Still here...

Um, er. Yeah, we are still here. The summer continues to fly past and I think I finally figured out where the unaccounted for time went! I had been on top of our scheduled activities: park dates with friends on Monday and Tuesday, library on Wednesday, getting together with our adopted grandma on Thursday or Friday, CSA on Thursday, and sometime other things with friends late in the week. So I knew we were busy, but since most of our stuff is half days or less, I couldn't figure out why I never got around to blogging. However, I think I finally solved it! Both park days plus some of the Thursday and Friday things are up in Madison, which adds a half an hour of driving on each end. It doesn't seem like much when we are driving it, but it sure adds up.

We have started listening to books on CD in the car, which makes the drive more enjoyable for everyone! We are almost through The Birchbark House, which Bean has really enjoyed. She and I are all about the 19th century these days. We have been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books at bedtime all summer and are almost through with The Long Winter (the sixth book in the series). The Birchbark House is slightly earlier than the Little House books, but tells the story of Omakayas, an eight-year-old Ojibwe girl. Although we haven't gotten there yet, the story continues in The Game of Silence and The Porcupine Year and we plan to get those from the library once we finish the first book.

A box for her Jewels

When Kitty Daddy brought home the bat house kit for Bug, he also brought a kit to make a small treasure chest for Bean. Mama did the gluing and nailing, but Bean tackled the painting all by herself. She ended up painting each side a different color, so we needed pictures to show off everything, including Little Miss Ham's many moods:




I suspect that she is destined for The Theatre (said in a haughty British accent). She is definitely our little performer. She is always singing and yesterday, she danced the entire way to the grocery store and back.

We have decided that the box is to be a jewelry box and we are planning to take her dollar from Grandma to the dollar store after Farmers' Market tomorrow to see if we can buy some new jewelry. Once things are more put away, I have some fabric somewhere that would make a perfect jewelry box lining for it. You know, to protect her precious plastic jewelry. ;o)

Since the end of the month sneaked in amongst the moving chaos, I will slip in the August Spin My Spindle update:

Spin My Spindle August 2008
Activity:	Spinning
Fiber:	Targhee
Spindle:	Schacht
Amount:	18 grams

A pretty quiet month by recent standards, but it still represents a fair amount of spinning. The targhee singles are quite thin, so even a gram is a bit of spinning. I did a gram here and there over the first few days of moving, but before long, my arms were so tired from hauling that I put my spindle down.

The upside of the break was that I ended up doing a lot of reading about spinning instead. I am about halfway through Color in Spinning by Deb Menz (a local, no less!) and having wonderful fantasies about setting up a dye studio [Aside: Don't get excited...it is SO FAR down on my to do list, it may never see light of day!] and spent much of the driving time delivering loads between Fitchburg and Stoughton looking at colors in the landscape and thinking how I could translate that into handspun yarn. I also read through Color Works, also by Deb Menz and have put it on my wish list of books to own. It is shorter and more general than the spinning book, but a nice overview of colors in crafts and has some handy tools for describing color in the back. I have also been reading the Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning. I had this one out from the library shortly after buying my first spindle and couldn't make a dent in it. Now I am nearly halfway through and enjoying it immensely. Being a drop spindler, I feel I should confess that I have been skimming through the parts that are wheel-specific and more technical. If I ever decide to tackle a spinning wheel, I will definitely re-read this book!

Rats, rats, rats!

A few days ago, Bug was watching Ratatouille on DVD for the ten gazillionth time (Oh, do we *HEART* Pixar!!). When they got to the part where Remy is putting together the ratatouille for food critic Anton Ego, my attention is piqued. Hmmm, that stuff that Remy and Collette are slicing looks an awful lot like zucchini (we got that from our CSA!) and summer squash (we got that from Kitty Daddy's coworker's garden!!) and, ooooo, that looks tomatoish (we got that from our CSA!!). I dug around on the interwebs a bit to see what all goes in ratatouille, got some green peppers from Farmers' Market, dug out an onion and some fresh garlic from our CSA box and picked up an eggplant from (*gasp* the horrors) the grocery store and... Viola! (pronouced VYE-ola) Ratatouille for dinner! Considering that I combined, picking and choosing from, about three recipes, it turned out durned tasty. Bug was convinced that he wouldn't like it (he was quoting Linguini from the movie: "Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat-patootie, which does not sound delicious. "), so he was quite tickled to find it edible! All three kids managed pick out a couple of components that weren't completely pee-yuck in amongst all those veggies (tomatoes for Bean, zucchini and squash for Bug, some mushed up eggplant for Beeb). So an entirely successful dinner and a movie! Well, not on the same night, but still!

You gotta read this book!

I found this book at the library last week, and, while I usually reserve our reading adventures for the other blog, I HAD to share this one with my fibery friends! The book is The Surprise by Sylvia Van Ommen. It is beautifully illustrated and has sheep, fleece, spinning, knitting, and other good stuff! It doesn't have any actual text, so Bean (who has been a little jealous of Bug's fledgling reading skills) has been "reading" (describing the pictures of) this one to me every night.

In my last post, I completely forgot our other big Memorial Day event! On Friday night, we made our second annual trip to the World's Largest Brat Fest. We did our part in helping to set a new record of 191,712 brats consumed. Okay, technically brats, hot dogs, and Boca brats (you veggie-sauruses can breathe easy. It wasn't all animal parts). Bug and Kitty Daddy also took a ride on the huge ferris wheel. Dismally overpriced, but Bug thought it was like flying and thought it was very cool to be able to see practically the whole state of Wisconsin (well, technically just a chunk of the Madison area, but do you want to be the one to burst his bubble?).

Oh, and my grand trauma from the holiday weekend. I was on my way to a hang-out-in-the-backyard-with-[ADULT!!!!]-friends-and-cook-out and noticed that there weren't any cars parked in the lot by our neighborhood Caribou Coffee. While most businesses are closed for Memorial Day, it seemed a bit odd that a coffee shop or restaurant would be closed. So I swung through the parking lot out of curiosity and there was a sign proclaiming that it was "Permanently Closed." My 'Bou! Gone forever! I was just there knitting and sipping coffee a week ago on Mother's Day. Very sad day!

More Fall Fun!

Okay, first off, a confession: I am pathetic. On my laptop, I had a drive that I could pop my photo card into and download photos. Now, with the desktop, I have a little USB card reader. Unfortunately, I have to unplug the printer from the USB port to use the card reader, so that one hugetastic extra step (yes, that was said with eyes rolling) means I take forever to finally get photos downloaded and blogged about. So, this is a catch-up post...

Thursday

On Thursday morning, the kids and I went apple picking at Eplegaarden, which is just south of us. We picked Haralson, Cortland, Jonnee, and Redmax apples. A total of 14 pounds...the orchard has a $10 minimum for self-pick and at $0.75 per pound, that is around 13 pounds. While I completely understand it from a business point of view, the minimum is kind of a pain from a mom-of-apple-pickers-with-short-attention-spans point of view.

After apple picking, we posed for "How Tall This Fall" pictures, since this would be a fun annual activity.

Since then, we have been enjoying raw apples for snacks as well as an apple crisp on Saturday and an apple pie on Sunday. I was planning on making a bunch of applesauce to freeze, but I'm not sure we have enough apples left! We may need to make a second trip this fall!

Also on Thursday, we went to Farmer's Market and bought the fixin's for this:

That's fresh mozzarella from Farmer Johns' (where we also get our squeaky curd for snacking) and fresh tomatoes and basil from other vendors. Add a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar and voila! Of course, Thursday night supper ended up being an exercise in contrasts. We had the classy, wholesome tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad with chili mac (macaroni, Hormel's chili and Velveeta...the ultimate in class and nutrition).

Friday

On Friday, Mama had a hard time waking up, and discovered that while she was dozing, Bug got hold of the digital camera and took a whole bunch of picture. They are actually fairly entertaining to see what captures his attention, but I thought this was the coolest of the bunch:

I have no clue what it is. It shall remain one of the great mysteries.

We did our regular library run on Friday afternoon, so stacks and stacks of more books to read! One group of books of note that we have discovered are a couple of easy reader non-fiction: Pebble Books and Pebble Plus Books. We discovered a whole slew of Pebble Plus animal books on the shelves at the branch library about bugs and ocean animals and have been putting more on hold since then. They are short (approximately 100 words) and have great pictures, so we can read a whole stack in one sitting and after we have read them several times, Bug can "read" them to himself by looking at the pictures and remembering the text. Right now, we have a bunch of books out (and on hold) about seasons, fall activities, and getting ready for winter. They have a whole bunch of beginning science, social studies, health, and animal books. They should keep us entertained for a while!

Saturday

Saturday, the kids decided that they need to express their creative side. Bug specifically requested cutting and gluing, so we got out some construction paper, scissors and glue. Bug made a trio of monsters:

And Bean went a bit more free-form:

We ended our Saturday cheering on the Hawkeyes, who were here playing in Wisconsin. It was on network TV, so we actually got to see the game. BB wasn't given a choice of who to cheer for. With Kitty Daddy's coworkers trying to dress him in Badger red, we had to counteract!

The first half was as good as a game could be with no noticeable offense on either team, but we ended up losing. *sigh*

Going Batty

Since Bug had such a fabulous time watching the bats at the Oregon zoo during our vacation, we got a bunch of bat books from the library after we got home. I am so impressed with how many cute bat books we found, so I am sharing some of our favorites today.

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon is a cute fiction book about a baby bat that gets separated from her mama and gets raised by a mama bird. The illustrations are just adorable!



Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies is definitely our favorite. It is about all the bats meeting at the beach on a perfect moonlit night and what they do (bug-mallow roast is one thing). We have read this one just about every night since we checked it out!



Little Lost Bat by Sandra Markle and Alan Marks is about a little Mexican free-tailed bat that loses its mother and a mama bat that loses her baby. The mama bat adopts the little orphan. Although this book is fiction, the notes at the end of the book suggest that it may be an explanation of a significant number of Mexican free-tailed bat mama-baby pairs found by researchers that don't share common DNA.



Bats by Tony Hutson is a longer, non-fiction book all about bats. We have started a habit of having a non-fiction "chapter book" that we read a chapter before bed. The more memorable ones include a biography of Jackie Robinson, a book about weather, a book about animal classification. Since we finished Bats, we have been working on Built to Last, a book about big, cool engineering projects in the U.S.



Shadows of Night: The Hidden World of the Little Brown Bat by Barbara Bash. This book is also non-fiction, but reads more like a story, going through a year in the life of the Little Brown Bat.



Other than going crazy at the library, we have been making regular trips to close park, "Keys" park, the coffee shop, the grocery store, and all our other favorite haunts.

I haven't been blogging very regularly and have gotten behind in my blog reading again...my laptop has been acting flaky at times, which with the time we spend outside, can really cut down on computer time! I'll work on getting caught up again...

We all hab codes!

Next time I complain that we don't do enough together as a family, please slap me. Kitty Daddy thoughtfully brought home a lovely little cold bug from a coworker and it didn't leave anyone out. Kitty Daddy stayed home and slept yesterday and the kids and I have been sniffling and sneezing and carrying on as well. While colds always make me crabby, right now my only line of defense is Tylenol and hot water with lemon and honey. Everybody else gets the good drugs. Pbbbllltttt!

Last night, we rented the new James Bond movie Casino Royale. Since I have never been a big fan of change, I was appropriately skeptical of Daniel Craig being the new James Bond. However, by the end, Bean had learned the word "hottie," so I think we will be okay. Eva Green played Vesper Lynd, the Bond Babe for this movie. As the plot was unfolding, Bug kept asking what the "mommy" was doing and I explained what I could (at an age appropriate level). At one point, he turns to me and announces, "I think you're a better mommy than her." Dude, I scored higher than a Bond Babe.

My Paton's SWS is turning into a newborn-sized soaker. I have gotten as far as the split for legs and decided that I need to get another skein so I can get the back to match the front and the leg cuffs to match each other. I absolutely adore the subtle color changes and LOVE the beautiful shades and would probably go nuts if things weren't symmetric. However, the stripe sequence is so long that the 80g skein only has two repeats and I have made it completely through one repeat so far, so I need another skein to start the back at the same place in the repeat. I will have plenty of yarn for a second soaker (and maybe a third).

Our seeds are finally sprouting. I wasn't sure if they would ever come out since it turned to cold and rainy immediately after we planted them. I will try and get some pictures this afternoon and post all the gardening photos tomorrow.

A poem to share

The kids and I have been reading Shel Silverstein poems. I ran across "The Giving Tree" several weeks ago at the library. We have had a couple of kid's poetry collections (Flamingos on the Roof and The Yellow Elephant) and Bug loved both. In fact, we read The Yellow Elephant at least twice a day for most of the time it was checked out! So, I looked at our library branch for some of Shel's poetry collections. We found Falling Up and A Light in the Attic checked in and took both home. We have already read all the way through A Light in the Attic and are about halfway through Falling Up. We checked out Where the Sidewalk Ends today (which I had read several times as a kid). So we have poems to hold us for a while!

Anyway, in the process of reading so far, I found a poem that I really like. Not only is it pretty good advice, it also sums up my whole parenting philosophy pretty well and explains how I found "Attachment Parenting" when Bug was tiny. So, without further ado...

The Voice

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel that this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you--just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

-- From Falling Up: Poems and
Drawings by Shel Silverstein

Daddy's little metal-head

Yes, Bug is clearly becoming Daddy's little metal head. Based on this picture from when he was seven months old, we should have know it would be inevitable!

Yes, a seven-month old with his very own Iron Maiden onesie. Kitty Daddy had just found an Iron Maiden t-shirt online, had ordered it, received it, and was VERY proud of it. Since Kitty Daddy had this album on CD (which had the same picture as his shirt), I found some ink-jet iron-on transfers, scanned in the album cover and made Bug a matching shirt.

A few intervening facts that will become clear shortly: (1) Somewhere along the line, Kitty Daddy found and purchased Iron Maiden/Vision of the Beast: The Complete Video History on DVD; (2) Eddie is the mascot of Iron Maiden; and (3) When Kitty Daddy has some cleaning to do, he will occasionally put in his Iron Maiden DVD and crank the volume. Bug, naturally, has been around when this has happened.

Anyway, fast-forward to now. The other day, Bug and Bean were digging through our DVD and video collection and came across Daddy's Iron Maiden DVD. He brought it over to me and described how he and Daddy have watched the "Sketelon Music" together (the "sketelon" being, of course, Eddie, who is, technically, a zombie. Whatever.) and that he wanted to watch it. So we put it in (probably not as loudly as Daddy, though) and played some. Bug did some very serious jamming out and dancing, and, at one point stopped, walked over to me and announced in completely earnest tones: "Mommy, this is GREAT music!"

Daddy is so proud!

What we're reading

Since the weather has gotten colder again, we have been enjoying cuddling up with blankies and books. A few of our favorites right now incude...

The Kipper books by Mick Inkpen. Not only do we enjoy reading about Kipper's adventures, we have been having Kipper and his best friend Tiger joining us for many of our daily activities. Love that three-year-old imagination!!



The Cleo books by Caroline Mockford and Stella Blackstone. Cleo is a cute little orange kitty and we enjoy the bright, colorful pictures in these books. Bug and Cleo are busy playing and talking as I write this.



We have also been hooked on "If you give..." books by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond. We have If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, If You Give A Moose A Muffin, and If You Give A Pig A Pancake out from the library right now.



Also anything by Todd Parr, though we have a couple of Otto books out from the library that have been a huge hit. We are also huge Dr. Seuss fans, but then again, who isn't??

Wausau and Mommit

Last week at the library, after picking out several DVDs for the kids (Thomas, Blue's Clues, etc.), a DVD of the three original Wallace and Gromit animated shorts caught my eye. I loved these way before Nick Park became a household name with Chicken Run. So I grabbed them and figured I could sneak them in during a nap or something, so I would have to interrupt their video time. Last night, Bug and Daddy ran a couple of errands, so I popped it in and Bean was just transfixed. She sat next to me on the sofa and watched all three half-hour films. Bug came in at the end and didn't seem too interested, but after we came home from the park, he begged for Wausau and Mommit. Unlike the kid-vids, the kids actually sit still and watch Wallace and Gromit. I think we are on our third time through right now! Tomorrow is library day, but we may need to renew this one!

Jaws!

Last night Kitty Daddy was channel surfing and ran across the original Jaws movie. It was close to the end, where the boat is sinking and the guy is shooting at the great white shark. When he finally hits the shark (side note: I did not know that great white sharks had the same tendency to explode on impact as a Pinto!) Bug said, "Oh no! The crocodilla broken!" We reassured him that (1) that crocodilla is, in fact, a shark, (2) the shark is actually a pretend shark, and (3) this is a movie, so it is all silly and pretend.

Oh, and was Richard Dreyfuss about 12 when this flick was shot??? Okay, maybe 17 to account for the unfortunate mid-70's facial hair situation?

Schoolhouse Rock!

Okay, so everyone my age grew up with Saturday morning 'toons and Schoolhouse Rock. A while ago, Kitty Daddy found a DVD of them and it has turned into one of Bug's favorite videos. I have most of them memorized now. Seriously...I can sing almost any of them on demand!

Interestingly enough, some of my strongest Schoolhouse Rock associations are more recent. One (filed under random things that just seem to permanently lodge in your brain for no real reason) is that a very dear friend of mine and her husband called their first child "Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla" before birth. In retrospect, the baby probably should have been "Rafaella Gabriella Sarsaparilla," and her little brother could have been "Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla." But who knew??

Another involves a friend from my Cottey College days. I was one of her bridesmaids when she got married in 1994 and stayed at her apartment while I was in town. On the morning of the wedding, the two of us were curled up on her sofa waking up and getting ready to start the day. We had turned on the TV and ran into Schoolhouse Rock. Again, I'm not sure why that moment is so firmly lodged in my brain either!

Books, books, books

What we are reading (in addition to a whole bunch of "quick reads" in Bug and Bean's book collection):

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling) - When book six came out last July, I decided that I wanted to reread all five of the previous books before reading book six. Since Bug enjoys listening to stories so much, I started at the beginning reading them aloud. We can read a couple of chapters a week when we are reading regularly, but there are times when Bug doesn't want to listen to a book without pictures and we also took a looooong hiatus while I finished up my dissertation. We are reading (more or less) regularly again now and are working our way through book four.

The Search for Modern China (Jonathan D. Spence) - When I was studying Chinese, I checked this book out from the library on the recommendation of a classmate taking a Chinese history class. It is extremely interesting and well-written, but I can only take history in small doses, so I wasn't moving fast enough for the library! I bought a copy not long after that, but with kids and graduate school and all the rest of life, it got put on a book shelf. I found it a couple of weeks ago, going through books in the shed and decided it was time to read it all. I'm on Chapter Two...the Manchus are quelling the last of the Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty is on its way in. It's still going slow, but that's okay. I don't have a deadline!

Semi-permanent members of my reading pile include:

• Raising Your Spirited Child (Mary Sheedy Kurcinka) - One word: Bug
  
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish) - Respectful family communication
  
• The Discipline Book (William and Martha Sears) - can't go wrong with the Sears
  
• The Family Nutrition Book (William and Martha Sears)
  

I go back and read bits and pieces of these fairly regularly...

Library Day

We had a short trip to the branch library this morning. We had some holds that were ready to pick up and two DVD that were due tomorrow after being renewed for a second week. We have been borrowing library DVD's from the "Real Wheels" series. They are live-action videos for kids that Bug ADORES! Kitty Daddy picked up a copy of "There Goes a Truck" on VHS from a sale bin while we were in Iowa City for my thesis defense. It's a thirty-minute video and we sometimes watch it three or four times a day!

The Real Wheels DVD's each have three half-hour "There Goes..." shows. The ones I have found are:

1. High Speed Adventures (A Race Care, A Spaceship, A Motorcycle)
2. Land, Air, and Sea Adventures (A Boat, A Helicopter, The Mail)
   
3. Rescue Adventures (A Rescue Hero, A Police Car, A Rescue Vehicle)
   
4. Travel Adventures (A Plane, A Train, A Bus)
   
5. Mega Truck Adventures (A Bulldozer, A Monster Truck, A Tank)
   
6. Tractor Adventures (A Tractor, A Dump Truck, A Farm Truck)
   
7. Truck Adventures (A Truck, A Fire Truck, A Garbage Truck)

We just returned Rescue Adventures and Travel Adventures and today we checked out Tractor Adventures and High Speed Adventures. They are very informative (I'm learning things I didn't know!), yet silly and fun at the same time. Another thing I like is that most of them say "If you want to learn more about ___ go visit your local library for lots of good books."

Bug also had fun playing with the trains at the library, but our trip was cut short by a Bean tantrum. Mean Mommy wouldn't let her play with the library's computers, so she demonstrated her new favorite skill: going limp, dropping to the floor, and screaming. She's only 19 months, but she's practicing hard and I have no doubt she will be a great talent by the time her second birthday rolls around!