To Aiden: On the day before 1st grade

Dear Aiden,

You begin 1st grade tomorrow. I'm not quite sure how that happened and where all of our time together went, but I hope I've done a decent job of cherishing my time at home with you. I currently sit here crying because I miss you already, even though you're just downstairs playing with your little brother. If you ever read this when you're older, the fact that I've spent a good portion of the morning in tears might come as a surprise since I've tried very hard to hide it from you. You are so excited to begin 1st grade and I have not wanted to make you feel like it's something to be sad about or afraid of. I hope that you can keep up that excitement through every grade that you enter.

I apologize in advance because I will most likely cry when I walk you into your classroom tomorrow. There will many First Days of school throughout your life and while I won't walk you to class for each and every one of them, they will probably all be just as hard for me. If I ever embarrass you in front of your friends by becoming a blubbering mess as I send you off to school, just try to remember that it's because I love you. You are my first baby and I will constantly find it hard to believe that you are at all old enough for anything that you are obviously old enough to do.

I sincerely hope that you have a fabulous first day of 1st grade. The day will be long (for both of us), but I'm sure it will fly by as you meet new friends, catch up with old friends, and spend time figuring out what 1st grade will mean for you. You are a smart, outgoing, and beautiful little boy. Sorry, I mean big kid. You'll probably have to keep correcting me for years to come.

For today, let's soak up our last day at home and prepare for this next step of yours together. I love you, Aiden bug. You are going to rock 1st grade!

Science Galore

As the start of the school year is just four days away (have I mentioned that I'm not excited about Aiden being gone all day?), we've been trying to cram in as much fun time as humanly possible. Rose Garden, Arboretum, Washington Park, Children's Museum, lots of other parks, library, board games, visiting friends, art projects....whew! And of course, lots of science experiments.

We woke up today and I realized that I was plumb out of ideas. We didn't really want to go to the park again and just sitting outside doing sidewalk chalk sounded kind of boring, so after a visit with a friend who is moving to Arizona, we jumped into some brand new science experiments.

First one up: Ivory soap in the microwave.

 Yep, that's it. (Take it out of the plastic wrap first. That was there just for pictures sake.) Set an unwrapped bar of Ivory soap on a plate and stick in the microwave for 2 minutes. Want to see what happens? Watch the video below. It will look like it's going to be hard to see into the microwave at first, but you'll be able to see, trust me! (Note: There is no audio. I was using our point and shoot camera instead of the video camera, and the point and shoot doesn't capture audio).

For those of you who couldn't/didn't watch the video, the soap turns into foam. Here are the boys poking at it.

 Tips for parents if you want to try this:

1. Yes, it does need to be Ivory brand soap. Other brands of soap will just melt.

2. It will smell like soap in your house for hours. Strongly. Ivory is slightly perfumed and microwaving it enhances that, so if you're sensitive to perfume-y scents like I am, make sure you have windows open and possibly a candle lit. The candle I have broke through the scent a bit for me and made it easier to handle. I still ended up with a slight headache, but it was worth it for the experience for the boys.

3. Let it cool before the kids touch it! It's hot.

4. It will make a mess if you let the kids play with it (which you should totally do - the stuff feels awesome). It turns into soap dust and will probably need to be vacuumed up. We took a large chunk and let the boys dissolve it in the bathtub later that night. Hey, they got clean.

The second experiment of the day was done with John's help. This time we took five simple ingredients: Strawberries, water, liquid soap, meat tenderizer enzyme, and rubbing alcohol. Can you guess what our experiment was?

DNA extraction!

The fuzzy stuff in the middle between the berry puree and the alcohol is the strawberry DNA.

This was a super fun experiment and while it required a little bit of time and work, it was fun to play with DNA (I don't get to say that often enough, methinks). We even took some of the DNA out by using the end of matchsticks and rubbed it in between our fingers. It felt like boogers. Also, my kitchen smells strongly of alcohol. Between that and the soap, it's a fairly clean smelling kitchen!

So that's what we've been doing. We'll try to make the most of our last four days of summer before Aiden heads to 1st grade and Nathan begins another year of preschool.

Happy 30th Birthday!

Happy 30th birthday to John!

He had to work today and things are a little busy just before school starts back up, so today was a low-key celebration. John and I will have about 24 child-free hours in a week and a half to really top off the turning 30 celebration. We also had a family party for him this past Sunday, and I made some chocolate "bundt cake" cupcakes for his co-workers this afternoon.

For dinner, we had homemade apple pie....

...and Philly cheesesteaks.  As much as I tried, they will never be as good as we'd get at 

Jim's Steaks in Philadelphia. Those things are amazing. Drool. Additionally, is Provolone more of an East Coast standard cheese? I had to go to the specialty cheese section to get it, which seemed strange.

It took me FOREVER to figure out what to get John for his birthday, but this afternoon we finally went out to get him a little something. Some new Discworld books (it's a British Sci-fi series) and a band saw!

Yes, it really is almost the size of our dishwasher. It's large and heavy. I figured since he's turning 30, he deserved a fairly nice present.

Funny story about buying the band saw. I head into Home Depot with the boys in tow, wearing my ballet flats, skinny jeans, with my perky little girly purse slung over my shoulder. I go to the guy in the tool department and ask where I might find the band saws. The utter look of confusion on his face was priceless. He leads me to them and stammers out, "Uh, these are the band saws". I say thank you and proceed to look them over. He comes back a few minutes later as I'm attempting to load a band saw into the cart. He offers help, still with a confused look on his face. Like, what on earth am *I* doing with a band saw/Do I even know what a band saw is/He sure hopes that I'm not going to actually try to use the thing, kind of look. I head to the checkout and wait, in between multiple elderly gentlemen, all of whom got the same confused look on their face when they saw what was in my cart. Apparently tiny mama Carrie with a large band saw is a strange thing to see. The cashier looked almost relieved when I explained that it was a birthday present for my husband. John and I had a good laugh about it when I described the scene later in the evening.

All in all, I think we ushered John's 30s in pretty well. Even thought the childfree weekend isn't for a week and a half, I am quite excited about my plans for John. But it's a secret, so I can't tell you. Yet.

Happy birthday, honey! We are very happy to have gotten to celebrate with you today!

Hmm....

This is Aiden's desk. He is six. Those are his molecular drawings on the right. 

I think we might be dealing with some boredom in 1st grade.

On a related note, we have been in contact with the director to the school district's TAG program. They start by doing multiple observations of him during class and we can request that they begin that at any time during the school year. We've decided to let him settle into the 1st grade routine before having them start the observations, so we'll wait until we're a month or so into the school year. I would also like to find some sort of parents group for myself and I believe the school district has one. It would probably be helpful to know how other parents handle certain situations and keep their kids adequately mentally stimulated. Most days I just feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants.