Ferguson Family Blog: Recycling and Sleeping Babies . . .

It's been a crazy couple of weeks in the Ferguson house. The kind that have made life feel a bit too busy with parent teacher conferences, illnesses, classes . . . these are the weeks that we remind ourselves how wonderful it is to have summers off as a family.

So Grant has found a new passion for recycling. While we are faithful recyclers, I can't say that we've been intentional about teaching the kids about recycling or why we do it. Regardless, for the past several days Grant has been scouring the house looking for things to recycle. This is his game . . . he looks in the trash can for things he thinks should go in the recycle bin, he decided to recycle various items we aren't ready to get rid of yet, or he pulls papers out of the craft closet and draws the recycle symbol on them and promptly places them in the recycle bin (kind of missing the point on this one, aren't we?). He is also insisting on drawing the recycle symbol on our regular trash can with a marker. I've washed it off three times and have now given up. The other day I picked up one of Grant's "crafts" (an egg carton with a paper towel roll glued to it) and headed to the trash can. Grant spotted me and yelled, "Mom!!!" I thought I was in trouble for thinking of throwing away such a treasure. I turned to Grant as he said, "Make sure you put that in the recycling bin!"

Sophia has a new passion of her own: baby blankets and babies. She spends most of her play time at home filling the floors of our house with "sleeping" babies and stuffed animals. Her game goes like this: she spreads every doll and stuffed animal she can find on the floors throughout the house, covers them each with a blanket (she uses towels, pillow cases, or shirts when she runs out of blankets), and then collects each blanket folding them neatly in a pile. While it can be difficult to walk through our house, I will say that she has become quite skilled at folding and is willing to use this skill to help with laundry!

Grant had his turn for Show and Tell at school this week. When I asked Grant what he wanted to take, he was decisive in telling me that he wanted to take his book about the Presidents of the United States. You may remember that about a year ago Grant had quite an intense interest in and knowledge of the Presidents of the United States. This interest had diminished a bit in recent months, but with the presidential election going on he is once again interested. The night before Grant's Show and Tell he and I got out the Presidents book and some note cards to write down a few things that he wanted to tell his class. He came up with the following three things to share on his own:

1. The President of the United States lives in Washington, D.C.

2. Grover Cleveland is my favorite president and he lived in D.C., too. (I'm not sure why Cleveland is his favorite . . . it used to be Nixon.)

3. I think Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. (Grant is still an undecided (non)voter. Some days he supports McCain and other days he's an Obama fan. I'm going to pressure him, but I hope he makes the right choice at Kids Vote on Election Day ;) )

After preparing his note cards Grant practiced his Show and Tell presentation in front of Travis, Sophia, and I. He did WONDERFUL! I was very impressed with him and was thrilled to see how proud he was of himself. I didn't get to see his actual presentation in class, but his teacher said he did a good job there as well.

Here are some pictures that I have been meaning to post for a while . . .

Grant put this outfit together on his own. Notice the shin guards . . . a boy after his mommy's heart.

Sophia is quite proud of her ability to pedal the tricycle. I have been amazed, and admittedly a little saddened, by the amount she's grown over the last few months, both in age and maturity.

I'm glad Grant enjoys baking, but shouldn't we be past the phase of walking into the kitchen and finding out that your kid has dumped a whole canister of flour on the floor?!?