Stringing Beads

We had a fun day yesterday. We met up with Kristin, Knox, and Mary and went to the children’s museum for a couple of hours (we’re trying to get some good use out of our museum pass before it expires at the end of the month). We had fun, and the boys actually did quite well there. (It’s a great children’s museum, the only thing about this one here is that it seems a lot more open than the one in Milwaukee – with as many little kids as I have, it’s nice to have areas that don’t have lots of exits. That’s one reason that two of our favorite areas in this children’s museum fit that description: the Berenstein Bears town, and the grocery store – plus, it doesn’t hurt that the boys think these are some of the best areas there to play, too.

Anyways, we had a fun morning with them, then we ate lunch in the car on our way home because then we headed to the library (it was the last day of the week for the boys to go pick out prizes for filling out their charts for the summer reading program). They got prizes, and then we picked out our weekly bag of 20 children’s books and headed back out to the parking lot.

On our way out, we made a short stop at a little thrift craft store there in the same shopping center. I dug the change out of my purse and let the boys pick out a box and a bunch of little 10 cent packets of beads of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. (After explaining to the boys on our ride home that bead necklaces and bracelets are just for girls – so they could make necklaces for their grandmas or friends, but mostly they could just string the beads and then put them back to string again later), we went home and I put the 4 younger ones to naps. Then Kolby and I spent a good hour sorting through all the random beads that came in the box – taking out all the ones that would be so tiny that they’d be very frustrating for kids to try to get on a string. Then Kolby sorted all the different colors and shapes into sections in the box, and I cut several long strings and tied a bead at the end of each one. Kolby was excited to start making color patterns as he strung the beads.

When Isaac woke up early from naps and came downstairs, I quickly realized that he would make short work of that well-organized box of beads, so I grabbed one of the little left-over boxes the other beads had come in, and I took out the set of the beads with the largest holes, and gave Isaac his own special box of beads and his own string. He sat with Kolby for quite a while, putting all his beads on his string, then back in the compartments in his box again. He was very excited to have his own little box. Then, this morning, as Kolby, Eli, and Camden were working on their bead patterns, Isaac stuck a bead up his nose. (Earlier this week he stuck a raisin up his nose, and after calling Michael and the pediatrician’s office and being told to take him into the doctor to have it removed, instead of waking all the kids up from naps and taking the time and money to go over to the doctor’s office, I laid Isaac down on the kitchen counter and removed it with tweezers myself. None of my kids have put anything in their noses before, and I sure hope this doesn’t become a habit).

So, luckily the bead came right out, but that was the end of Isaac’s participation in the bead business. Oh well, it was a good idea anyway.