BEST Playdough Recipe

With the colder days coming, I am constantly looking for things my kids can do inside that 1) keep them occupied for as long as possible 2) don't take forever to clean up and 3) don't cost a lot. Well, yesterday I tried a new playdough recipe and it is, by far, the best recipe that I've ever tried. It turns out just like the store bought playdough. It doesn't dry out. It's smooth in texture. It's very easy to make. I thought it was worthy of sharing. Here it is:

Just Like the Real Playdough

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon powdered alum
1/2 cup TABLE salt (don't use kosher)
2 tablespoons vanilla
food coloring

Mix all dry ingredients. Add oil and water. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until reaching the consistency of mashed potatoes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and food coloring. Divide into balls and work in color by kneading the playdough.

I think the vanilla is just for the smell but I have not tried making it without it. It cooks up super fast so keep an eye on it when it is on the stove. You'll need to knead it after you cook it, even if you don't add food color. It helps smooth it out and keeps it from drying out. Enjoy!

Lily Ann Gibbons

Announcing the newest addition to our crew.

LILY ANN GIBBONS

Born: September 17 @ 12:20 pm
Weighing: 8 pounds 9 ounces
Length: 21 inches

My Superheros

My boys are such good helpers these days. A month or so ago, I noticed that Gabe was missing and the house was unusually quiet. This being a typical warning sign of trouble to come, I went looking for him. Much to my surprise, I found him in the laundry room ironing a shirt for Doug. Sigh...if only I could actually let him do my ironing for me. Wouldn't that be wonderful!



Earlier this spring, Doug took the boys for a day up to Logan for Baby Animal Days (I can't remember where I was but I'm sure I enjoyed the time off!). Here are a few photos.





One nice spring afternoon, I gave the boys some yogurt for a snack. I came back a few minutes later to find that yogurt doubles as a great facial moisterizer.




Gabriel loves peanut butter. So much so that one afternoon when I was upstairs getting Oliver up from his nap, Gabe snuck downstairs. We came down a few minutes later to complete silence. We looked all over for Gabe and finally found him in the guest bedroom with all the doors shut (he loves to hide, especially when he knows he shouldn't be doing something). Needless to say, I'm getting really good at getting oils out of my carpets. Oh, by the way, that was a FULL jar when he started. It's also worth noting that he hates to have "sticky" fingers so after covering himself in peanut butter, he proceeded to fling as much as possible off of his hands and arms, probably thinking that he could hide the evidence and I wouldn't know (despite his clear hand print on the carpet). There went my plans for the afternoon...



We bought the boys some superhero pajamas the other day. Unfortunately, the bottoms were too big for my beanpole children so Doug opted to put some underwear on them instead (over their diapers too, as they are not yet fully potty trained). It seemed quite fitting, although we are missing the tights.

It's a Girl!

For those of you who don't know (and I'm not very good about spreading the word to those that don't see me on a regular basis for two main reasons - Oliver and Gabriel) we are expecting child #3 and just found out that it will be a GIRL! I am due on Sept 11 (but would rather avoid that date, if possible). I mostly feel wonderful because I'm only having one child and the freedom (compared to carrying the twins) is amazing by comparison. However, the constant fatigue and shortness of breath are somehow dampening my enthusiasm.

I think the boys are excited to have a baby sister and like to talk to her in my belly. They also like to occassionally punch her (and me). This may be a foreshadowing of things to come..."Finally, someone smaller than me that I can pick a fight with and consistently beat!" Doug is concerned (and probably rightfully so) that adding another child to this already constant mahem, may only increase the chaos we call home. However, I am blissfully holding on to the belief (while I can) that #3 will be an angel and easy to manage. Is is too much to hope that she will mellow out the mischevious nature of my boys? Probably. Besides, most of the time, the antics and trouble my boys get into gives me a good laugh. Here is one, for example.

We took the boys out to eat at a popular Mexican restaurant called the Red Iguana. The wait was 30 minutes during which we sat outside and chatted with an older couple and their grown daughter, visiting the Red Iguana for the first time. When we got inside, as luck would have it, we were sitting at a table right next to them and near the door. After the older couple and their daughter finished eating, they said bye to the boys on their way out. The older gentleman wisely avoided Gabe's outstreched hands since they were covered with beans, cheese and other various mexican delights. However, he was not familiar with the...hmmm, what shall we call it..."tenacity" of Gabe and as he turned to go, Gabe, ever so subtly, wiped his hands on the man's suit jacket (without him knowing and in a place the man would not notice). They were out the door a second later. Doug and I couldn't help but laugh about it along with the crowd of folks waiting to be seated. What would a night out be without that sort of unexpected entertainment?

In Case You've Been Wondering Where We've Been...

Perhaps you are wondering why it's been so long since we've posted. C'mon. Twins can't really be that much work, you're thinking. We'll, I thought I'd post a few photos that show how my kids have been transitioning to the "curious twos", we'll call them. And, yes, it's taken me about this long to recover from these two days and others like them.

Below, you will see the result of four hours or so of work on my part attempting to feed my family healty by making homemade wheat bread. You will also so the (cleaned up) work of one of my twins of about 15 seconds. I came into the kitchen and found all four loaves on the floor, one of which had been destroyed by curious little hands and spread far and wide for mommy to clean up.

Note that Oliver has no shame being posted by his handiwork.

The next is a sequence of photos for which I have Gabriel to thank. While I was upstairs playing with Oliver (okay, okay! I was attempting to take a short nap while Oliver was peacefully reading a book), Gabe snuck (and I mean SNUCK) downstairs, moved his stepstool to the fridge, unlocked it, and proceded to experiment with gravity and our tile floor.

Yes, those are empty containers you see there. And, yes, they were not empty when he started. Here is a partial list of items I found an inch deep on the floor. A gallon of milk, a number of cracked eggs, a container of orange juice, shredded chicken, Pace salsa, a jar of pureed strawberries, ...need I go on? Notice the empty shelves in the fridge.
Just in case you thought the worst of it was in the kitchen (as I originally did), enter Exhibit number 2. This is a 5 Quart container of oil purchased at Costco recently. I had just opened it and taken out a small amount, leaving the remainder in the cupboard. Once Gabe had grown tired of the fridge, he moved on to the cupboard, pulled out the oil and emptied it on to the floor. Not on to the tile floor, mind you, but on to the Mongolian Rug we have in the family room. Then he (just to show how sneaky he really is) put the lid back on and placed it into the kitchen with the rest of the mess. This was to throw me off the scent, I suppose.

Well, if any of you have ever had to get oil out of a rug before (the carpet cleaner assures me that this happens quite often), you will know that it took a few weeks and over a hundred dollars later to return it to its pre-Gabe state.

Both our parents assure us that Gabe gets his sneakiness from us. We don't know what they're talking about.

All that work for $0.50 in pennies

As some of you familiar with the Avenues may know, part of the "charm" of living in the Avenues comes with on-street parking. The advantage is that we can see our cars from our bedroom window. The disadvantage being that they are, well...on the street. Now, our neighborhood is a safe neighborhood. However, we live close enough to other neighborhoods not so nice (e.g. drug neighborhoods) that we seem to get uncharacteristic crime float through occasionally. Along with this, we sometimes hear strange noises randomly at night. Most of the time I jump up (with my cell phone in hand ready to call the police) to look out the window to make sure no one is going to decide to break into our house. Well, last night I slept like a baby. No random noises to disturb my dream-like slumber. However, when Doug got to his car this morning to go to work, he found out that someone had broken into it. Now, a word about his car. It's over 10 years old, the indoor dash lights don't work, the CD player doesn't work and the driver-side window doesn't roll down or up all the way. Not to mention the fact that it has become an extension of our "junk drawer". This may have been part of the allure to the thief (that and the lack of an alarm). There were a couple of nice glasses cases lying on the floor along with other misc items. However, after pillaging thoroughly through the car, the thief only discovered some old tapes, empty glasses cases, and about 50 cents in pennies in the ash tray. Apparently, the urge to not leave empty handed was strong enough for him to take his pile of pennies and go. A handful of pennies was "a steal" considering that on his way into the car, he seemed to have fixed our window! Excellent. Did I mention the curb-side car maintenance provided in the Avenues?

Surprise!

The other night Doug and I went in to do our nightly check on the boys before going to bed. Much to our surprise, when we looked into Gabe's crib, he was naked! We started laughing so hard that we had to leave the room for fear of waking the boys up. It seems that Gabe has learned how to take off his pajamas all by himself. I love the little things these boys do that make me laugh.

Both boys have been very interested in photos lately. They love to point at people they know and tell us who they are. Oliver has everyone down, except apparently he can't tell himself apart from his brother. Every time he sees a toddler boy he says, "Gabe". That includes when he is looking in the mirror and when we point to him and say, "Who's this?". We get "Gabe" almost every time. Occassionaly, he also seems to think he is Elmo.