Spring and Fall

Spring and Fall

to a young child

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah, as the heart grows older,

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh,

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now, no matter, child the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

We drove down to spend Thanksgiving week at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm, and you were captivated by the baby chicks. You tromped out through the snow each day, looking forward to feeding, watering, watching, holding, and petting them. And for the week we were there, you and I talked repeatedly about how you would miss the baby chicks, and how you were sad that they would grow up and get bigger, and how you wished you could bring their enclosure and heat lamps into your room and watch over them and keep them safe all night and keep them little. It truly caused your heart to ache.

I know that someday – too soon for me – you will grow older, and you will grow to such sights colder. I wish I could somehow capture the pure, sweet, innocent you of today. I didn’t tell you as I lay there trying to calm your fears and snuggle you to sleep, but I know exactly how you feel. It is Margaret that I mourn for.

Home Sweet Home!

We are all moved in! The house is set up! The whole family is home, living together in Oshkosh! Lucien and I flew in three weeks ahead of Daddy so that we could get the house all set up and organized, then he flew in this week. Lucien and I were both beyond excited to pick him up at the bus depot, bring him home, and show him around our new house and our new neighborhood. And now that the house is organized and my husband is here, I finally have the time to take pictures and post a virtual tour!

First, the room that was most fun for me to decorate – Lucien’s play room! He has a full bookshelf, fun pictures and wall decals, a (write-on) world map with dry erase marker, a padded window seat, and oodles of cube storage. He also has an appropriately sized table and chairs, for eating snacks, drawing, crafting, and reading. He currently has his cup of tea sitting there. (Please excuse the dismal lighting; it has been dark and gloomy here lately.)

Also, notice the piano and Suzuki music book. We start Suzuki piano lessons next month, right after his fourth birthday!

One of Lucien’s favorite activities is playing shop with his toy food – or real food, for that matter. He now has a kitchen + shop on wheels, and boy, has it ever gotten a lot of use! He even likes to eat his breakfast there. For those rare occasions when he is not using his shop, we can collapse and roll it into the corner, right underneath the Dr Seuss clock and Winnie the Pooh picture. (The latter was a gift from his great grandfather, which we shipped to Hawaii and then back.)

We have lots of books in our living room, too. I made a cozy reading corner by the couch with a book rack for all our library finds. And then we have a couple of very full bookshelves for Mom and Dad’s books.

I put a big photo wall in the dining room, featuring plenty of happy memories from Hawaii. And I managed to squeeze in more bookshelves. This one has scrapbooks, homeschooling materials, and read-alouds. I really like the Usborne Illustrated series, as you can tell by looking at the top shelf!

Also in the dining room, we have a view of the staircase and railing that Lucien loves to climb. The little monkey!

Upstairs, Lucien’s bedroom was also a lot of fun to put together. It is all in blue, with a Noah’s Ark / animal sort of theme.

His stuffed animals have their own ladder bookshelf, and Lucien has his own cozy reading corner, complete with blankets, pillows, lots of books, traditional bookshelves, and forward-facing bookshelves.

We also have a mud room! We have feet in our shoes, but mahalo for removing those shoes when we are in the house!

Lucien was a big helper organizing the kitchen and even cooking!

Eating is also a lot of fun.

But sharing food with friends is even better.

We are loving our new house, new neighborhood, new activities, and new friends.

Outer Space, Sailing, and Planfulness

I have been looking for some inspiration for new plans, ideas, and schedules in our home learning life, and since I am such a type A, planner sort of person, I thought that a homeschool planner might be a great boost for us. I was indeed correct. And beside, with Lucien getting closer to actual school age, it is probably wise for me to get in the habit of documenting. I ordered this planner, which I love, shortly after my birthday. It arrived mid-June, and I decided to start my first calendar at the beginning of July. I rounded up some colorful pens and got to work!

Lucien has been very interested in outer space lately, so I created an outer space book basket with both fiction and non-fiction options, planned a trip to the planetarium to explore the exhibits and watch a planetarium show, and came up with a few fun activities for at home.

Lucien had been working hard at writing his name, so I cut out some shapes and he practiced tracing his name, and then gluing to make a rocket ship.

Our word wall was another opportunity for pasting and spelling practice. We have completed the whole alphabet, A-Z, and Lucien keeps coming up with more words he wants to add.

We had some more fun with science; we did color mixing with watercolor paints, and then made the water “walk” up chromatography paper. Lucien ended up with some cool designs. He also used the watercolors for their intended purpose: making a painting. 

Lucien also joined in my planning spree. We wrote out all the activities for the month on our giant white board calendar, practicing the numbers and the letters in July. We drew a big circle around the 28th, the day we will be moving to Wisconsin.
This week, in addition to our planetarium trip, we had on our calendar a trip to the zoo, a trip to the library for summer reading program (we are up over 250 books now!), a trip to another library for story time, and two Discovery Center days. Lucien was over the moon because Dad got to come and see the Discovery Center for the first time this week.

And what an absolutely wonderful Wednesday we had. A morning trip to the Discovery Center was followed by lunch in the park, which was followed to a trip to the Hilton lagoon, where we splashed in the water and dug our toes in the sand and waited to board a sailboat for an hour-long cruise around Waikiki. What a wonderful time!

And as if that wasn’t enough fun for one day, afterward Lucien and I piled in the car with Grandma to go meet Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Justin for the Uncle Wayne and the Howling Dog concert. This is the third concert of theirs that Lucien had attended, and he was so looking forward to it! We now have all of their CD’s, as well as matching Uncle Wayne tee shirts. Lucien enjoyed a picnic dinner and visiting with family, then he went and sat right up front. He danced with me and sang along and raced me around during the motorcycle race song. It was such a fantastic, full, family-oriented day!

Summer Fun

We are enjoying summer in Hawaii! Zoo, beach, parks, to be sure. And we escape the heat with lots and lots of library visits! We went to the summer reading kickoff party at the state library downtown. It was a Superhero-themed Bon Dance – only in Hawaii! We watched traditional dance and listened to drum beats, got our pictures taken with the superheroes, and signed up for the summer reading program. We are supposed to record in our log all the books we read over the summer. We have already completely filled up the first log – 130 books! – and we are over 70 books into our second log. Recent favorites have been The Magic School Bus and anything about science, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Magic Nesting Doll.

We also attended a special library show by the Fairy Grandmother – a superhero-themed magic show! Lucien happily reminisced about our previous encounters with the Fairy Grandmother, and delighted in her magic tricks.

Another library program we recently attended was a concert by Uncle Wayne and the Howling Dog Band – they provide folksy-style musical edu-tainment with Hawaiian flair. We learned through fun songs about coral reefs, humpback whales, sea turtles, and environmental stewardship. Lucien loved them so much we hunted down their schedule and attended their very next concert – we had a picnic dinner outside the Mission Houses museum downtown, discovered some traditional toys and played in the yard, then sang and danced along to the music. We also bought a shirt and CD for Lucien, and I think we all know all the songs by heart now!

Thanks to Grandma Carmen we had a fantastic opportunity to ride a submarine just off the coast of Waikiki. We saw lots of colorful fish and counted four different honu. We saw first hand the animals Uncle Wayne sings about! We dove down over 100 feet and saw wrecked ships and a submerged airplane. Lucien is still talking about the fish and the “fish buffets” – where plants are growing on the wrecks, and the fish hide out and eat.

We also continue our frequent visits to the Bishop museum. Lucien’s favorite spot is the planetarium. We even got to watch a new show about Pluto and the New Horizons spacecraft that will soon be snapping pictures of it. We learned about telescopes and how people discovered the planets. We learned about all the different Kuiper Belt Objects orbiting the sun. It was fascinating for me, too! Joanne is the person who usually gives talks in the planetarium, and she was there as sulu that day. As we were waiting to enter, Lucien said to me: “I like Joanne. Let’s tell her that I like her when we go in!” And as we walked past Joanne, he said in his loud, clear, cheerful voice “Joanne, I like you!” On the way out he insisted we stop and talk to Joanne again, and he said to her, “Joanne, I liked the show!” Such a sweet boy!

We have been reading a lot at home about science, gravity, and outer space, and Lucien can answer a lot of Miss Frizzle’s questions. I am impressed with how much he can absorb and comprehend. We sometimes take Miss Frizzle along with us to Starbucks for some iced coffee and ice water. Perfect way to escape the heat!

Another fun summer activity? Feeling the wind in your hair! Lucien loves when I pull him through the parking lot on his skateboard. We tied a jump rope up to it, and we got some serious speed. Things got even better, though, when dad came home from work and tied then other end of that jump rope to his bike!

We have also been having fun with friends, learning, playing – and climbing! – at the Discovery Center, drawing, coloring, and even practicing our letters.

What We’ve Been Doing Lately

We have been so busy at our house, learning and playing together, and I have been so preoccupied with our new house in Oshkosh – preparing to visit, making it comfortable for Lucien – that I have totally neglected to write about anything we have been doing lately. So here is a whole bunch of pictures, and a brief recap:

We are soaking up the Hawaiian weather! Walking to the beach, playing at the park, climbing some trees, splashing and wading in the water, playing in the dirt and making mud pies. Lots of dirty laundry at this house!

 

We are playing with the neighbors. Ring around the Rosie inside a hula hoop was fun for me to watch! We also do a lot of art here in our living room, sometime with friends. Lucien is still working on that pencil grip, and getting a lot better at drawing people. He also loves his workbooks, doing things like connect the dots, beginning letter sounds, simple math. We love playing school!

Science with our Clifford science kit is always enjoyable. Here Lucien is doing rainbow experiments and mixing primary colors.

Our favorite activity recently, though, has been visiting the Bishop Museum. We finally broke down and bought a family membership. Boy, was it worth the money! I wish we would have done it sooner. Lucien loves visiting, and we have both learned so much.

There is so much information about Hawaiian culture. We got to watch a live poi making demonstration. (Poi is basically pounded taro root, a traditional Hawaiian staple food.) We learned about lau hala (a traditional Hawaiian weaving) and got to make our own lau hala fish. We learned about endemic species, Polynesian exploration, cultural history, dress, and so much more! When we read the Magic Tree House book about Hawaii, Lucien already knew all about the history and culture – he could have given Jack and Annie lessons!

Lucien loves visiting the planetarium and seeing the kids’ show about the night sky. He can tell me all about the moon and its phases, meteors and how they burn up in the atmosphere because of friction, how all the planets orbit the sun because of gravity, and which planets are which. He is also learning about the constellations in the night sky. It is so exciting for me to see him so excited about science, and we continue to encourage that curiosity with lots of non-fiction books from the library.

He also loves the dinosaur exhibit at Bishop. We are learning all about which dinosaurs were carnivores or herbivores, how we can tell my looking at their teeth and claws, which dinosaurs lived in herds and worked cooperatively, where on the globe they lived, what their habitats were like. Lucien tells me he likes the maiasaura the best, because their name means that they were good mothers, and they take care of their babies in a nest, and we read about them in a Magic School Bus book. We have checked out several non-fiction books about dinosaurs, including a Cat in the Hat science reader, which Lucien always enjoys!

The science building at Bishop is another treasure trove. Lucien is learning how to use microscopes to examine plant and animal specimens. Here, he is also using a microscope to examine sand found at different beaches in Hawaii. We talked about how some were made from volcanic rock, some from coral and marine skeletons, and how the composition of each changed the color and texture of the sand.

We learned about the underwater volcano that is in the process of forming a new island – Lo’ihi. We got to hold an actual lava rock that formed 3000 feet under the ocean. We compared it to other types of lava rock and talked about density. The lava formed under high water pressure was much denser and so heavy that Lucien needed to use two hands to hold it, while the lava that cooled while shooting through the air was very porous and therefore light. Lucien’s interest in volcanoes continues, as does our non-fiction reading list from the library!

We learned all about volcanoes and lava when we attended a lava making demonstration. We got to see how lava melts and cools, and hold about ten different types of lava in our hands! Lucien was so excited for this presentation, I think it was the highlight of his day that day.

All of this activity, plus our normal weekly trips to music class, the zoo, library story time, and the Discovery Center? It adds up to lots of fun.

And this coming week will bring even more fun and excitement, as Lucien and I will be getting on the airplane and flying to visit Grandma and Grandpa on the farm in Wisconsin. We will also get to see our new house, and I can get to work unpacking and organizing and creating a beautiful play space for Lucien. We have so much to look forward to.

Saint Patrick’s Day, Volcanoes, Songs, and Dirt

We might not be Irish, but we had some fun celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day this week.

We had a St. Patty party with friends at one of our favorite state parks. Lucien helped me deliver coffee for all the moms and snacks for the kids. We also brought along a big bag of rice to feed the feral chickens at the park, and Lucien was excited to share with a friend!

One of our creative mom friends brought along a sensory bin of green rice and the supplies for a fingerprint rainbow craft. After having some fun with art, we were off to play, climb, run, and explore the trails! Being out in nature is such a fun, mood-lifting adventure for Lucien and for me. I love finding these little pockets of nature in the big city!

And we had to cook a traditional Irish dinner, of course! Corned beef was on the menu, and, in lieu of cabbage (I think I am the only person in the house who is a fan), Lucien helped me prepare a new recipe for potato dumplings. Mixing and shaping them into balls was great fun.

Also, craft time at the Discovery Center was a lot of fun. Lucien’s shamrock was on display in one of their windows, and he was so proud that he wanted to take a picture to show Daddy.

We have also been getting into science this week, because our monthly Clifford science kit just arrived in the mail. “Do another experiment! Do another experiment!” is a joyful exclamation that I have been hearing multiple times per day. We “fed” yeast with sugar and watched the carbon dioxide bubbles it produced, then talked about how a similar process occurs when making Lucien’s favorite drink – kombucha. We made sticky ice cubes by pouring salt on them, making them melt slightly and then re-freeze. We talked about freezing and boiling points.

And we have been doing explosions with baking soda and vinegar. Lots of explosions. Good thing I picked up the big box of baking soda. Lucien concentrated on his explosions for an hour yesterday, like a little mad scientist at work in his lab. We even decided to get out the paints and make colorful explosions. He made a beautiful volcano with red hot lava.

Volcanoes have been an interest to him lately. In addition to our baking soda and vinegar volcanoes, he has been asking lots of questions about how the Hawaiian islands were formed, and I have been doing my best to explain in terms he can understand how volcanoes built the island we live on. We checked out two non-fiction books on volcanoes during our most recent library visit. Lucien was fascinated by the science, but a bit nervous about the possibility of an eruption. I explained to him that while volcanoes built out island, there are no active volcanoes on Oahu today. We talked about other active volcanoes, and he told me that he wants to fly over Kilauea on the Big Island with Grandma Carmen.

We also read a chapter book about volcanoes – Vacation Under the Volcano, which is number 13 in the Magic Tree House series. It still amazes me that Lucien wants to sit through these longer chapter books – it takes us about 45 minutes to read through one, and most pages have no pictures – but he loves them, refuses to let me take a break in the middle, and sometimes asks to read more than one in a sitting. So last time we went to the library, I checked out a stack of them, and we are already on number 13. Mary Pope Osborne had better keep writing, because Lucien absolutely adores Jack and Annie!

Speaking of books, we had a wonderful special guest at our library story time – the Fairy Grandmother was back with magic tricks, songs, and stories, and was Lucien ever thrilled!

We have also been spending a lot of time outside, and enjoying the pleasantly warm weather and sunshine at the zoo.

Lucien and I are both disappointed that our Music Together class is on spring break hiatus, but we have found a fun new activity – Island Song! On Friday morning we went to play and swing and fly kites and ride bikes at the park, and then at 11 a group of moms got together with musical instruments to lead some singing under the shade trees.

We then had some fun spring-themed sensory play. Lucien loved digging and planting flowers in the sensory bins and interacting with the other kids there.

 

Some even wanted to bury toes in the dirt!

Happy spring, everybody!

Doctor Seuss Day!

I have been so busy with Lucien I haven’t had a chance to check in here online, but I wanted to post just a few pictures of the fun celebration we had earlier this week for Dr Seuss’s birthday (which was Monday, March 2).

When we visited the Discovery Center over the weekend, they were  already prepared with some decorations. Lucien posed as Thing 1.

Lucien made his own Cat in the Hat hat by gluing scraps of red and white paper, and Lucien and I took turns wearing it.

I also made Cat in the Hat kebabs (actually slices of strawberry and banana) to go along with dinner. We talked about birthdays, and how sometime we mark birthdays even after people have died, as a way of remembering them and celebrating their accomplishments.

The morning of Dr Seuss’s birthday I had the hat out and waiting, along with a selection of Doctor Seuss books for Lucien to pick from for our morning reading.

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Breakfast – no surprise – was green eggs, colored with broccoli, which is Lucien’s favorite green vegetable.

We read Green Eggs and Ham and Hooper Humperdinck (twice – I was thrilled that Lucien enjoyed this new selection so much. We talked about how Dr Seuss incorporated the alphabet into the book. I saw this lightbulb go on for Lucien when he figured out that the children’s names followed the letters of the alphabet. It was so fun and gratifying for me to see him figure it out, and he was so proud. We read it again, naming out the letters of the alphabet as we read.

We also read The Cat in the Hat, and Lucien requested another hat kebab, which I happily supplied.

A fun afternoon activity was making our own oobleck using glitter glue and liquid starch. Lucien had fun pouring and mixing, getting his hands dirty, and washing off in the outdoor sink!

A Typical Thursday (Day in the Life)

4:10am

I wake up, disentangle myself from Lucien’s octopus hold on me, gently wrap him back up in his favorite blanket, and sneak out of the bedroom door. I wake up by myself – no alarm necessary – between four and five almost every morning. I enjoy some precious peaceful quiet time and an uninterrupted cup of coffee. I thrive on my morning alone time and struggle when I miss it, so I get up at whatever hour is necessary to ensure I get it. Everybody is happier that way 🙂 I clean up any egregious clutter left over from the night before (today it is only some sea animal puzzle pieces and part of our disassembled drying rack cluttering the living room floor); get to work on meal prep (dinner and lunches for husband and son); check my email inbox; and (if I am lucky) do some reading or watch some Doctor Who. Nick introduced me to the Doctor at the beginning of the year, and I am now hooked. My inner geek loves it! I am currently at the beginning of season three.

4:30 am

Lucien wakes and calls for me. I run to the bedroom and snuggle with him until he falls back asleep, enjoy a few moments looking at his angelic sleeping face, think about how he has gotten so big so quickly. Then I tiptoe out of the bedroom. Back to that coffee! Today, instead of watching the Doctor, I enthusiastically set to planning how I want to organize Lucien’s play room in our new house. Now that our offer has been accepted and the move to Oshkosh is feeling closer and more real, I am engrossed with arranging and rearranging furniture in my mind, drawing out possible floor plans, imagining how I want to decorate, and planning our new home to make it welcoming and homey for Lucien. I also squeeze in a very quick (10 minute) kettle bell workout.

5:15 am

Lucien wakes again. After about 15 minutes of snuggles he is back to sleep.

6:15 am

Lucien wakes up, but – miracle of miracles! – he falls back asleep. He has recently given up napping, and I am quite positive he is in the middle of a growth spurt (especially judging by the quantities of food he has been consuming!), so he really needs that rest. I decide use this extra time to eat my breakfast. I batch-cook my breakfasts ahead of time to make mornings run more smoothly. Just as I am finishing up my “green muffins,” as Lucien calls them, (eggs, salmon, and greens mixed together and baked in a silicone muffin liner) I hear the bedroom door open.

6:35 am

Lucien is awake, for the day this time. In the not-too-distant past, Lucien would wake up and call for me and we would spend about twenty minutes together in bed, snuggling, talking, playing, and going over our plan for the day. The past few weeks that has been rare. Now it is much more common for me to hear the door opening and feet running down the hall. The first words out of his mouth are “Mama, I want breakfast!” Alright, then! I ask what he would like to eat, and he requests a banana pancake. He helps me put all the ingredients into the blender – one banana, two eggs, a heaping spoonful of nut butter – and then blends them thoroughly. Meanwhile I heat up copious amounts of grass-fed butter in the pan. After I pour in the batter, Lucien informs me that he is a baby bird. A girl baby bird. The baby bird wants her bird food (that would be the pancake) and she flies around the house asking when it will be done. She then climbs up into her “nest” – actually the second shelf in the kitchen closet and talks with mama bird. I play with mama bird, stopping periodically to check and flip the pancake. In just a few minutes the baby bird sits down to breakfast. We read together. Lately the Berenstain Bears have been a favorite of Lucien’s, so we read through three different stories.

8:15 am

Lucien is very excited about library story time. After breakfast he decides to play “Miss Alice.” (She is the story time librarian.) He gathers up some books and hides them behind his back in the chair, just like Miss Alice. He does a great impression: “Good morning, boys and girls! Let’s all sing our good morning song!” We sing “The More We Get Together” together, complete with motions. Lucien “reads” me some stories. And then he is off to his next adventure. No longer a baby bird, no longer Miss Alice, Lucien is now a shop keeper named Andrew (I have no idea where he thought up that name.) who is organizing the food behind the counter. We play shop for a while. Now Lucien is a pet store owner selling me a variety of animals (actually stuffed animals that he is bringing out of his bedroom). I accumulate quite the menagerie, until it is time to get ready for our trip to the Aina Haina shopping center.

9:15 am

Time to load up the car – my backpack, snacks, a ridiculously large and heavy bag of library books to return, snacks and water for Lucien, and a box to mail at the post office. Then Lucien climbs in with three baby dolls, one stuffed dog, a pull-along dog toy, and a cow puppet. We are ready to go! On the car ride to Aina Haina Lucien asks lots of questions, and I spend fifteen minutes explaining the demise of the dinosaurs, extinction level events, and evolution via natural selection. He comes up with the most intelligent questions!

9:30 am

Today is a particularly exciting day, because we have a Starbucks gift card from Grandma and Grandpa! There is a Starbucks right next to the library, so we (and all the dolls and toy animals) stop there first. I get a grande and Lucien chooses a protein box. He immediately eats the cheese (his favorite) them asks me to skin the apples for him and help him open the salt and pepper containers so that he can make a “dunking pile” for his hard-boiled egg. He is very methodical, ritualistic, even, about the whole process. Next he eats the fruit and peanut butter. The bread that is included we tear up into tiny pieces and throw into the grass to feed the birds. Lucien is happy – today is a good day – we see at least a dozen birds. After the birds get their breakfast Lucien plays “pet shop” with me. After I purchase an armload of pets we see, across the street, the librarian unlocking the front doors to the library. Hooray!

10:00 am

The library is open! We are some of the first people inside. Lucien drops our books in the book return, and we set off to find new ones. Lucien requests the Berenstain Bears and Miss Frizzle. I also pick up some stories by Chris Van Allsburg (Lucien is fond of him) and the next installment of the Magic Tree House Series. Lucien really enjoys hearing about Jack and Annie’s adventures.

10:30 am

Story time begins! Lucien finds a spot on one of the floor pillows with the other children, and I sit down next to him with our big bag of books and animals. We sing the welcome song and the ABC’s, listen to four animal-themed story books, and do a coloring activity. We check out all of our books, load them into the car, and head back home. We listen to our Music Together CD on the way home.

11:30 am

We are back home for lunch (I had some beef and steamed, buttered cauliflower ready for Lucien.) and stories. Lucien asks to listen to a Sparkle Story from the Martin and Sylvia collection – his new favorite. He listens and eats for about ten minutes while I tidy up, then we read together for another 30 minutes or so. Chris Van Allsburg is a win!

12:15 pm

Lucien heads out back to check on the bushes our landlord just had planted behind the house, as well as the seeds he planted in his pots. His seeds have not sprouted yet, but he sees that all the plants need some water, so he turns on the hose, waters them, waters the sidewalk, makes a mud puddle to play in, and just generally has a good time. He spies our sprinkler and asks for my help setting it up. We arrange it in the middle of the front lawn and Lucien turns on the water. We both have lots of fun running through and jumping over the water. I join in – because that makes it more fun for both of us, and because I am really hot. There are no trade winds today, just hot, muggy, still air, so I am very thankful that Lucien thought of the sprinkler. It putt us both in a much more cheerful mood!

2:30 pm

I wasn’t planning on doing this much running or being this busy today, but there are only four eggs left in the house! This could spell disaster. (Seriously, only four eggs is bad. My husband eats five in a sitting. My son has been known to finish three.) Guess we are going to Costco today. Lucien is actually very enthusiastic about the trip, because at Costco they have samples, and rotisserie chicken, and pineapple! Lucien, all three of his baby dolls, and one stuffed dog ride along in the cart. It was actually a very good week for healthy samples – we find cheese, coconut milk, fruit, and salmon! Lucien lines up all of his sample containers very neatly in the cart. We load up the food and the baby dolls in the car and hurry home, because Lucien wants some chicken and pineapple right now!

3:30pm

We return from Costco. Sophia immediately runs to the car and asks Lucien to play with her. The two of them play chase while I unload the groceries. As I am walking back and forth Lucien asks repeatedly if I am done with my work and if I can come out and if he can have his fruit and rotisserie chicken for snack already! I ask Sophia if she wants some, too. She says yes, so I mach schnell and get two bowls and two forks for them. They have a picnic outside on the lawn. More running and giggling ensues, then it is time for play doh creations. They prepare some play doh food for me, the customer at their restaurant.

4:15 pm

Sophia’s parents call her to come into the house. We go back to our house, too, and – at Lucien’s request – snuggle up in the chair for some stories.

4:45 pm

We are hot and sticky and sweaty and dirty which means that it is time for showers! Someday in the future I might be able to shower alone, but for now I have a companion/assistant/soap-getter-downer. We are both clean by the time Dad gets home from work.

5:10 pm

Dad is home! While I get dinner ready he and Lucien play “rowdy games,” which involve Nick throwing, catching, swinging and otherwise rough housing with Lucien. He loves this time!

5:30 pm

We sit down to dinner. That spaghetti squash and beef casserole that I prepared this morning will have to wait until tomorrow, because we have a rotisserie chicken from Costco! That, and some warm, buttery purple sweet potatoes. Nick asks Lucien to give him a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Tonight, after some deliberation and prompting from us, he settles on microwave, to climb, and pink. Nick spins a delightful Lucius story on the spot. Lucien sits enthralled for a full half hour. Nick finishes up the story while I clean up the dishes.

6:00 pm

After dinner we have some quiet play time in the living room. Lucien gets out his critter clinic, unlocks and opens the doors, and organizes various small stuffed animals in their individual cages.

6:30 pm

Sophia walks up our front step and Lucien invites her in. They ask for paper so they can do art. They draw with markers and stamp on their papers until Sophia’s mother yells for her to come home.

7:15 pm

Lucien gets out his Kumon cutting book and decides to use it for tracing practice. He methodically goes over several pages.

7:30 pm

It is time for our nightly tradition of “snack and story.” Lucien requests melty cheese, (we work together to slice and microwave some Kerry Gold cheddar) and the Magic Tree House. We are on #3, Mummies in the Morning. Lucien loves it, and he is so engrossed in the story that we have to finish all of it. 45 minutes later, after we close the book, Lucien declares “Let’s go to bed.” It is about time!

8:15 pm

We brush teeth, go into the bedroom, nurse, and sing lullabies. Lucien always sings “Love You Forever” along with me, and it melts my heart every time. We snuggle up together. 8:35 pm Sleep!

Back to the Hawaii Life

We are slowly settling in and getting back to our Hawaiian quotidian life. We had a wonderful family Valentine’s Day. In the morning Lucien got to visit and play with Grandpa Nic; they had lots of fun riding bikes together. Lucien was excited to give Daddy the Valentine’s Day card that he had finger-painted, and a couple presents. He was thrilled with the heart-themed lunch I prepared for him. (He really missed those buttery purple sweet potatoes while we were in Wisconsin!)

He was very enthusiastic about his Valentine’s Day basket. See that big bag of coconut flour? We used it to prepare this recipe from The Paleo Mom. I love pretty much all of her recipes. We mixed, rolled, and cut together.

Lucien was very proud of the finished product. So proud, in fact, that nobody was allowed to eat any cookies for quite some time! Instead, Lucien went about setting up an extremely elaborate bake shop in the living room, using the cookies, all of his toy food, and K cups “muffins” carefully placed in muffin liners and then in muffin pans. He was a very serious bakery owner, and I had to pay top dollar for those cookies!

  

We are again enjoying story time at the Aina Haina public library. Doesn’t he look so relaxed! Lucien likes Miss Alice, the librarian, so much, that he pretends to be Miss Alice at home. He sings the story time songs, “reads” stories to me and the baby dolls (they are still omnipresent in our lives), and even reenacts special events that he remembers from story time, like a Halloween trick-or-treat parade.

We are also happy to resume our regular visits to the Honolulu Discovery Center.

We have been doing copious amounts of reading at home. It is so hard for me to keep track of detailed book lists – we just read too much! – I have taken to logging the time per day we spend reading. Our average is two hours per day! I love it so much. I can tell that Lucien listens to a lot of literature, because when he talks it very often comes out sounding like a story. “‘Alright,’ he said with a sigh” and other such utterances are typical.

The past few days I have had a bit of a sore throat – and all that reading aloud certainly doesn’t help – so I have been doing a bit of storytime outsourcing. I found a wonderful resource called “Sparkle Stories.” They have a free podcast, so Lucien and I have listened together to two different stories in their “Martin and Sylvia” collection. Martin and Sylvia are homeschooled siblings, and the stories are sweet and positive and cozy, and they encourage creative thinking and independent play. A win all around!

Our monthly installment of our Clifford science kit arrived in the mail this week, and Lucien was over-the-moon excited to get a package just for him. He was so enthusiastic to “do another experiment” that we worked our way through the whole kit in just two days! We used static electricity to make pepper “jump”; we linked two bottles together and spun them to make a water tornado, and then when Lucien asked why there were bubbles floating up through the water we talked about how there was air inside the bottle, just like all around us, and how the lighter things – like air – float to the top; we further explored the concepts of buoyancy and density by making an egg float in salt water; we made our own paper from recycled materials, we explored how mirrors can create multiple reflections of an object and then made our own kaleidoscope,

Dad came up with another fun experiment of his own – a homemade siphon! We tried our best to explain Bernoulli’s principle and the law of conservation of energy. Those can be tricky concepts for adults, much less a three-year-old, but we did our best. “If a ball is at the top of hill, it has a lot of potential energy …. it would could start rolling down and by the time it reached the bottom of the hill it would be moving very quickly ….” Lucien just loves playing with water. He spent a great deal of time siphoning things into and out of various containers. I am not sure how much of the science he understood, but that is just fine. I figure he is at least filing the ideas away somewhere in his brain, and we can go back and retrieve them sometime in the future!

Speaking of science, Lucien still adores Miss Frizzle. He asked to check out a Magic School Bus chapter book from the library. And then he asked me to read the whole thing aloud! We finished Penguin Puzzle in only two sittings, and he loved it. He is asking for more! This is actually the second chapter book he has requested I read. While we were in Wisconsin we read the first book of the Magic Tree House series together. I have #2 checked out of the library and waiting in case he shows more interest. He liked Jack and Annie, and thought the idea of a tree house that could travel through time was really cool. We might have a great, fun way to introduce history!

Epic Picture Bomb Post: Our Wisconsin Trip Recap

Lucien and I took a three-week trip to Wisconsin in January to visit my parents and to hunt for houses, because – sing it to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell” – “We’re moving in July, we’re moving in July, everybody clap your hands, hip, hip hooray!”

We took the nine-hour red-eye flight from Honolulu to O’Hare, and arrived in Chicago in the early morning dark. Lucien is such a boss traveler!  Grandma and Grandpa made sure that Lucien was all prepared with lots of warm winter clothes, so we bundled up and went outside to play with the snow until our bus arrived. (Well, we stopped at the Starbucks by baggage claim before going outside, because mama didn’t weather the flight quite as well as Lucien!) We boarded the bus, and Lucien insisted that he wasn’t tired. See?

Thankfully we both got a little rest and were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to greet Grandma and Grandpa at the bus station in Janesville. We headed right back to the farm. Lucien absolutely loves the farm! He loves playing with Grandma and Grandpa. He loves playing with Dakota the dog and Zoey and Zander cats. He was especially enamored with the baby chicks.

Shortly after we arrived, a shipment of 75 “teeny tiny brand new baby chicks” also arrived and took up residence in the basement. Multiple times per day, every day we were there, Lucien informed me that we needed to check on the baby chicks; he then faithfully refilled all of the water bottles and food containers. He was delighted to pet and then hold the chicks – he was ever so gentle with them – and he thought it hysterical when one of the chicks flapped up his arm to his head. As the chicks got bigger and attempted to fly out of their buckets he had lots of fun shooing them all back in. (I regret to say that I got no pictures of him with the baby chicks – but I was too busy enjoying our time together!)

We visited three different area libraries while we were in Wisconsin,  enjoyed story times at all of them, and checked out piles upon piles of books. We also played puzzles and trains and doll house and rice bin, and enjoyed the company of some other friendly kids. I love to hear Lucien singing the songs from story time, and making up his own verses – he is such a creative boy, and I can tell his mind is just constantly working.

This was our new favorite book. I have always loved the song, Lucien loved listening to the CD, and I adore the illustrations in this book – especially the final page, when Jackie Paper introduces his daughter to Puff. I was never very emotional before I became a mother, but I teared up every time I sang it with Lucien! “A dragon loves forever, but not so little boys.” So true, and he is growing up so quickly.

We celebrated a belated Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa, so Lucien had lots and lots of new toys to play with. Play doh is always a win with him. He was thrilled with the toy ice cream. Books and marbles and bubbles also went over very well.

    

His favorite play items at the farm, though, were the paper muffin liners and muffin tins. He made the most elaborate bake shop, and played for hours! Trying to make dinner was a bit tricky, though ….
Another Christmas gift was passes to the Madison Children’s Museum. We made a day of it. What a blast Lucien, Grandpa, and I had! Tape art, painting, magna tiles, ball wall, a huge selection of activities to enjoy together!

We also had to go to the Rockford Children’s Discovery Center. We had a membership when Lucien was younger and we used to live in Wisconsin, and when we come back we just have to visit, it is so much fun. Now that he is older he can enjoy it so much more. He spent a great deal of time in the farm exhibit, gathering eggs, milking cows, and moving grain. Turbulent orb, water table, train, and basketball were some of the other attractions.

  

While we were in Wisconsin we also celebrated Grandpa’s birthday. Lucien enjoyed helping me pick out and wrap presents for Grandpa – he is so thoughtful! And he loved baking primal chocolate cupcakes. Well, mostly he loved eating them!

One of the many Christmas presents Grandma and Grandpa got for Lucien was an Oshkosh hoodie sweatshirt. Because – squee! – we are moving to Oshkosh this summer.

We also made a couple of trips to Oshkosh to look for houses. Lucien was such a good sport on the two-hour drive, and during the long process of viewing (lots of) houses. We found one we liked, put an offer in, and after an obscenely long negotiation process, I am thrilled to say that the sellers accepted our offer!

The house is so incredibly Lucien-friendly. It has a front porch with a swing, a fenced back yard with a swing set. I finally get my white pocket fence! It has three bedrooms, a mostly finished basement, a toy room on the first floor, and a huge kitchen for our cooking adventures! It has a big open staircase that I know Lucien will enjoy running up and down, hardwood floors throughout, and a mud room space for all our grubby outdoor clothes.

It is a block from the lake, and a block from Menominee Park, which boasts two beautiful playgrounds, a native Wisconsin animal zoo, a children’s carousel and train ride in the summer.

And get this – our mortgage – on a 15-year note – insurance, and taxes – is less than half of what we are currently paying in rent. And we will finally have a secure, permanent place that we can call home. I am ready to break into song and dance, I am so thrilled.

And I will leave you with my favorite Lucien picture from our trip. Barefoot in the Wisconsin winter (We thought that natural consequences would lead him to wear shoes, but we were wrong.), sporting upside-down sunglasses and noshing on pork rinds. This kid has spunk and style!