Starlings in Gingerbread

The covered porch was not possible THIS year and there is a small inaccuracy involving Nutmeg's bedroom but all in all I am pretty pleased.

St Lucia Day - Age 4

Lucia Day didn't go so smoothly this year.  The baby I tend was scheduled to arrive at 8:30 so there was a deadline.  Nutmeg got up albeit with a bad attitude but Camrock (who was the designated helper) was much too sleepy to be helpful.  There were tears, fighting and commotion for 45 minutes. Meanwhile I was lying in bed pretending to sleep with the camera poised, for 45 minutes thinking the doorbell would ring at any moment and there I was in bed still.

Nutmeg was very uspset because she wasn't able to wake us up for real.   So she had this look on her face when she finally shuffled in the room

We pretended to be asleep and she perked up, then we "woke up" from our pretend sleep as she started singing...

"Away in a manger no crib for his bed, the sweet little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. The stars in the heavens look down from the sky, the sweet little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay."

Despite the fighting it was a great way to wake up.

Snow Much Fun!

We happened upon a great wintertime book.  It is called  The Story of Snow 

it has those amazing photographs of snowflakes on a microscope slide.  They are just beautiful. 

The book explains how snow crystals are formed and why they look like they do.

  

Did you know that snow crystals always have 6 arms or sides?  This is because water molecules attach themselves in groups of 6.  How interesting!

What the book doesn't include but should is instructions for cutting your own six sided snowflake, which is what we did after we read this book.  

I suggest using a slightly lighter weight paper than your typical printer paper.  It is really hard to cut through all of those layers and I ended up needing to cut every one's flakes which led to many tears.  Old fashioned typewriter paper, newsprint, origami or tissue paper would work very nicely.  We also used different sized paper hole punches for some of the details.

Grammar is So Unforgiving

Today is the beginning of the end.  Nutmeg has been reading Level 1 books for a few weeks now, reading is her new passion.  I am so happy but also sad because not 10 minutes ago she was looking at the cover of Little Red Riding Hood and said to me "Mom, shouldn't it be l-i-t-t-O-l?"

Nutmeg has a charming little accent that is hard to pin down.  She likes to pronounce things with a lot of vowels.  "Littol," "clev-uh," "Sister Doming-uh."

As I explained to her that "little" was pronounced "litt-L," I could see the puzzle pieces arranging themselves in her mind. The puzzle of "They way that I say words are not they way that they are spelled.  Either the words are spelled incorrectly  or I am saying them incorrectly."

I am afraid that the benefits of reading and correct spelling will shortly chase her haughty little accent away.