Spiders

Anna has been studying spiders in school and she has been very enthusiastic about it.  I have noticed recently that she likes observing bugs and will find and watch bugs she sees around our house (outside our house).  She had a homework assignment this week to observe different kinds of spider webs around her yard and record her findings.  She took it very seriously and was very thorough in her search for spider webs.  She found several different kinds and was also supposed to record any "spider activity" she saw in the webs.  In most of the webs the spider was no where to be found but we did find a large spider in the process of wrapping up his prey in the web, which I don't think I've seen before.  It was quite exciting.  Anna wanted to take pictures and video and was sure to record the spider activity on her homework.  Here she is pointing to our spider friend.

The spider a little closer up

Last week Anna's teacher asked the students to bring in a spider if they find one at home.  Anna immediately set to work looking for a spider.  She found a small one and we got it in a jar and Anna took it to school.  Anna even went about trying to catch bugs for her spider to eat (read about that HERE on date 9/17).  The spider came home a few days later and Anna gave it to one of her friends on the bus who showed interest in it.  The semi-horrified mother of that friend wasn't sure she wanted to keep the spider and we all agreed we would need to let the spider go now so it could eat.

Anna's interest in little critters reminded me of this picture from when she was 1 (Matthew was 2 1/2) and they were meeting an insect pet of Ruth and Dana's.  Matthew was recoiling while Anna was unafraid.  That may have just been personality or the fact that she was 1 and didn't know about being afraid yet.  :)

A reading assignment they had at school was a "recipe" for how to make a marshmallow spider.  Anna wanted to actually buy the ingredients and make the spider, so we did it this week.  She wanted to follow the directions as closely as she could.  She insisted that we get red licorice for the legs instead of black because she was sure that was what was intended.  Here are just a few pictures of us making our marshmallow spiders.

 We bought the gigantic marshmallows

This is the one I made.

Grant didn't want me to take a picture before he finished his spider, but I thought he might never finish...and just eat it all instead.

 Matthew was very earnest about getting the appropriate number of legs on there.

 Grant was very entertained by how messy he was getting

Matthew's spider at the end.  Eight legs and eight eyes.  Anna kept insisting that spiders have eight eyes.  So she and Matthew gave their spiders eight eyes, while my anatomically incorrect spider (above) had only two eyes.  I wasn't sure if that was true and had to look it up.  Turns out she was right, most spiders have eight eyes.  Thanks Anna.  Maybe we have a future biologist on our hands.  :)

Bonus Pictures of Anna as Spiderman!!

 This is Anna just over age 3 being Spiderman

And Anna at age 4 1/2 as Spiderman

Love that muscle-y costume

Sibling Rivalry

Sometimes we have a bit of a sibling rivalry problem in our house.  Especially among my two oldest children.  Anna always feels that she should be able to do anything Matthew can do (ride a bike with no training wheels, read chapter books, be student of the month, run just as fast).  And Matthew can't stand for Anna to receive a compliment that he does not also get - he has often come sobbing to me after hearing Anna get a compliment that he feels he also deserved (I think "words of affirmation" may be one of his love languages).  He gets plenty of other compliments from Scott and I, but that doesn't seem to matter.  That's not even the extent of the rivalry.

Anna is sensitive about not being able to read as well as Matthew (he IS older, a year ahead in school and has been reading longer but she doesn't care about that).  She is also sensitive about not being able to spell words as well as him and HATES being corrected, which makes practicing spelling with her a bit of a pain.  After she wrote her spelling words the other night I praised her nice penmanship and had her take her board to Scott so he could see her nice writing.  I even took a picture of her spelling words.

Matthew overheard and wrote this (above) on his board and then insisted I take a picture of it.  He usually scrawls his words out as fast he can to get done quickly, but when competing with his sister, it turns out he can also write very nicely.  I laughed, but also felt like rolling my eyes.  We're not to the point of one of them just being happy for the other and not feeling the need to compete...maybe someday.  But on the other hand, he has been writing his spelling words much more legibly lately.  Maybe there's a silver lining in there somewhere.

As a side note they both won the coloring contest for their class this past week.  I was kind of relieved that they were both happy for each other, even though their drawings will compete against each other now in the school wide competition.  Maybe this will be the beginning of being happy for one another's accomplishments.  We'll see.   :)

St. Louis Science Center

We made a quick visit to the St. Louis Science Center on Labor Day weekend.  The Science Center is free so we can stop in for an hour or so.  We actually went to see a movie playing at the Imax there about DDay.  Scott, his parents and John went to that movie and I took the other kids to see a show in the planetarium.  The planetarium show was cool and as an added bonus, I didn't have to chase John around in the dark during the show.  Hooray!  Here we are building an arch together.

The finished arch, plus a random kid who helped us work on it.

Matthew and Anna in the hurricane machine

Upsetting a smoke tornado

Working that hamster wheel

Everyone took a turn - as it were.  :)

Grant had a little trouble getting it going

That's what big brothers are for.

So we had fun at the science center, even though it was a short visit.

Random thought about big brothers: Anna read a book recently about a big brother who teases his little sister.  Anna said she liked it 'cause it was about brothers and sisters but added that her big brother doesn't tease her that much.  So I guess she couldn't relate.  Matthew is a nice big brother. Just today he was telling me a long list of grievances he had against little people (siblings and other neighborhood friends) causing him problems in the afternoon.  He puts up with a lot - like people breaking his Lego creations - but still tries to be a nice brother.  

Baby Update

Baby Girl Guptill - 28 weeks

I'm just over 28 weeks now and the baby has just been diagnosed with Intrauterine Growth Restriction.  It's nothing that we didn't know before, pretty much it just means the baby is small but they wanted to have several ultrasounds at different times to gather different data points before they actually diagnose as IUGR.  8 weeks ago the baby was under the 1st percentile (less than 1%) in size.  4 weeks ago she was just under the 5th percentile.  And yesterday she was at the 9th percentile.  So she is catching up. The cutoff for IUGR is 10th percentile, so she just missed it.  Her head was actually measuring normal, but her femur was smaller so it threw things off.
So now I will go in for monitoring three times a week and at least one of the weekly appointments will be in St. Louis, which I'm not that excited about.  They will be checking her all the time to make sure she is getting enough oxygen and nutrients and continuing to grow.

I've done a lot of testing over the past 8 weeks and they haven't found anything wrong with the baby other than that she is small, so that is good.  And my placenta is now a normal size (it used to be slightly large which is bad and could indicate its not working properly - normal size is good).  I'm told if the baby gets up to over the 10th percentile I may be able to stop the close monitoring (3 weekly appointments), so I'm hoping she can grow just a little bigger.  Mostly I'm hoping nothing is really wrong with her.

The doctors will be watching closely to see if I need to deliver early.  Since I'm over 28 weeks now I'm in a relatively safer timeframe for early delivery.  Still not ideal to have a baby so early, but the baby has a much better chance now if we did have to have her early.

So we are still hoping she will grow more and everything will be ok.  I feel her moving all the time now so that is good!!  Thinking good thoughts!!

Grant's Farm

Grant let us visit his farm this past weekend.  Ok, its not really his, he just thinks it is since it's called Grant's Farm.  Here we are by the entrance to the Tiergarten (animal garden).

Everyone had fun feeding the goats.  Mostly from behind the safety of the fence.  The goats are aggressive when they see you with a bottle.

 Matthew went inside to feed them.  He is taller than they are.

 He liked petting them too

 More feeding

Grant came inside to pet and brush the goats after he was done bottle feeding them.  And that is me at about 28 weeks pregnant.  I think I look pretty big, but I still have three months to go.  Fun times.

 Helping Grant brush the goats

 Riding the carousel

We also saw lots of other animals and an elephant show.

 Grant and his farm!

Here is Grant feeding a llama

 And riding the tram

We also got to have sno-cones!

 We went to see the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales at the farm too (this farm is owned by Anheuser- Busch).  We saw a few of the Clydesdales in the barn but not too many out in the fields today.

 By the Clydesdale's barn.  Anna is trying to stop John from running away.  Good D Anna!  I think I'll sign her up for basketball this year.

She's a good at Johnny corralling.  That's a thing.  We had a lot of fun visiting the farm and it wasn't even too hot!  Does this mean fall is on its way?  We'll see.

The Arch

We visited the arch with Scott's parents while they were in town.  We didn't get rained on, so that was good.  And we watched the Lewis and Clark Imax movie which was cool.  Here are a few pictures from our visit.

 Matthew wanted everyone to touch the arch

 Going up the arch in the little pods

 And at the top.  Grant climbs up to look out.

 John pointing at Mommy.  I like it when he acknowledges me.

 Anna checks out Illinois from the top of the arch.

So much corn!

And sitting in the display pod down by the museum.  We always have fun when we go there!

Apple Picking

We went apple picking this weekend.  Even though it still very much feels like summer, the apples are in season!  Hooray!  I'm looking forward to cooler temperatures!  We picked honeycrisp apples this weekend, which are more expensive than other varieties, but so good!  Great for baking, eating, applesauce, you name it.  Here are the kids on the wagon ride out to the apple trees.

 Scott's parents were visiting us this weekend and joined us on our apple adventure

John was big enough this year to pick some of his own.

 We didn't want to get too many but it took us no time at all to get a lot of apples.

I think we ended up with 30 pounds of apples.  Hmm, must be apple crisp time!  We still have applesauce and apple butter that we canned last year so we aren't even going to can anything this year.  We'll just make a lot of tasty desserts I think.  Mmm, apples.  We're looking forward to fall.