If I haven't returned your call or email

it's because we're not home much these days. It's too hot. We're at Barnes and Noble, Land of Nod, Red Robin, Lake Washington, the grocery store, or any number of other air conditioned or watery places.

Wishes on a day where the inside is 10 degrees lower than the outside

and yet still the thermostat inside reads 94.

Hannah: I wish there wasn't such a thing as "too warm." I wish there was only warm enough.

With record-breaking temperatures today, I imagine that most of Seattle agrees.

Flip-flop

Simeon would like everyone to know that he's changed his former position on baths. He now loves baths and weeps bitter tears when we take him out. In fact, anything involving water is a good thing, and he would like to note for the record that it's a terrible injustice that his sisters are allowed to be free in the water, but his mom always hangs on to him. Thank you for listening.

Sim is talking

Have I mentioned that Simeon is talking? A little bit. He's signing, and he thinks it's wonderful when we understand what he's signing. But he also says Dada and Mama and pat-pat-pat.

"Dada" is when he wakes up in the morning, because Michael usually takes him, so I've taken to saying, "Let's find Dada." Consequently, "Dada" is said in a cheerful and very pleasant voice.

"Pat-pat-pat" is really cute, because he says that while he's patting me when I'm holding him. He started that because I pat him and say pat-pat-pat. His sounds a lot more like "pah-pah-pah," but he's 10 months, folks, give him a break!

"Mama" is usually said in a whiny voice, because he uses it when he wants to eat or take a nap and is feeling cranky. Hmmm. We're going to have to work on that one!

In Which Lake Washington Comes to the Rescue

You know you're in trouble when your indoor thermometers (both on the main floor) read 88 and 89 degrees. And that feels pretty cool when you come in from outside. And your 3-year-old has heat rash all over her shoulders and chest.

When you're in this sort of trouble, it helps to be about 10 minutes away from a large lake that's pretty chilly most of the year. It also helps if everyone has long-sleeved rash guard swimsuits from Land's End so that the slathering of sunscreen is kept to a minimum.

We all went down to Lake Washington and had a fabulous time. All of us enjoyed the cold water, and we were all much cooler and more agreeable by the time we headed home.

I have a feeling we'll be spending more time there this week.

Hannah loves

little kids. And babies, too, of course. She wants to make sure that the next time I get pregnant I have twins "so we won't all have to share just one baby!"

After the girls' swimming lessons, there is a lesson with a baby who's about 14 months, I'd say. (She's smaller than Sim, of course, but she can do more advanced things, like walking..) Hannah always begs to stay for a while to watch their lesson. After one time of staying for a little while, she sighed and said, "I wish that baby was ours." That's not the first time she's wanted to adopt children we've come across.

This is why I was surprised at Hannah's response yesterday when I told the girls we were going to a party and there would be lots of babies and young kids. "I really like kids my own age best." I pointed out that she likes younger kids and babies, and she said, "Well, I like Naomi, but I don't really like other little kids." I objected again, and she said, "Well, yes, but I really like kids I already know."

Of course, Hannah loved being there with the little kids. They often really latch on to her, since she pays lots of attention to them and she can do cool things for them. Sometimes she tries to do too much for them, at which point they object, but yesterday she was most popular with one in particular of the younger set. Plus there were lots of very cute babies that she could talk to. She did spend a lot of time playing with Naomi, but she thoroughly enjoyed herself with the little kids she didn't know, too.

We're adding the "If" questions to the "why" questions

Naomi's started asking some interesting questions lately.

"If I were a giraffe, what would I eat?"

"If I weren't born, what would I be?"

This one stumped me. I had no idea. But Naomi did: "Maybe a cupcake or a chocolate chip scone."

Very true, cupcakes and chocolate chip scones are not born.

We're going to need some more help

On July 4th, I tried to get a family picture. We were all red, white, and blue, together, and at a friend's house, where we could enlist help in taking said picture. The picture at the top is one attempt. Here are some others...

Michael particularly liked this one, as he looks somewhat out of it and perhaps a bit drugged. Hannah has on her stone face. Simeon and I look pretty good! Perhaps some cropping is in order.

To be fair, it was the end of the day and kids were getting tired. Here's the proof:

Perhaps we've reached the point at which we need our family (to be in the picture), someone taking the picture, and at least one other person, who will jump up and down and say, "Over here!" and do funny things, to stand behind the person taking the picture in order to get a good shot of the family.

My new camera

As a postscript to my camping post: I got a new camera for Father’s Day, which is why there are pictures of camping this year.  One just doesn’t take a digital SLR camera camping, but my sporty Nikon Coolpix does much better.  It allows me to capture pictures like these.

Hannah, awaiting her swimming lesson with great interest:

Naomi, also enjoying her lesson:

 

Musical talent in the making:

And finally, my blazing hot stove, burning my pancakes:

This post is courtesy of Windows Live Writer, which seems to work nicely with blogspot and is much easier to deal with when doing pictures.

- Michael

And now for someone completely different

Both Hannah and Naomi were petrified of the vacuum cleaner for a long time. So much so that when I went to get a new one, I specifically researched quieter vacuum cleaners so they wouldn't have to run screaming when they saw me get out the vacuum. They're still not that fond of it, and both remind me when I'm vacuuming that I shouldn't vacuum them up. The physics of that maneuver still elude me, so I can safely promise not to do so.

Simeon, on the other hand, is fascinated by the vacuum, and not in a bad way -- he loves it. He follows me around (with his little combat crawl) while I vacuum, and when I set the thing down, he sees his chance and moves in. He LOVES it when I vacuum. And he likes the noise, too.



I've been having to vacuum more often now that he's combat crawling everywhere, both because that way he doesn't sweep quite so much dust up with his outfits, and because he's discovered that his sisters drop food on the rug under the table, so that's his first stop on his daily combat crawling rounds of the house. Aargh. Despite efforts to keep it cleaner, he seems to find something tasty to put in his mouth...sometimes just a piece of paper, but HEY! it's fun to eat paper.



Maybe the reason he loves the vacuum so much is that it quickly and efficiently gets all of that stuff that he wants and I either clean up first or take away from him.



He wants to know its secret.

Naomi's Heavenly Expectations

Hannah has said a lot about what she thinks Heaven will be like, and now Naomi's chiming in. She has her own ideas.

Naomi: When I get to Heaven, I will be able to eat cow cheese.

Naomi has difficulty with many cows' milk products, so although she loves cheese, it's not something she can eat. But SOMEDAY!

Dads and Kids Camping: 2009

Hannah, Naomi and I are now back from our big July camping trip. We had a great time. I was a bit concerned about how it would work with 2 kids under six years old, but they did very well. As in previous years, we went to Rasar State Park near Sedro-Woolley, WA, on the Skagit River. We left Friday afternoon and returned Sunday afternoon. In between we camped, made camping food, built campfires, went on hikes, and visited the Skagit River.

Some highlights:

The Tent: Our new six-man tent is enormous. We had room for the three of us and all of our gear, and then some. The girls were very excited to use the closet, complete with shelves. The tent also has a sort of pet door. The manual says its for 'cooler access,' but the girls thought it was for dogs. Naomi really liked to stick her head out of it.

The DeVet-Adairs, curiously enough and without coordination, purchased the same tent:

The River:

The girls loved our hike to the Skagit River. They played on the banks and in the sand. They pretended to be pirates. They tried skipping rocks. Naomi's jacket was not going to be removed, even for the river:

Shadow of Sentinels:

Another hike we made was in a forest of old-growth red woods. The oldest was at least 680 years old. The hike is a boardwalk, so the kids had it easy. The younger ones ran as quickly as they could; the older ones read the signs.

Cooking:

As usual, I'm in it for the food. I planned out the meals for the weekend. Saturday morning's breakfast was pancakes. Monica had made whole wheat "Bisquick", so I had my batter all put together and looking beautiful. Then I tried to cook it. Whisperlight stoves, the backpacker kind, are designed to boil water. They are highly efficient at what they do. They don't do much else. Try making pancakes on your kitchen range with the burner on High. They just tended to burn, and burn, and burn. By the time I got the hang of it, the girls were ready to be done with breakfast. Hmm ... Stuff that does work: oatmeal; sausages; boiling water. We had dehydrated beef stew Saturday night, and 50% of my girls liked it! (I'll let you guess which 50%.)

So, we all had a great time. We found a nearby church and went Sunday morning, clean and neat, and broke camp afterwards and came home. Naomi was asleep in seconds after leaving the campground. Hannah held out a little longer, but eventually succumbed, too.

Notes for next year:

1. Don't make anything that calls for 'simmer' or 'low' heat.
2. Bring Tang. It's tough to drink water when your cousins have juice boxes. Tang rules.
3. It's not about the trails. It's about who you are pretending to be while on the trails. (Peter Pan, Paul and Maureen, Garzishes (ask Gabe, I don't know what they are)).
4. Bring maple syrup if you are going to make pancakes. Liquid sugar covers a multitude of evils.

- Michael

Wondering

I'm home with Sim this weekend while Michael and the girls go camping. And I wonder...why did I think I was SO busy with one child? It's not even noon and I've taken a walk, a shower, and a nap, bathed Sim, gone out to breakfast, watered plants outside, run 3 loads of laundry, folded them and put them away, played with and fed and changed Sim (more than once for each of those!), talked to a couple of people on the phone, and entered the schedule for Hannah's choir next year into my calendar. Now I'm sitting down to do some things on the computer while Sim naps.

Okay, okay, I've come up with several reasons that I was busy as a mom of one:

1. I had major difficulty with breastfeeding for the first 9 months
2. Sim is the easiest baby in the world -- very adaptable and agreeable; I might not have been as busy if he'd been my first
3. It's difficult to have the efficiency of a mom of three when you're only a mom of one
4. My firstborn, bless her, did NOT get up daily at 5:45 (or before, like Sim did this morning). She slept until 8:30 or 9 daily for the first year and a half of her life...

But, really, it does amaze me.

Raspberry Picking!

When I suggested raspberry picking on Wednesday morning, the kids were ready to go. I asked them to go up and get clothes on. It was a bit chilly, so I suggested pants and short-sleeved shirts with a sweater. Here's what came down:

Yes, that is Naomi's Easter dress. And a lovely dress on Hannah, too. Sim is appropriately attired, since he couldn't choose his own clothes. Poor kid, though, his mom forgot to bring his hat, so that's the only one she found in the car. AND his outfit doesn't really match all that well. He doesn't care, though.

There were some lovely berries out there.

We picked.

And picked.

And ate.

And brought home a whole bunch. Hannah filled her box, then helped Naomi and I fill ours. She's an industrious picker.

Sim wasn't too impressed by the outing until he got to sample some of the goods himself. Then he decided in favor of raspberry picking. You can tell by his raspberry goatee that he enjoyed his.

They're on their way

Camping, here they come!

What's on the menu

These days, Sim is trying lots of new foods and liking most of them. He's a very gratifying eater, since when he really likes something, he gets a big smile on his face when it's put in his mouth. He's also a full-body eater, as Michael likes to say. He'll lunge at the spoon or hand with the food in it, then lean back and enjoy it, then lean forward and lunge again.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the foods Sim's found he likes:

cherries
apples
applesauce
baby applesauce with apricots (one of the few baby foods he likes)
cucumbers
broccoli
peas (but not strained -- gross!)
green beans
pork
chicken
beef
oatmeal
beans
bacon (BIG grin with that one the first time!)
raspberries
blueberries

He's eaten most of what we have offered...except the strained peas. He had two bites or so both of the times we offered them and then refused to let any more into his mouth. He looks like a friendly, happy baby who could easily be convinced to try another bite of strained peas, but he has a will of iron inside that cute baby exterior. The funny thing is, he likes peas that are cooked by not strained.

The broccoli tryout was pretty amusing. We were having it with dinner, and the girls both like it, so they were eating a bunch. We were feeding Sim chicken, I believe. He somehow indicated that he wanted broccoli -- staring at it and making urgent sounds, if I remember correctly -- so I gave him a bit to try, figuring that he'd do the strained-peas-will-of-iron thing after not too long. He ate a lot of the broccoli -- for a baby -- and enjoyed it. So all three of them like broccoli.

Sim has also discovered that the girls drop things off the table, and usually in his combat-crawling rambles he'll head there first to check out the buffet of any un-vacuumed items. He's relentless in his efforts to get whatever might be there. The will of iron again. So, needless to say, I've been vacuuming under the table more often. "Cleaner living through trying to prevent small people from eating stuff off the floor," that's my motto.

Making their father proud

After they ate their snack this afternoon, both girls said to me: "Mama, can you please get me some more beef jerky?"

Mystified Naomi

Or should I say Wendy? She's Wendy today...at least some of the time. However, when we met friends at the playground, she suggested to her friend (a boy of about her age) that he be Peter Pan, he declined. He was polite, but not interested. She suggested a whole host of other characters from Peter Pan, but he remained uninterested. She couldn't understand it.

Umm....I believe I've mentioned before...

...that 91 is not a number I like to see on the thermometer. The kids are running through the sprinkler (in the shade of the front yard) while I entertain vague ideas of running Sim through it, too. We'll see. Happily there is a nice breeze on the porch and we got another a/c unit so that there is a/c in both bedrooms. We also went to the playground this morning, instead of leaving it for this afternoon.

Resident storyteller, resident story reader

Naomi has taken it upon herself to tell lots of stories lately. They get somewhat rambly, and I don't know that plot is much of a concern for her, but she loves telling stories. One day last week, she told a story for probably 30-45 minutes while I was making dinner. Phew! It was really funny, but I do not understand how she can talk and talk and talk for that long. She gets most annoyed if anyone interrupts her, too.

Hannah reads. And reads. And reads. I believe I've mentioned this before. She also gets annoyed if anyone interrupts her. Here's some evidence of the reading:


Michael laughed when he saw the next picture, because it's apparently how Hannah often says goodbye to him in the mornings when she's up and he's on the way to work:

Camping food

Michael is taking Hannah and Naomi camping with some others this coming weekend. They are very excited. (All of them.) We made some marshmallows and graham crackers in preparation, because I wanted to see how tough it was to do and how they came out. The verdict: pretty easy, and quite good. The crackers are somewhat tricky, because they're so thin they'll burn easily, but the ones that weren't too brown on the bottom tasted quite good. Marshmallows are weird in general, and homemade ones are no exception. However, you can make them without eggwhites and food coloring, and they're pretty easy to do. They come out pretty tasty, too. I see peppermint marshmallows in our future...maybe around Christmastime...

And math, too

Hannah is good at math. She also really likes it, and will tell people it's her favorite subject when they ask. She did not get this from her mother.

The other day we were reading her book about St. John Bosco, and came to a passage about how the townspeople were going to a parish mission twice a day at a parish 3 miles from their homes. I said to Hannah, "Whoa! They walked twice a day, 3 miles there, 3 back, 3 there, 3 back! How much is that?!"

Without pausing, she said, "Wow! 12 miles a day! That's a lot of walking!"

Memory and grammar start early

I was trying to remember a very funny thing Naomi said the other day. It wasn't coming to me. It was intensely frustrating, because I really wanted to remember, and had tried to sear it into my brain at the time. Apparently the searing didn't work.

Or maybe it did, just not on me, because Hannah reminded me of it in the car the other day. She told the whole story. So now I can remember it and tell it to you.

I was trying to fix the girls' hair the other morning, and needed the brush for Naomi's hair. I had used it on Hannah and it was still out, so I said to Naomi, "Naomi, please go get the brush off the couch and bring it to me."

Naomi looked at me, all innocence, and said, "Bring you the couch, Mama?"

Okay, so there was technically an unclear antecedent...I still can't believe she caught it!

A new CD

We got the soundtrack to Peter Pan the other day. I took the kids to see the play at the beginning of June, and they LOVED it...Naomi has sometimes been Wendy and "Twinkerbell" (her rendition of Tinkerbell) instead of Hello Dolly since then, so you can see how much she enjoyed it. The soundtrack was a big hit. By breakfast this morning, the girls had already listened to it through once and were halfway through it again.

Naomi has decided to rehabilitate Captain Hook. He's still a pirate, she says, but he's not a mean pirate any more. He's married and has 3 children. Coincidentally, two girls and a baby boy...Michael actually gets to be Captain Hook now (taking a break from Horace Vandergelder or Peter Pan). Naomi has spent a long time narrating Captain Hook's new life for me this afternoon. Hannah listened to parts and put in editorial commentary from time to time, but I got to listen to the whole thing. I finally had to tell her to stop talking so that she could eat some of her dinner.

Of course, she was singing (very quietly) "think lovely thoughts" after Communion at Mass this evening. I suppose that's fairly appropriate advice for that time, though.

Our weekend so far

Yesterday, Sim learned how to climb up a step. We were at the local relatives' house, and they have an area in their home that's one step below the rooms adjoining either side. I thought how perfect it was that Sim could combat crawl around in there and not be Hurricane Sim. Then, he noticed something about a foot into one of the rooms. The something was a colorful plastic comb. Simeon NEEDED that comb. So he climbed the step and got it. And later, he taught himself how to climb down the step, too.

Today we've been talking about America and independence and listening to Wee Sing America in order to get into the spirit of the thing. For me, the 4th will always be about going to the lake house of my aunt and uncle. We spent many, many Independence Days there with family in my growing up years, and I still can't quite get used to not being there on the 4th. When I asked Hannah how she was enjoying the 4th, she seemed to have similar feelings of something missing -- not the same thing, though: "It would seem more like the 4th of July if people were shooting off firecrackers in the streets, or at least if there was a PARADE going by our house!" I think her literary selections with stories of the 4th from long ago have given her a different picture of what to expect...

Michael picked another 2 pounds of sour cherries last night and another 11 pounds of sweet this morning. He's about to start on a cherry pie to bring to the potluck this evening. Hopefully most of the people coming won't actually want cherry pie...;)

Perhaps the most momentous happening today, though, is that Naomi used the big girl potty twice this morning, each time telling us she needed to go! Independence (from diapers, that is), here we come!

Sim

Simeon is on the move, and it's impressive. This morning we had a visit from the local cousins. The kids all blithely set up their Duplo village on the floor...but Hurricane Sim was on the move, and the city planners had their hands full trying to fend him off. "Umm, Aunt Monica, how do we keep Hurricane Sim from getting our buildings?" Meanwhile, Hurricane Sim was happily chewing on the building he'd just wrested from the city.

There were other surprises in store: "Hey! Sim's under the bench! Haha!" "Hey! Sim can really crawl fast! Haha!" "What do you mean, Hannah, that Simeon sweeps the floor?"

Developmental milestones happen awfully quickly at this stage, and I think it's been a while since the cousins have seen Sim with free range. Often at parties he's passed around and not allowed to get down and eat and drink the stuff that people foolishly leave on or near the floor.

Of course, this also means that I'm finding new stuff daily that I have to block off or move or be careful of...

Cherries

Everyone around here is enjoying our crop of cherries. The above squirrel is only a small example of the wildlife we've seen since the cherries appeared. They're a bit early this year, but we're ready. We have 4 trees: 2 bing, one rainier, and one sour. Here's a look out the kitchen window at the rainier tree. Those cherries are not within reach of us, even with ladders or climbing into the tree.

However, since we've gotten -- so far -- 19 pounds of various kinds of cherries, I guess I shouldn't complain.

The girls aren't complaining, either. They're helping Michael make cherry pie. There's nothing like cherry pie with fresh sour cherries. MMMMM.


Michael even did the lattice top.


It's almost miraculous that we got a picture of the finished product before eating it.

It's because Michael took these. I would have been wielding the knife right away...

The girls decided that they didn't like the filling, but did like the crust. To which I say -- MORE FOR ME!!!