Playdate

I invited families from my local Attachment Parenting message board over for a playdate to give the kids other kids to play with and to get the moms out of the house. I did one last month too and might continue them through the winter. It's mostly younger kids now that school is back in session, which is a bit disappointing to Aleks. He always wants Jonas to come over, but Anna watches kids at her home and can't come visit during the day.

Aleks convinced me to buy this snorkel at the thrift store two evenings previous. At first I was disinclined due to not feeling like it would be used and trying to limit my thrift store purchases to what was really needed, but then I realized it'd be great in the costume box. So far, this assumption has been dead on. Bastian was wearing it before our guests arrive.
Remembering that I needed to feed the kids, I chopped up a bunch of finger foods and set them out. Aleks and Bastian made Salad People.
Bastian really found this fun.
Aleks is quite serious about constructing his monsters.
He used the grapes from City Fresh which do taste too sour for actually eating to create three eyes. His monster appears to have claws instead of hands and some extra appendages sprouting out of his arms, though I'm uncertain as to what precisely they were intended to be.
Bastian also used these sour grapes and made four eyes to Aleks' two. The faces are made of a plop of yogurt. Bastian's Salad Person's pasta hair appears quite beaky if you look at it right. Perhaps the crackers are wings.
One of the older children got a little bored, so I brought out some things for her to draw and paint. All of the children then had to participate, of course and a brief stint of painting took place. The main problem with this was seating them all and their remaining happy despite neighboring elbows. It seemed to mostly work out.
After the littlest children left, the older kids wanted to go outside to play. I brought out the rubber animals and dinosaurs and lizards to keep them occupied in the front of the yard as opposed to having to chase them around and around the house. They drew on the sidewalk with chalk and made the animals have lots of battles.
I loved the way they all looked in the sunlight and took lots of photos. This lizard was bought for me in Australia by family friends Marty and Dan when they were on their honeymoon 8 years ago. It's a Frilled Dragon and it's name is Leonardo "Jon" DiCaprio. I didn't name it. Marty really wanted to call it Leonardo DiCaprio, I think because she doesn't like Leo DiCaprio (maybe she's changed her mind now that he's the international spokesperson for global warming). We were also reading an article in the local free paper at the time where my step-father was referred to as Jim "Rev Cool" Carter, which is stupid because it should be Rev. Cool aka Jim Carter, no ridiculous quotation marks necessary. Because of that, Marty felt that Leo should have Jon as his middle name, after my dear husband and that the quotation marks must be essential since the pseudo-professional journalist insisted on the dang things. Plus it's just goofy. So whenever I tell people my Frilled Dragon's name, I use my hands to make quotation marks around "Jon." Very important.
This is Aleks' twenty dollar T-Rex he bought. He spent forty-six dollars on three dinosaurs. The jaws open on two of them and they really are quite high quality. I suppose now I'm thrilled he has a little less money to obsess about heading to the toy store with. His consumerism seems mostly sated for the time being.
I should remember these photos for making cards with later...


The day went quite smoothly, though I was exhausted at the end of it. I had to head out for a Mom's Night Out just a couple of hours later too. We accidentally got Anna's mom really drunk. Not that that has anything to do with unschooling...