Tag Archives: kids

Only In Wisconsin…

Yesterday we headed into Tomahawk  for Fourth of July festivities. The rain started just as the first firetrucks in the parade went by, fortunatly we had come prepared with umbrellas,

and rainjackets.

Even with the rain the parade was a success, Ivy collected a huge bag of candy and we got to see this:

We suspect it is only in a northern Wisconsin parade that you can see men riding barstools in cheese-head cowboy hats, carrying an American Flag.

Ivy’s New Job

Last week our sheep grew bored with things around here and six of them went on a little walkabout. A very nice farmer up the road (two miles up the road) found them and helped to get them back. Since then we’ve been beefing up fences and keeping a closer eye on them.

To be totally correct Ivy has been keeping a closer eye on them. Her new job is to check to make sure the sheep are still here. The first few days every hour or so I would ask if the sheep were still here and she would go running out the door to check. Now I don’t even have to say anything, she just wanders over to the gate and looks for sheep.   In addition to that she usually stays on the gate contentedly visiting with the sheep for a long time before coming back with her report. Ivy’s new job makes me happy becuase it gets Ivy out of the house doing something by herself. Fortunately Ivy likes her new job too. It is important to know if your sheep are where you left them and Ivy feels special that she’s been given an important job.  Perhaps it makes the sheep happy too, I’m not sure. Do they like bubbles?

Don’t Forget to Pack Your Straw!

This past weekend we went up to the Superior area for a long weekend full of: train rides, birthdays, fathers day, swimming, fishing, boating and friends.

We’d love to visit the area more often except for the tiny problem of the 6 hour drive. And that is only the driving.  Peeing, eating, diaper changes, leg stretching, and waiting out a large thunderstorm with lots of tornadoes that just happens to be hanging out over the road you need to follow to get home, are all extra.  Once we added those in our drive home was about nine hours!

Now before someone says, how its not so bad , “just jump in the car pop a movie in and you’ll be set,” lets just set something straight.

We do not have a TV in our home.

We do not have a DVD player or anything like it in our car.

It is likely to stay that way indefinitely.

I like to think this is a good thing.  I might be wrong, it may be unreasonable, but I’ve been known to cling stubbornly to unreasonable ideas before. I have kept up my own personal ban of the Harry Potter movies for many years now, and lived most of my life in a TV-less environment.  I think I can swing keeping movies out of my vehicles.

For now both of our girls are very good in the car, and really the only problem is I keep forgetting to pack my earplugs…

Have I ever mentioned my oldest daughter’s ability to talk?

Have I mentioned that she LOVES the captive audience a car creates?

So, knowing that we had a big car ride, and that if a certain someone uttered the phrases “What?” or “What kind of…” or “Hold it on it’s BACK Mom!”  too many times I’d lose the last of the sanity I had remaining after a frantic day of packing, I tried to be well prepared.

We  had a bag of toys:

We had a pile of books:

And then we had the most sought after item, the most played with item, the item that literally kept Ivy busy for two hours, the item that made all the rest of the things I brought along pale in comparison….

the straw.

Who needs a princess movie when you can play the trumpet with a McDonald’s straw?

What Does a Giraffe Say?

When Ivy reached the age where her main “party trick” was to tell you what noises different animals make her Grandpa Moose (my Dad) was determined to teach her what a giraffe said.  Today I witnessed evidence that all that training many months ago finally paid off.

These three animals were set up on her floor today as I was watching her play.

She pointed to this one and said “Neeeiggghhh!”

She pointed to this one and said, “This one says “Pbbbbbbbb” “

Then with a twinkle in her eye and a little grin Ivy  looked at me, pointed to this one and said…

“This one says, “Hi Shorty!””

Congratulations Grandpa Moose you did it!

Reason #72 We Do A Lot of Laundry

Ivy likes to help feed Clara, and she’s pretty good at it. Ivy’s very careful while she is feeding her she  shows Clara signs for food and more, all in all she has been a very good helper. Ivy helps, I get to keep making dinner for the rest of us, everything goes great, until Clara’s arms streak out from her side and grab the spoon and shove it into her mouth like a kraken with a hobbit.

Forget about getting that spoon back ,  give it up and just get another one, I think it was easier to get the hobbit back from the kraken! This picture was taken early in the meal, they don’t look too messy, but believe me it got worse. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how much worse, just think:

–  three year old

– baby kraken

– a  jar of sweet potato baby food…

…and another load of laundry!

Little Friends

This was the first weekend James (Sarah’s son, more on him over at The Little Cherubs)and Clara spent together that they really started to interact. Just four months apart it has still taken quite awhile for Clara to “catch up” enough to be able to “play” with James. This weekend they shared toys, food, sippy cups and kisses… this week I’m sure we’ll discover that they shared a few viruses as well!  But until the snot starts running I’ll just be happy Clara has a new little friend!

Pick a Good One, O Best Beloved

I just got off the phone with my Dad and in the course of the discussion we were talking about how much Ivy liked hearing my dad read her The Elephants Child by Rudyard Kipling last weekend.  This was the original scalesome flailsome tail version, O Best Beloved,  with one measly black and white illustration for the whole story, and Ivy loved it.  She is after all a child full of  ‘satiable curiosity! It’s no surprise that my Dad and I agreed that challenging books are great for kids,  after all I grew up listing to my Dad read the same stories to me!

A few observations, and beliefs of mine:

People talk down to kids.

Kids of all ages understand far more than they are ever given credit for.

We create and read books to kids that are far below their comprehension level.

These books are boring, for everyone adult and child.

If you don’t challenge a vocabulary it will not grow.

You don’t need to understand every word in a book to understand the book.

My Dad seems to be holding a grudge against Dick and Jane.

Older books have great stories and vocabulary, think Beatrix Potter, Kipling, A.A. Milne.

If a picture book has one paragraph of words or less per page throw it back.

Unless the illustrations are gorgeous then take it home anyway.

And so every time we go to the library I make sure at least one book is a challenging one. Sometimes those are Ivy’s favorites and sometimes they are not but  every time she gets to learn a little more.

And sometimes all this learning it causes a bit of a problem . Today a speech therapist told me Ivy’s language skills were advanced beyond her motor skills which was causing her to have fluency problems (in plain speak a nice lady played with Ivy, she stutters but she’ll grow out of it), but that’s a problem a parent can be proud of!