Busy week and this and that

We've had a busy week! Jane and family visited for one night last weekend (Yay!) and now we have another houseguest this week. Dan loves the Kelty Kids frame backpack we bought back in June for our hiking trip that he's been coming up with uses for it and prefers it to the stroller. (He even suggests we take walks around the neighborhood, a new development.) We broke down and bought an AC when I heard that the highs here would be 99 degrees a few days in a row. (A pregnant woman can only deal with so much heat!) The heat is helping my tomatoes, and the first one should be ripe in just a few days.

Hmmm... time to go back to work!

Life with a toddler

I realized one day, while frustrated with my dirty living room, that I had picked up about 150 books that day. Not 150 different books, but thirty books, five times each. Thirty books? Who needs that many out at all times? I got some 2 gallon freezer bags, labeled each with a day of the week, and divided the books among them. Thus began the book rotation. However, I haven't stuck with the days of the week but just change the books if I get tired of them. I kept Dr. Seuss's ABCs out all of last week and have it memorized now ("barber, baby, bubbles and a bumble bee"). I also put away some toys that I was tired of, though I put them all in a clear container so John sometimes points to ones he misses. I do have compassion if I realize he actually misses the toy and isn't just pointing at it because he wants to move onto another activity.

Since John enjoys looking out the window at the wildlife in our backyard, I took a blanket outside yesterday with the idea that he'd enjoy the wildlife from outside and I'd "read" a book. John took my book and sat down to read it. Hmmm... we could do that inside... Mosquitos started swarming around John and I killed a few that landed on me. After five minutes, John started bringing me leaves and sticks, but our presence in the back yard kept the bunnies and birds at bay. Oh well. We ended up staying outside for about half an hour, but maybe next time I'll try to go to a park that is far from bodies of water.

Cool bird

We live on a .6 acre wooded lot near a bunch of open space. John loves pointing out birds and bird songs to me, so I've grown to notice them (in the past, I "subtracted" them from the background noise). I just saw a new-to-me bird, a yellow warbler! Cool! I wouldn't even have had the eyes to see it (or the ears to hear it) before.

Laura's post about vinegar as a cleaner made me laugh. My parents were good at teaching us kids various things that not all children are taught and that I've only realized might be family-specific since getting married.

For example, my mom was very concerned we would get poisoned, so we learned that all cleaners were poisonous and could send you to the hospital and we were all careful not to touch them EVER with bare hands. (I think I put on gloves to pick up the bottle of bleach.) Since getting married to a man who didn't have precisely the same training, I've actually read the bottles and learned that some cleaners I thought would kill me are not even marked as poisonous.

Whenever we were near a truck, my father would remark, "Left side, passing side. Right side, suicide." The phrase still goes through my head when I see trucks on the freeway.

John points to bicyclists. Following my parents' lead, I say things like, "Bicycle. The man looks like a professor, but he must be rather stupid because he isn't wearing a helmet."

John also points to motorcyclists. Once again, I repeat the things I heard growing up. As the motorcyclist zips around cars, I mention offhandedly, "Look, John. There's an organ donor!"

Weird

I haven't been to Germany since 2002 (yes, I was there to enjoy the German enthusiasm for the last World Cup when Germany was beaten by Brazil - I was also there in 1998 for that round of enthusiasm!), but I still can speak and understand German well. How do I know?

While I was eating breakfast around 7:30 am, the phone rang. The woman sounded confused and I was confused, too, until I realized she was speaking to me in German. It took a few minutes of me speaking to her in German to convince her that, no, I am not "Thomas Rolf". She called back again at 9 am and I had to re-convince her. She never asked why my German was so lousy, though it probably would have been a fair question.

Good thing I got the practice. We've only got about 6 weeks until our trip abroad!

Yippee and what I'm listening to

Dan bought me a Jamie Soles CD for mother's day and I love it! I'd heard of him from my cousins and, although it is aimed at older children, I like having children's music on that can be stimulating to adults, too. I can listen to this a few times a week and be edified and I hope John can learn something, too. Try doing that with a lot of other popular children's music and you'd go crazy.

Most Christian children's music focuses almost entirely on the New Testament and on things which are "nice". Jamie Soles introduces children to the whole testimony of scripture. What other children's musician introduces his audience to the account of Jael and Sisera or Eglon who was king of Moab, Israel's opressor? (In this particular series of songs, the chorus is, "So may all your enemies perish, but may the righteous shine like the sun." That's straight out of scripture, folks!)

Thanks to Jamie Soles, I've got the Apostle's Creed by heart and am almost done with Jesus's lineage according to Matthew.

I'm glad I decided to post about this tonight - when I opened up his website, I learned that he has recently released an album of Psalms as well as an album of memorial songs. I know what's going on my birthday list, Dan. :-)

Glass cups

Murphy's law says that the day after you write about your son drinking out of glass cups, he'll break one.

Ironically, he broke it because I had handed it to him to entertain him while I finished reading an article about how some experts think celebrity fanaticism has gotten out of hand recently among children because of parents not spending time with their children. (That conclusion wasn't stated until the last paragraph, which I read after cleaning up the broken glass.)

On the plus side, John did a great job of drinking a half cup of milk on his own without spilling in the hours before the first broken glass.

For those wondering, I buy the 2 or 3 for a $1 glasses at Ikea whenever I drive by one. I break glasses a lot, too!

Cups

We haven't used a sippy cup successfully with John.

WHAT??? No sippy cup???

Yes, I typed that correctly. No sippy cup. We began without bottles (except when John was under the bililights). He totally rejected pacifiers when we offered them at two months. I tried sippy cups on and off, but those got rejected too. Usually, John just shook them upside down like he was trying to water his high chair.

Frustrated, we let him take sips out of our own cups. He was eating off our plates, so why not drink out of our cups? He did a great job. At the same time, I was reading some books about Montessori education that said children should be offered glass cups and real plates as soon as they start eating. What a bizarre idea - no special plastic stuff?

Since John was doing so well with our cups, we started pouring him his own drink in his own glass, though I keep them in the kitchen and off of his tray if he isn't drinking.

John is pretty good at taking a cup off the table and bringing it up to his mouth without spilling as long as the cup isn't too full. Unfortunately, after he's satisfied, he appears to forget that the cup may indeed still hold liquid and turns it upside down. Oops.

Last night, John held up his cup multiple times to ask for more milk. Each time Dan poured just over one sip worth. John brought the cup to his mouth well, drank well, and then poured milk onto his tray. We were splitting at the sides while trying to be respectful of John as he learns this new skill.

I've got to agree with (one author at) Slate.com. Children are funnier that the best movies.

I read Meredith's post this morning before Dan left for work and I left to pickup our vegetables and found it very convicting. Maybe I have been having no "luck" at garage sales recently because I'm seeking to satisfy wrong desires in spite of my husband and in spite of our budget instead of seeking to honor him.

For a change, I asked Dan what he would like me to buy.

"A bike helmet for John and 6 chairs."

On the way to the boxed share, there was a garage sale where I got 29 books, mostly Caldecott Honor books or books I remembered from childhood, for $5. Dan didn't specifically mention them, but I knew he would like them.

On the way home, I drove past our house - just one more street! But then Click and Clack were discussing a problem in a car one model year later than ours but that our car has been having, too, so I continued on another few blocks, hoping to see some more garage sales. One sign was a bust (last weekend, maybe?), another was a bunch of teenagers, and the third appeared not to have much stuff.

I got out at tht third anyways and there was a Kettler tricycle for $4. Not bad! But no bike helmets. I noticed an ice cream maker very similar to a trash-picked one Dan and I are storing but which doesn't work. $2? Great. A little boy who was missing two front teeth was selling lemonade, so I asked his mom about helmets. She hadn't been planning on selling any, but maybe she had some. Sure enough, she brought out two! I put one on John and thought it fit OK, but the father came up and adjusted it until it fit perfectly. Price? $4.

I couldn't have used more than 1 gallon of gas, so my total cost for the day was $18, at least $7 less than a Wal-Mart helmet which has been on the memory-list for about a year - since the time I bought a child trailor for a bike for $10 at a garage sale.

One deciding factor for buying the tricycle is that our new landlady has three sons, 4, 6, and 8 and has decided to fence in our yard (the Home Depot guy came on Thursday). With the .6 acres, it'll be like living in a park.

Now to cook some freezer beef so that I can make sorbet!