Two quick pictures

My favorite baby stage:  re-shelve all the books every day.

Joseph is really, really interested in birds and a recent project was an attempt at a falcon kite.  It didn't work but I admire their perseverance.

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.

Happy Birthday, William!

After living with William while he made the most of his "Twos" the entire family breathed a sigh of relief when William turned three a couple weeks ago.  Of course, those old sayings don't actually determine behavior, but there is certainly something to them.  Eric and I observed, once Joseph was about four that age two seems to be hard on the parents but age three seems to be hard on the child.  That held true for Margaret and, so far, for William as well.  Three-year-olds seem not so much naughty as in need of a lot of support as they see their big ideas fail in light of their limited abilities.  

We love our sweet little William (of course!).  He has been the family ham and clown since he was very young.  He has, I think, the most advanced verbal skills of any of our children yet and he is at a particularly cute age as he prattles along a mile a minute with that dinstinctive toddler accent ("Mommy!  I heaw da twash twuck!"  "Is dat da wivah?")  We can't get enough.

William woke the morning of his birthday to this in the living room:

Some of you will, no doubt, recognize this as the "circus tent" from IKEA.  It's been a big favorite on shopping trips for several months and it was actually supposed to be part of the kids' Christmas present.  But they were all sold out when I did the shopping in early December.  Since we give the kids their "big gift" on Epiphany I didn't worry.  But they were still sold out in early January.  So I decided Gregory would get it for his birthday.  But they were sold out on January 12.  January 29th was finally my lucky day and I got this home in time for William's birthday.  It's not actually very big and it is somewhat collapsible.  All the kids can squeeze into it comfortably when they are playing together and they can drag it from room to room.

Funny story:  I set up the tent the night before after the kids were in bed but left the lights on at that end of the house.  Before we'd gone to bed William woke up needing to use the bathroom.  Eric carried him down the hall and--in a sleepy stupor--William looked over Eric's shoulder and said, "Are Joseph and Margie in that tent?"  He was not at all surprised to see a tent in his living room in the middle of the night.  We killed the lights and put him back to bed and he didn't remember it by morning.

\His other gifts (a set of puzzles from GI Grandpa and a hat and mittens) were waiting inside the tent for him.  

The tent has been a huge hit with the whole family.

 For dinner William requested "bean pizza" and chocolate cake.  We've been trying to eat less wheat and I recently found a fantastic black bean cake recipe.  If you are looking for a gluten-free chocolate cake recipe for yourself or someone else, I can't recommend this one enough.  It is really, really good.  And I don't mean "good, for a bean cake."  I mean, it's our new favorite cake.  Eric wants it for his birthday (but with frosting).

For the "bean pizza" I basically made a taco pizza but with black beans instead of ground beef.  It was very yummy.

A lovely celebration for a lovely boy.

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!

Wedding Day!

Today was the big day. Our good friend, Rene, was married today and her wedding was most of the reason for our visit to Colorado. It's nice, of course, that we got in some visiting with my Dad but we see him pretty regularly on the East Coast. Joseph was the ring bearer and Margaret the flower girl for this wedding and they have been looking forward to this day for months.

But before I get to the kids, I have to gush a bit about this wedding and the family that hosted it. I've known Rene for several years and heard lots about her family. They always sounded wonderful and creative and resourceful but nothing prepared me for this wedding. Rene wanted to be married at home so the first step was to build a barn. That's right. That beautiful building at the top of this post was built by her family in the last month. Her father owns a sawmill/lumberyard but, still.

The upstairs is a loft room that was used for out-of-town guest housing. The bride and groom exchanged vows on the deck there and Joseph is trying out the boardwalk that was built this morning. And lest you think that a wedding in a barn can't be wonderfully elegant, wonder no longer:

The entire setting was lovely. In addition to building the barn Rene's family also self-catered the reception (delicious Cajun food), made Margaret's dress and about a million other things that many people would have hired someone else to do.

Margaret was a lovely flower girl. After getting dressed and getting her hair done she spent a long time meticulously pulling apart roses to fill her basket with petals.

At the rehearsal Margaret had refused to walk down the aisle alone. She insisted that once she had her flower petals she was going to do exactly what was expected of her. But as anyone who knows Margaret could probably guess, she froze at the prospect of walking past lots of strangers so I had to personally walk her down the aisle and get her into her seat. Everyone loved her anyway, of course.

The ring bearer, on the other hand, performed flawlessly.

Joseph took his job very seriously, wheeled down the aisle beautifully and looked quite dapper while doing it. I was not at leisure to take pictures of the kids actually going down the aisle.

My favorite part of the day was after dinner. Margaret was in a bit of a funk, I think, and asked if we could go find her flower basket. We retrieved it from the house and she asked me to come with her back outside. She walked back to the end of the aisle and proceeded to walk slowly down the aisle scatter flower petals the whole way. The photographer caught it all. Then she walked back and forth up and down the aisle until her basket was empty. Then she asked to find Rene who was only too happy to take another trip down the aisle, hand-in-hand with Margaret, this time over flower petals.

Shortly after Margaret had completed her appointed task the dancing began and the shy flower girl became the life of the party. She wouldn't sit down.

She danced with me:

With the maid of honor:

With the bride:

The boys got in on the fun, too. Joseph raced across the room to ask the maid of honor to dance as soon as the dance floor was open to everyone.

And William, who is a dancing fanatic, couldn't get enough. We couldn't quite capture the sheer delight on his face while he bopped around with us. But William spent a good deal of time trying to get as dirty as possible. He spent the ceremony chucking fistfuls of mulch, most of which landed on himself.

He spent the toasts playing around this beautiful spot tossing stones at the Adirondack chairs.

And staring, entranced, at the huge dogs which he loved as long as they remained a safe distance away.

A lovely day for our family and a beautiful start to a marriage for Rene and Bob. Margaret is sleeping in her dress next to me.

What's William up to?

William is most definitely not up for walking. He has no interest whatsoever in getting around on two legs. But, as my grandmother said the other day, "Don't make trouble for yourself." He's easier to keep track of for now and I don't think there's anything wrong with him.

He has gotten super communicative lately. We're really trying hard with baby sign language because he is a shrieker. I've seen bystanders visibly jump when he opens his mouth to let loose and just today I ran into a total stranger on the street who recognized us from church and asked, "What was wrong with him on Sunday?" What was wrong was that he wanted to be outdoors and I had the gall to keep him in the church building. William cannot get enough of being outside. He wakes up in the morning or from his nap and gleefully points to the bedroom door. Then he points to the stairs. Then he points to the stroller. I put him in and he points to the door. So we've been doing a lot of this:

He's definitely not to the posing for pictures stage yet. He was neither asleep nor sad but very happily hanging out while the kids and I worked on a project. Sometimes Margaret pushes him around a bit. And I've been looking for a good excuse for a walk every day lately because he's so happy outside in the stroller.

One of the signs William has mastered is "more." It's always a big hit for "baby's first sign." He recently exercised his powers of communication to get lots of his new favorite food:

No, that is not my hand in the picture. I would never dream of feeding one of my children Nutella for breakfast.

Although William has definitely arrived at the demanding, shrieky stage of babyhood he is generally a really happy, incredibly sweet little boy. He loves to give hugs--especially to Margaret and I. He prefers to fall asleep cuddled up next to me with his arm around my neck, and we're all having a lot of fun watching him learn and explore.

And does it make me a really bad mother that I snapped a picture before rescuing him when he got stuck in the plastics cupboard today?