Two quick stories....

[conuly]

The other day I was putting Evangeline down for her nap. She's started taking one again as she's growing and she URGENTLY NEEDS ONE every day. She doesn't always like it (the first few times I managed to trick her into sleep, but she's caught on), but she goes down anyway.

And as I'm snuggling her prior to the nap itself I call her "ducky".

Evangeline: I don't like when you call me ducky. It's too much like an animal.
Me: Oh, sorry honey.
Evangeline: I don't like when you call me honey.
Me: Sorry, sugar.
Evangeline: No, not sugar. And not hon-
Me: Sorry, pumpkin?
Evangeline: No!
Me: Sorry, cookie?
Evangeline: No, no foods. No cookie, no pumpkin, no sugar.
Me: Muffin?
Evangeline: That's a food, Connie.
Me: You're right. I'm sorry, pookie.
Evangeline: That's too silly!
Me: I'm sorry, shnuggly shnookums.
Evangeline: What? NO!
Me: I'm sorry darling.
Evangeline: That's okay. Just call me darling.
Me: Sweetie?
Evangeline: No, just darling.
Me: Angel?
Evangeline: No. That's too much... it's already in my name!

Which it is. Evangeline. So I just snuggled her and sang to her a bit and she nodded off and fell asleep.

Edit: She just came down. I told her I was typing about how "you're cute as a bug". "Connie. Bugs aren't cute."

So, now, this is awesome. But, some backstory.

Waaaaay back a few weeks ago at Parent Teacher Night, Ana's teacher revealed that she's below par when it comes to writing. This is because she won't write, not necessarily because she can't at all. And what came of this that concerns me is that she's now doing her journal first thing, and writing five sentences instead of three (and longer ones too if I can make her).

I'm a little annoyed that the teacher never told us that the expectation for the daily journal had changed. And I'm more than a little annoyed that we haven't been able to convince her to cave on the "write about school" concept. Ana doesn't want to write about school. And I agree - it's boring day after day! But she still has to, you know, do it.

So every day we've been doing her journal first thing instead of putting it off (which sometimes resulted in no journal getting done - it's such a fight!) and I've been sitting down with her and writing out an outline (with her input) before she even starts to write. And this has been helping. There's less fighting (although there's still a lot of "my stomach hurts, I need to pee, I need to eat, I need to read, I need to sharpen my pencil, find my pencil, eat my pencil...." every day).

Well, she has to write in her journal during the break too, of course. Thursday she had to write in her journal (five sentences) and also two or three sentences about the famous woman of her choice. (She picked Wilma Randolph.)

I'd pranked them on April Fool's Day, you know. Nothing major - I taped up their door with paper and stuck balloons behind it so they fell out when they opened the door, and I let them have cereal but I dyed the milk purple in the carton. So she wrote about that.

And managed eight sentences without whining, fussing, fighting, or even erasing very often! She was surprised! She'd had no idea she'd written that much!

And me, I was just that proud :)

Well, we're off to dye eggs.

Tell me - when I dyed the frosting for the cupcakes for the bake sale, and when I dyed the milk, I mixed red and blue food dye. That should make purple, but it made a kinda grayish purple. Not too appetizing. How can you mix up a real, purply purple with food dye? Is it possible? Do you have to use better dyes?

Comments

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Way to be on the writing! Some psychologists say that when kids don't want to write creatively, it's because they are self conscious and think their thoughts and feelings are, for lack of a better word, dumb. I was the opposite actually, and wrote a lot as a kid because I needed to vent about how worthless I felt and how difficult and scary everything was.

As to the other, are you using liquid dyes or powdered? Powder will give you vivid color that pops a lot more. Also, try using the blue dye first and getting the frosting a nice, deep blue, then add red to change the color to purple. Some people do it the opposite way, red first. But if saturation is an issue, I would go blue, then red.

[conuly]

Blue, and then red? I'll try it! (And I'm using liquid. It's what was available.)

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I hear you, my grocery store only carried the liquid as well. If I didn't have a friend who was a chef, I wouldn't have access to the powder stuff. You can order it online, but it's expensive for something I'd just use frivolously and once in awhile.

[conuly]

Seems more expensive for something you'll use every day, frivolously or not! (Is there a non-frivolous reason for people to use food coloring? I sure hope not!)

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

some grocery stores have "neon" food dye as well...lime green, purple, pink, and some other color.

blue, apparently.
http://www.mccormick.com/Products/Extracts-and-Food-Colors/Food-Colors/Assorted-NEON-Food-Colors-and-Egg-Dye.aspx

[jan-andrea.livejournal.com]

I use paste dyes -- Wilton has a lot of different colors. Most craft stores carry them, though I haven't seen the more esoteric colors at the grocery store. They're usually pretty true to the cap color.

[conuly]

Would paste dyes work for eggs?

[jan-andrea.livejournal.com]

That's a good question. I've never done it before. eHow says it works, though: http://www.ehow.com/how_15797_color-eggs-with.html

[conuly]

We did eggs today. I'd've liked to mix up my own custom dyes, but that didn't happen. (Instead, I had a dozen and a half containers of box dyes. Why? Because each package only comes with one dipper! Whose bright idea is THAT? I had nearly more bowls than eggs!)

So if that's the best stuff, I'm not likely to use it that often, I'll probably still have some next year. (Then again, next year I may get my act together and use natural dyes.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

In my experience, writing is always difficult when you don't have anything to say. And it also tends to come out worse then too.

[blackhanddpants.livejournal.com]

We bought a Paas kit this year, and it said that your colors will be more vibrant if you use vinegar, not just water, in them. We did that, and our eggs were very pretty!

[conuly]

Oh, we always use vinegar. You usually don't? This year, actually, since I had extra bowls, I made some without vinegar for a change!

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

And so I've just noticed that they* both have Angel in their names.

I'm rather slow at this, aren't I?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! And I used a generic, dollar store egg dying kit this year, nothing fancy for us.

It said on the box to not put vinegar in the pink or purple dyes. Except there was no purple. It had orange, yellow, green, blue and pink.

So when we were down to 4 undyed eggs, I put a bit of the (vinegar'd) blue into the pink cup, and made some purple eggs. :-p And they came out great.

AND ANOTHER EDIT. I need to stop this:

I haven't bought white vinegar since the babies are out of diapers, I don't use it for anything. However, I had red wine, balsamic, and rice varieties in the fridge. I used the rice one for lack of color. :)

[conuly]

Next time, use lemon juice. It's not as strong a mordant* as any type of vinegar, but it's a lot cheaper than rice vinegar!

*Technically, I'm not sure it counts as a mordant since you're dying eggs and not cloth, but whatever.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I didn't have any lemon juice either. :(

I actually got my rice vinegar from a friend who had an unopened bottle from an ~*exotic foods*~ basket and she was like "I will never ever use this, hey lizziey, you make weird crap all the time, you want this?" and I was like "omg yes plz" haha.

[conuly]

No lemons? What sort of messed up kitchen do you have?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

A 2 days before payday kitchen. Daniel's check goes to pay rent, the money I have been bringing in goes to food stuffs, and I got money on Monday.

Just happened to be the week I ran out of lemon juice haha.