Nap Time, Pipe Cleaners, and Quiet

 Did anybody else have a little trouble adjusting to Daylight Savings Time this year?  March just seems so early for that change.  At our house the grumpiness associated with changing schedules occurred on Monday rather then Sunday, so when afternoon nap-time for the little ones finally arrived, I did not want ANYTHING to interrupt it.  My big kids, however, had other ideas and my dreams of a peaceful afternoon were quickly turning into nightmares.  I had to think of something before disaster struck and the little kids woke up crabbier then ever.

My fall-back for such situations is to do a project, so I dragged Ian and Brynn into the kitchen (the room farthest from the nappers) and asked a very dangerous question: "So, what do you wanna do?"  I was so desperate to keep them quiet that I would have allowed almost anything, but to my joy and surprise they both answered "Shamrocks!" and were promptly shushed.  I thought I was in the clear, until I discovered that my beloved first-born son had already used up all of the green paper in the house.  I almost panicked until a package of pipe cleaners fell on my foot.  Given the situation, I decided I could work with pipe cleaners.

 I did a little experimenting, and came up with a workable design.  I was forced to use black because the kids had grabbed all the green before I got a chance.  I wasn't gonna fight them for any, because they grabbed quietly, and that was the whole goal.

 Brynn needed some help with the twisting and bending, but Ian was determined to do it himself.

 Once all the green pipe cleaners were used up, the kids moved on to other colors and even combinations of colors.  I know that blue and red shamrocks are not traditional St. Patrick's Day colors, but I was very willing to sacrifice authenticity for silence.  When they eventually tired of  bending pipe cleaners into shamrock shapes, we strung them on a green string and hung them in our front window.  Just in time for the end of nap time.

 Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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And in case you want to know how to make your own silence preserving pipe cleaner shamrocks, here is my method:

Supplies - 4 pipe cleaners

Step 1: Bend the ends of the pipe cleaner together and twist, creating a one-inch tail.  Form the loop of the pipe cleaner into a heart shape.  Repeat two times.

 Step 2: Arrange the heart shapes with one heart up, one to the left, and one to the right, with the tails forming a cross.

Step 3: Slide the remaining pipe-cleaner behind all the crossed tails and through the point of the upper heart.

 Step 4: Fold the pipe cleaner down over the tails and pinch it tight.  Then twist the "stem" pipe cleaner tightly, incorporating the tails of the three hearts until they are held tightly together.

 Step 5: Reshape your three leaves, if necessary, and voila - a shamrock.