Tag Archives: kids

Little Ballerina

We love to talk about how our kids are just like us, a combination of our best and worst traits.

It starts at birth.

“She looks just like you!” –  “She looks just like John!”

Those comments always made me inwardly laugh.

Ivy didn’t look like John or I, she looked like a startled monkey, and even on our worst days of sleep deprived new parents I don’t think we sunk that low.

Then as personality surfaces we move from looks to acts.

Ivy:  She’s stubborn like me, outgoing like John, she stays up too late reading books like me, and she talks non-stop like John.

But we are all wrong.

Ivy is, and always has been, Ivy.

She may share the trait of contrariness with me, and she may have Johns tendency to preform for an audience.  The combination could result in her dancing opposite of everyone else at her first ballet recital with a grin on her face and a smile for the audience, but our little, pink, tutu clad, ballerina is all Ivy.

She always has been, and I’m certain she always will be.

After all neither John or I have ever been into pink!

Old As The Dinosaurs

We don’t watch a lot of movies. Partly because we are without that whole TV thing, partially because I’m indifferent to many movies, and partially because there is too much other stuff to do.  But every now and then when John is away and Clara goes to sleep early Ivy and I have “girl night.” We’ve done different things but most often we paint toenails and watch movies. It used to be that we could choose from a variety of movies, Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, Toy Story, Milo and Otis… but now Ivy has become terrified of anything scary and refuses to watch any of those. Our choices have dwindled to a leapfrog video that if I hear again I might be forced to smash with a hammer and Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit is a great movie, Ivy loves the horses and the racing, but it’s not all exactly four year old material.

Last movie night we watched Secretariat.  It was a good move, nothing scary, lots of horses, lots of racing, and most importantly nothing a four year old shouldn’t see.  It was a welcome change to see Ivy shaking with excitement instead of fear while we watched.

The races were by far her favorite and she gave me a running commentary on every one. They went something like this:

Mom who is going to win?

Mom the blue one (Secretariat) is in the back.

Now he’s running faster mom

Oh he’s going so fast!

Look, Look he’s beatin’ those horses.

He won Mom, aren’t you so excited?!??!

After it was done she was full of questions about the people and the horse wanting to know if we could see him and if he was real. Here is part of the conversation that followed:

Me: Secretariat was a real horse, but he lived a long time ago.

Ivy: A long time ago before I was born?

Me: Yup, a long time ago before I was born!

Ivy: You mean when there were dinosaurs?

They say kids age you but I had no idea by how much!

“ALL My Horses Talk.”

Guess what?

Ha! Just kidding, no guessing involved.  I’ve just heard that so many times today (and by the way actual guessing about what comes next is not in any way shape or form allowable) I feel the need to start every conversation with it, like this:

Guess what?

I hate playing pretend.

Unfortunately Ivy (the supreme guess whater) LOVES it.

Somethings are tolerable, I can pretend to be the bad queen (and the wicked witch) all day long if necessary. I guess somethings just come naturally…

But the one thing that I never, ever want to do is pretend to make toys talk.

Not horses, not stuffed dogs, not rocks pretending to be talking rocks – nothing.

Ivy has lots of toys (and she’s good and finding rocks), and she wants to make them all talk-all the time.

For instance, Ivy has lots of toy horses, lots of horses that need another person to hold them -in a very specific manner -and make them talk. BUT (before you get all, your such a meanie that’s not so bad on me) they can’t just say whatever you want. Oh no! Ivy wants the horses to say what she wants them to say, but you have to say it. Sounds fun huh? For awhile I was able to escape the talking horses by telling her that my horses didn’t talk.  My horses ran, and ate grass and sorted themselves by color, position, and gender, but they didn’t talk. Now Ivy walks up with her horses and says, “Mom, want to play horses with me?… ALL my horses talk.”

– dang –

I like to think I’m not a complete dud in Ivy’s playing world.  We set up forts, stables, farmyards and villages for her and her toys. I help her dress like a princess, play board and card games and sometimes we build things out of Johns chemistry models.

Tonight we built (from left to right) A Basset Hound, a Great Dane, an elephant a giraffe, a caterpillar and a duck, also not pictured were the deer, and the chicken with a nest of eggs.

Who knew chemistry could be so fun?

 

Then they started talking, and suddenly it was bedtime.

What can I say?  I really hate making toys talk!

Nerdy Fun

Last April when I first started this blogging thing my very first post was about John.

Specifically it was about John being a chemistry nerd.

Because as much as he tries to deny it – he is.

Unfortunately most of his chem nerd skills are not especially useful on a daily basis.

Smelling different household chemicals to identify them is a neat trick, but it is not particularly useful.

He can do stoichiometry to figure out cooking conversions, but I think that is perhaps making things a bit more difficult than necessary.

Sometimes he can figure out substitutes for a chemical we need but don’t have.  This is useful, but I can only think of twice in the last 10 or so years where it was actually needed.

So while his chemistry skills aren’t a daily boon to us at home (Other than the whole job/paycheck bit, we all appreciate that!) there are times like tonight when being married to a chemistry nerd is fun.

Let me rephrase that a bit. I love my husband, and of all the nerdy chemists I have met he ranks very high on the fun scale. Being married to him is almost always fun.

-Except for when he falls asleep in .2 seconds while I toss and turn. That’s not fun, I hate that. What is it with men and being able to do that anyway? Anyways, as I was saying…-

Tonight there was fun, nerdy chemistry fun.

Tonight there were boxes of dry ice to be had.

A box of dry ice and a bathtub full of water, and we had a good 20 minutes of nerdy chemistry excitement.

Ivy almost had as much fun as John did. As she played in the smoke  she asked, what it was, what was happening, and why it was happening faster than John could spit out answers in three year old language.

On the other hand Clara was less thrilled, while John and Ivy played around she exited the bathroom.

I’m not sure if it was that she couldn’t see her feet, that the rest of her family was acting ridiculous or that she’s not cut out to be a chemistry nerd herself, but whatever the reason, Clara was not impressed!

Oh The Dichotomy

We have never hid from Ivy any of the realities of the farming and hunting that we do.

Ivy also loves pink, princesses, dresses, sparkles and anything else fancy and girly.

The combination has made for some interesting times…

It’s one thing for her to be helping her Great Gramps track a deer in the woods.  Tracking a deer with her imaginary friend Belle who is wearing camo coveralls over her pretty yellow dress, that’s an Ivy special.

Pretending to go hunting I don’t think is an odd activity for a girl who has been exposed to so much hunting herself. But when she is dressed in a pink dress with her pink six shooter cap guns, it’s just funny.

Then of course there was the time we ate Rudolph.

So I shouldn’t be so surprised and amused anymore when my girly girl tells me things like:

“Want to hear about my fairy song?
First they go flying, and then they kill stuff.”

But I am.

Edges

It appears that when Clara is cold she takes matters into her own hands.

Now, if you want to know why she’s covered with bumps and bruises, check out her feet.

The girl has no concept of edges!

Reason #46 We Do A Lot of Laundry…

…because Clara’s new favorite trick is to climb on the table – and sometimes she finds things there.

I’m hoping that most of the soda went on the clothes instead of in her belly, but I’m afraid nap time is going to be tough today!

*I’d also like you to know that by the time I got there the soda was already down her front, in her belly and gone. As much as I like posting photos on my blog I’m not about to let my child caffeinate herself just before nap for a photo op!