The Very Hungry Cupcakapillar

Jonah's birthday was on Monday, and I was a bit nervous about one thing. A couple weeks prior, the whole family was driving in the car. From the back seat, Jonah piped up "Go to the party store!" Why? We asked him. "It's Jonah's berfday! Get party hats and balloons and berfday cake!" Later that evening I asked him what he wanted on his birthday hats and cake, a subject I had previously discussed with him. All he had specified was that he wanted chocolate cupcakes and Chuck E Cheese. Now however, his tune was different. "Want.... want.... BUBBLE GUPPIES!!!! Bubble Guppies berfday cake!! Bubble Guppies Berfday hat! BUB BUB BUBBLE, Bubble bubble guppies!!!" Bubble Guppies is Nick Jr's newest show. It's cute. He learns a lot from it and the music they sing is actually enjoyable even for the adults. I would have loved to comply and gotten him all things Bubble Guppies for his birthday. The problem lies in the fact that it's Nick's newest show. They've only aired a pilot season. There is no merchandise on the market. No party hats, no balloons, no cakes.

When he first told me he wanted chocolate cupcakes, I went on the interwebs to find a cute way to present a plain old chocolate cupcake. I found this and was immediately inspired  by coco cake cupcakes! The Hungry Caterpillar has always been a favorite book in our house.  Over the past three years, we have spent countless hours, reading the book countless times.  Jonah loves it! He would appreciate it. Or so I thought before he began asking for Bubble Guppies.

As there are no bubble guppies cakes or figures to put on a cake, and as I do not have the skill required to make our own Bubble Guppies cake, I decided to stick to the plan. I showed Jonah the picture from the above website, and he said "mmmm, very hungry caterpillar for in my mouth! UMMM!" and pretended to take a bite from the picture. Promising, I thought. So that was the green light! Here is how I re-created the cupcake cake and made it our own.

First I made way too many cupcakes in three different flavors. Yellow (the kind Johan picked at the store), chocolate (the kind he originally asked for), and strawberry (because I wanted it!) I also made a mini strawberry cake for the head. I used a small spring-form pan; the same that was used for both of the kids' first birthday smash cakes. I did use cake mix to cut some of the stress out of the weekend, since we were also traveling to Toledo to visit Daryl's family.

Once the cakes were cooled, I frosted the 22 yellow cupcakes for the caterpillar's body. I lucked out in that I had planned for the body to be 22 cupcakes, and that is exactly how many the yellow cake batter made! I tried to make a swirl effect in the green icing by not mixing the coloring all the way through, but that method didn't work very well. I piped the frosting on using a decorating tip and a zip top bag since I couldn't find my pastry bag.

I then set to work to create pictures of the food that the caterpillar ate on Saturday, giving him "a terrible stomachache." On the suggestion of a friend, I used taffy-like candies such as starburst, laffy taffy, airheads, caramels, tootsie rolls, and flavored tootsies. Some of them had to be microwaved for about 7 seconds to get them soft enough to roll out and mold into the shapes I needed. I used a very light coating of cooking spray on my hands, surfaces, and utensils to avoid sticking. I rolled some of the candies together to get the swirling effect seen in the illustrations of the book. This part of the cake was a lot of fun! I felt like I was a kid playing with playdough again. Once I had the candy decorations made, I frosted the chocolate cupcakes with a butterknife and placed the decorations on top.

Then I used six tootsie rolls to make the feet, yellow starburst and green laffy taffy for the eyes and nose, and purple laffy taffy for the antennae. I frosted the mini cake with red frosting and added the face candies.

At the party store, I found some wrapping paper with a leaf and fern print, on clearance for fifty cents! I used it to wrap a cardboard cake sheet (also bought from the party store) to make it look like the caterpillar is sitting on leaves. I arranged the body out of the green frosted cupcakes and then placed the head. I barely had enough room, and was nervous that the head wouldn't fit! I placed the tootsie roll feet underneath the green cupcakes, and the "food" cupcakes along the bottom of the sheet.

I placed rainbow sprinkles along the caterpillar's back as his fur. This was not as tedious as it first seemed, and only took a few minutes.

Finally, I had a Very Hungry Caterpillar cupcake cake that I was really proud of! Jonah absolutely loved it. Before we headed out to meet our family for the celebrations, I let him have a little peek. He was really excited to see it. I was so relieved that he did not mention Bubble Guppies again the entire day! He was too excited about his party and cake to think about what wasn't there.

Week In Training Review: Week 5

This week, I've been trying out a new app on my Android to help me with my outside runs. On my treadmill, it is easy to track pace, distance, and calories burned. Outside, it is easy to track distance by mapping out a route on the computer, and average pace by timing the entire run, but getting times per mile and real-time pace is a bit trickier. Recently, I've been looking into purchasing a GPS watch but when I saw the prices, I decided to figure out a way to make-do with what I have. The app that I was previously using was called SmartTrainer, and I did not like it very much. It was inaccurate, would crash frequently, and did not really do the things it claimed to do. I need something that can tell me my current pace, what time I finished each mile, and my overall time and distance.

I decided to try Endomondo first. It has all of the features that I need, and the paid version has a setting that saves the battery of the phone. Unlike SmartTrainer, it only uses GPS rather than a combination of GPS and tracking your steps. This seems to make it much more accurate.While the real-time pace did not seem accurate at all and jumped all over the place, the overall average pace seemed extremely accurate and consistent.

I really suggest that if you're going to use a phone during your runs, that you get an armband. I bought one that is made for an iphone, by Belkin, but my android fits inside and I can still use the touch screen through the protective cover.

This week's schedule:

Week	Mon.	Tue.	Wed.	Thu.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
5	Off	4M	4M	6M	6M	3M	off (traveling) Mon. 11M

I met a personal record this week and ran eleven miles! I am showing this Monday's workout because the eleven miles was supposed to happen on Sunday but due to traveling, it had to happen on Monday. Even though technically it belonged to week 6, it is really part of week 5's schedule.

I was beginning to become discouraged with my long runs. Until this Monday, I had been unable to get to 10 miles. I was beginning to doubt my ability to finish a 13.1 mile race by August 21st, which is when my first half marathon is going to be. But now that I've broken through that wall, I am much more confident that I can do this. My only long run before the race will be only 8 miles, so this past Monday was my last chance to prove to myself that it's possible.

Butterfly Songs

I found this song on youtube and then created different colored butterfly di-cuts to use on our magnet board. The song is really simple to learn, and you can create a variety of different colors to use in the song by attaching a self-sticking magnet strip to the back of paper di-cuts.





We have also been doing this fingerplay:

There was a little caterpillar crawling all about.
He worked and he worked and worked all day without a single doubt.
(Index finger wiggling)

Wrapping himself in a snug cocoon.
Waiting and waiting, will it be soon?
(Cover index finger with other hand.)

Look, he’s coming out, my oh my!
For now he’s become a beautiful butterfly.
(Cross thumbs and let fingers be fingers be butterfly wings.)

Butterfly Art

In the fall, during wooly bear season, I shared a fun caterpillar craft. That would have been a fun activity that would have more of a creative element than the following activities, but since we still have that caterpillar hanging on our fridge, I decided to choose a craft activity that encompasses the entire life cycle of a butterfly. Although it is less open ended, it demonstrates all four stages of a butterfly's life in a way that kids identify with and find fun.

We created a diagram of a butterfly's life cycle by using pasta!

We used four different shapes to represent each stage. Ditalini for the eggs, penne for the caterpillars, shells for the chrysalis, and farfalle (bowtie) for the butterflies!

I used a green marker to divide a piece of printer paper into four rectangles, and labeled each section with the appropriate stage. I also drew a leaf in three of the sections, and clouds and the sun in the section for the butterflies. Older kids can do this step themselves, or you can use cut outs for your child to glue on by themselves.

I got a book that Jonah is very familiar with, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and we went through the book talking about when the caterpillar was an egg, a caterpillar, a cocoon, and a butterfly. I was impressed that Jonah was able to name each stage while talking about the story. 

After having him identify the stage, I asked him which pasta was shaped like that. For example when we read "In the light of the moon, an egg lay on a leaf" in the book, I asked him "What is he first? What is that? An egg! Which pasta looks like the egg?" He was pretty able to identify what the shapes were meant to resemble. He then colored the shape with markers.

Then he used glue to place the pasta on the diagram.

We repeated this for all of the stages, continuing to follow the book as our guide to a butterfly's life. Jonah really enjoyed the "game" of matching the shape of pasta to what the character in the book was doing.

When Jonah was finished, we reviewed all of the stages, then set the picture aside for the glue to dry. When Daryl came home, Jonah was so excited and proud to show his Daddy what he had made, and what he learned about how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly!

Butterfly Literature

We picked up some books from the library to go along with our butterfly themed learning activities this week. Both Jonah and Eve really enjoy reading and looking at these books, because the pages are so colorful!

Waiting For Wings by Lois Ehlert: I really enjoy Lois Ehlert's children's literature. The stories have a nice calming rhythm, and explain things that children encounter every day, in a simple yet elegant way. The illustrations are unique and captivating. Jonah really likes to turn the pages in this book because they vary in size, overlapping pictures of several pages. The story tells the tale of how an egg turns into a butterfly.

My Butterfly Book (a smithsonian board book): This is a board book containing beautiful photographs of different kinds of butterflies. The book asks questions about the color of each butterfly, but my kids could care less about the words, they just want to look at the vivid images.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar By Eric Carle: This is the classic book that everyone thinks about when it comes to caterpillars and butterflies. There is a good reason! Not only are the pictures interesting, but the story is very easy for young children to understand. We love counting each item that the caterpillar ate, and the story includes every stage of a butterfly's life, in very distinct stages that children can understand.

Butterflies!An Introduction

This week, we are talking about butterflies! To get started, we took a couple of field trips. During breakfast, I asked Jonah if he's ever seen butterflies in our yard. I asked him what colors of butterflies he's seen? Were they big or little? How many has he seen? What were they doing when he saw them? Where were they?

Then we headed outside to see if we could observe butterflies in our yard.

 

We looked all around our yard. While we were able to observe quite a bit of nature, we only saw one white butterfly, for a fleeting moment.

Because we didn't see very many butterflies in our yard, we headed to the Cleveland Zoo where an exhibit called "Flutter" puts visitors in a green house full of beautiful butterflies, and demonstrates how butterflies change from caterpillars to elegant winged creatures.

Both of the kids enjoyed seeing the butterflies flit from the flowers and trees inside. While we were there, I asked the same semi-open ended questions: What colors are we seeing? Where do the butterflies like to land? How many can you count? What are they doing? Can you see a big one? Can you find a little one?

I am really glad that we started this "unit" by observing butterflies up close. Jonah seems to be inspired to learn about them, and excited to do more activities involving these lovely little creatures.

Baby Fever

Me: It seems like all my friends are pregnant... again!!! How does this keep happening!?

Daryl: ....ummmm....

Me: Don't look at me like that, I know how it happens!

I can't say that adding number three to our brood hasn't crossed our minds. In fact I think about it almost every day. We had never planned on stopping at two. And I think I can correctly speak for Daryl's half and say that neither of us really feel quite complete yet. The stack of cards that we have been dealt means that we have to think this through a little more carefully than we have in the past.

For now, I'm happy with focusing on my upcoming half-marathons. And living vicariously through my friends' ultrasound pictures and facebook statae that depict their midnight cravings for ice cream and breakfast cereals. I'm plenty busy chasing after the two that I already have, thank you!