Transition to Fall

We enjoyed the formal transition to fall this week. We had a heat wave yesterday, but many of the other days it's been cool and a little overcast. The most marked change is how much earlier it's getting dark. Which is too bad because the kids on our block have gotten into a rhythm of hanging out after school. They play spy and then spend big chunks of time doing elaborate art projects that involve lots of pipe cleaners and all manner of things made into "police cameras."


Last weekend we headed out of town to a really lovely family-run orchard to pick apples with friends. It was really perfect, just apples, no parking or admission price, just simple apples. We made the filling for apple pie today with H and V and Henry made up his own concoction that baked-up right into a lovely lemon cake. As he told me-- next time we need to write down the recipe so he can make it again.


This Fall also brought Silas' long sought-after soccer class. Unfortunately by the time reality hit it was a little too much change for him to deal with. He's done pretty well transitioning to preschool but you can tell it's still a lot for him. And adding soccer on top of that was just too much. He managed to participate and have fun by the end of class but by the time the next week rolled around he was resolute. We tried a lot of different angles but ultimately i decided it wasn't worth pushing. He's 3, we'll have time to try again later.

The Best Block Ever

Two kids, in school. Somewhat hard to imagine. Silas starts preschool and Henry will be in Kindergarten in the fall. I still thank the gods that we bought this house. Despite the fact that there are no right angles in the entire house, we lucked into an amazing block and neighborhood.

From July-Aug 2010

We had our block party last weekend and what a treat it was. Each year it's an awesome time to connect with our neighbors-- many who are really active in our community and are fun cool people to boot. This year Ms. Peggy planned a whole block worth of amazing activities for the kids. The "stand-bys)are two jumping houses and usually the fire truck comes (this year they couldn't make it due to a real emergency). But this year Ms. Peggy went all out and made a pinata with the kids (in advance), and had "stations" set-up on both sides of the street including: bubble blowing, hula hoops, hopscotch, an art table complete with nature rubbings, face painting, an amazing balloon guy, chalk art, dominoes, checkers and a few stations i never even made it to. One of the best parts for the kids was that she made them all "games official" badges and posted each one of them to a station. They had a blast being in charge of the stations and enjoyed their official role.


The party had a fabulous pace to it, really relaxed which isn't the first thing that jumps to mind when you have an entire street full of small children. But it just worked.


So between our block party and getting ready to send both boys to our neighborhood school (it's a block away, how much better can it get!) we're just so content in our urban neighborhood that is really a neighborhood at its best.

Backyard Magic

Having these new little toad friends (more pictures added to toad post) in our backyard doesn't hurt, but i've found our little backyard (big by city standards) to be quite a haven this summer. With JT gone weekend afternoons, the boys and i have been doing all kinds of projects out of doors. We painted and hung small birdfeeders, we made little boats out of twigs, we expanded the toads' habitat and this weekend we're working on making felted rocks. I can't find a link to the rocks and i know it sounds strange, but they're very pretty and i think will be a lot of fun to do with the kids. It involves raw wool and wet soapy water.


Next weekend we're going to make birdseed cakes and maybe do some glue batik painting to some old white shirts. I can really tell that the boys are getting older because while Silas' attention span is still shorter than Henry's when it comes to crafts, he finds other ways to keep himself amused-- usually involving water and, well, water.


The only problem is the mosquitoes. Since we've had such a wet summer they are out in force in our backyard. Silas in particular is loved by the mosquitoes (pequitos as he calls them) and yet his skin really hates the bites. He's covered in red welts right now. Even though we cover liberally with bug spray. So if anyone has any other remedies they can suggest please feel free to let me know.


I think next year we're going to make one of these fairy gardens. I didn't see the idea until just recently and i don't think we'd have time for them to get established now, but what fun designing and creating this will be next year. Even more magic for the garden!

Toads!

We have slugs, a lot of slugs. I've tried drowning them in buried cups of beer (very effective but the carnage is more than i can bear), picking them up with chopsticks and transplanting them to the trash (time consuming) and just hoping they'd go away. But those tell-tale mucousy trails made it clear they weren't just going away.


For two summers we tried to "entice" some toads into our yard. We put some clay pots on their sides and fluffed decomposing leaves into the bottoms. We arranged them in a shady spot by a large tree and made a rock "garden" of sorts. We left out saucers of water. Nothing. I decided there may be toads in Chicago, but not in at least a 10-block radius. If we were going to get toads in there, we were going to have to import them rather than have it happen organically.


That's where things stalled for another year. You can't just buy any old toad and plop it into your backyard. That's why cane toads and bullfrogs have become nuisances or worse in a lot of areas. So i researched and found out that an indigenous toad for this area is the common American Toad. We started at Petco once i established that they do carry frogs and toads-- but as it turns out only the more exotic species (like tree frogs and such) that people keep indoors as pets.

So i searched the web and found Reptile City. The toads were quite affordable ($6 each) although the shipping was $20. In hindsight this makes sense because how else would you get live toads to you intact if not overnight? We set-up a little enclosure made of sticks and waist-high chicken wire in the afore-mentioned toad spot. We put saucers of water dug into the soil so they are flush with the ground. I got a notice that the package was due to be delivered by 3 pm.


I put a note on the door to make sure the postman rang the doorbell and left my phone number. I stayed close to home but with the ac blowing i missed his steps on the porch. The next time i checked i had a package slip to retrieve the package the next morning! I headed out to the post office and they searched for the package only to come back and tell me it was still on the truck with the driver. I explained the situation and as soon as i mentioned "live toads" that woman leapt into action. She called the driver, found the location of the truck and in 15 minutes the package was in my hand. In the meantime i had gotten a few frantic calls from Reptile City who had been notified about the package not being delivered.

After retrieving the boys we headed home to open the box inside their "habitat." I was very worried because i expected the box to be jumping or something and it was completely still. I opened both layers of packaging and found a cotton drawstring bag which immediately started moving and jumping and generally coming alive. I put that down on the ground inside the chicken wire and gently shook the toads out. Hot dog! 4 toads including a little baby one.

But damn if they weren't much smaller than i had anticipated. Even the biggest one took one look at that chicken wire and hopped right out. Madness ensued. I was running around getting old sheets that i draped around the chicken wire and secured on the bottom with rocks. Once that was more or less done we tackled trying to catch the 3 that had escaped. 2 had already hopped under the fence into our neighbors' yard. And so while holding a toad was not really on my list of to-dos ,i successfully caught and transported those toads back to their enclosure.

Ultimately i'd like them to be "free-range" toads. But for now i'm trying to keep them enclosed so that they adjust and make our yard their home. Tonight i'm going to get metal stakes and make a bigger enclosure out of landscaping fabric. I'm envisioning a toad "run" of sorts. This way the toads have more room and Henry can get in there with them and move around. He spent about 30 minutes in the current enclosure which is only slightly wider around than he is. I'll update with pictures as soon as possible.

5 Years in Pictures at the Beach

You know how lots of people take pictures of their babies in front of the same stuffed animal to visually mark how they grow? Heading to the beach each summer offers visual reminders of the boys' growth and development, along with all the memories looking back at these pictures evoke. But for now i'm leading with the pictures...

Henry 3 Mos and Nonna:


Henry 14 months:


Henry 14 months:


Henry 2 Years:


Henry Beach 4 Years:


Henry Beach 5 Years:


Silas 4 Months:


Silas 15 Months:


Silas Beach 2 Years:


Silas Beach 2 Years:


Silas Beach 3 Years:


Boys Beach 2010:


Family Picture 2008:


Family Picture 2010:


Parade 2008:


Parade 2009:


Parade 2010:


Baseball Game 2009:


Baseball Game 2010:


Sherman 2008:


Sherman 2009:


Sherman 2010:


Carousel 2008:


Carousel 2010:

Imaginative Play

At some point or another someone from my family is going to ask about gift ideas for the boys for Christmas this year. I've preemptively been trying to file away ideas Henry suggests or that seem appropriate based on his interest. The other night i stayed up far too late doing "research" on Amazon and a clear trend emerged; make believe. Of course almost all kids play is "pretend play." Except for when they're using the real vacuum, and even that is a form of pretend since they do a sub-par job (but not without enthusiasm!)

When Henry plays with the phone he pretends to be calling 911 and reporting "two fires, on the roof!" Then he's likely to pretend to be the fireman putting out the fires. This weekend he started playing being a "policeman getting the bad guys out of the houses" (i'm not entirely sure what this stems from-- possibly my attempt to explain the paddy wagon.)

He was playing red-light/green-light with all of his bath toys the other night-- deciding which ones could get by him in the tub and flying his hangers around like planes this morning before school. It's a fun, fun time to watch a little person turn just about anything into a wacky made-up escapade.

Conversation Topics

A love of vaccuming now runs in the family.

So i'm leaving the heading alone for now because Silas is still just engaging in the most preliminary of "expressions," but Henry has mostly moved beyond me being able to capture his amusing sentences to raising topics of conversation that are alternately amazing, difficult to answer, or relentless. So, you'll continue to see the funny things i can't help remember, but you'll also see the types of things he's turning over and over in his head. I'm hoping this will help me capture the kinds of thinking he's doing now more than just the speech aspect of things.

Silas seems to be holding steady in the speech department- he's got several two-syllable utterances; wa-wa, c-car, tr-truck, sh-shirt, as well as a handful of signs; where, water, bye-bye, milk, train, plane, etc. I think this is good enough for his 18 month visit (which btw i need to schedule!) and i'm assuming he'll make more progress in good time.

17 Months, 3 Weeks/ 3 Years, 5 Months

Busy, busy, busy which explains why i didn't get a chance to post last week. I was traveling Mon-Wed and the two remaining days didn't leave me much time to catch back up. But, it's about to get crazier. I have at least one trip a month until December and in October i have the craziest 20 days of my work/life balance yet. In 14 days we have two sets of back-to-back houseguests and during that period i have two trips-- one for work to CA and one with the boys to OK. So, if i'm not posting or returning calls, or moving much when i get back, you'll know why.

Here's some updates though to bring you up to speed. Henry's really working on a couple of abstract concepts-- truth and weekends. He gets so excited now when he realizes it's Friday afternoon and it's the weekend! Part of it was just realizing that on Saturday and Sunday he has more time to play around in the morning before we have to get dressed and go to school. Weekends also mean having syrup on your pancakes (we usually have some leftover during the week but JT has a no syrup rule on school mornings), and typically being able to stay up a little bit late.

He's also figuring out what "telling the truth" is, not so much because he's been lying but he'll go to get ready for bed, you'll hear him brushing his teeth, turning off the water, etc, but no toilet flushing. Then he'll run back out, and tell you that "the truth is" he just brushed his teeth and didn't go potty and dawdle a bit and then run back to finish getting ready for bed.

He's also exploring early math concepts. Today he was helping me make a cake and we talked about how we needed to put in 5 eggs. We had already put in four and i asked him how many more we needed to add until we got to 5 eggs. He told me one! It's not like he can do really hard math problems but he's definitely building a relationship to numbers. I had an education-long struggle with math so i'm personally looking forward to starting over with him fresh.

Silas has a little tiny bit of a stuffy nose and some sores in his diaper area. I'm not sure which is the culprit but he's been sleeping terribly. Last night i was up and down with him 4 times over an hour and a half and he only finally went to sleep once we moved him upstairs. Although he has the pain threshold of a linebacker something tiny gets out of whack and his sleeping goes off the rails. We're going to call the Doctor tomorrow to try to get him in-- we're due for his 18 month appointment anyway.

Toy Organization

From September 2008

I think my schooling is coming along as it pertains to toy storage. At first one big bin of soft toys and some baby gear that the baby may or may not agree to rest in is about all you have to struggle with. Then somewhere along the way, Christmas, birthdays and other events for showering your child with gifts emerge. Suddenly the coffers are full and you're struggling to not have your living room look like you're being paid to run a day care.

We've tried many strategies-- large containers, small containers, shelves, toy boxes, bags, etc. My current strategy rests on a couple assumptions--kids only play with 10% of what they own (assuming you have more than a whittled doll) and they get "bored" quickly with that 10%. We're lucky enough to have a basement, so we're fans of the "rotate method." I've been employing the basic method of trying to rotate toys periodically (ideally every 2 weeks, although i shoot for monthly) for awhile but i've now honed my technique.

I store toys to rotate in the basement in approximately one-square foot cubes. This allows for one "big" toy, as well as several small toys to fill the cube up. We've switched to primarily storing toys on open shelves; finding that toy boxes never have more than the initial surface scratched. The most important factor is culling the toys we do have to get rid of those that no one gets excited for-- even when they're just emerging from the basement. I'm particularly doing this now in prep for Christmas, but really i hope to keep it up at least quarterly just to keep toys manageable.

I've been actively selling on Craislist which helps provide some incentive for taking the time to list things. I've been trying to engage Henry on it as well-- asking him if he'd rather have X toy or whatever new item he's putting on his "list" for Christmas.

Preschooler

One of the bonus benefits of Brenda's daycare is her early childhood interest and experience. It's proven a boon not only for quality childcare but as Henry officially morphs into a preschooler.

Many of Henry's friends are starting preschool in the fall and we looked into enrolling him in the half-day preschool program at the local elementary school-- only 2 blocks away. I've been researching this school since we moved in and have attended all the open houses i could. Everything points to it being a great school with a strong preschool program. As a bonus, it's part of the city's "preschool for all" program so it's free. The downside is that it's only a half-day program which would mean someone would need to meet Henry and take 30 minutes mid-day to take him to Brenda's. Then a few hours later return to pick he and Silas up. It's doable-- but not convenient.

Add to this that Henry already has a strong academic component to his daily play-based schedule. He knows his numbers, letters and colors, and is very interested in measurement, increments of time, etc. He's got a lock on the social skills preschool helps kids develop, having had the chance to move from circle time to free play to big-motor activities ever since he could participate in the least bit as a baby. He interacts with big kids, babies, and teachers all day.

All of this is to say that we decided he *is* in preschool now-- it's just part of his full-day care. So we've convinced ourselves to revisit the issue for next fall and see how the decision matrix falls.

Will Summer Come Again?

From August 2008

We wrapped up the official end of summer (while trying to confirm that summer will indeed rise again) with a pretty decent weekend. It was something along "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," because while i had 5 days off work and home with the boys, one of those was an official sick day and the rest involved a mix of us all being under the weather, being somewhat better, hosting a bbq, and trying to enjoy summers passing. Of course with the weather hotter than it's been all summer, it's been a little hard to get too teary-eyed about the changing seasons.

We didn't make it to the pool again after i took the boys on Friday, but i think i'm going to look into swim lessons for Henry this fall. We haven't completely decided what we're going to do about him and gym class. We're waiting until at least the fall session to enroll because right now he's getting a lot of the same practice and exercise by frequent park visits.

I think because they've been sick, the boys' sleep skills have deteriorated a bit. Each night it's at least one of them up a few times- and sometimes both. Henry was crying out for me the other night and when i went down to figure out what was wrong he was sitting-up in bed saying "let's play" over and over to me. I'm not sure he was awake but after he called out for me an hour later i told him that he needed to remember to just roll over and go back to sleep if he woke up at night. I think he's back on the right path, but in the meantime, Silas has been waking up and when i go down to comfort him at night ... (as he just did with perfect timing) he won't quiet down and points out of his room. He's definitely at the point where everything is more exciting than sleeping even in the middle of the night. So we'll see. When it gets really bad i put him in the pack-n-play upstairs but i'm hoping not to make a habit of that.

Book Review- Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

Books have been a favorite in our household for quite awhile and Silas is now starting to get in on the act. He won't sit to listen to any stories that i might read, but he will get a book, hold it up right in front of him, and jabber, jabber, jabber away as if he's doing a perfect imitation of what "reading" sounds like to him. I thought i'd periodically review some favorites in our house and i'm kicking if off with my favorite genre-- short and rhythmic.

We have board book versions of both (Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb) so when bedtime is calling they satisfy a request for a story without risking excessive delays.

Jamberry is like an exquisitely rhythmic poem-- it starts simple and slow

one berry, two berry pick me a shoeberry,

mixes in active, colorful and whimsical illustrations, does rhyming without being syrupy

Quickberry! Quackberry! Pick me a blackberry!,

and concludes with my favorite crescendo:

Moonberry Starberry Cloudberry sky
Boomberry Zoomberry Rockets Shoot by
Mountains and Fountains
Rain down on me
Buried in berries
What a jam jamboree!

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb starts off with a simple beat:

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, one thumb, one thumb, drumming on a drum

Throws in masses and masses of silly monkeys with

rings on fingers, rings on thumbs

adds in more instruments

hands play banjos, strum strum strum
hands play fiddles, zum zum zum

and continues the forward momentum until the end

many more fingers
many more thumbs
many more monkeys
many more drums
millions of fingers, millions of thumbs
drum drum drum drum drum drum drum

17 Months/ 3 Years, 4 Months

Today Silas' turns 17 months old and unfortunately he's home sick with his first cold of the season. Nothing major we hope but we noticed yesterday evening that his nose seemed pretty stuff. His temperament was normal and he went to bed quietly at 7. Around 9 he woke up crying and couldn't be shushed back to sleep.

I thought maybe his teeth were bothering him because he was sitting up in his crib gnawing on his pacifier with his back teeth and looking like he had buckets of drool running down his face. I'm guessing now that it was actually mucus. I gave him some Tylenol, got him to lay down and covered him up, but within seconds of leaving his room he was moaning/crying again and with Henry being wide-awake it looked like no one would be going to sleep soon.

So we said good night to Henry brought Silas upstairs, set up the humidifier in the closet that doubled as his bedroom for 10+ months, rocked him for a bit and put him down to bed. While we were working on getting Silas settled Henry starts screaming for me-- going from a normal "mommy" call to a hysterical "MOMMEEE" in about 2 iterations. When JT went down to check on him he was upset because the cat was in his room and he didn't want the cat in his room, he wanted the door closed.

I was prepared for a rough night but miraculously they both slept soundlessly once everyone was settled. Silas seems okay today but still very congested so JT kept him home from daycare. He's taking a morning nap now which means he probably is feeling run down.