Fire

Fr. Jerome likes to build fires while camping.  Well, for all I know, he likes to build fires at other times, too, but we’ve only seen him build fires while camping.  Hannah took the opportunity of camping with him again to hone her fire-starting skills – she got a refresher course on the newspaper knots that are Fr. Jerome’s signature, and he showed her how to set up the kindling so that the fire gets off to a good start. 

It was Simeon, however, who was most powerfully affected by the fire this year.  Last year I don’t think he even saw the fires, since he and I retired to our RV earlier in the evening.  This year, he saw and appreciated them.  And he learned to get out of the smoke when the wind shifted.  And every morning, when he saw Fr. Jerome, he would say, “Want to make a fire!”

Fr. Jerome was definitely pleased to have a new enthusiast, and even taught Simeon an all-important phrase.  So now, we have the dubious distinction of having a son who thinks it’s very amusing to say, “Fire. Ugh.”

Successful!

Camping was a great success.  We had so much fun, and this year Simeon and I slept in the tent, which turned out to be just fine.  I think that all of us were so tired after our days outside that we could have slept almost anywhere.  Of course, the two Thermarests that I used and the nice warm sleeping bag a friend loaned me helped, too.  Simeon looked SO CUTE in his little sleeping bag, but I didn’t take any pictures of that – no good can come of risking waking a sleeping baby just to get a picture! 

The girls looked cute in their bags, too, but Hannah has not mended her bed-taking-over ways, and was found on more than one occasion to be taking over Naomi’s Thermarest.  Once she even was lying with her head on Naomi, and complaining that Naomi was trying to take her spot.  Heehee.  Of course, we were very relieved that her nocturnal stomach complaint from last year didn’t return. 

Fr. Jerome came with us again, and we really enjoyed having him along.  He is a favorite with all the kids, which was good and bad for him.  Naomi greeted him each morning, as he unzipped his tent, by jumping on him.  She taught girl cousin to do so, also, and Simeon joined the fun more than once.  Girl cousin also would often say, “Let’s play a game!” 

Fr. Jerome:  Okay, what shall we play?

Girl cousin:  Running!

Fr. Jerome:  [Noticeably lacking enthusiasm]  Um…okay.

Being a good sport, Fr. Jerome would play running.  It seemed to get his creative juices going, though, because he would soon come up with another game – without running – to play. 

Simeon and Fr. Jerome spent a good 1/2 hour or 45 minutes one day, throwing rocks in the lake.  Simeon even talked about it in his sleep one night while we were there. 

Hannah led many explorations of the rest of the campgrounds, accompanied by her siblings, cousins, and Fr. Jerome.  After one such excursion, we were amused to see them coming back, all lined up behind Fr. Jerome, in height order, marching.  The order didn’t last long, though, because Simeon objected strongly to being the last, and insisted on going up and holding Hannah’s hand. 

Naomi has decided that we should live at the campground.  While I did have fun, I’m not quite ready to go that far…

Simeonisms

Someone showed Sim a picture of Mickey Mouse in a magazine.  So now Sim talks about Nakey Mouse.  “Nakey,” of course, is how Simeon says naked.

Camping

Hannah:  [to a friend of ours] We’re going camping and we’re taking a priest.  And he’s not JUST a priest, he’s a lot of fun!

*****

Hannah:  [as I packed the honey for oatmeal] Mama, you’re really not roughing it. 

Water

We have a whole bunch of potted plants in the back yard.  This is mainly because, when we moved into this house, we had the soil checked for lead.  And…there was lead!  However, we want to grow plants to eat.  Lead + soil + plants = edible  This means that we’re growing things in pots in the back yard, while we can plant directly in the soil in areas that are farther away from the house. 

Potted plants need to be watered more frequently than ones that aren’t potted.  And when the weather is over 90 degrees for several days in a row, they REALLY need to be watered. 

This is good news, really, because my kids don’t seem to recognize that the only thing to do in hot weather like this is seek the coolest place to be and hold as still as possible there.  Lots of menu planning, school planning, phone calls, emails, reading, letter writing, etc., can be done while holding still in a cool place, so it can still be productive time!  Bike riding is for after 8 p.m., when it’s cool.  My children do not see it that way.  That might be because I put them to bed before 8 p.m., so they can’t really bike at that hour.  I can, though, and that’s what I’ve been doing. 

H:  Can I go in the back yard?

Me:  [suspicious] What are you going to do back there?

Now, really, I’m only suspicious because I can’t IMAGINE why on a day like today, anyone wants to be outside.  It’s HOT out there!  HOT!  Of course, I forget about when I was younger and would work outside in the Texas heat all summer long with horses, for crying out loud.  If there’s anything that makes one warmer when it’s 98 degrees and 98% humidity, it’s a large, hairy animal that requires all kinds of activity to keep it happy and safe.  And then you add 20 small children in a day camp situation, and…okay.  Let’s just say it’s hot. 

I also realize that, if my children seek a cool place and stay there during the heat of the day, holding still, they will never, never, never go to sleep at night.  They need lots of exercise, and I need them to go to sleep at night. 

Happily, our back yard is in the shade during the afternoon, which means that my kids can go out there without having to be slathered with sunscreen first.  Sunscreen is good in its place, but if it doesn’t need to be used, I’d much rather skip it. 

How many tangents can I pursue in one blog post?

SO…once I agreed to let the kids outside, I then decided to give them something fun – and productive! – to do while they’re out there.  I filled up a large metal thing with water and gave them our plastic cones and requested that they water the plants.  The plastic cones were out there, and they hold water, which is why I chose them – available and useful, two qualities I like in toys. 

 

They were happy to comply.  At first it was all business.  Fill bucket, use cones to water plants.  I think that Simeon watered one pot of mint exclusively.  If it doesn’t survive this heat wave, it will not be his fault.

Serious workers, seriously working.  But pretty soon, I heard some other noises.  Shrieks of laughter.  Plant watering doesn’t usually involve shrieks of laughter, even with my kids watering.

 

Now, I was pretty sure this would happen, because I’ve had kids for a while now, and I had siblings and I babysat, and water + kids = wet kids, even if the water is supposedly contained.  I must be getting ready to start math lessons again, with all the equations!

Hannah blithely yelled to me that “we’re putting water on each other!”  And in the photo above, you can see her sloshing Naomi with water.

 

Happily, Naomi didn’t mind.

Poor Sim, though, being the shortest, got water poured over his head multiple times.

 

He didn’t mind too much, either.

 

I decided that the kids probably would tire of having their siblings pour water on them (funny how you tire of that faster than you tire of pouring water on your sibling…), so I provided a distraction, with some other fun water toys:  cups, medicine syringes, measuring spoons, etc.  I thought this might change things a bit as far as how the games were going.  And it did!

 

Mostly.  Here’s Naomi, delicately pouring a tablespoon of water on Hannah.

 

But for the most part, water fun has been highly successful.

 

Just ask me how I feel about it when I have to deal with wet, grassy children in a half an hour…

Hot

Today’s temperatures in Seattle were record highs, apparently.  We were all quite warm.  We are all quite grateful for the room air conditioners in our bedrooms.  Our little weather station reports that indoors it was over 80 today.  It shows a little frowny face, depicting that we might not like that.  It’s right.

More on Infant Potty Training

I mentioned before that we’re doing infant potty training with Simeon.  It’s going well.  Since Naomi finally fully potty trained around her 4th birthday last March, we’ve changed fewer than a dozen poopy diapers, and Sim is not yet two. 

Sometimes people say that infant potty training is more like parent training.  Heck, if it means that I change fewer poopy diapers, because the poop goes directly into the toilet, I’m happy to call it almost anything!  And traditional potty training definitely is parent training, too – how many times do I still have to remind my other kids to use the potty?  Lots.

Sim isn’t quite ready for diapers yet, but he does have days where he exclusively uses the potty, no wet (or poopy) diapers all day long.  He also knows when he needs to go, and although that doesn’t always get translated to telling us and getting to the potty (although it pretty much always does when he has to poop), it’s a large part of potty training.  His potty training is much smoother and easier than either of the girls’.

If God blesses us with more kids, I have a feeling infant potty training will be employed again.

Isn’t it obvious?

This morning I took the kids on a nature walk in our neighborhood.  It’s a beautiful day here, so there were lots of people out, and lots of nature too. 

Naomi had moved ahead of us a little bit and struck up a conversation with someone who was out in his yard.  I was close enough to hear:

Man:  Hi there!

N:  Hi.

Man:  What are you doing?

N:  We’re going on a nature walk.

Man:  What are you going to see?

N:  Nature.

Reading to baby brother, forced edition

I hear Naomi, in the other room, “reading” to Sim, making up stories to go with the books she’s flipping through with him.

Then I hear this:

N:  Oh, no, Simeon!  You can’t get down!  I’m reading to you.  Listen.

A few minutes later:

N:  Simeon, stay here!  I’m reading to you!

A little bit later:

N:  Simeon, stay on the couch, I’m reading to you.  Don’t go away, you need to hear the story.

Granted, I’m happy that she’s so eager to read to her brother, since sometimes she is of the opinion that a full-length couch isn’t big enough for the both of them.  It’s just that I’m not sure Simeon is enjoying his role as her captive audience.  Emphasis on captive.

Make Way for Ducklings Pictures

Remember how we lost our camera in Boston?  And then it was found again?  Well, I still haven’t posted any of the recovered pictures, and it’s time to fix that! 

So here’s our trip to see the Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Public Garden. 

We ended up with a cute family photo with the ducks.  All of us looking at the camera, most of us smiling.  This is no small feat!

Then we spent a long time there, letting the kids climb on the ducks.  Consequently, we have lots of “kids sitting on ducks” pictures.         

  

Yes, again, bold horizontal stripes make a toddler easy to spot.

 

     

      

We then walked over to the lagoon and got to see some real, live ducklings in action.  And asleep.  Those were much cuter than the statues. 

   

  

Of course, the hazard of that is that the kids decide they want to take home the darling little fuzzballs. 

But really, can you blame them?  The cuteness factor is really, really high.  Naomi eventually settled for pretending to be a duckling for the rest of the day, and then on and off for the rest of the trip.

The swan boats were not as fun nor as cute, but they do figure prominently in the book, so we took a photo. 

It was a hot, hot day, and we were quite warm on this outing, but  seeing the ducks was well worth it!  I’m so grateful to have our camera back, too.