When I Grow Up To Be Normal

The other day, I was telling Aidan how grown up he is getting!

I asked him what he was going to be when he grew up, maybe a fireman or a cowboy?

"Nah," he said.  "Just a normal person."

But maybe he'd like to be an astronaut!  Or perhaps fly airplanes?

"No, Mom," he said.  "I'm just going to be a normal person."


Later in the day, he happened to have a similar conversation with his Papa.  When Shane asked him what he was going to be, he replied:

"I'm just going to be a normal man."


His total lack of enthusiasm was crazy!  Once again, it would be so interesting to dive inside the mind of a child.  I hypothesize that he might mean he wants to be like Shane, who is "normal" to Aidan.  He'll play Starfall on the computer and tell me he's "working at the computer, like Papa".  He's mentioned on several occasions how he's going to grow up and work in his closet like Papa does.  (Shane has no office in this house, so his walk-in closet is his office here.)  So perhaps Aidan's idea of what a "normal man" does is to sit in his closet with his computer and "work".

Poor child, he needs a healthier view!

The Best

"Mom, your bread is better than a bakery!" said Lucas.

"Mom, your bread is better than a store OR a bakery!" said Julia.

"Mom, your foot is better than a fan!" said Aidan.

Crocheting For The First Time

My kiddos expressed an interest in making things with yarn.

So for Julia's birthday I got her a couple crochet hooks and a couple balls of very darling yarn.

I figured that one stick to wield would be easier than two, although I don't know how to crochet myself, and I've forgotten how to knit.

Enter some You-tube videos of the granny square and off we went on a loooooong car trip.

So I had all this time on my hands and could NOT remember how to do a granny square!  So I just tried out some stuff and decided to make a hat for Julia's new Bitty Baby (which she calls Bitsy Doll).  Turns out, I did a chain stitch the entire hat, also known as a slip stitch according to the simple instruction booklet I got later.  But it looks cool!  =)

Hat 1

Once we got to our destination, help was on hand for some further instruction.  It was quite dizzying, all the different things that can be done with one hook and some yarn.  So on the way home, I put my vastly improved skills to work on a second hat for Julia's doll.  Somehow, I was in the mood for hats.  And I still am, but haven't made one for a real person yet.  =)

Hat 2

This second hat has a variety of stitches as I tried out some different things.  I tried single crochet and double crochet stitches and then some "shells"???  or whatever those pieces of granny squares are called.  And back to the slip stitch from time to time so I could enjoy it's own special little mark.  It was very cool, and I think Bitty Baby is happier because of my efforts.  Thank-you, Lindsi! =)

Did you notice how this went from "kiddos" and "Julia" to "I" and "me"?
My excuse:
I can't teach them until I learn it myself!  =)
However, Lucas and Julia have both made several bracelets, necklaces and funky hair pieces with a simple chain stitch for practice, so I haven't left them out completely.

100 Years Ago in Nature

Nature is a weekly magazine that publishes current research.  Researchers wishing to be published must be peer reviewed in order to get their paper published.  And this is a magazine that Shane was used to reading in grad school, and has lately renewed his subscription to feel better in touch with what is new in the field of science.

Most of the magazine is over my head, it's very technical and uses words I don't know and equations that don't have very many numbers in them. =)  But I can glean a bit, and I enjoy it when it isn't a depressing trend that is discovered.  There's a lot of bad news with the good.

In the 10 November 2011 issue, they had a small sidebar with an excerpt from 100 years ago:

"There is not the slightest doubt that birds and mammals are now being killed off much faster than they can breed.  And it is always the largest and noblest forms of life that suffer most... And the worst of it is that all this wanton destruction is not by any means confined to the ignorant or those who have been brought up to it. We have had our warning.  The great auk and the Labrador duck have both become extinct within living memory...  When wild life is squandered it does not go elsewhere, like squandered money; it cannot possibly be replaced by any substitute, as some inorganic resources are: it is simply an absolute dead loss, gone beyond even the hope of recall."
From Nature 9 November 1911

1911.  Wow!  I'm also struck the term "absolute dead loss".  And of course, since that publication 100 years ago, many more animals have become extinct.  More animals gone beyond the hope of recall.  Maybe I should look up how many.

Reading this makes me wish that we would have come farther in caring about animal extinction over the last one hundred years.

Reading this makes me sad for my children.

Reading this makes me realize that here is something that science and religion should have in common: a care for our natural world / God's creation.  Should scientists care more for the environment than those who attribute the existence of our natural world to God?

I want to raise my kids with a respect and appreciation for nature, which we depend on for our very lives.  And I hope that in the next one hundred years, as many other species hover on the brink of extinction, we will be willing to give more and take less from our environment.

~My Girly Girl~

I'm not much of a make-up person.

In fact, I'm not much of a dress-up type, either.

Let's just say it's a good day when I actually wash my face once.

I don't like to shop.

The thought even makes me tired.

I don't accessorize or bling or go glam or any of the rest of it.

But I have inherited a very girly girl!  She loves the glam, the over-stated, the ultimate frills, lace and twirls.  And show her some make-up?  She's in love.

Like the uni-brow eyeshadow?

How about those dark purple cheeks?  She's not convinced by my plea's that cheeks are supposed to be pink, not dark purple.  

She came out of the bathroom looking like this and said:

"I think I put on a little bit too much lipstuff."

An eye for the finer details, that one.

Our Halloween Fun

This year, everyone was their own unique thing for halloween, but Mom seemed to give everything the same costume!  Hello Walmart sheets and ribbon!  =)

Also this year, we had our cousins Cora and Tyler come and visit!  It was their first experience trick-or-treating and after two houses, that was enough for them.  

Aidan was a White Wizard, with a really cool hat!

Tyler was an alligator, too cute!

Cora was a white fairy, and her mom made the cutest white and purple wand/circlet to match.

Lucas started out being willing for wizardry, but changed his mind to Harry Potter.  Papa made him a knockout pair of glasses out of welding rod.  Woo hoo for creativity!  His flexible wand of juniper and lizard hair was waiting for him outside.

Julia was a Crystal Fairy, one of the Crystal Fairies that Thumbelina went to live with after her adventures.  Just in case you weren't sure what a Crystal Fairy was.  She was asked if she was a flower girl.  =)  During the making of the crowns and wands, Calysta and I laughed at the differences: Cora's things were dainty and tasteful, Julia's flowers were huge and all over the place!  But my daughter knew what she wanted and love the result, so who am I to stand in her way?  (who am I to make something cute and tasteful, either?)

We always like to start out with a little practice at our own front door, both for pictures and to teach them manners.  It was the only house in which Cora felt comfortable walking up to the door!  

Even though we only went to the houses on our street, mind you on one acre lots, so not close together, they came home with their pumpkins over half full!  Way, WAY too much candy!  Lucas had apparently overheard Shane and I discussing how country folk often drive into town for more candy opportunities.  He informed us as we walked around our road that the country was the best place to trick-or-treat!  More fun and not too much candy!

Atta boy.  Indoctrinate them early, I say.

An Art Lesson

Fridays are the easiest school day of our week.  It was designed that way on purpose!  We love to have Fridays for extra reading time, science experiments, history projects and most especially: Art!

I chose a simple curriculum for art this year called ARTistic Pursuits.  It's a basic introduction to the visual arts, and is expressly for kids.  Each lesson is based on something an artist does, then what artists see, and where to find art.  Today's lesson was about how artists LOOK.  After we looked at a famous painting that gave attention to detail, we tried to remember everything we could see from the living room window.  Then we went to the window to see what we had missed.  That was illuminating!

Then for the most fun of all, we went outside, and tried to draw something in nature while paying particular attention to some detail.  Julia drew a beautiful castle complete with tooth fairy before I realized that my directions needed to be more specific.  Lucas threw a boo-hoo tantrum(because he can't draw exact replicas), until I became inexorable and would not let him off the hook.  Once we were clear on the lesson and over the tears, we had a LOT of fun!

Here, Aidan draws a juniper tree, or two close together.  His detail was the leaves of the juniper.  His special touch was a very elaborate play house that "Mom is going to build here soon".   Oh.  I believe that is a chimney I see.

Julia drew a tiny Alberta dwarf pine that has barely survived in the chicken yard this summer.  Her detail was also the needles, but I have to say, I like the detailed root system she's got going on underground.  

This is what Lucas was trying to draw: an ant hill with some sticks beside it.  He left out the truck.  But the boo-hoo part was that the ant hill first was drawn too small, then too tall.  And these ebony pencils brook no eraser!  Interestingly, he had tried to draw a grasshopper first, but he informed me tearfully that it had hopped away.  Shocking!

 I'd say ya did good, Son!  He included darker spots and depressions in the hill for his details, and I was pleased with his efforts!  We just need to do this more so that he can learn to master frustration in order to enjoy life.