Watching them grow up.

Our little barn swallows are almost ready to leave the nest. If you're very quiet when you walk into the garage, you'll see this.

If you're not quiet, you'll get this.

One of 'em's a coward.

They are *so* close to leaving the nest (compare this picture to the same birds last week) that I sat down to try to get some good pictures. My goal was to get a picture of their parents feeding them, but I had a bit too much help for that to happen.

I was able to get this ...

and this ...

and this.

When I came back out by myself a few hours later, the nest was empty. And so it goes.

Classic.

It's a bunny, not a cat, but still, this picture made me startle.

Doesn't she remind you of someone?

Fitting, since her favorite movie right now is My Fair Lady.

She's still a bit too young for Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I heart Audrey Hepburn.

Do you have a sperm name?

We were working on Hannah's 'Secret File' (more on that in another post) and she asked what my full name was. I told her and she said, referring to my last name (which is different than hers), "Now that's your sperm name, right?"

"Um, what's a sperm name?"

"It's the name you get from your father. He's the one with the sperm."

Oh dear. Reproduction lessons (goat reproduction, if you must know, though the tie-back to humans isn't that hard for a little mind) are coming back to bite me.

The Octopus' Happy Life In His Cottage and Sad Death (which was also in his cottage).

Hannah cut the legs off of one of her pairs of pants to make shorts. I'm not sure why she didn't just wear one of her pairs of shorts, but I wasn't home at the time, so by the time I got home it was a done deal.

She took the legs to her daddy and told him "We need to make something with these." So they made puppets. They used buttons from their button jars and ribbon and sticks from their Creation Station (a box with 'stuff' (scrap ribbons, sticks, game pieces, puzzle pieces, plastic lids, lots o' stuff).

Ainsley's is a ghost. Hannah's is an octopus. And I got a puppet show out of the whole deal.

Introducing Octopus.
(he had stage fright)

"Once upon a time there was an octopus.
He was exploring the ocean and came to an octopus cottage. "How lucky am I?!?" said the octopus. (He was very lucky, by the way, Mother. There aren't very many octopus cottages in the ocean.) So he settled into the cottage and ate all of the food he could find.

Now here's the very scary part, Mother. Don't be scared.
A SHARK found his cottage and it tried to eat him, but he wouldn't let it. He sprayed inky black stuff ALL OVER the shark and he said GO AWAY SHARK!!! and the shark went away."

Ainsley: "AND THEN THE GHOST CAME! Hi, shark!"
Hannah: "I'm not a shark, Ainser, I'm an octopus."

Ainsley: "... ... ... ...BOO!"

Hannah: (trying her best to ignore the ghost stealing the show) "So then the octopus had lots of children in the cottage and they all grew up and he was a Grandpa Octopus."
Ainsley: "A grandpocopuss? What a grandpocopuss?"

Hannah: "No, Ainser, A Grandpa Octo... Oh, you're frustrating me."

Ainsley: "The ghost said goo'bye. Goo'bye ocopuss!" (ghost exits stage right)

Hannah: "Thank goodness. Now, here's the very sad part. He died.

The end."

There was an encore, of course. Several, to be honest. And many more to come, I'm sure.

Overwhelmed.

According to Hannah, that is. And she's not far off. One picture and one child-mother interaction tell the story of the last two days.



Today when we got back from the post office, the girls were setting up coloring implements on the porch. I was taking everything from the car into the house when I noticed I had a shadow. "You look overwhelmed, Mother," said the shadow. "I am, a bit," I said. "Well, I've been watching you and I think that it's the cleaning that's stressing you out. Why don't you give cleaning a break and color with us. That will stop you from being so overwhelmed. And you'll be more fun to be around."

Point taken.

The best part of the day.

This is one of those days where I'm afraid your interest will wane because, well, we went to the park.

How many park pictures do you want to look at?

You're probably there with your kids every other day and if you've seen one park, you've seen them all.

But stay tuned, because this little guy made a break-through today.

First, I want to tell you about this girl - we'll call her Ariel.

We were at a park one day and Ainsley - who is notoriously aloof around new kids - and most kids she's met many times - immediately started playing with her. They ran around that playground giggling, holding hands, and jabbering to each other, not seeming to mind that one was jabbering in Spanish and the other in English. When Ariel and her parents started to leave I ran over and gave them my phone number explaining that my daughter really doesn't take to a lot of kids and I would love it if they could call next time they came to the park.

Luckily, they did, and we've been slowly building a friendship. All of us.

When we go back to the town we used to live in (tonight it was for some lawn work at the old house), we call and meet up to play.

Last time they visited our new house, I gave them some banana bread (I was trying a new recipe from A Homemade Life) and it was so good that Ariel's mom asked for the recipe. Today when I handed her the recipe, she handed me a plate with four pieces of 'Mexican custard' on it. Oh, it was so good. Hannah ate one piece, I ate one, Ainsley tried a bite and didn't like the texture. I gave Grayson a few spoonfuls and he seemed to like it ok. I wanted to talk to Ariel's mom, so I gave him the spoon and he started doing this -

Then I got distracted talking and he dropped the spoon - I think it was slowing him down -and started taking handfuls. By the time I regained control of the plate, there was only a quarter of a piece left and his hands and face were very, very sticky.

Now, about Grayson's breakthrough. Do you remember this? The passive-resistance-I-hate-swinging-and-you-can't-swing-me-if-I-just-hang-here pose?

Oh, yes. That was so last week.

This week, with the discovery of big kid swings, the world's looking very, very different.

What a change. He watched the girls climb onto the swings and tried to climb on one himself, so I put him up there and started swinging him. Fifteen minutes he swung there before I tried to take him off. Then he made a noise that made me stick him right back on for another five minutes until he was ready to go. He was in heaven. Explain that to me.



Of course, it could just have been that his hands were so sticky that he couldn't let go.

So the most exciting part of the day for Ains was getting to play with her friend, the most exciting part for Gray was either discovering Mexican custard or discovering that big kid swings are the best things ever, but the most exciting part of the day for Hannah was discovering a real, no kidding, honest-to-Murgatroyd, ain't no one foolin' here fairy ring.

It was on the lawn and it was very unusual. A complete, perfectly shaped circle with mushrooms (maybe toadstools?) all around the edges with none inside or outside the edge of the circle. Fairies certainly danced here last night.

Oh, yes, Magic entered her life today. This was almost as good as seeing a real fairy. She's a believer, my girl.

So it was just another ordinary day at the park.

If you believe in ordinary days, that is.

I'm glad you let me tell you about it.

Sweet dreams.

Kids these days.

"Father, I'm making pancakes. It's hard to do while I'm talking to you because they're so hot. I don't think it's very safe. Guess what? I milked the goat today."

Them kids...

-Hannah's uncle asked her what the spots on her face were. "Freckles," she answered. "Are you sure they're not angel kisses?" he asked. "Well are they blue?" says she. "No, they're brown." "Then they're definitely freckles." Apparently angel kisses are blue...

-Gray and I walked in the floor from choring and I nearly tripped over Ains sitting on her knees scrubbing the floor with a washcloth. I thought that maybe she'd accidentally peed and was cleaning it up, so I asked "Is everything ok?"

"No, momma," she said, "me no make mess. Me Cinwella and Hannah stepsister. She bewy mean." and she happily goes back to scrubbing. A few minutes later I hear her say "Me done stepsister. Me going pay wif Bobo (Cygnus)."

-H: Mother, I just went poo potty and it had corn and peas in it.

M: I did not need to know that.

H: I didn't know that. What if you *did* need to know it and I hadn't told you? How could I live with myself?

-I asked Gray if he wanted a cookie and Ains answered "Me want cookie, Momma."

"You do?"

"Yes. I hooman baby. Hooman babies eat cookies."

- We were getting ready to go to a family reunion and while we were packing the truck, we were trying to finish all of the last-minute stuff that needed to be completed/turned off/packed. Hannah was ready, waiting, and impatient to be off to see her cousins. Finally she said, in a very frustrated voice, "Why is everyone hurrying so slow?"

-Ainsley's still switching words with hilarious results. If she wants a Jones Soda, I get asked for a 'baking soda'. If she wants to read Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, I get asked to read 'Fantsy Pantsy'.

-Grayson? He's just gotten into teasing his sisters. Anything he can do to get squeals out of them he will. He put this to good use the other day when Hannah was sad. He gave her a bemused look and went up and started tickling her knees. Luckily, it was a small sad, so his tickles worked and he was mightily pleased with himself.

Poodles, the 18th century, and magpies.

-Ainsley asked me to put this hat (scroll down to the debutante picture) - all pink and fur and ribbons - on Cygnus. I did and between giggles she said "He looks like a poodle!" It made me laugh because I don't think she's ever in her two-and-a-half years on this earth seen a real live poodle. She recently asked for a poodle book from the library and she went through it, but I don't recall more than a few of the poodles in the book being dressed up fancy.

-Every so often, Hannah says something that even I don't know where she got it from. The other day, Ainsley came into the bathroom where Hannah and I were, grabbed some bracelets and put them on. Hannah looked at them, noticed that the pink bracelet was not the closest to Ainsley's wrist, and decided to help her out with some fashion advice. "Ainsley," says she, "are you stuck in the Eighteenth Century or something? The pink goes in front."

Ainsley responded with her usual impertuable "Oh. Otay, Hannah." and moved the bracelet while I just stared at Hannah. "Where did you learn that, Hannah?" "I don't know. It's just in my brain." Fair enough. Luckily, Matt knew where she'd heard it. They'd watched some Duck Tales episodes on YouTube and the Eighteenth Century featured prominently in one of them. Random.

-Ainsley's at the cute stage where words that are similar get used in place of each other. Example: Killdeer becomes John Deere. As in "Mommy me just saw a John Deere! It was peetending to be boken!"

Or Rhubarb Pie becomes Magpie. As in "Mommy are you making magpie again?" (Actually, 'magpie' is quite common around here since it's Ains' current favorite word and insult. You get her frustrated and you're likely to hear "You .... you .... MAGPIE!")

-Hannah insists that Grayson's first word is 'Hannah'. She could be right. He says 'NAnnah!" clearly and frequently when he looks at her. He also says it clearly and frequently when he's looking at cats, dogs, birds, flowers, the sandbox, the bikes, and horse poo. But Hannah believes it's her name, so sibling rivalry has kicked in. Every time Gray says "NAnnah!", Ains gets right in his face and starts chanting "AINSley. AINSley!" She does this so much that if he were a parrot, he'd be repeating her name by now. In fact, I'm surprised that the local crows aren't flying around cawing "AINSley. AINSley!"

Overheard...

at our old house tonight, while I was cleaning in the kitchen and the girls were sitting in the hallway.

Hannah showed Ains her necklace and said "My grandpa gave me this necklace. It means a lot to me. He died in the Great War of Possachossa."

Ains replied. "Mine Gandpa killed by shark." After a pause in which her sister didn't sound impressed enough, she added "And a tiger. And a cawkadile. Mine Gandpa very dead."

How unschoolers learn about reproduction.*

*Please note that this is not how unschoolers learn about reproduction.

Yesterday morning, when Hannah was making pancakes, she asked for help flipping some of the smaller pancakes. This is what I saw when I looked at the grill.


That and this:

Of course, I just had to make up a few more and turn it into an object lesson.*

Two people met and fell in love.

The inevitable happened.

And they had a baby.

It's like finding the Virgin Mary on your griddle, but this one teaches you a sex-ed lesson. Or something.

*Again, this object lesson didn't happen with my kids. It is just for my blog. In fact, I never pointed out to my daughter that the first pancake looked like a fetus. I did not want tears as soon as the fetus' umbilical cord fell off or her sister ate the head. I also never pointed out to her that the second looked like sperm. We'll have that conversation another day.

More food as body parts posts here and here.

Kiddy goodness.

H: Mother, try my food.
S: Are you sure? I don't want to eat your delicious dinner.
H: Of course, please do. It would please me greatly.


H: (After I said that I thought my hair looked nice) Be careful, Mother, or the water nymphs will throw you clear up in the sky like Cassiopeia. That's what they did to her when she was envious.
S: Envious?
H: Um, no. Vain. The nymphs were envious. She was vain. But Andromeda wasn't vain. She just got put in the stars because her mother was vain and her father couldn't kill the sea beast himself.
S: Oh. What was the king's name? I've forgotten.
H: Carl. It's not Harry. That's not a very kingy name. His name's Carl.



The girls are playing their magical creatures game at the table right now. All of the sudden I hear Ains squeal gleefully "I got the HANUMAN! Yay!" Hearing that little voice say hanuman makes me smile.

Meet Dora and Boots.

But, shhh... they're taking a nap.

Once Hannah started pretending, at around 18 months old, she hasn't stopped - sometimes for days at a time. She would bounce from pretend to pretend and we were expected to keep up. If she looked up from a bowl of water that I'd just put down for the 'puppy' and I said something to the 'puppy' but she was now a horse, that could be very bad.

Now that she's older and her pretending has gotten more sophisticated, her sister's starting to pretend independently from her. This means that while sometimes she's Boots to Hannah's Dora, she's more often somebody or something completely different than Hannah is, which means that I have to pretend two completely unrelated storylines at the same time. It can be challenging, but so much fun.

What to do while mom packs.

Build farms.

I got boxes for packing from the recycling center. I was a bit .... optimistic when I picked out some of them. They were too big. You couldn't lift them after they were packed. (I didn't discover this until I'd very proudly packed two of them full.)

So I gave them to the girls to play with on the porch. They ended up making stalls and hallways and a farm kitchen.


Here's one of the ponies. (Very dark in her stall.)


And here's the other.

Dumb and Relatives

Mother: We can go to the store, but first we need to feed the animals.
Hannah: (with great frustration) I want to go to the store first. Animals are DUMB!
M: Really?
H: (backtracking quickly) Well, I'm not saying their hair is dumb or their bodies are dumb, but they can't use their voices to talk, so they're definitely dumb.

Times like this are when you're glad you taught your kid different meanings for one word. You get to laugh inside.

Ainsley has a mini-obsession with her AuntRia. Seriously lurves her. We've been getting some great stuff out of this. When trying to explain the word 'trust' to Hannah, I hear Ains pipe up from her car seat "I TRUST AUNTRIA!" Or when discussing the best way to fix Hannah's hair, we'll hear Ains yell from the hallway "AUNTRIA'S HAIR PITTTTTY! DO AUNTRIA'S HAIR!" Or if a tractor is driving up the farm road, Ains will bounce at the window yelling "AUNTRIA'S COMING, AUNTRIA'S COMING!!!" AuntRia, she heard you say you were coming to visit. Will you come visit already? Thank you.

Puppet theatre.

In all of my decluttering/packing I came across a stash of puppets.

I collect puppets wherever I can find them - yard sales, thrift stores, dollar stores - because they are so expensive. The wolf and owl you'll see featured below are thrift store finds - they're actually golf club covers.

I've had a few puppets out, but the girls have showed no interest in them. This infusion of new blood, puppets they didn't remember seeing before, was all they needed to get going. Especially my little story-teller. I'll walk you through it.

H: "Open curtain! A dog is walking down the street when he sees a wolf come towards him." (I love Ainsley's face in this picture.)

"The dog says GO AWAY, THIS IS DOG TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

"DOG TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

"WOLF TOWN!"

Oh, dear. This is getting out of hand. We may need an outsider to help out here.

A: "OOOOWWWWLLLL TOWN!!!!"

H: "Close curtain."