30 seconds of cute

 Jack is picking up all sorts of great learning from Pre-K.  Today he cam home proudly showing off 4 new yoga poses.  Which he is pretty good at, I have to say.  That flexibility is paying off for him...

He also learned this song today.  He started singing it spontaneously at dinner and kept going with it pretty much all evening.  Luckily its really cute.  See?

Quick updates...

Ivy has two new words today:  Nye-Nee (night night) and Pee-ba (Pizza). At Dewey's tonight she ate an entire slice of pee-ba all on her own.  She's taken to running laps around the house, doesn't wait for help to clamber up the front steps on her own, and she slept through the night last night.  (Praises be!!) And, she's still really cute.

Jack was thrilled to have daddy be the parent helper today; daddy did me the favor of taking lots of pictures and one really long video of Jack and his new best friend sitting and waiting at the snack table.  I won't post it here.  Mostly because it would take too long to upload and also because no one but his parents actually want to watch 7 minutes worth of two boys waiting to eat some yogurt covered raisins.  Even if he's really cute, too.

Here is a little gem for you, though.  Moments like this make me feel like having two kids wasn't such a bad idea after all.



And some moments from Pre-K...


Jumping on this trampoline is one of the two things that gets reported to me when I ask about his day at school.  The other being:  "I jumped off the monkey bars!"  Every day.


This is Jack dicating his story to Mrs. B in the writing center.  Today his story consisted of a string of random numbers generated by his calculator, with occasional random words sprinkled in.  He's special.



Jack and buddy Tristan.  Before you get too excited about how adorable they are, we'll pass on our sad news: Tristan's family is moving out of Ohio in October.  I think we're cursed.


Group meeting.  Jack's not even in this picture but I like the "piles of 4 year olds" feeling in this shot.

Happy Friday to all.  We are hurtling into a busy weekend. Off to the History Museum before 9 tomorrow to see Dr. Scott the Paleontologist (from Dinosaur Train of course).  Can't say that we don't know how to have a good time!

Snippets

We keep on having these wonderful days.

Darn it all.

It keeps me so busy uploading pictures and recording our travels and events, that I find I am leaving out the little moments, the snippets of information about the kiddos that would truly capture them as they are, right now.

To that end, I give you these:

Ivy, her raincoat, and her doll.
Kid loves her new raincoat.  Yellow rainslicker with pink and red ladybugs and the cutest ruffle detailing on the hood.  Never mind that it fits her perfectly and frames her face so well;  what is so wonderful about this coat is her attachment to it.  She demands to put it on anytime she sees it.  Once you put it on her, she walks around until she find Jack's windbreaker and then she wants him to wear his coat too.  Yesterday her coat was in my car, which traveled to Lakeland with Nat while I stayed with the kids.  We were getting ready to head out into the rainy evening when girlie, with great intention, began to walk around saying "di-di!  Ray-ee!  Didi!  Rayee!"  It took a while before I put it all together, as she walked around and pointed at every coat she could find.   "Raincoat!  Raining!"  That's what she was saying.  I explained we didn't have her raincoat but we did have another jacket. She accepted this as long as I put a coat on her baby doll too.  Really, she told me, in her own not-really-talking way.  We went to dinner at Burger King with her clutching a doll clad in one of Ivy's hooded sweatshirts.  She was intensely concerned with the doll getting wet in the rain.  I love her.


Jack, preschool, monkey bars and chapter books.
Jack has become very interested in climbing high and jumping off of things recently. OK, that's been for a while.  But this week the things that he's been most proud of, all of his reports from school, seem to involve just how high he's climbed, how far he jumped, or whether or not he cried when he fell.  The boy is manning up, now that he's 4.
Also, he seems to have a best buddy at preschool, Tristan.  Apparently they save seats for each other, and Jack talks about playing with no one else at school so far.  Hopefully we'll get along with Tristan's parents...
We've decided to try reading chapter books with Jack, mostly because we are getting tired of the library roulette that is picking out a stack of picture books. What if we get a bunch of lame stories, or too-long stories, and we're stuck with them for a week?  What's worse, what if one of those becomes Jack's favorite??  So, we ordered a set of Magic Treehouse books and Jack LOVES them.  It IS magical, the attention he is paying as we read, even coming over and laying a head on our shoulders.  Three chapters a night and oh does he remember the story from night to night.  He's very excited about them.  It doesn't hurt that the first two books are about Dinosaurs and Knights, respectively. 


Now, back to the reporting and recording. We had a really, really nice weekend. Full of more snippets than I could possible record or even remember. And some wonderful big events too...

The Madison Park Festival (ethnic food, cheesy music, and of course, alpacas..) and a treat of a half hour at the park with just my boy.  Best.  Half hour.  Ever.  This little boy?  He's pretty fun.








"Weekend of the Pooka" in Bedford Square.  We really had no idea what to expect from this venture.  I mean, what IS a Pooka???  Turns out, the festival was a small, down-home art fair with lots of interactive booths with very kid-friendly activities.  Here you will see Jack sculpting, painting, and creating a poem flag.  Ive got the short end of the stick this year, but I think we'll be heading back next year when she can do a bit more...



 







We ended the weekend with an impromptu and perfect picnic at Horseshoe Lake Park.  We followed clambering children up and down rocks and in and out of logs, ate hotdogs and chips with wild abandon, and  then fed the ducks as the sun dipped towards the horizon.  I promise you pictures soon.  For a sneak peek I'll link you over to Melinda's Blog, where you'll see Ivy girl has made the headlines... :)

Goodnight all.  More snippets to come soon.

Free Time

Another great Saturday has been had by all here in sunny Cleveland.  After a week of rain we've been treated to a spectacular few days, sunshine and crisp fall air abounding, with plenty of end-of-summer festive events to choose from.

Last night, it was Ingenuity Fest.   While I am sad this event has moved out of downtown, and I personally believe it had more to offer when it was located in the venue-rich Euclid Avenue neighborhood, I can certainly see the appeal of its new location.


Its got a great view.

Three years ago it started as "BridgeFest", a one-time opening of the space underneath the Detroit Superior Bridge, where the trolleys used to run.  Now our Ingenuity Fest call the Bridge home.  It's a mysterious and "secret" space;  you enter through a doorway that seems like an afterthought, up a grass-and-cobblestone rise from the old Flats, and enter a dim subterranean world... but to your right!  The columns arch off toward blue sky and river below and you are suspended in this middle world, abandoned and raw and industrial and lending itself to the cause of art and music and dance for this one weekend a summer.



And there was dancing, in our family at least.  The kids were crazy about the bridge, imbued as it was with a no-rules vibe. The first exhibit-- just past the beer truck-- is an all-white room wherein you are given a Sharpie and told to draw and write. On anything.  Jack asked, "even on the couch???"  In retrospect perhaps it was not the best idea to encourage our children's participation in this experience....



Other highlights:
Dancing and stomping and spinning on the plywood floor laid over the metal grid on the "suspension" part of the bridge, while the Drum Corps played; looking down to river and boats docked underneath our feet; the interactive light-art in the "catacomb" section by the old terminal.



(In the picture above we are waving to our images in the interactive screens on the walls. The family portrait we created is below.  Don't worry, Nat is holding Ivy.  In fact, one of the horizontal blobs on the screen is the image of her legs being held straight out in the air so you we could tell she was in the picture.)


Jack scored two cups of free lemonade, by the way.


Today picked up where last night left off, with the awesome-ness.  Off to Lakewood bright and early where Nat went to work at The Root, I went to shop at the first Kids' Resale of the season, and the kids stayed with Gram.  Two hours later, Gram and I were off together to take the kids to the Madison Park Festival, where we fed alpacas, ate random ethnic food prepared by church kitchens, listened to cheesy renditions of polka and folk favorites, got balloons, waved to Elmo, and generally had a wonderful time. Gram took Ivy to the car to nap while Jack and I had the most marvelous time on the play structures, which are sky-high and adventurous.  I realized I don't get nearly enough opportunity to play with my boy on playgrounds.  I mean, REALLY play.  Not run after his sister while pretending to be a troll from a distance.  Not supervising him while I chat with adults.  Really running around, climbing, racing down the slides--playing.  We had a blast.  Jack is a really fun kid, you know?  And so kind-- he offered to help me up ladders,  to "stable me" while I balanced.   Looking out for his mama.

It was a little gift, that moment of time with him.

Later in the afternoon Nat and I had a little gift of time ourselves, leaving the resting kids at Grams house again and heading out for some spontaneous garage-saleing and coffee.  Delicious, to have free and unfettered time together, to just putter around, to go through shops and amble and talk and not have to shepherd anyone else.

We talked on the way home about being startled at just how little free time we do have, as parents.  How plenty of our time is spent doing fun things, but we are always on duty during that fun, always on guard, protecting and watching and encouraging, structuring and creating and arranging, creating and safeguarding the fun experience for our children.

Back in our neighborhood this evening, we took Cor on a 3-blocker walk.  At one point  we found ourselves singing  "We are the dinosaurs" at full volume, roaring and stomping and all.  And I had this little epiphany that has somehow taken me 4 years to discover:

I need to change my definition of free time.

Because what could possibly be freer than walking along with a happy dog and two happy kids, unabashedly singing about dinosaurs?  Not much, that's what.

Maybe that which we used to think of as free time, was really more like wasted time.  All those moments spent doing...nothing at all.  Unimaginable these days.

No, as parents we USE our time.  We FILL our time.  And if we fill it the right way, with joy and care and love and spontaneity, maybe this full time can be all the free time we need.


A side note:
Here's just a small example of the way kids make our lives great.  As Jack and I opened the packaging for my new jump drive, he asked what  I was going to use it for.  I explained how it would help me to take information-- words, documents, pictures-- from one computer to another.  I held the tiny device in front of me and marveled over how something so small could do something so amazing.  That we have to take this technology for granted because if I think too much about it, its simply mind-blowing.  Nat observed that its all a series of ones and zeros. And I continued to marvel that "I have no idea how it all works."  Jack, sitting quietly by, watching his "How the Earth was Made" documentary, chimed in:  "I know!  You just take it and you put it in a slot and then you take it out!"  Kid knows how to keep it real.   I love him.

Oh, and FYI, I will be putting up a few pictures of Jack's first day at preschool, in the post from that day, below.  Jack continues to report that he is having fun at school and most recently was proud to report that he can jump off the rock climbing wall from really really way up high and not even fall or cry. Atta boy.

First Day

Jack started Pre-K today.

I ended up writing mostly about the children tonight on my other blog, so I am going to jsut link you over there for now, OK?

But I promise pictures soon!

http://anythingfor30days.blogspot.com/2011/09/september-13th.html

A couple of pictures:

Sparx in the Hyundai

This morning dawned dismally.  Gray light and pattering rain greeted me as I pulled myself from a luscious night of sleep up in my "nest" (the bed in my office that Nat encourages me to retreat to, once in a while, when Ivy's night wakings and my early mornings combine to make me a very droopy camper).  Pattering rain and a grey day are not in and of themselves the worst things. At the right moment, they can both even be lovely.   

But you see, today was supposed to be one of my favorite days of the year:  the Sparx City Hop.  One wonderful day full of people touring about Cleveland in trolleys, congregating in wonderful hidden neighborhoods, discovering galleries and restaurants, spontaneous art fairs and flea markets and car shows springing up around the trolley stops.  Its fabulous.  

And this year, it was rained out.

We'd talked ourselves into braving the threatening skies and trekking out, Kelty and McClaren in tow, when we discovered the event had been cancelled, in its entirety, due to weather.

Sigh.

But it turns out that even the most dismal day can be entirely redeemed.  Here's the story of today.

A grumpy mommy took over the kiddos at 8am so Nat could go to Starbucks and get some work done.  Jack and I played our own version of Bakugan for a while (which involves dice and comparing quantities up to 6, of course) and I tried valiantly to get some food into my reluctant eaters.  We spent the usual inordinate amount of time getting children dressed, packing snacks, and running around the house to find shoes, toy cars, and other items we had forgotten.  Finally at 9:30 we headed out the door and went to the J to check out the recently renovated Family Playroom.  

The kids had a great time, clambering on the foam shapes in the gross motor room, and playing kitchen and garbage truck in the toyroom.  Ivy was a hoot.  She discovered the two dolls, the doll stroller, and the doll highchair and spent her time shuffling back and forth with one doll or the other clutched to her chest, trying to wrap them in blankets, patting them, and alternately placing them emphatically in the stroller and in the highchair. I wish I'd been able to get a video, of her concentration and her funny little posture, and the way she tried to push that highchair ALLLL the way in to the table.   I haven't laughed that hard in quite a while. 

Redeeming of the day, underway.

We detoured on our way home for a stop at a local thrift shop where we scored two pairs of shoes for the kids ($1 each! Keens and Skechers!) as well as a milk crate jam-packed with Hotwheels track, loops, starters, connectors, and a wild assortment of cars, planes, transformers and one very strange amphibious vehicle with a lot of propellers, labeled a Rescue Unit. 

Add in some consumer therapy.  Day is getting better.

Jack and Daddy and I assembled track and raced cars and folded laundry (well, OK, that part was mainly me) while Ive napped in the car.  We discovered the Great Cancellation during this time but that disappointment aside, we had a lovely rainy-Saturday hour, the three of us.

When Ivy awoke we took a break for some lunch and then, somehow, Nat got the kids going on Ring-Around-the-Rosy.  And apparently, this is the game Ivy has been waiting for her entire life.  She couldn't get enough.  Nat and I took turns walking in circles in our dining room with giggling, flailing children clinging to our hands until the whole thing just dissolved into laughter.  I think Ivy would've played all day.  

Watching our children play together and laughing til our sides hurt = not such a bad day after all...

So, as the understanding dawned on us that we would either be spinning in circles all afternoon or dealing with a very disappointed toddler if we didn't distract her soon, we decided to head out into the world.  Cancelled Trolleys be damned.  We would have our own Sparx City Hop.  Sparx in the Hyundai. 

We drove around through midtown til we found a few of the places we'd stopped at last year (a little glimmer of home but no cigar) before heading to our telos:  downtown, to visit the Arcade. 

And we had a most lovely visit to our fair city.  By the time we parked near the Public Library, the sun was shining and it was a glorious fall day.  We meandered through arcades and pedestrian malls and gardens for the better part of 2 hours.  We saw a religious fanatic preaching his message on his own personal PA system, a large contingent of homeless people, and no fewer than 8 wedding parties. We may be memorialized in a number of photo albums.  Our children posed for pictures on walls, ran down sidewalks, splashed in puddles, and had a snack at the soldiers and sailors monument. Ivy tried to do a somersault in a puddle of water.  Jack was a ball of enthusiasm.  We visited Starbucks and the sun glinted off of everything. It was rather a magical afternoon; we felt as if we'd gone abroad.  

Day, all of a sudden = best I've had in a while.

From there we went to Edgewater.  A boy wanted to wear his new Keens in the water.  We were going to take a McDonald's picnic but the skies were threatening again and we didn't want our son's choice of activities to be rained out. Quick, quick into the swimtrunks and down to the beach we went, where Jack spent a few moments standing in 2 inches of water while Ivy did everything possible to keep her feet out of it, before we turned our attention to the giant sandbox that is the beach, with Jack and I building a sand ship and Ivy alternately digging in the sand and trying to get it off her hands.  The sun glanced down from between the shifting clouds and the post-season beach was calm and clean and our children were easy and content.

We left for dinner before the day could lose a bit of its "Can't get much better" magic.

We'd promised McDonald's so McDonald's it was even though picnic plans had changed.  Instead we ate-in and it turns out, we kind of like McDonald's.  It seems like we always have a nice meal when we eat there.  Something about the combination of greasy food and cheap, novel toys makes our children very happy, and tonight was no exception.  So we decided to take it all the way and end our meal with ice cream.  

Today, it seems, was sublime. 

I hope your day was, too. 

*I think I ought to note that all of the preceeding pictures were taken with Nat's phone.  Freakishly good camera in that phone.  When we went to download today's treasures, we accidentally imported all the pictures on the card.  All 1100 of them.  Ranging from winter 2010 to today, all those blurry and odd and perfect photos, snapped in the "where's my camera when i need it" moments.  Beautiful. I am working on a plan to get the 250 pictures I deemed worthy collaged into 20-some pages because what a interesting view of our year that would be....

Ivy right now...

Changing at the speed of light, this little girl.

 Except for sleep. She still clings stubbornly to the sleep habits of a 6 month old. Sigh.

 But other than that! Oh what fun she is becoming!

 Here are some new developments from our youngest child:

 * New words! Among them-- Sticky, Stinky, and Baby. All utterly adorable to listen to. She LOVES the word "sticky" and will say it over and over and repeat it, if she hears us say it in conversation. 

*Dolls! She has suddenly gone all girly on us, and is now officially obsessed with the dolls she received last week from Grandpa and Vovo. She likes to take them along on walks, in the car, into the store or restaurant. Today at Chic-Fil-A she ate her dinner with her "bee-bee" tucked under one arm. She gives them kisses ("mah!!) and snuggles and walks them in her doll stroller and oh is she cute. To her credit she also takes Hotwheels and shoes for walks in her stroller.

 * TV! She now watches television and has gotten into the routine of settling in to the small Poang chair, placed right next to Jack's TV chair, where the two of them will happily watch up to 30 minutes of video. She doesn't stay seated for that whole time but even as she wanders the living room or stands in her chair, she's pretty engaged in the shows, to the point that she repeats words said by characters in the show. So far she's pretty open-minded and will even watch Jack's new favorites-- animal documentaries-- but her favorites seem to be anything with music, and Bert and Ernie.  I really shouldn't be happy that my barely 16 month old baby likes TV but I have to say-- both of them sitting and being entertained for a few moments, at the same time?  It rocks.

 *"Shyness"-She continues to be a friendly girl who loves to say "Hieee!" and charm everyone she meets but recently she'll follow that up with a cling to our legs or a shy head turn. She gets over it pretty quickly so at the moment its mostly endearing.

 * Trying to run. You should see her do this little quasi-march, legs extending out straight in front, tromping about at a great rate... she's almost there with the running.

 * Dancing. She does the twist, arms swinging and rotating her torso like mad, anytime music starts up. Interestingly she uses a similar motion to indicate "No way in H***" rather than just shaking her head no to things.


 Well, my ramblings about my daughter must end now, as she is starting up her nightly "its about time for mom to go to bed so I'd better wake up and scream" routine.

 Before I go I just have to share that she and Jack climbed all the way up the play structure at Chic-Fil-A tonight, the boy holding her hand and following her attentively the whole way. It was wonderful to see, one of those "OK, it might be worth it" moments. Especially when Jack happily exclaimed, "I just LOVE Ivy" when I asked him if they were having fun. Good stuff.

 Now, off to have my nightly chat with my daughter about the whole "nighttime is for sleeping" thing. If she ever figures this out, she and I may actually get along pretty well....

God Bless Three Day Weekends

"Back to School" is ALWAYS a shock to the system. I don't know why I am surprised by this again, every year. It's brutal, the early wake-up, the driving, the craziness at school, the craziness of my own darlings who only act like this because they miss me but STILL.... whew. Complicating matters have been runny noses, fevers, coughs, and the ensuing bad nights of sleep that come with two kids getting the same virus in succession.

This weekend, they felt better.

This weekend, I felt better.

I didn't think about school for (almost) three days (just did a BIT of planning before coming on here, because, you know, I ought to have SOMETHING ready for tomorrow...)

After being briefly overwhelmed by the state of affairs in the housecleaning department on Saturday morning, Nat and I divided and conquered and by today I even got to one of my long-term, organization projects. Nevermind the 33 more projects on that list...

HOT weather on Friday and Saturday (mid 90s! In September!) has morphed to fall-like chill and next weekend I'll probably be switching out our seasonal clothes.

In the meantime, here are some moments from our weekend trips to the Botanical Gardens and Rocky River Beach.