We start 'em working young around here! (A is just finishing her silverware putting away job in this photo. She gets the chair out, opens the drawers, puts all the silverware in the correct slots, and puts everything back all by herself... not bad for 22 months!)

storyteller

Her brother's modeling has apparently inspired A to tell stories already. We were in the car and she said, "Once upon a time there was girl who lived on a hill." I suspected that she wasn't going to tell the same story as ZZ Top sang about the girl on the hill, but she started mumbling so I couldn't catch how she elaborated on the plot. Luckily, a few minutes later she started another. "Once upon a time there lived a tomato who lived... someplace else." I REALLY wanted to know what happened next this time, but she got distracted by a passing truck and didn't continue. It'll be interesting to hear what kinds of stories the two of them come up with together....

Returning home from his first day! (remember to click on photos to enlarge) 

C does time

Well, our little boy spent 7 straight hours in the public school system today for the first time in his life (about 1.5 hours of which was on the bus...though that will lessen somewhat as the drivers and kids get used to the schedule). Very fortunately, he was smiling when he came home, and said he had a great time.

And while they "learned a lot of rules" at gym on the first day instead of playing or running around much (hmm.... a bunch of first graders in full-day school for the first time; what shall we do with them in gym class, play active games to help ease their stress and get their energy out, help them have fun, or make sure those all important rules are lectured first thing?), his classroom teacher, Mrs. Woller, is by all acounts so far a fortunate pick (there are 3 first grade classes at Elsmere, he seems to have gotten "the best" teacher according to reputation; she's supposed to be kind, gentle, and very inspired). She also has an almost full time volunteer in the classroom, a retired kindergarten teacher, so it makes the ratio to 24 students much better!

To her credit, C said they went outside 3 times today to the playground (it was a beautiful late summer day), and even though he chose not to eat his lunch at all for some reason, just some high-protein pretzels and a few grapes between 8 a.m. and 3:50 p.m. when he got home, he seems to have done fine in general today. He made up for lost time in eating a snack, the traditional first day of school walk to Stewarts for ice cream cones, and 3 helpings of dinner...

With luck, he'll continue to be happy, make friends, and manage not to lose much of his creativity throughout his public school career...

-Dan

On the way to his first day of 1st grade! 

C's new favorite song

C has not yet fully explored all the CDs I gave him for his birthday, so it was not until this week he discovered this song. He loves it so much that I was trying to come up with other songs that reference money for him, but I deemed the obvious Pink Floyd and Dire Straits picks marginally inappropriate due to language. This one has subject matter issues, alas.

the name game

A enjoys the name game so much that she believes it is only common courtesy to say "thank you bo-bank you" and "welcome bo-belcome."

A's poem

Based on the view from our deck, A composed and recited this to herself over and over:

Crescent moon
Blue sky
Green trees

She's having a lot of fun with language. From the time she could talk, she intentionally played with words, and made up rhyming words, like "Paco-maco-paco-pie." She continues to make up words to rhyme with many of the things we say, and clearly sees it as a fun game. She can insert her own words in the name game correctly (more fluently than her father, I suspect).

caught getting along :) 

summertime... 

telling time

Since we grew sick of C's constant questions about when things are going to happen, how long until this or that, and his requests to warn him 30, 15, and 5 minutes before bedtime, we've been teaching him to tell time. He's had the general gist of it for several months now, but in the past two weeks something clicked and he can tell time fluently. In addition to knowing the current time, he can calculate how many minutes to the next hour, etc. in his head. While very exciting, we're a bit perturbed- without secretly changing all the clocks in the house, we can no longer send him to bed early without his knowledge.

book review

"We Help Daddy," by Mini Stein, is a Little Golden book from 1962. While caring for Benjy and Sue, who are about 4 and almost-2 respectively, Daddy is able to get more done than Dan and I could in a month of Saturdays. He fixes the attic door, weeds and waters the garden, trims the hedge, bathes the dog, paints the kitchen fence, and hangs a painting in the living room. Calculating best-case-scenarios for the times these things would take, and assuming that Benjy and Sue are able to manage all of their own physical needs without interrupting Daddy (even though Sue is pre-verbal), I can envision how all this MIGHT get done. But then they decide to build a birdhouse, collect and chop firewood, wash and polish the car, replace a knob on Benjy's dresser, and pull a nail out of the bathroom door. Finally, the poor kids get to eat supper, after which "we are very, very sleepy" (no doubt!) and they go to bed.

Based on my frustration with our task-completion time, Dan is convinced that I must have had this book as a child. I don't have any memory of it, but Pa Ingalls was pretty darn productive too, so perhaps my expectations are too high. Or have they sunk too low? We've needed to replace the knobs on A's dresser for about a month now; our garden is somewhat less of a Darwinian experiment than in past years, but it still doesn't look like our neighbors'; we're lucky if we get the kids bathed before they start to stink, much less the dog; and we've never built anything without having to re-cut at least one piece of wood that didn't fit the first time. We suspect, however, that Benjy and Sue's Daddy spent the last three months drunk every weekend, and Mommy has threatened to leave him if he doesn't take the kids and get this list done so she can bake cookies (we see her cheerily rolling out dough through the window in one scene) and make dinner in peace.

trip to the museum

C's spending the week at Camp Oma and Opa, which (along with the heat wave) made the idea of a trip to the (air-conditioned) state museum somewhat more enticing because his need to discuss the attributes of every model of fire truck used since 1850 wouldn't be hampered by A's need to "walk by self, walk by self, walking, walking, walking." Perhaps, though, if he had been there, she would not have inexplicably screamed in terror when we walked in the door (maybe the mastadont skeleton got her down?) and remain frantic until I begrudging took her to the mind-numbingly-boring "Discovery Place," designed for little kids who have no toys at home, and read her a book. After that she perked up and spent aeons (or did it just feel that way?) dropping plastic fruit down plastic tubes until, not surprisingly, she got hungry.

The only place we're allowed to eat in the museum is in the cafe, which is on the fourth floor; while there presumably are staircases to reach it, I don't know where they are, so we were limited to escalators and elevators. I knew she hated elevators, so we took the escalator; or perhaps I should say escalatorS, because they are set up so each run stops midway between floors and you need to turn around to get the the next set, just as stairwells are often designed in public buildings. This meant that there were actually six escalators between us and the cafe, and by number two she was starting panic. When we finally reached our floor (after all of about 30 seconds), I caved into her demands and let her know that we would NOT go back down on the escalators, which she repeated the entire time she ate her snack. The carousel distracted her briefly- not that she would RIDE it of course, but she enjoyed watching it go around and around and around and around and why didn't I bring a book? and around and....

Finally she tired of the carousel, which meant, of course, we needed to return to the first floor. She liked the elevator about as much as the escalator. It must have been a horrid 20 seconds for her, because the whole REST of the time we were at the museum I heard nothing but "no more escalator. No more elevator. All done escalator elevator. Bye bye escalator elevator." This may have been annoying enough as mere background noise, but she generally demands confirmation following her every utterance so I needed to drone "that's right; no more elevators or escalators" continuously as well. Plus, in order to overcome the trauma of the experience, we had to go back to Discovery Place, and I had to hand her the orange to drop down the tube about 50 times, and occasionally vary my response to "that's right, the cabbage doesn't fit down the tube" when appropriate.

It was nearing naptime (well, not really, but I had to factor in the mile-long walk to the car since I'm too cheap to pay for parking, and the inevitability of being stuck behind a bus on the way home) so I said, "We need to leave in 10 minutes." She stops (holding asparagus and an apple), frowns, and says "Stay 15 minutes" before returning to her task. Luckily she can't tell time, because we were outta there in 5.

Our "parenting retreat" to Twin Trees went well; illnesses and fear of precipitation reduced our numbers, but we still had four families join us. And given how hard it was to get into the kitchen, especially after the roof started leaking, I think I'm glad we didn't have the eight that had planned to come! The kids ran wild inside on Saturday, but Sunday dawned beautifully- sunny, warm, no humidity- so they were able to get out before driving us insane. So maybe we'll do it next year- but it is soooo much work to go up there for just one day!!!

I recently discovered a local radio station with the tag line, "We play anything." I thought that this was a rather dubious distinction, but given the other options out there (106.5, which exclusively airs George Thoroughgood and the Marshall Tucker Band, and 99.5, which limits itself to "Benny and the Jets" and Matchbox 20), I kept listening. I immediately learned that they would, indeed, play anything; the song that endlessly repeats "Amadeus" was followed by the theme song to the TV show in which Tom Hanks and some other guy had to dress as women in order to keep their apartment (were sit-coms already DRAGging so hard by 1981 that they needed to invent a gimmick like that?), which segued into "Smokin' in the Boys' Room." This was followed by the president of Siena College, who enlightened listeners with a biography of the "Saint of the Day." I thought it was a funny way to advertise a school, but since obscure martyrs are much more interesting than the other stations' morning shows, I found myself tuning in more and more. (Beware sneaky Franciscan conversion techniques.) Other advertising was rare, and despite the hit-or-miss quality of the music, it was indeed MUSIC rather than babble (except of course for those pesky saints).

Last night, I mentioned the station to Dan, who'd also heard and been amused by their proud proclamation of unselectiveness, and he wondered if they were mostly-request and if they were run by Siena. I poo-pooed both these ideas; other than the informational interjections, they made no mention of a college affiliation, and they never had callers on the air to dedicate songs, which is fairly standard when requests are played. But it turns out that he was right, which explains the lack of advertising and the random play list. It does NOT explain why the DJs never acknowledge their connection to Siena, unlike WRPI which points out its affiliation every seven minutes; must be another subtle conversion/ marketing tactic. And the lack of on-air callers still seemed pretty strange, until I read a little more about it. Turns out they banned airing call-ins because they feared they were being used for gang communications. Why the thugs don't use cell phones like everyone else is beyond me, but all-righty.

Enjoying his moon pinata 

Oma and A decorating for C's birthday party

C's stellar cake thanks to Sarah

I made the Coop Scoop!

http://www.hwfc.com/CoopScoop/Jul06/staffprofile.html
(The print version has a picture, too.)

 

 

 

walking in the water, a new favorite activity 

wild strawberies 

Weekend adventures at Twin Trees 

July 4th- in a pinch, A can still nap in the sling, but she hangs out a lot more now

So a fluke of a late night, a traumatizing fireworks-watching experience, and mere luck led A to sleep something like 5 hours straight last night, giving Dan and I more deep sleep than we've experienced for month. And did my body take advantage of this rare experience by sinking into a much-needed oblivion, or dreaming of kittens and rainbows? Noooo. I had a dream about the guy on the left in this picture. Everyone gets two guesses of who he is; if you get it right, I'll make you a t-shirt.

 

A's crib mutterings at bedtime tonight

Feed da birds, tuppence tuppence tuppence a bag

eight nine ten eleven

Nana play toys. E-I-E-I-O.

No kick Mommy. Hurt Mommy.

Noisy roofers. Roofers go home. Roofers sleeping. Woofie sleeping. Daddy sleeping. Daddy sleeping right now.

--------------------

Daddy soooo wished he had been sleeping. Instead, he was cleaning out the mudroom so the contractors could work on it, now that they've FINALLY finished our roof. Meanwhile, as soon as A fell asleep, I opened up the bottom of the dishwasher and ran it to see if I could figure out why water was pouring into our basement. Luckily, I didn't have to spend too long lying on the tile floor with a flashlight to see that the leak is related to the float. Now we need to figure out whether we can fix it with a gasket of some kind or if it's going to be an even more painful replacement.

More evidence that A is a Day girl

Sign of the times (C's started making birthday presents for Sarah already)

Trying to make a Lego land rover for Tristan's birthday (since Lego doesn't bother :) 

C's wonderful wrapping paper for my birthday presents last week

In which we find it even more unlikely that C will ever fit in with the other Delmar kids-

and it's our fault.

He sings, "Gravity girl, gravity girl, living in a massive world" to the tune of "Particle Man" when Alyra plays the drop-stuff-and-hope-someone-picks-it-up game.

Dan's new camera is magic, because it can capture Sarah's eyes when they're OPEN. 

Now that the kids have a new table, maybe they'll stop fighting over the THREE chairs that were in the kitchen before. 

This is BEFORE she fell on her butt and wanted dry clothes- 

Memorial Day at Twin Trees 

I convinced Dan it was his turn to put A to bed, which meant that I had to go catch the garter snake poor C discovered on our porch. While I attempted to do so (and failed- I'm hoping it left on its own accord and is not lurking underneath something), I realized that I had just agreed to chase snakes in order to avoid putting my daughter to bed, and still felt I had the much better end of the deal. This is a sign that SOMETHING needs to change....

Memorial Day

When I told Cadao we were going to the parade, he said they'd learned about Memorial Day at school. "It celebrates veterinarians and people who help people and stuff like that."

Dan wanted me to stand next to him to hold the roof panel while he cut it. That lasted about 3 seconds, until the sparks started flying.