Tuesday, May 27, 2008

It's the 27th, right? I lost track of the days over the long weekend.

Phew. It was lovely to have a long weekend, but recovering from those days off is always hard. I find that the first day of the week always gimps along awkwardly - it's not until day #2 that we really hit our stride. That goes double for the first day back after a holiday weekend.

We had a pretty good weekend here. The weather was gorgeous. I was, unfortunately, holed up working for quite a bit of it but we still managed to find time as a family to purchase and assemble all the basics of our square foot garden. It's pretty impressive, really. Our square foot garden measures 4- by 3-feet, with space allocated for a surprising number of vegetable plants (I kill flowers). It is not fancy or pretty, but it gets the job done. It's fun for Isabel to help with the garden and she's especially happy to add the green bean plant that she sprouted herself, as a project for the Wee Explorers preschool program she attends at the science museum. This week we'll put all our plants in.

We also cut Isabel's hair over the weekend. It was an accident, actually, and we had to make an emergency run to Nick's cousin to have the cut evened up. Isabel has been asking for short hair but I had resisted because I like the convenience of being able to easily pull long hair back into a ponytail. I agreed only to a little trim. Sadly, just as I was about to *snip* with the scissors, the child moved. And *chop*. I was left with a handful of long, blonde hair. All's well that ends well, though. She is happy and it's really cute on her, as evidenced in the attached photos. (Also notice the new sneakers that she ties all by herself.) We told her that the cut makes her look older. The next day, to her grandmother, she reported, "My Mom and Dad say my new hair makes me look like an old lady."

Today all desk work was set aside when three huge trucks marked Schneck's Tree Removal pulled up out front. Our stump! Before the fall, our property was the home to an enormous, ancient death trap of a tree that dropped log-like branches on whatever unfortunate vehicle, toy or person happened to be beneath it at that moment. After extensive complaints by ourselves and our neighbors and, finally, calls to our representative, the city removed the tree (it was a street-adjacent tree, the city's responsibility). The stump remained. Until today.

Isabel and I parked ourselves in the front window, gawking shamelessly, while the stump was ground down, shoveled into a huge pile and scooped into the bed of a dump truck. Then new dirt was brought out, shoveled into the hole, patted down, and sprinkled with grass seed. After they left, we marched outside to see what the grass seeds look like and compare the size of the area ground up to what we remembered the circumference of the stump to be (and talked about root systems while doing so).

This afternoon was Irish dancing, and then the kids and I made our way to Wegmans to grocery shop for the week. I find grocery shopping to be a trip that is full of opportunities for kids to explore and learn. Plus, Isabel just plain old enjoys the grocery store. She asked for some paper and a pen, which she drew and wrote on as we meandered through the store. The produce section is a lot of fun for her - her "special job" is to remember the produce codes as we take our selections to the scale. I punch in the code and then Isabel takes the sticker and puts it on our item. Throughout the rest of the store, she reads prices for me and we compare items to figure out which is bigger or smaller, heavier or lighter.

In the middle of choosing canned tomatoes, Aidan put both of his fat little hands on my cheeks and very deliberately pulled my face down to his (he was riding in the sling, so only about a foot removed from my head) and kissed me. It was a wet baby kiss, very slobbery and goofy, but very sweet. Then he clapped for himself and said, "Ay!" (which is "yay" without the first "y"). Too cute.

Isabel helped at the checkout line as well. When we left the store, she proudly showed me her paper, on which she had been carefully writing her name. She sometimes forgets the "b", but her letters really are formed well.

Tomorrow: Library. It was closed yesterday. I had thought we'd do some work on arachnids this week, but I still have a bad case of the heebie-jeebies from a horrible Oh, what's this tickle behind my ear? I'll scratch it - aahh ahhhh AHHH AHHHHHHHH SPIDER! experience on Saturday. So arachnids will wait until the memory of pulling a gigantic wolf spider out of my ear has faded a bit. Since we're going to the Toronto Zoo next week (vacation!), I think maybe we'll do some more animals. Or trucks, maybe - Isabel liked the trucks today. I'll ask her what she wants to read about. Such is the beauty of homeschooling.