the one

cheap help, if you can get it

We threw a little bit of yard maintenance into the mix this past weekend which involved cleaning up the green stuff growing between the bricks and putting a little more sand in.  This activity turned out to be a big hit with E.  Once I reminded her that she had new knee pads, she went for it.  I'd estimate she got through about 85% of the paving before I found her sculpting mountains out of the residual sand.  That's a pretty high percentage for her.  She's much more likely to get distracted thirty seconds into a task and rarely gets the first one done.

"E, could you straighten up your art table and put the paper scraps in the recycling bin?"

"Sure."

Fifteen minutes later you find her stringing the entire contents of the recycling bin into some sort of "late, late, late Mother's Day present", some sort of abstract sculptural invention that I'm to treasure and hang onto forever.  And the art table is piled twice as high now with the scraps.

So the fact that the patio area is nearly complete - it could use another sweeping, but I always seemed to have a certain ten month old in my hands this weekend.  And that's saying something for things around here.  No matter how many three-day weekends we have, we always could use a fourth day, and probably a fifth.

And now I'm off to fold that laundry that is only 85% folded.

friday morning in the garden

Friends of ours recently discovered that two of their trees (planted by previous owners) were fruit producing cherry trees so they ended up with branches of these last week - more than they could eat, so they graciously shared with us.  Yum.  What a treat.  Really, to just wake up one day and find one of your favorite fruits weighing down the branches of your very own tree.  These early cherries are just hitting our grocery stores, and the organic bags are $7 a bag.  The way the baby gobbled them up, we may need to plant our own orchard.

Three hours in the garden the other morning, ahhh.  I'm sure I had more pressing things to do, but it's amazing how those things fly out of my brain when I'm in there.  The only thing more pressing that F had to do was to try and reach these off limits cherries.  She knows a good thing when she sees one. 

Enjoy the explosion of nearly-June garden color.  And wrapping it up at the end... another version of going, going, gone.  Or maybe I should call this one going, going, gone and really gone. 

 

 

 

 

outside the arc

Should she go in?  These weighty questions sometimes take awhile.  Luckily, yesterday morning we had just that.

The answer:  yes, after much contemplation.

poetry pot

The first graders in E's class (poets extraordinaire) each wrote a few lines of poetry about their teacher.  These lines were put together into one poem, and their words - in their own handwriting - were transferred onto the flower pot and painted over.  Here are some shots of the in-progress and finished product as well as the poem.  I think she will love it.

Brandy: a poem

by the Enigmas

Brandy is as gentle as a butterfly, as beautiful as a dove.

Your smile is as pretty as the morning sun shining on huge beautiful flowers. 

You smell as sweet as a flower, as sweet as honey.

You are as nice as an angel, as cool as the wind.

You are as pretty as a flower, as pretty as a peacock, with a

smile as friendly as a puppy.

Your hair is as dark as the best kind of chocolate.

You are as helpful as a bee because bees carry pollen from one flower to another.

You teach us as perfect as a mastermind.

Brandy is as sweet as a rose.

update to below

Chocolate gelato stain - OUT. 

in our own best interest?

I am hurting my father with these posts.  First it was the g diapers.  I remember asking my (Procter and Gamble employed) father when I was still pregnant if he would be too horribly crushed if we drastically reduced our Pampers consumption in the house.  (He wasn't.)  And I will say that when all the cloth diapers are in the wash, the baby does wear a Pamper or two.  Before we ever ventured into the cloth diaper world - back in the old days when E was in diapers - we tried a bunch of different brands, including the generics.  Who wouldn't once they encountered the sticker shock of those tiny little newborn diapers that they wear for all of twenty minutes before letting loose another runny poo?  Unfortunately those cheaper diapers never worked.  They always leaked, and leaking diapers were never worth the extra change, no matter how much it jingled in our pockets.  Never.  Pulling poopy onesies over the head of the baby resulted in multiple baths a day which drastically cut down on the amount of free time we had for other activities like crossword puzzle working and light reading.  Ha.  But they did stink, and we were Pampers consumers through and through.

Over the course of six years, Huggies (cheaper by pennies only) has made some pretty big strides, and still to this day remain the only overnight diaper F can wear without soaking through.  She sleeps on her stomach with her rear so high in the air that short of strapping some sort of super absorbent inner tube around her mid-section, it takes a really good diaper to catch the liquid before it puddles under her stomach.  I still feel like I'm letting my father down a bit.

But perhaps the mightier blow is in the works right now.  I've been pretty brand loyal to that orange box or jug since I first started putting coins in machines to do my own laundry.  (Cover your eyes, Dad, I have a new love.) 

It's not just because the bottle looks so much better in my newly renovated laundry room (it does) or because it takes up so much less room (it does) or even because it easier to use than that giant orange bottle (oh my goodness, so much easier) or because I can use it with one hand while holding the baby in the other (I can!  I can!  I can!).  You could say it's because it's supposedly greener and leaner and meaner than Tide and the company is cool and leaves me coupons in my inbox and doesn't give me a hernia when I carry more than one bottle in a bag draped over one arm from my street-parked car (all those things and more!).

It really comes down to the ads.  I love them, and they work on me, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  They work.  Nice job.  I've switched, and I think I'm in love.  I'm only twenty or thirty loads in, and there's a pretty big gelato stain (chocolate) on some little first grader's skirt, so I won't jump into anything too permanent until I've used it for awhile.  But there is a second bottle already purchased and waiting, so we might just be free and clear of those orange jugs for good. 

My father is no longer an employee of P&G, but he does enjoy a bit of retirement stuff from them.  And we own a lot of stock in that company (well, my children do) so feel free to continue using your Pampers and Tide all you want.  Really, they are just fine.

where you will find us starting mid-july: nearest orchard, 12.4 miles from our house

There's still a lot of food love going on around here.  So far she seems to be equally as interested in barley and asparagus and quinoa as she is in apples and bananas and pears.  That even playing field may be tipping a bit in the favor of warm weather foods that can be held with both hands and have the living daylights sucked out of them.  Looking for a challenge?  Try prying a peach out of this girl's hands once she has sunk her fingernails into it.  I recommend just letting her go at it for the better part of an hour until she falls asleep with just the sticky pit in her paws.

Looking forward to blowing her mind with watermelon.

spring art show and concert: part two, the strings

Here are a few photos I snapped of the kids on the front row.  A few weeks back I posted some photos of the older kids performing with their strings instructor's band.  The money that was raised from that concert went towards the purchase of new music stands - great for the users, not as great for us parents trying to get some pictures of our kids behind those big black squares.  Very impressive show - the kids have worked really hard.  Looking forward to some private lessons this summer and a new repertoire of songs.  Really looking forward to that last one... 

spring art show and concert: part one, the art

I should preface this whole post by saying that this post is not going to reach its fullest potential.  On a scale of one to ten, ten being the best post you've ever read and one being the kind of post that causes you to un-follow, this one earns about a seven.  It's a cupcake without icing, a picnic with fried chicken and watermelon, but no bug spray, a tall, cold glass of lemonade where the ice has melted so fast that its moving from cool to lukewarm and it tastes like watered down church potluck lemonade.  (I can say that without offending anyone because I've personally made that lemonade before.)  And so I preface this whole post (if you'll kindly let me preface it still now that I'm a whole paragraph into it) by saying that it is incomplete.  But bear with me on this because I'm tired and I'm lazy and it's Sunday night.  Thank you.  That's really kind of you.

Here are a few of my favorite works from the gallery show last Thursday.  The kids' work is on display at a local gallery where they also got to perform their final strings concert of the year and where the following phrase was uttered by my significant other to the baby right before the last piece was performed by the first graders:  "Kiddo, listen up, because (thankfully) this is the last time you're going to have to hear "Old Joe Clark"."  And he was right.  We haven't heard it since (although it may live in infamy as that tiny singing voice within my head).

Focus.  Sorry.

Where was I?  Yes - a few of my favorite works.  These are my favorites for two reasons.  One, they were done by my child, and/or two, they photographed well enough to show you.  The first two are really just slightly blurry stills of a projection on the wall.  The animations were so funny to watch, but not as funny as E trying to explain it to me.  I need to get a copy of the animation and watch it with her, and if I do I'll share it with you.  So that's shortcoming number one.  A film with no film.  Trust me, it was wonderful.

The second group that I really liked were the photographic light drawings.  Fail number two.  I actually won the compilation of this work in the school auction and it is sitting in my living room right now.  I should photograph it, download it, resize it, upload it and publish it but I'm far too lazy to do it.  So instead, here are the photos of the photos, and the text that accompanied their work.  I'll at least re-write the first paragraph in case you can't read it: 

Enigma students are undisputed scholars of reconfiguration as they have spent the last quarter of our time together working through various process-based, patience rewarding projects emphasizing slight but numerable manipulations of objects:  stop motion, plaster casting, and photographic light drawing among them.

That detail shot (three down) is one of E's.

And these silhouettes / self-portraits by the Thrive class were just amazing.  But you know me, I'm always partial to the work of paper and an x-acto blade. 

Part two, the strings coming tomorrow.  Thanks for putting up with my shortcomings.  I'll work on getting that video and that compilation for you to enjoy.