Park Morning

Hey, it's time for my annual blog post!

I just made a new schedule for myself now that Catherine is sort of, kind of, once in awhile, sleeping or playing long enough for me to accomplish something and the new schedule includes blogging a bit.

We've been enjoying the mild spring days (the few we've had in between the rainy days).  One of the best things about home educating is getting to the park in the morning when it's relatively empty and the air is cooler.  The kids are really into climbing lately.  The top picture here is Gregory (3.5) at the top of a complicated, twisty ladder.  The other had been scared of it for awhile and one day he called me over and said, "I just climbed that."  I didn't believe him until he did it again.  Within five minutes the three middle kids were chasing each other up it repeatedly.

Catherine Rose is almost eight months.  We are still working our way through a list of potential nicknames for her but "Rosie" is the current favorite.  She is a maniac.  Constantly on the move and seldom sleeping.  She's pretty cheerful but I spend a lot of time chasing her around and picking "choking hazards" and making sure she is not about to fall on something sharp.  Our house currently has no carpeting and she's developing a thick skull.  She is happiest when standing but, as you can see, the little boys are always very nervous about her falling--even though this playground turf is much softer than our wood floors.

William is 5.5 and is really struggling to find his place.  He continues to swing between extreme sweetness and extreme storminess.  He can play equally happily with his younger or older brother, playing elaborate imaginative games with Gregory and building with physics sets with Joseph.  He has energy to spare and loves to race around the park on his little bike.

Margaret is 7.5 and really determined to master all the physically demanding parts of the park this summer.  She's been working on various sections of the climbing wall.

And teaching Rosie to do the same . . .

 
And she has now officially conquered the lower set of rings.  Eric and I marvel at this since neither of us could do this as kids.  She's working now on a much higher set.  I've been really pleased to see her patient determination with these since that is not generally characteristic of her personality.

A few days after the rings she made it to the top of the climbing wall.

How does Joseph keep busy at the park?  Sometimes by making up imaginative games, often by bird watching.  He is an avid birder and recently began a nature journal.  His first entry was a starling and he's looking forward to cataloging our entire park and journaling on our trips this summer as well.

Tea Party

Margaret found an old book of mine recently all about Anne of Green Gables.  It's a sweet book full of "behind the scenes" information about what daily life would have been like on Prince Edward Island in the late 19th century.  Included is an extensive chapter on Tea and, especially, more formal tea parties such as Anne would have delighted in.

Margaret became rather obsessed with the idea of planning a tea party of her own to celebrate her birthday.  We had a great time putting it together.  Margaret came up with the guest list on her own including all the women she knew within a two-hour drive between the ages of four and sixty.  There were twelve of us in all and with some careful furniture rearrangement and some fabric repurposing we were able to set up a few lovely little sitting places.

I, of course, failed to take a single picture but Robyn came to the rescue once again with a few lovely shots.



The menu included tea, of course.  We also served chicken salad sandwiches cut into triangles and cream cheese sandwiches in the shape of hearts.  Margaret seriously impressed me by using a cookie cutter to cut a dozen heart shapes out of whole sandwiches (the boys ate the leftover edges, don't worry).  Then we had strawberries and cream and plain scones with jam, marmalade, and lemon curd on the side.  I won't claim to be an expert on authentic British tea customs but it was a delicious menu.  And a big shout-out to Trader Joe's flowers.  We got three five-dollar bouquets of chrysanthemums (because that's the flower Anne spelled to beat Gilbert Blythe in the spelling bee, of course) and filled nine vases with them for the party.  Ten days later, more than half the flowers still look beautiful.

Robyn asked what she could bring and, while I can hold my own in the scone department, I knew that Robyn would come up with a dessert far better than anything I could muster.  And she did not fail to deliver.


Margaret (and Joseph) helped Robyn set up pink frosted vanilla cupcakes with handmade chocolate butterflies and fun butterfly cupcake wrappers.  We distributed them around the room and they were such a nice decoration until I ordered everyone to eat them and I was glad they tasted as good as they looked.  Margaret has crowned Robyn the Cupcake Queen.  And every day she is careful to wear the cupcake charm necklace Robyn gave her for a gift.

And, happily for the little girls, the cupcake wrappers make fantastic crowns.


It was a lovely afternoon with a lovely young lady and it left me wishing for more excuses to put together lovely little parties for friends.

She's Five!

And she's not even my oldest. I remember being five quite well and the memories are mostly pretty happy. Such a fun age and Margaret is already milking it for all it's worth.

The day was slightly less than it might have been because we were all in various stages of a cold that week. That day in particular my cold was exacerbated by Gregory's having been up hourly the night before. I did manage to drag myself out of bed to make Margaret's requested birthday breakfast: coffee cake. It's pretty much everyone's favorite breakfast so it wasn't too much of a sacrifice. Though after she insisted on a traditional birthday cake for dessert that night I've decided that we are having a One Cake Per Birthday rule going forward.

Then we were supposed to have lunch with "G.I. Grandpa" (my dad) and family on their return trip to Colorado but since we'd had a long visit with them the week before, my dad opted to just swing by and drop off presents rather than subject everyone to plague while on a road trip.

The highlight of Margaret's actual birthday was, I think, her violin lesson. She's been asking to start learning for awhile and Eric promised that she could start when she turned five. She was ecstatic and has been very enthusiastic about practice. In this picture she is also wearing one of her favorite birthday presents. Grandma Marga (Eric's mom) had this chicken apron made just for Margaret. It's practical and whimsical and cute and very well-made. And the thoughtful woman who created it basted the finished hem up four inches to leave plenty of room for growth.

The day ended with Margaret's favorite dinner which is "rice and beans." Fancy, huh? What she means, specifically, is the rice and beans that come from a particular Peruvian chicken place in the neighborhood. So, Margaret gets her rice and beans, the rest of us get awesome chicken, and I get out of cooking on a day when I'm sick and already making two cakes. Everybody wins. The cake was chocolate with chocolate frosting with vanilla ice cream on the side. Margaret is all about the basics.

And shortly after this picture was taken (imagine me shouting "don't set your hair on fire!") Margaret sat down on the couch and promptly fell asleep. It's exhausting being five.

On her way to a big girl bike

We bought Margaret a little bike last summer. She had been begging for one for ages and when we finally decided to get one, the local big box store was sold out in her size. The local hardware store only had a red bike with a "flame" seat. I don't think it's a style typically marketed for girls, but she's never complained. She had fun tooling around with the training wheels for the last year but we decided it was time for her to really learn to ride.

It's kind of a trend now to teach kids to learn to ride bikes with "balance bikes." These are bikes with no pedals and no training wheels and they are based on the theory that riding a bike is all about the balance--pedals just confuse things. This idea appealed to our low-tech/lazy parents ethos but we were not about to drop $100 on a special balance bike when we had a perfectly ugly bike and a perfectly good hack saw already.

After a few minutes of hard work, Margaret was taking her new balance bike (or "coaster bike" as she calls it) out for a spin.

Almost immediately she had her first fall

but she climbed back on like a trooper.

And while I, personally, would have initiated a wardrobe change before riding a bike, Margaret is of the opinion that a long, twirly, pink dress is appropriate in any setting.

These pictures are actually about two months old now as anyone who has seen or heard about our patio recently can testify. On a recent outing to the park Margaret was zipping along on her balance bike a truly alarming speed and I think it might be time to upgrade to the real thing. And get her a helmet.

Sunday in the park, with garden

Sunday afternoons are so lovely. It's especially wonderful when we get up and out early enough to get to Mass at 8:30 so that we're home early with the whole day ahead of us. But what to do with that whole day? Typically we either take the train into Manhattan and wander around or go for a drive. Margaret was strongly lobbying for the latter this past Sunday. Eric pulled up a map and made us a list of parks we'd never been to while I put together a picnic dinner.

Making dinner has been a blast lately. Our garden is doing really well. All the lettuce sprouted but between our late start (we could have planted in mid-March) and slugs it was awhile before we got our first harvest. The slugs had us stumped for awhile: they'd emerge each evening just after dark and munch our young leaves down to nothing. After a bit of research we decided that hand-harvesting was the best bet. We--and by "we" I mean Eric unless the kids are up late--keep a slug stick stuck in one corner of our planter box. Each evening we head out, use the stick to pull off any slugs we find and drop them in a cup of salt water. I love animals but I love lettuce more.

Once we got on top of the slugs the lettuce went crazy. We've made lots and lots of salads and we just pulled out some bolted plants and started a second planting. We'll see how that goes. One of the lettuce varieties didn't do as well so we put some parsley in that space.

And we added a mint plant to one end although we hear that mint spreads so we might move that to a dedicated planter.

We also have cilantro and basil on the roof of our shed.

Between our garden and our weekly produce deliveries we've been eating well: lots of salad, lots of pesto, a yummy caprese salad for our picnic last night. We are definitely planting a much bigger garden next year. I never would have thought that container gardening would work so well.

But back to our Sunday. We opted to explore Palisades Park which is on the Hudson River, straddling the George Washington Bridge on the New Jersey side. It's a long, skinny park and it is very pretty but it is largely hiking/biking with some small marinas along the water. We were hoping for more of a "picnic spot with picturesque view." The first place we stopped seemed to promise this but after a few minutes we noticed that the water on the path was rapidly encroaching on our bench. Who knew the Hudson River was tidal?

We found a nice little picnic area and enjoyed our dinner. We are still loving Joseph's FreeWheel. It's great to see him getting around on sloped, bumpy, thorn-riddled terrain.

And here's a couple shots of my new haircut, courtesy of me. I've tried a couple hair salons since leaving Minnesota and the results was always a bad hair cut and less money in my wallet. So I did a little googling, got out my scissors and had at it.

I needed to do a couple of rounds over a day or two to get close to what I was going for but I'm pretty happy with the result. And it was free! Can't complain about spending zero dollars on a decent haircut. Eric has proclaimed it the best haircut I've ever had.

Last Minute Halloween

We've never done much with Halloween in the past. We don't have too much against the holiday, we've just never made much of a priority of dressing up our kids and sending them out for days' worth of sugar highs. And, oddly, we've never lived anyplace where trick or treating was a big deal. In our neighborhood now there are hundreds and hundreds of kids out but they only go to businesses.

This year the kids suddenly "discovered" Halloween and just last night started talking up the complex costumes they were hoping to wear today. We decided that a bit of holiday fun was in order so we came up with some last-minute costumes.

A very scary ghoul:

This picture does not do justice to my amazing face-painting skills. At Joseph's direction he had red and yellow eyes, a green mouth, and black face.

A fairy princess:

The dress is courtesy of Aunt Laura and, again, you can't really see Margaret's very sweet and glittery face here. She was so excited to wear a whole face-full of real makeup and wants to go to church like this tomorrow for All Saint's Day.

And a sad dirty bum:

He was sad that Eric wouldn't let him play with the dirt longer but he cheered up once he realized that we were going for a walk to get candy. William was completely unfazed by Joseph's face but completely freaked out when our baker donned a clown hat and tie and tried to give him a cookie.

Happy Halloween!

Margaret did have a birthday this year.

Margaret did, in fact, turn four almost a month ago. It was a beautiful sunny day and we had plans to go to our small, local zoo. Unfortunately we sort of had a housing crisis dumped on us first thing in the morning and much of the day--and much of the four weeks since--was given over to dealing with an ugly situation. I won't go on and on here but things on that front are quiet at the moment and we are hopeful that we will be happily living in our little apartment here at least until next summer. But we'll see.

I think that Margaret's birthday, from her perspective, was still really fun. Her favorite food is "Porkacheese" (Portuguese--it took us a while to figure that out) which is abundant in our neighborhood so we got takeout from a place nearby and had friends join us for an impromptu birthday party that evening. For Margaret, it's all about the party so she was all too happy that she had a second party with my brother and sister and their spouses just a few days later.

The celebrating continued in that Margaret got birthday money this year. She's gotten birthday money every year, of course, but usually the money is spent solely at the discretion of her parents and it never really occurs to her to have an opinion. This year, though Margaret has almost no concept of what a monetary transaction entails, she was very concerned about her birthday money and how it would be used. After quietly discouraging her from running out and buying the first cheap knick-knack she could lay her hands on, it was settled that the one thing she really wanted was a doll she could dress up. My brief doll-shopping experience has revealed that specially-made doll clothes can add up right quick and I had to admit, honestly, that I am not up for making doll clothes. I was glad to find a good-quality baby doll that was sized to wear newborn baby clothes. We ordered the doll together and it arrived on the Big Brown Truck last week.

Margaret is just smitten with this doll. She named her Lila for reasons unknown to us and has taken possession of all her own newborn wardrobe which I'd saved in case we ever have another daughter. Lila is the first one dressed every morning and gets changed several times a day including into a nightgown for bed. Lila has her own "crib" (the laundry basket lined with blankets) but prefers to sleep snuggled next to Margaret. She's been to the grocery store, to church, and to a Toyota dealership and often joins us at the table. Margaret insists that I take lots of pictures of her and her baby. Here are a couple--first Margaret and Lila doing a dry run in their holiday attire, and then the two of them in more everyday clothes:

Part of Margaret's birthday present was a book rack for her top bunk which I had a lot of fun making for her. I only today got it hung on the wall--shame on me! But I've spent most of the time since she opened it thinking we might move any week. So now Margaret's pink fortress is all set up for her on the top bunk. A friend asked to see some pictures of how we rigged up a canopy for her so I tried to get a few shots but the light in the kids' room is just awful for photography.

Her book selection and flower lamp:

Margaret's bunk from "outside". The fabric is just a "tapestry" from Target. I sewed little plastic rings to four corners (I think they might be stitch markers for knitting) and left a long side hanging. Then I screwed four hooks into the ceiling and just hung it that way.

This is the foot of her bed looking up. Her doll house lives at the foot of her bed as well. Since it's a twin-size bed and she's only four there is still plenty of room for her to sleep. She loves her own space up there and since her brothers can't (yet) get up to the top bunk it's a good retreat when she's feeling frazzled. Which is often.

So, there are some of the birthday highlights. We did finally get in our zoo trip the week after her birthday and we are all looking forward to what our little four-year-old has in store for us this year.

She can sleep anywhere

When I took William up to bed this evening both kids were outside playing. Our Brazilian neighbors have a six-year-old boy who had finally come home after being out all day and we let them have some rare after-dinner playtime to celebrate.

From the upstairs bedroom I could heard Eric say, "Time to come in, kids. I'm going to bump Joseph up first and then it will be time for Margaret to come in." I hurried downstairs as soon as William was asleep. Margaret has been begging for my presence at bedtime recently and I indulge her while working on knitting projects.

Downstairs I saw Eric and Joseph but neither heard nor saw Margaret. I said, "Margaret didn't fall asleep already did she?" Eric responded, "Check the camera."

This is what I found:

Don't worry, she'd been relocated to her bed by the time I saw the pictures.

Cookie fun!

Growing up my mom made thousands of cookies each Christmas but she never, in my memory, made sugar cookie cutouts. I can appreciate why not. They are a major pain and not really all that tasty. But Grandma Marga did these with the kids in Minnesota last year and I thought it a fun tradition for the kids. We cut out the cookies yesterday and baked them. All our cookie cutters came, in one or another, from Eric's family. We inherited a coffee can of cookie cutters from Grandma Ada--several red Christmas themed ones that we couldn't make work and then a bell, a star, a circle and a "bar" with zig-zag edges. The kids told Eric last night, "We made stars and bars Christmas cookies." Hm. There was also a music note--appropriate from Eric's highly musical family.

Our other two cookies cutters were a wedding gift from Eric's uncle Steve: a cow, and the state of Wisconsin. These people are serious about their homeland.

So the shapes themselves aren't all that festive but the overall effect was very nice, in the end, and we sure had fun.

Margaret was pretty much in "production" mode cranking out three or four cookies to Joseph's one but sacrificing real artistry in favor of speed.

Joseph was very serious about every single one of his creations. Some highlights include a star having a solar flare:

And Santa Claus with his pack and boots. You can see the lone chocolate sprinkle which is his smiling mouth and the cinnamon candy is his "fiery eye." Apparently we need a little more Clement Moore around here.

I went for more whimsy with my cookies creating some festive homage to favorite Wisconsin destinations (Madison and Sturgeon Bay). And, because we prefer our milk from brown Jersey cows, a spotted bovine sporting a seasonally-appropriate red nose.

William napped through most of the project but woke just in time to consume a broken musical note while we cleaned up.

Sunday evening

Blueberry cobbler is baking in the oven for dessert. Red peppers are roasting to go on sandwiches with leftover steak. Eric is out on a walk with William and bringing home rolls for the sandwiches. My kitchen is strung with white Christmas lights which makes it feel almost pretty in here. Margaret is washing up the dishes I used to make the dessert

and Joseph is busy with his sketchbook.

All the letters for "grasshopper" are there--though not in the correct order--and as I type he's drawn me a picture of my cup of coffee. I'm not in the picture. In the sketchbook universe I'm knitting in the living room while my coffee cools down.

A pretty nice evening so far.