Pia and I have been listening to loads of patriotic music lately, which is totally out of character for me. It is so weird how kids change everything and how a mere two years ago I would have been mocking the same songs that she and I now are singing together at the top of our lungs. Odd how being a pessimist just isn’t as much fun when there is a bouncy, happy 4-year old around. Our favorite song to sing together is “This land is your land” which makes me secretly happy as it is a Woodie Guthrie song. Oh, and Bruce Springsteen does a mean rendition of it which makes my heart swell each time I hear it. Listen to it here and your heart can swell, too. Robin, please don’t click on the link as I fear you will just poke fun and I can’t bear the thought of you not loving Bruce to the depths of the deepest oceans as I do.
Oh, but I must ask this: in the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy” what is the meaning of the line “and with the girls be handy”? Handy? Do they mean “handsy”? In which case that is totally wrong and dirty (if also mighty hilarious). Or did “handy” mean, like, chivalrous back in the 1700s?
But on to the point of this post: today’s summer bowl activity!! We took our summer bowl on the road today and brought the fun to Tea. Together we made these fun CD spinners that were in the latest issue of Family Fun magazine.
The directions called for an old CD, a shooter marble and an old plastic cap. Alas, old CDs are easy to come by in this house, but shooter marbles and plastic caps, not so much (as not much soda or bottled water is consumed in our house). So, instead of a marble we used big wooden beads and instead of the plastic cap we used old wooden spools. The swap worked fine once Robin figured out that the bead and the spool could be hot glued together through the hole in the CD, thus sandwiching the whole thing together (the glue didn’t work very well on the plastic CD). The tops work shockingly well and I think this might be the first CD reuse craft that actually has merit. Have you discovered a CD craft that is cool? Please let me know!
I would love to say that Tea and Pia played with their tops happily and sharing-ly for the rest of the afternoon while Robin and I sipped iced coffees out on the veranda, but that would be a big old lie. The kids lost interest pretty quick and since it was about 900 degrees out today they spent most of the day bickering. Robin did manage to capture a bit of video that shows the tops in motion and the kids in the 30 seconds of the day that they weren’t fighting. Enjoy!
Domestic Wormhole 
Thanks for bringing over a craft so that I can pretend I’m encouraging Tea to be creative when really I’m drinking iced coffee. I did *not* click on the Springsteen link, but only because I don’t want to tarnish the beautiful memory of you and Pia singing it for us this morning. Divine! 😉
As for Yankee Doodle, the never-erroneous Internet would suggest: “Pun intended. During wartime, a popular tactic is to question the chastity of the “little woman back home” or to question the native women’s morals, as this line does.”