to help.

And I’ll leave you with this… check out this amazing bed my mom bought for Becca at this past sale. It was $100. Simply gorgeous. Fabulous condition. And Becca LOVES it. It makes her “big girl room” truly a big girl’s DREAM room! Best part is, the height is adjustable, so we can have it low for now since she’s little, and raise it up when she’s older! So why am I a consignment mommy? Because it’d be crazy not to be!