Wiggling Around

Last week, we got our worms in the mail and we are now officially worm composters! It has been a fascinating project - I never thought I'd actually read an entire book about worm composting, and the girls have learned a little more about how to recycle trash. We spent a day or two setting up our bin, playing with the worms, and now the worms are happily eating our organic trash. So far, we have fed them our egg shells, avocado pits, banana peels, and tomato ends -- and they LOVE it!

Here's Arturo, drilling holes in our recyling bin (Ha ha, get it? We Recycled our Recycling Bin!!!) so that it lets the compost bin aerate (aka, not stink from all the food we put in it!)

The girls and I hand shredded 1.5 pounds of paper and newspaper. It was fun for that first pound -- very satisfying ripping up paper -- but then, when I realized we needed 4 more pounds, we got out the heavy duty shredder. Our neighbor, Maura, supplied us with another 4 pounds of newspaper - and the shredding machine got to work. Dude, 5+ pounds of shredded newspaper is A LOT!


Here we are playing with the worms. I have wonderful memories as a child, digging up and playing with earthworms. And I don't want Em and Lex to grow up to be "girly girls" so I have been pushing this big time. Here's the irony:

I've mentioned in many posts, that if there's anything Alexa hates, it's getting dirty. We are beginning to suspect that this is because she hates the washing her hands with soap (the process of lathering and rinsing simply takes too much out of her busy day...) No joke - we have been with her many times where she'll say, "I have to potty... Oh, never mind, no I don't have to potty" - because she remembers she has to wash her hands after going to the bathroom. Or we'll be sitting down for a snack, and she will forego snack, because she doesn't want to wash her hands!! Since our worms have arrived, Alexa has been ALL OVER IT. She digs her chubby little hands right in and finds those worms. There's no fear.

Emma, on the other hand, is terrified. She wants nothing to do with touching the slimy worms (though they really aren't slimy at all!). She dons her gardening gloves, and that's the only times she will hold a worm.

Below picture is Alexa with baby worm:

More shots of Alexa with Willy the Worm: