Just Tuesday

There is a cold in the house. It is trying to ruin my best laid plans for staying healthy in January. We have big doings on the burner for January and can't afford to be sick. Still, there is a cold in the house, ignoring my restraining order, making me bust out the chicken soup, the early bed times, the extra fluids, the naps in the afternoons.

The good news is that this was the first day in weeks that we've been just home. We slept in a little, we did two weeks worth of laundry, we went the homemade route with the chicken soup. There was another section in math, the last of the thank-you notes to write, and we drove trains around the Lego city in our play room. There was Star Wars on the piano. I introduced Calvin to the Wii today with Wii Fit Plus, and we revisited our favorite British Doctor with a couple episodes of The Human Journey. We played a cooperative game of Set (and we might be getting the hang of it). There was art. A lot of art. And there was a lot of just plain enjoying each other.

5 days: and counting

I remember Christmas as kid. Those last few days seemed to shimmer and vibrate with excitement. Presents piled up around the tree, the stockings were hung, school was out, joy, joy, joy. I'm sure excitement around the already riveting holiday is exacerbated by increased amounts of sugar. We've baked (and cooked) for one party or another at least once weekly since Thanksgiving.

So now that the presents are mostly bought and wrapped, the cards are out, the crafts are made, I'm trying to keep the rest of this week as normal as possible. Swimming lessons, library trips, some errands, laundry.

Calvin finished the last section of his Alpha math book today and filled out the accomplishment certificate in the back for himself. Then he asked for more. Good thing I ordered the next book.

He's still on a major Magic Tree House kick right now, his focus being on Christmas in Camelot and A Ghost Tale For Christmas, of course. He's still playing away at the piano.

And today he tackled learning how to draw reindeer, using this tutorial. I love their antlers.

Nature Thursdays—turtles at Independence Lake

We are fortunate to have a really wonderful naturalist with our County Parks and Recreation. We've done several hikes and other presentations with her in the past, and this summer she is offering Kids' Nature Thursdays in which she will cover a different topic at a different park each week. I knew that it would be a lovely program because I know she's great with kids in the way that I like people to be great with kids—by talking to them as equals and giving them respect and space in which to learn. Today was the first of the summer Thursdays, an hour all about turtles. We touched shells we learned some facts, we played with a couple captives, we went looking for the real things in the lake, and we scouted out some nests, finding two in tact (and putting protection over them) and many that had fallen victim to raccoons (which allowed us to come home with shells, and I had forgotten how rubbery they are, not at all like chicken eggs, something Calvin noticed right away).

I learned today that the snapping turtle, unlike most others, has very little shell on his underside, which means he has to be more aggressive and ornery. I learned that my son already knew that, and what a reptile was, and what it meant to be cold blooded. He'd been reading up, unbeknownst to me, in preparation for today's session. I think that was my favorite new bit of knowledge for the day.

Then, being already at the park I figured that Thursdays would be a great time to get Calvin out hiking on his own two feet. He's been out many times before, of course, but really only in the backpack. Today he and I did a mile trail through the wetlands after turtle appreciation hour. We took lunch and ate it sitting atop the lookout, where we promptly got lightly rained on, but to no ill effect. So the weather was iffy at best, we had a great time anyhow.

We identified milkweed, poison ivy, yarrow, and a number of trees. We also saw many butterfly species, including the cabbage white, lady skippers, spring azure, and peck's skipper. Calvin is pretty good with the cabbage white (and a number of other butterflies that visit our own yard regularly), and he knows most of the plants already, but we took some laminated identifying pamphlets with us for fun.

Rain and all, it was a great afternoon, and Calvin is really excited about what I have dubbed "nature day" next Thrusday. He's also asked to go on another hike this weekend, and with the cooler weather it seems like a great time to explore another local path. We'll continue breaking him in on increasingly long trails as the summer progresses. I have images of us hiking into rustic camping already!

My only disappoint from the trip was that, after getting a-hold of nature journals and remembering to pack both them and colored pencils, it was too wet to get them out. When we got home, though, Calvin was quick to jump at the opportunity. So these are not nature illustrations the way that I had them in mind, with the two of us sitting and sketching what we see (and oh, how often will it occur that I imagine an event one way but have to be content with another outcome), but they are his impressions of our hike today. The first is his sketch of us eating lunch on top of a wooden lookout. The second is his sketch of the trail as seen from above. And then, of course, the jounral entry. I was surprised that he didn't add a picture to this as well, but if he does so in the future I will come back and add it.

I linked this post to share at Saturday's Artist.

party planning

It is a fine evening. A soft, though not cool, breeze is blowing and the sun is at that stage of warm evening glow. Calvin is in bed. He is reading about bats and The Wizard of Oz as he tries to find sleep. The past week has brought unseasonably hot days and drought-like weather—a slight shock in the wake of so much rain—and between the heat of the days, and the late setting sun at night, there has been less sleep and more grouching around here. It doesn't help that our neighbors put their young children to bed after ten at night, and they all play noisily outside until then. A part of me would love to live by the sun, to go to bed when it gets dark and rise when it's light, but that's not enough sleep for Calvin, as I'm finding lately. That's not to say that we always mandate an early bedtime. I love that the flexibility of this life allows us to stay up late when the night calls us by name (or promises s'mores).

We are gearing up over here for a fifth birthday celebration. Calvin turns five on Thursday. We will celebrate on that day just the three of us (just the two during the day, in fact), and on Saturday we will have his grandparents and some other family over for dinner. He is planning the party himself—a Wizard of Oz spectacular. He has a mulititude of plans, some of which will be possible, others that are pretty pie-in-the-sky. I love that he is helping plan, I love that he is excited about the event, and I love even more that he is perfectly pleased to keep it as the small affair we've had every year since his first (small affair, of course, referring to the number of guests, not to the extravagance of the celebration he is actively planning).

Do you know how hard it is to find Wizard of Oz accoutrements that are not based on the movie? They are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. Which is probably best, since that will keep everything homegrown. I will be playing with fondant for the first time ever this week.

Saturday on vacation

Into every vacation a little rain must fall. If it weren't for the rain we wouldn't discover things such as local museums. Visiting Holland for the tulips and the beaches is one thing, and we often hit their tourist places, like Windmill Island or Dutch Village, but we this was the first year we visited their little local museum. It was definitely little, with a rather eclectic collection that ranged from local history to bizarre Native American or even Mexican artifacts, but every museum is worth a good look. No photography allowed, of course, but we got to see Dutch impressionism by rather obscure artists, a collection of "after hours work" by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, and Calvin reading the information plaques all by himself (which alone was worth the trip).

And afterwards, rather inadvertently (like the rest of the trip, really) we stumbled onto the Tulip Time parade and its multitude of festival queens and courts—the Tulip Queen, the Maple Syrup Queen, the Red Flannel Queen, the Asparagus Queen, the Apple Queen. I had no idea there were so many eligible teens in Holland. Calvin adored the bands. And any Dutch dancers he happened to espy. And we stopped by New Holland for beers and snacks while we waited for traffic to clear after the festivities ended, because this was probably the one day in all the year that traffic crawls to a stop in this little town.