Happy 40th, Sesame Street!

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

It's true - Sesame Street turns 40 today! We sometimes catch a bit of it in the mornings, if we've got 5 or 10 between getting all ready and before it's time for coats and shoes and heading out the door. It's interesting for me to see the mix of old and new characters, different features, occasionally a piece straight from back in my day.

I've always had a soft spot for my lovable ol' pal Grover, the personality conflicts of Bert & Ernie, and I thought the Twiddlebugs were neat with the way they used real life things differently in their small lives with cars made out of matchboxes, etc. I thought it was so funny that Big Bird was the only one who every saw Mr. Snuffeaupagus, so everyone thought he was imaginary. You know, I think I had my first "jump the shark" moment when someone else finally saw Snuffy and realized he was really real. I might even occasionally be heard to sing the "1, 2, 3, FOUR, FIVE, 6, 7, 8, NINE, TEN, eleven, tweh-eh-eh-el-elve!" jingle around the house...

So, how about you? Since we ALL watched Sesame Street, tell us about one of your favorite vintage Sesame Street memories?.

And then maybe join me and Bert in "Doin' the Pigeon" 'round the living room.

Monster Madness game

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Back in October, I was fortunate enough to win this fun Monster Madness Game from Fragile Earth Stuffed Animals. (Also, I highly recommend you follow them as the odds can be really great in their contests! *wink*)

We received it only a couple of days after I emailed Mary Beth our address & the girls were very excited to see it. It's so fun! Penguin at 2 1/2 doesn't get it at all, but Pumpkin can play very well and could even teach a peer to play.

Basically, you fill in a what's basically a small checkerboard with a bunch of one-of-a-kind monsters, spin a spinner to find out what color monster you need to get and how many spaces you must move to get it, and do so, refilling empty spaces as long as possible. Winner is the one who ends up with the most. Some good pix are here at BoardGameGeek.

I like that you can move in any direction, including diagonally. It's great for problem-solving and for planning on the various directions you can move to get your monster. Good fun and we've played it a bunch.

Apart from the game itself, which is fun, these monsters are GREAT for sorting. None are exactly alike, but there are 8 colors, and like 15 different basic face shapes, but you don't necessarily have one of each color for each face shape. Plus some have sharp teeth, some don't, some smile, some have horns, most have 2 eyes, but some have 1 or 3... So we've done a fair amount of sorting by different characteristics, comparing the results, predicting which will have more, and I even had/helped Pumpkin and a couple of her classmates that I watch use pictures and some letters to record their sortings.

So if you've got a kid who likes monsters, or even one who doesn't, maybe ages 4-8, I'd certainly recommend this as a great holiday gift. Throw in a stuffed monster or monster book (Where the Wild Things Are, maybe?) and you'll be the coolest gift giver!



***As mentioned previously, I received this game for free from Fragile Earth Stuffed Animals, but they never asked me to blog about it; it's just so dang cool I wanted to let you all know about it! Plus, you know, November is a long month sometimes when you're trying to post every day.***

Thankfulness

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

A brief and incomplete list of things for which I felt thankful today:

• The beautiful weather
• A husband who is home and actively co-parents, as well as improves our house
  
• That we take turns getting to sleep in on the weekends. He gets Saturday; I get Sunday. Not that I got to today thanks to sick and/or grumpy and/or overtired children, but I did crawl back into bed for an extra half hour after things were settled down.
• That Pumpkin can read and enjoys reading. It's really helped keep her entertained while she's sick & has no voice.
• The great book sale Mr. Kluges's work hosts twice a year to get rid of damaged books, samples, excess stock, etc. There's really cool stuff there, and at $2 an item, it helps stretch the Christmas dollars... plus lets us pick up a few gems for ourselves.
• Flylady, for the (in general) decent condition and tidiness of the house, and helping me develop routines that make it easier to keep it so, even with a sick child.
• Also for Flylady, for planting the idea of starting some holiday stuff now with her "Cruising through the Holidays" ideas. I'm not talking about decorating or anything like that (I firmly believe in Thanksgiving first!), but I'm actually wrapping some of the gifts I've already picked up for Christmas now, to help avoid having to do a marathon wrapping session the night before I need the gifts. Plus, I'm writing down what I'm wrapping so that I know what and how many things we've gotten for each person as we get closer to the holidays.

...and finally, for my children, for actually both napping at the same time for the first time in I don't know how long. Bless you, my sweets, I hope you find your naps restorative & happy-making. I know I'm finding them to be so! :)

The plague has arrived.

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Poor Pumpkin is sick. Yesterday when I picked her up from school she sounded a little funny, and by 3:00 that day had mostly lost her voice and had a temp of 101F.

So we've hunkered down, pushing as many liquids as we can get her to drink, dosing her occasionally with children's tylenol when the fever makes her too uncomfortable, letting her rest as much as possible, and allowing unlimited eating of ice cubes. Poor thing. She's stopped talking, except when she absolutely has to, because it hurts to talk & she's got no voice to hear anyway. As Mr. Kluges had mentioned to me a few times today, it's a good thing she can read. We put her down for quiet time and she curled right up with Little House in the Big Woods and was content for more than an hour. We got her dressed and outside for a while, too, for a change of scenery and to get some fresh air, and she was really glad to be out - didn't want to come back in for a long time, even though all she was doing mostly was sitting on a chair on the porch with a blanket. Poor baby.

We've got a call in to Gramma Pet the Nurse, but she might be working tonight. We'll keep up with the fluids and rest and tylenol as needed, but if she stays sick past the weekend, we'll think about bringing her in to the doctor, or at least giving them a call to see what they advise. Poor thing. It's no fun when your kids are sick and you can't just make them better.

First, yet "Last" Theme of NaBlo

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Stolen from Mugsy at Drive Fast. Take Chances; can also be seen at Syl's Watching Paint Dry and Kashka_Z's Aunt Templeton's Theme Song.


Last Road Trip: Girls' Adventure Weekend '09, baby!

Last Bad Advice: "Go ahead! Have some more of that leftover Halloween candy!" (Received from my own subconscious, dang self-sabotager that it is!)

Last Movie I Saw in a Theater: Um.... I think it was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Last TV Show Watched: The Mentalist

Last TV Show I Enjoyed Watching: I don't usually watch shows I don't enjoy - waste of time - but I will sit through not-my-favorites while folding laundry

Last Book I Tried to Read: I tried Dante Club for Book Crack (well, actually, after Book Crack was done with it), but just couldn't get into it, and ended up returning it without finishing it, which I NEVER do. Now I'm reading Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things and enjoying it immensely.

Last Thing I Left Home Without: My husband. Usually it's the girls and I doing the school run.

Last Take Out Meal: A few weeks ago, on a Friday, I had neither kindergartner I sometimes/usually watch, so my own two girls and I hit the McDonald's drive-thru for an out-of-the-ordinary treat.

Last Celebration: I love Halloween, not that we did anything with anybody, but it was still fun!

Last Item Loaned Out and Haven’t Gotten Back: Oh, most likely a book. I think Siblings Without Rivalry. I would like to give honorable mention, however, to Sailing to Sarantium, which I'd lent to Syl YEARS ago... and got back at GAW. Thanks, Syl!

Last Package Received: A Halloween package from Gramma Yori, but it only beats out one from TNGreatAunt by a day or two. We're very lucky to get packages fairly often from generous souls. No, wait! Actually, I think this great Monster Madness Game I won from Fragile Earth Stuffed Animals came after those two. I've been meaning to write about how awesome it is anyway, so I'll try to do so tomorrow. Thanks, Mary Beth and Helen (and Rupert, of course!)

Last Web Site Visited: Um, the aforementioned Fragile Earth Stuffed Animals so I could link to it. Otherwise, probably Twitter.

Last Injury: I'm always bumping into things, giving myself paper cuts, bending back nails, etc. Yesterday I bumped Pumpkin's headboard with my wedding ring while making her bed, causing my ring to scrape the top layer of skin off a very small area on my finger. Whenever I even slightly bump my ring now, it pushes/bumps into that skinless part and hurts. However, it did not occur to me to, you know, take off my ring and put it someplace safe until Mr. Kluges suggested it when I was complaining about it tonight. *eye roll at myself*

Last Run In with the Law: Let's see... probably the last time I got a speeding ticket... which was before we went to Ireland... which was forever ago.

Last Place I’d Want to Live: Someplace super cold like the Arctic or Antarctic. But I do also have a somewhat irrational dislike of St. Cloud, MN.

Last Magazine Read: Bazaar, while waiting at my eye doctor appointment this week, which was rather bizarre, since I had to take my contacts out for his assistant earlier, so I was holding it about 3 inches from my face.

Last Thing I Broke: My replacement carafe for my French press coffee maker, which I'd had for all of 26 hours after waiting months for a local store to get them in. Not that I'm bitter or anything. (Note to those who might possibly be looking for Christmas presents for me - yes, an 8-cup replacement carafe would be great, or else an unbreakable or stainless French press will be mentioned on my wish list....)

Last Thing I Fixed: Ha. Not the carafe. I taped up a ripped book earlier today and also fixed half of my microwaveable scarf, which I'd trapped in the door late last winter and in so doing burned a hole through part of it.

Last Thing That Made Me Laugh: I'm sure it was either one of the girls or my husband, likely something about one of the girls, because I laugh at/with them multiple times daily.

Last Thing That Made Me Go Huh? One of the girls I sometimes watch, who we'll call Rachelle, said today, "Thanksgiving is just the same as Halloween." Um, no. Both are fall holidays, but otherwise, no.

Last Thought: Man, I just can't be brief at these meme things, can I?

It's like Wild Kingdom around here

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Today we've seen, while going about our normal business...

• 3 deer, while on our way to school
• 1 hawk, sitting on a sign at the stoplights
  
• 2 hawks, sitting in the oak tree in our backyard - 1 of which I can still see looking out the office window as I type this (I wish I had my camera back!)
  
• a woodpecker
• a blue jay
• several other normal brown-ish birds, like a mourning dove, maybe some sparrows
  
• quite a few squirrels, including two who were running around in the road in front of our house and I could have easily squashed with my car
• a few chipmunks, or at least, in some cases, their tails sticking up above the leaves
• several skeins of geese

Oh, and the neighborhood black cat, Zipper.

WW - A few from Halloween '09

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Management might be a good career choice...

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Scene: tonight, at the supper table


Pumpkin: I'm cold!

Me: Well, that's because you took your sweater off. Did you bring it downstairs like I told you to?

P: Um, yes. It's around here someplace.

M: (pretty sure I saw it earlier) Why don't you go look for it in the living room then?

P:(going just to the edge of the room) But it's dark! And I don't like it!

M: Hon, you can just go around the corner and turn the light on.

P: (whining) But I don't like it!

M: You've got two choices, hon. Either go in just -this- far and turn on the light or be cold.

P: (turning to her 2 year old sister) [Penguin], would you go in and turn on the light for me?

Penguin: Sure! (gets down from her chair, goes to LR, climbs 2 steps up, turns on light switch on stairway that's all of -this- far from the DR)

Mr. Kluges: (laughing) Or get somebody else to!

M: Or bamboozle somebody!

5 Things About Which I've Thought Today

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

1. If I should do National Blog Posting Month. I did post yesterday, over at Recipeeps, and this is one for today, so, hmm.....
2. How much I dislike the in-between stages of potty training, and how glad I'll be when Penguin's done with it.
3. How fun it is that Pumpkin can read so well. Yesterday she came downstairs after quiet time, with Little House in the Big Woods in hand (Grandma Pet has been reading it to her when they visit), asking me if she could read me the part about Grandpa and the panther. So she did. Twice. And it was great.
   
4. What sorts of things I should be thinking about putting on my own Christmas wish list & what the girls will want on theirs.
5. "Huh. I didn't expect to be able to see a hawk poop that high up in the air."
   

an excerpt from my Recipeeps post

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Ok, just to make it easy to see that I DID post every day for a month, here's an excerpt from my November 1st post over at Recipeeps... I'm back-dating it so it shows up as a November 1st post here at Musings & Mutterings as well, even though I copied it over to here on the 30th, I still actually wrote & posted it over there on the 1st of November.

Happy November, everyone. Or, as we call it around here, try-not-to-eat-all-the-leftover-Halloween-candy month.

November's theme is, probably not surprisingly, turkey! We're talking anything turkey around here - from raw, using leftovers, or heck, even turkey-shaped things! Who knows, somebody around here (not me, thankfully) might even be hosting a Thanksgiving get-together, or just taking home a few pounds of leftover turkey from the in-laws.