Sunshine and Lollipops Camping
We went camping at our property with some friends this weekend. Some other friends came by on Saturday just to visit. We even had a visit from the mayor of the town. I friended the mayor on Facebook as someone I knew from way back in my days in the navy. It blows me away that he’s actually the mayor of a town…even a tiny town far beyond Bum Fuck, Egypt.
It was one of our first hot sunny days of the year so we spent a much of Saturday at the sand bar by the river watching the kids cake sand all over their sand monster selves. That night we were serenaded with illegal fireworks, which reminded Kurt and I of our old house in the hood. The sounds bounced and echoed off the mountains.
Lukas slept through all the noise but woke up cold in the wee hours of the morning. Adding blankets to him wasn’t working because he would just kick them up and they would wind up around his neck. He cried for an hour before Kurt decided he should just sleep with us. Then Lukas cried for about another hour before I took him and he instantly quieted down and fell asleep. Then I just couldn’t sleep. I had to pee, and Lukas was sound asleep. On. My. Arm. Damn kids. I pretty much just watched him sleep with his mouth open and head cocked to one side the rest of the night. How do babies not wake up with stiff necks?
We woke up to a rainy gloomy morning. I couldn’t tell when I friends woke up but by eight I knew I had heard voices from their pop-up camper so I went over and invited them into our mini cabin (it’s a shed on stilts). We shared breakfast foods and waited for the rain to let up.
When it was merely a grey day we all went outside so the kids could unleash their energy. We went for a walk while Kurt and Sophia stayed back to chain the ginormous picnic table the engineer over engineered to a concrete plug in the ground. I’m going to have to make the picnic table a whole other post, seriously.
Lunchtime arrived and so did another family of friends. They brought the rain back with them. We were overjoyed. Really. After lunch, which for Sophia consisted of a whole bag of tortilla chips, we went to the beach. At the end of the trail that leads to the river sand bar we call the beach the grey sky ended. No discernible wind that blew the clouds away, they were just gone. In place of the grey was sunshine and lollipops. Ok maybe it was chocolate cake sand castles.
Sophia actually playing with another child. I heard that she had started interacting with children at preschool, but this is one of the first times I actually witnessed interaction. They’re making “chocolate cake”. Sophia is obsessed with chocolate cake and birthdays. She kept singing happy birthday to me and Lukas.
The kids were watching Kurt turn their “chocolate cake” over and make it a sand castle. Shortly after the photos were taken Sophia decided to make sand angels and her partner in crime there followed her lead.
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The Evolution of Chicken
We have had a very hard time getting Sophia to eat. From the very beginning, solid food has been a struggle. For the longest time all she would eat was rice, breads, cheeses, oatmeal, apples, bananas, sweet potato prepared a very specific way, French fries and bacon. There was a time in which I could sneak grated veggies into her breads. Sadly, that time has passed.
Because bacon was the only meat she would eat and not a terribly healthy one at that, I didn’t mind when Kurt introduced her to chicken nuggets. I never thought I would view chicken nuggets as a victory. Never. After a while Sophia branched out and would eat chicken at home when I breaded it with Panko. That was a much greater victory for me since I don’t fry the chicken. Eventually Sophia progressed to eating chicken without a crunchy cover and then… one day…
I went to Costco and bought one of their yummy Kirkland Signature foods. I warmed it up and set it at the table. Kurt announced to Sophia that it was chicken. It wasn’t. Not even close. It was smoked pulled pork, and Sophia likes it A LOT. Of course now we call all meat chicken just to increase the odds of it’s edibility and when Kurt wants to know what’s for dinner I have to specify the type of chicken that I’m serving. It’s pork chicken.
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Garden Gnome
A full-fledged garden, that’s what I wanted for this year. There has been so much to get done with the new house that the garden isn’t at the top of the list yet. I’ll definitely have one next year though. This year I’ll have to settle for an herb garden and hope that I can at least get a greenhouse for the herbs to live in through the winter. I’ll also be reading up on how to keep plant things alive. I’m not too worried about the herbs since most of those, like cilantro and the minty things, grow like weeds.
I am worried about this little guy though…
He arrived in a brown paper bag carried by my ginning three year old, “look I made!” I couldn’t even tell what the hell kind of plant it was. Great. I checked Sophia’s backpack hoping for some clues as to what kind of plant I’m going to have to apologize profusely for killing in the next few days. Nothing. How the hell do I not kill this when it’s not even labeled?
When I finally felt brave enough to take it out of the bag…seriously I handle plants like they’re even more fragile than the most thin shelled egg because I’ve found that I’m about that deadly to them. Written on the side of the cup was the plant type. Ahh it’s a green bean plant. I posted quick plea for instruction on Facebook to my more plant friendly friends. I was informed that it could be a bush like green bean of which I had no idea existed or a vine type. I thought all green beans were vine like. *shrug* I found that either way I could just put it in an eight to ten inch pot and if it got all vine-y on me I could put a stick in there for green bean guidance. Thank you Rebecca.
I’m so happy that the green bean plant has made it a whole month in my care that I’m now really testing the limits. I bought a Meyers lemon tree. Yep, I’m going to try and grow citrus in Washington State. The state that routinely evades sunny summer weather until after July 5th, yep, that state. Citrus.
Thankfully, I have a good luck gnome. It’s a four handed garden gnome. Never heard of those? Check it out, I have a picture…
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Baby Squeezins: Diaper of the Month
I’m not sure what the infant body does with food, but it doesn’t look like it takes the time to do much. The contents of this diaper could really be scooped right back into the random vegetable baby food jar and I doubt anyone could tell the difference. The color and even the smell… is just as brilliant and stinky on the way out. Taken on the 6th of June with my Nikon D60 for your high-resolution pleasure, I now present to you the vegetable goop Baby Squeezins, the Diaper of the Month.
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55 Flash non-Fiction Friday: King’s Power
We watched The King’s Speech a few nights ago. A fantastic movie. I’m stuck on a fact of history. The Anglican Church is headed by the king, which was created by Henry VIII in part because the Catholic Church would not grant him a divorce. Still, the king cannot marry a divorced woman. Very interesting.
Flash Fiction Friday is hosted by g-man.
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Summer Boredom Busters
In the last week of school, Sophia was sent home with a packet of papers. Amongst the papers were some tips from the speech therapist to keep Sophia talking and help with pronunciation, including a list of books. I have half the list on hold at the library right now. Another part of the packet was her progress report and information for the kids moving on to kindergarten.
The third part is something that made me happy. It was a thick bunch of papers stapled together. On the front was a picture of a bunny with a pail, shovel and sunglasses. Under the bunny read, “Summer Time Fun”. Inside the packet were lists of story times from the library, a few national reading incentive programs, a bucket list of summer activities, tips for gardening with your child, museums that are free on Thursdays, parks and trails near us, a sheet to make our own bucket list, and my absolute favorite part…weekly themed activities.
For the first week of July, the theme is of course red, white and blue. I started yesterday. I don’t care that it’s still June. It was a crappy day and I’m a rebel, so I started with star patterns.
Divide a piece of white paper into rows. Using red and blue star stickers, start patterns at the beginning of the rows, such as red-blue, red-blue, or red-blue-blue, red-blue-blue. Invite your child to continue the star sticker patterns, giving him help as needed.
Sophia loves stickers. I only started one pattern at the top of my lined paper before Sophia started getting upset because she wanted to do it, so I let her have at it. She didn’t want to use my paper because I had already put stickers on it, so she grabbed her own paper that she had previously used with other stickers. Sort of defeats the purpose, but whatever. I just want to kill time.
She starts out peeling and putting the stars on the paper one at a time, but then the child who, for months, fed herself rice one grain at a time found that if you peel the corner off from the whole sheet of stickers all the stars come off all at once and the whole thing is sticky. The sticker fun ended much too quickly.
Other activities for Red, White, and Blue week are:
- Have a picnic with red, white, and blue plates, napkins, and foods.
- Put random red and blue dots on a paper and have the child connect the red dots with red markers or crayons and the blue dots with blue ones.
- Invite the child’s friends over to decorate their riding toys with red, white, and blue streamers and crepe-paper and have a parade.
- Cut up red, white, and blue pictures from magazines and make a collage.
The second week of July is supposed to be a bunch of activities with a fruit theme, but I may switch things around because there are some themed things in the following summer weeks that we won’t be able to do while up in Alaska.
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Lukas’ six month baby wellness checkup
It’s four days until Lukas will be seven months old, so I should probably get to writing about how his six month baby wellness check (6/2/2011) went. The nurse asked a bunch of developmental questions to make sure some milestones are being met. I believe we answered yes to everything or nearly everything. He is manipulating objects with his hands. He can transfer things from one hand to the other. He certainly recognizes if someone is a stranger. He’s not as testy about it as Sophia was. Lukas will allow people to hold him. He usually only becomes upset if I leave while an unfamiliar person is holding him.
The neighbor at our old house still watches the kids for me one day a week. I visit with her for an hour and then she watches the kids for about an hour while I go grocery shopping. She has watched Lukas since he was three months old and he cries the entire time I’m gone. When I come back and she hands him to me…it instantly stops. At first she would say that he must have a sour tummy or something, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Sophia was the same way only worse. Sophia wouldn’t let people hold her and would sometimes even cry if they just leaned in to talk to her.
One of the other things the nurse asked was if Lukas puts his weight on his feet. He does, but only for a second or two. That’s probably normal and I’m not at all concerned, but that was something that Sophia was much more advanced at. She started putting weight on her feet at about two months. I have pictures of it. By four months, I just had to hold her torso and she would keep her weight on her feet for a couple minutes.
Lukas is a more advanced sitter than Sophia was and he has never minded having a little tummy time. He doesn’t just tolerate it. He’ll actually amuse himself for a while with various objects and he uses his arms to push himself up into a half pushup. The beast of a boy weighed in at seventeen pounds and eleven ounces. His length was twenty-eight inches and his head circumference was seventeen inches. He’s the same length as Sophia but almost a full two pounds heavier.
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Preschool Drama Award
I don’t know when it was exactly that my cellphone crapped out on me. I never use the damn thing except as an alarm clock, so I didn’t get a call from Sophia’s school to come and pick her up on Wednesday. Her teacher had brought her in to the nurse’s office that morning concerned about Sophia’s cough. They also called our house, but I didn’t get home until the time that preschool lets out.
Thursday, the last day of school, I called her teacher in the morning before the bus even picked Sophia up. I didn’t want her to think that I’d send Sophia to school if she were really sick. I told her that we didn’t hear any coughing all night and none in the morning, then asked her if Sophia had just been asked to do something she didn’t want to do when the coughing started. The teacher laughed. Yep, that’s what I thought. After picking at a scab on her forehead for about three months, Sophia moved onto a new drama.
Picture taken on 2/2/2011. We don't know how the wound originated.
Picture taken on 3/5/2011. I had tried to get her to stop scratching by covering it with a band-aid. Turns out she has my sensitive skin and is either allergic to the glue or latex, so it was made worse. I just can't win.
Picture taken on 4/15/2011. I took this picture so Kurt could see her in ponytails. She always takes out whatever they put in as soon as she gets home.
She was half laughing, but that was fading fast. She was really wanting the ponytails out. "No ponies! No!"
You see, I told you.
Her latest pity-ploy is to cough until her face turns red and almost to the point of puking. She sheds huge crocodile tears, coughing with her mouth in an oval shape and her tongue out as if she’s about to puke, dramatically sweeps her hair out of her mouth, coughing, half-puking, and then crying, “I don’t want to…”, and more coughing. The first time she did it I was almost convinced that she was coking, except that she could still form words and do so clearly. Sophia, I love you, but you’re not a fucking princess. If you need to cry go to your room. I don’t want to hear it. (I don’t actually tell her the “fucking princess” part, but I do send her to her room.)
As I described for Sophia’s teacher what the coughing probably looked like she laughed even more, “Oh yes, we’ve seen that.” Oh good. It isn’t just reserved for me. I really don’t know how those teachers and therapists deal survive in a room full of children with intense personalities. They’re truly saints. The teacher said they might have been a little over concerned because there was an unconfirmed case of whooping cough in class and one kid that had Pneumonia.
On Monday I received our second and final progress report for the year…
“Sophia has been making steady progress toward reaching her objectives this trimester. She is following two-step directions now with very little difficulty. Sophia continues to join in all activities but clearly enjoys art projects the most. She is beginning to speak to us in full sentences, although, some days she chooses not to talk much at all. ; Snack time is still a challenging time and so far she had not chosen to eat; however, she remains at the snack table with the other students until snack time is over. Sophia has a couple of friends that she enjoys playing with and does some very nice sharing with them. She is continuing to grow and hopefully you will have a wonderful summer with her.”
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Animated Chatty Baby
Lukas is very talkative. He’s also constantly moving. Even while I was pregnant, the boy wasn’t lulled by movement as I’ve heard is the case for most babies. He moved during the day, at night, it didn’t matter if I was walking, trying to sleep, or just sitting. That boy was moving.
Last month (5/23/11) after giving him a bath, he was really chatting up a storm. I believe he received Kurt’s lecturing gene. I pulled out the camera and snapped two pictures back-to-back, as quick as my camera would shoot.
