Farewell to open windows

     We've had several weeks of gorgeous, temperate, breezy weather and it seems they may be coming to an end. Today it is predicted to "feel like" 88. *sigh* So, I guess it's time to close the windows. Don't get me wrong, I love warm weather. I was made to live where it is warm. From shorts, sleeveless tops and flip-flops to swimming and being outside, I prefer warm weather and everything that goes with it. Having spent most of my childhood in Buffalo and Syracuse, NY, I've had more than enough cold weather in my lifetime and I'm really, really over it. However, I'm not ready to exchange the beautifully mild weather we've been experiencing lately for the heat and humidity of summer quite yet. I love to be outdoors. I love to have my windows open and hear the birds singing and the kids playing. Where we live, these days are few. Most days it's just too hot. Then, in the winter it's often too cold for my wimpy, cold intolerant body but usually, in the Spring and late Fall it's just perfect for open windows and I can let all that glorious fresh air in. And so, as these days seem to be coming to a close I'm a little sad. Eventually the kids will stop playing outside as much and we'll go to the pool and the beach a lot more and I'll say farewell to the smell of fresh air, my curtains blowing in the breeze and all the outdoor smells and sounds that go with it.

Recent Happenings

 

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time! This guy should have opened days ago, by my calculations, so I had little hope of him opening at all, but my daughter and I went out on the patio this morning and found him dark purple, a sign that he was almost ready to come out. Still, I hardly expected to actually witness the event, since all my past attempts had failed, but I grabbed my camera because I thought a picture of the purple chrysalis would be pretty. After taking some pictures, my daughter and I stayed on the patio while she practiced her "bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish" skills.  All of a sudden, I noticed the bottom of the chrysalis crack, grabbed my camera and FINALLY got my video!

To watch:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcCOr-ihNU0

 During the next several hours, they pump fluid from their 

abdomen into their wings.

 When their wings are full, they expel the excess fluid and

continue to wait for their wings to strengthen.

Right after this picture, she fell. I gave her my finger to grab

onto and was able to move her inside to our butterfly house

until her wings were strong enough to fly.

Other Things We've Been Up To .......

We "painted" hot rocks with crayons...

  To try:

 http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/crayon-painting-on-hot-rocks

 

made some nature art.....

  visited the History, Art and Children's Museums......

built some video games on the computer.....

To try:

 http://www.brothersoft.com/games/mario-builder-download.html

caught lots of tadpoles, spent countless hours outside, splashed in the pool alot, 

and had a wonderful time visiting with out of town family.

A girl and her mouse

     I just came back from watching a ballet performance. It was in my daughter's bedroom and it involved a mouse.  My youngest has tremendous love for all things furry, feathered, four-legged, and even creepy crawly.  This may have something to do with the fact that we had two litters of kittens when she was barely a toddler. Since they were the only things in the house smaller than she was, she naturally assumed they were her responsibility to raise. Unfortunately, they grew, and eventually got too big and too fast for her pudgy little arms to capture anymore. Occasionally, she can still pin them down and they submit to a quick cuddle. Our dog outgrew her grasp just as quickly, but they still snuggle, play and roll around on the floor together. Last year we had chicks for a few months and she played with them as if they were any typical house pet, cuddling during movies and taking them outside to play. Her particular little chick was so attached that she followed her all over yard, chirping loudly anytime my daughter was out of her sight.

      She doesn't just love animals. She also loves bugs. She loves them all, except spiders and roaches. In fact, there is a plastic cup full of dead leaves sitting next to me right now that was home to some sort of small beetle. I'm sure the bug is long gone by now since there is no lid on the plastic cup. She has fallen in love with many an "adorable" little worm and our backyard is filled with buckets, cups and cardboard boxes that have housed any number of different six legged creatures. There are also countless frogs, tadpoles, and lizards she's housed and loved, over the years.

     Her newest pet is Blondie, the mouse. Blondie, it seems, doesn't mind a life of constant handling and attention and is very content to be unendingly nurtured. Blondie is hers alone, and will never outgrow my daughter's ability to pick her up.  She plays with her in her doll house, reads her bedtime stories, snuggles her and feeds her treats out of her hand.  Blondie rolls all over the house in her little ball and has gotten quite good at maneuvering it wherever she wants to go, which is usually the kitchen. Then, there was the ballet performance that they spent lots of time practicing for. My daughter gracefully twirled and leapt, all with a mouse crawling up and down various parts of her body. She balanced her on her hand. She balanced her on her leg. She even balanced her on her head. 

Blondie seems happy and needless to say,  my daughter is too.

Why I don't restrict TV time

     Well for starters, I don't restrict TV because today, after a dark and menacing thunder storm prompted me to declare it was a good day to curl up on the couch and watch TV, my children have, instead, chosen to make a movie spoofing The Wizard of Oz. They've been happily engaged planning, making costumes, writing lyrics, (it's apparently a musical) doing hair and make-up and filming for far longer than they would have lounged on the couch for a movie.  In fact, today, the TV has only been on long enough for my daughter to skip through a recorded episode of  American Idol while she ate her breakfast. Gotta love DVRs for making TV watching so much more efficient!  Is this normal? like everything else in our life, it depends on the day. 

   Having not liked limited TV time when I was growing up,  I started out parenting with no plans to restrict TV.  Home all day with small children, with a husband in school, working full time and never home,  I was also watching a lot of TV myself, at the time. However, as I started finding more and more reasons to turn off the tube myself, I became less enamored with the idea of my kids plopped in front of it. Then, we got cable. Suddenly, with more than just PBS to choose from, the TV was on more than ever.  My love affair with television was definitely coming to an end. I was watching less and less and becoming more and more annoyed by its presence in my home. It was loud, it was bright, it was inane, it was distracting and I was getting sick of it. When our power was out for over two weeks after hurricane Wilma, I enjoyed the respite so much that I decided to begin eliminating it from our lives.

     At first, it was mostly me declaring, "You've watched too much tv. Go play outside!" but then I began to set time limits, make rules and design charts. With 3 kids, this was always hard to keep track of and enforce. They would reason that they had only watched a few minutes of a show and not the whole half hour or that they were just walking through the room during someone else's time.  It made it really difficult to keep up with the precise measurements I was seeking to enforce. Next, I decided they could only watch it after homework and chores were finished. Eventually, and I was SO proud of my super-mom skills, I made a list of daily requirements and attached  a limited amount of tv time to each.  IF they performed all of their daily requirements, the most TV they could consume in a week was 3 hours, and that was limited to weekends. Then, on the weekends we were so busy that they hardly had enough time to get in any of the TV time they had worked so hard to earn.  It was the perfect plan.  I had a quiet, peaceful house and I could boast to all my mommy friends about how little TV my kids watched. If there was a super-mom contest, I was winning!

   

     Then I started homeschooling and our whole world changed. Suddenly, we weren't running all over the place like crazy people. Time was not our constant enemy but simply something that existed.  Lists and charts and schedules were not only unnecessary but life without them was suddenly free and simple and wonderful. I began to voraciously consume information about natural learning. I began to rethink life. I began to let go.  At this point, TV had become an area of contention between me and my children. My son was suddenly "sick" almost every day and very whiny about his "need" to lay in bed and watch TV.  They were frequently asking for extra TV time and special concessions to watch certain things. I had made a decision for my children based on my own life's experiences and my own preferences and was robbing them of the same experiences that led to my decision and they were rebelling against that. So I decided to let them make their own decisions about how much TV they would watch and relinquished control.

     So what does unlimited TV time look like now, in a house where the kids are home all day, with probably 10 channels devoted solely to children's programming, lots of DVDs and Netflix? A lot of times it looks like today with lots of other interesting activities taking place instead. Since I still find it's presence somewhat annoying, we don't have the TV in the main part of the house on often, unless we're watching something together.  The TV is off, then its on, then it's off again. Sometimes it's "educational", sometimes it's Spongebob. It is almost always abandoned for something more interesting. Sometimes it's on while they do crafts, play with legos or do a puzzle. They record the shows they really want to watch and watch them when it's convenient.  My oldest, like me, watches very little. My son seems to watch the most. I've noticed that after he's been very active it's almost like he uses it to unwind for awhile. My youngest can still barely sit through a whole movie. She'll watch if someone else is watching but then usually loses interest quickly.  Do they watch more than 3 hours a week? Yes. Are they showing discernment and wisdom making their own choices for themselves? Definitely

......and by the way, they still read and play outside, they are not obese and they are unbelievably creative and talented.

Butterflies and "Snowball" Fights

      

     All of the butterflies have now eclosed (emerged from their Chrysalises) and the last two flew away this afternoon.  We had two on Sunday,  five yesterday and two more today.  Five at once was a lot of fun to watch.  They're so beautiful when they're trying out their wings for the first time, slowly opening them and then quickly shutting them again.  One of the caterpillars was smaller than the others. He must have been a couple of days behind the others and every time they molted they left him a size behind.  The last time he molted he ended up with only one antennae which made him easy to recognize.  He was my daughter's favorite and she always kept track of him while they were outside. Today he flew away.  He ended up being the biggest Chrysalis and probably the biggest butterfly and he'll end his life with two antennae.

 

this guy hadn't been out long and let me hold him

When we release them, they always fly the same direction. 

They must have an internal compass that directs them North for some reason. 

      The rest of the day, I've been catching up on laundry and trying to get an always uncooperative house back in order, if their is such a thing, while the kids have spent a good part of the day outside. They made ramps for their bikes, played with friends, rode their bikes to McDonald's and made a house for a lady bug......and then, they had a "snowball" fight  Not having much experience with snow, they naturally think they are missing out on something amazing. Having had more than enough experience with snow, I disagree. They decided to make snowballs out of crushed ice from the refrigerator. The ice didn't exactly stick together but that, and the fact that it was in the high 70s, didn't stop them from running around the yard and hurling handfuls of ice at each other. This turned into sandwich bags made into water bombs and eventually ended with a swim in the kiddie pool.  My kind of snowball fight.

 

Caterpillars and new pets

     I'm sitting with my windows open,  listening to the birds singing while my youngest and her friend splash in the pool outside my window. Bliss. Beside me,  nine caterpillars are in various stages of pupation, which means, in about nine or ten days we'll have nine Monarch butterflies to release. They appeared as teeny, tiny caterpillars on the milkweed in our garden about two weeks ago and we've been watching them grow, and munch all our milkweed, ever since. Once they were nice and fat and ready to pupate, we brought them inside to our butterfly house because watching them pupate and emerge from their chrysalis is just so much fun, no matter how many times we've done it.  Let me be clear, I enjoy it much more than the kids. Their interest waned after the first several butterflies. Although, my youngest spends a lot of time observing them with me.
     Last night, we went to the pet store to purchase some fish for our aquarium and ended up bringing home the mouse my daughter has been pining for instead. The saleslady let her hold her favorite mouse, Blondie, last time we were there and my animal loving, daughter was instantly in love. After several days of discussion and trying to figure out where a little mouse could be safe in a house with two cats, we decided to let her bring one home.  Her intention was not to pick Blondie because she knew she was the saleslady's favorite but the saleslady was so excited the we would be providing a good home and not be using the mouse as pet food that she practically begged us to take her. So, with the promise to bring  Blondie back to visit, we left with an adorable, well behaved, little, blonde mouse and one very happy little girl. Tomorrow, after some adjustments to our water, I think we'll go back for the fish.

 3 in Chrysalises, 3 hanging in a "J" position ready to pupate 

and one spinning a silk button to hang from. When they 

pupate, their skin peels off from the bottom and fall off. 

The result is the green Chrysalis underneath.

 Blondie

Typical Day

     Yesterday was an example of "typical day" at our house.  Our days are largely unstructured and our interests vary so there's not a whole lot of typicality to a typical day in our home, but if we have a typical day,  yesterday was it.  I started the day by putting in my CD of Les Miserables, being suddenly nostalgic for it and hoping it might spark an interesting conversation about French history, a topic that fascinates me.  It didn't.  I reviewed some French history time lines for my own personal enjoyment, but unfortunately, the kids were not interested in the political climate of  Europe during the 18th and 19th century in the least. Instead, my oldest two spent most of the morning challenging each other with spelling words they found on the internet and making up funny sentences to go with them.  So I guess I had just as much fun listening to them giggling in the next room as I may have had enlightening them about the Bastille, the guillotine, the Bourbons, Napoleon, the 18th Brumaire, the burning of Moscow.......I was even going to make connections to the beheading of Charles Stuart of England and our own fight for independence.  I guess I'll have to save it for another day or befriend someone else who cares. 

      While the older two were happily engaged with their spelling game, my youngest and I were busy at the table making a house for Blondie out of old cereal boxes. There is always a project or two, or three, or four, out on the dining room table, whether it's legos, puzzles, origami, artwork or something else being built or crafted.  Inspired by the pontoon boat my oldest two made out of cardboard, fabric and old water bottles, my youngest, wanted to make something too. The boat should have been made for Blondie, in her opinion. It was definitely not, in theirs.  So, we made a house that was.  I made a bed.  She made a couch and a table. Blondie loved it and pooped on them all indiscriminately, including the boat. 

     Later, my son put in Monster's Inc. so while I folded some laundry and my oldest used the computer, he and my youngest settled on the couch to watch. When the laundry was folded I laid down with them and, being 4 months pregnant, immediately dozed off. I woke up to E.T. and an empty room. The kids had dispersed to do other things but came back to watch the end.  After some dinner, my son went to baseball and my daughters spent the rest of the evening learning swing dance moves from youtube.  Naturally, a performance of their new skills followed. With a smile on my face and trepidation in my heart, I watched as my youngest flew through the air in more ways than I would have thought possible but they had fun and everyone survived, including the furniture.  Then, it was off to bed and a few more chapters of Around the World in 80 Days for the oldest two with a brief discussion about Great Britain's occupancy of India (yay!)  and Ramona The Brave for my youngest.  It was a quiet, fun, relaxing, creative, typical day.