Onion Skins, Frozen Peas & Standardized Testing

I'm starting to look forward eagerly to Spring! So I've begun saving onion skins for egg dyeing. I just put a cup hook in the pantry and hung a bag on it. Easy. Of all the natural dyes we've tried, onion skins were my favorite.

Zac, almost 9 months, has started eating soft finger foods. He has had Cheerios (I'm glad they made them gluten free), pieces of carrot and turnip (cooked), pieces of banana and honeydew melon, and -- today -- frozen peas. He has done well with picking them up, since they are firm. But they aren't hard enough or large enough for him to choke on. The cold also helps him to judge where it is in his hand and if he has gotten it into his mouth. Just in the span of today's meal, I saw a big improvement in his pincer grip.

He has so many foods listed on the paper on the fridge, it's hard to believe he just started with oatmeal cereal three months ago! I made him a big sheet of paper with all the categories listed on it, and as we gave him something new we wrote it on with colored pencil and put the date. It used to be empty... now there's hardly room for another fruit or veg!

Zac used to be so little!!!

I based my list on this... very handy.

Zac and Mommy. Present day. Six teeth!

Peas! Please!

We have been doing baby sign language with him but so far, no luck.

Natalie completed her standardized testing for the high school and did well on everything but the math, although she still scored high enough to get into Accelerated Algebra. She met with her advisor, had her tour of the building, chose her courses, and Adam and Leah went to the school last night for the parent information evening. Leah was so so excited! She was just jumping out of her skin, so curious to see a High School.

I feel good that Natalie is well prepared, at least on paper, and so far as we can tell at this early date, for high school. She is taking English I, Accelerated Biology, Accelerated Algebra, and P.E./Health. She is choosing Theatre and Multimedia Development and Wood Shop (now bizarrely re-titled as Introduction to Technology and Engineering I) as her first choice in Electives and French I and World Geography and Human Geography as her Alternates. She has had a LOT of fun looking through the course catalogue and we had to restrain her from also picking Early Bird classes until she sees what a freshman workload looks like.

I'm almost done putting together my notes from our Literary Criticism / Short Stories block and so I will have them ready tomorrow. I also want to do a blog post about Zac's favorite board books. It's strange to be putting in links from But Not the Hippopotamus alongside The Lottery and Other Storiesbut I guess that's what happens when you get married again and add to your family later in life! Natalie is going to be the class of 2020, which already makes me feel old, but Zac is going to be in the high school class of 2033 or 2034... and that's positively mind blowing!!!