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Saturday, March 31, 2012

dirt

One of my favorite things about spring is the chance to dig in the dirt and start new things.  This spring I decided to re-work the garden format and in doing so dig up a substantial bit of the yard near our patio.


It is perhaps an overly ambitious plan, but I'm too far in now to pull out.  And so this week when we had a sunny, beautiful afternoon, I decided to embrace this chaos as an opportunity to make do with what we have- dirt.


I love dirt.  There is just something so freeing and wonderful about plunging your hands into it and feeling its earthiness between your fingers.  Or toes. I love watching sand slip between my fingers, and the squelchy noises mud makes, and the smell of the soil after a rainstorm.  And as I've gotten older and more nerdy, I love it for the way it provides nourishment for plants and for the amazing ecosystem that is there, hiding under our feet and sustaining life as we know it.  There is simply nothing like good, clean fun in the dirt.

So as we were unpacking the lunch-boxes, backpacks, cars-eats, and water-bottles from the car,  I mustered up the most excited voice I could and said "Jonathan, do you know what is in the backyard?"  He mirrored my enthusiasm with his "What?!" and I replied "DIRT!!!!"  "Wow!" "Do you want to go PLAY IN IT?!?!?"  "YEAH!!!!" and he started dancing around with his excitement (his excited dance is one of my favorite things about 2 1/2).

So we put the sleeping baby in a shady spot, and got out the shovel and rake and plunged in.


We found worms and centipedes and rolly-pollys and rocks.  We pulled out tufts of grass and examined their roots.   Jonathan discovered how to make dirt clods explode when you squeeze them.    We stopped short of hosing the dirt pile down and making a mud-pit, but at the rate my project is progressing, there will be more afternoons in the dirt!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Art Every Day

I was inspired today by two things.  First a blog entry that someone posted on facebook made me fall in love with the process of children doing artwork every day- the way it makes them think and inspires them and gives them confidence and creativity.  We don't have tons of fancy art supplies at our house- we rely heavily on crayons, stickers, and washable paint.  But this post made me excited about expanding our repertoire to pastels, collage, and more. The second thing was that on my way to pick up the kiddos I was listening to a story on NPR about creativity and how our brains are able to develop and practice creativity and how we learn and problem-solve best when we participate in a wide range of activities on a regular basis.

So when we entered the phase of the evening when I attempt to cook dinner while Zoe screams and Jonathan whines, I decided to break out the crayons and some stickers.  And within moments our kitchen floor looked like this.


Not ideal for cooking, but dodging errant crayons is way better than dealing with whining.  And by dinner time he was actually so into his art that I had to pry him away from his masterpiece- success!


So tonight after bedtime, I was still feeling inspired that in order to foster creativity in my own brain, I should also engage in art on a more regular basis.  I was too tired to go upstairs to drag out my 'real' paints, so I opened up the box of crayons and spent a few minutes filling up a page.


I don't know if I was inspired to a star pattern because I am currently teaching our astrophysics unit at work, or because I am just feeling a bit more spiny and sharp lately, or because we've been reading and talking about dinosaurs and their spikes and horns quite a bit around here lately.  But it was a great way to relax and though I don't think I'll pin mine to the refrigerator, I might break out crayons a little more often just for me!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Animal Prints


Last weekend, Jonathan was set on being noisy- banging, yelling, crashing.  LOUD.  I'm all for letting little boys run and jump and yell and be noisy messy little guys.  The problem was that little sister and sick papa were asleep.  Solution?  Coral him in the kitchen with a really fun project.  This took about 10 minutes to set-up including the time I spent rooting around in our disaster of a craft cabinet looking for the washable paint.

I cut open and laid flat a bulk diaper box, poured a mixture of paint into a shallow pan to make our "mud", and then collected some animals and cars from our toy bins.


I showed Jonathan how to dip the animal feet into the mud and demonstrated how to walk them down the cardboard to make foot-prints once and then he was all in.


We had fun looking at the animal feet first, guessing what the foot-prints would look like.  I think making the prediction first helped Jonathan pay more attention to the tracks he was making as he played.  Our favorite was the stegasaurus because he made 4 clear footprints AND a tail print.



But they were all pretty fun.  The project served its function and kept him happily occupied for about 40 minutes!

The paint was almost entirely contained to the cardboard and when we were done I just dumped all of the animals into a sink of soapy water to soak until a more opportune time to wash them. (And by then most of the paint had already rinsed off).


Thursday, March 8, 2012

hope

Hanging above the changing table in our nursery is a poem that my mom embroidered when my brother and I were little.  It says:

Cleaning and scrubbing 
Can wait for tomorrow
For babies grow up
We've learned to our sorrow
So quiet down cobwebs
Dust go to sleep
I'm rocking my baby
And babies don't keep.


Zoë has been grabbing at it every night as I put her PJs on, so I've been reading it aloud and thinking about it on a pretty regular basis lately.  And while I love the sentiment and the reminder that loving on my kiddos is WAY more important that tidying up, that is not what has been standing out to me over the past few weeks.  Lately, my response has been thank-goodness that babies don't keep- because I do not have the energy to do this indefinitely.



Don't get me wrong, I love my babies like crazy.  Today Zoë woke up early so I got to play with her for a few minutes before I headed out to work and when I got in the car,  I cried because I would miss spending the day with her.  But.  But.  I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to not smelling a little bit like sour milk all of the time and to making dinner without simultaneously holding a baby and to tackling a day with a full night's sleep under my belt.


So when I noticed a tiny white corner of a tooth just beginning to peek out from her gums yesterday, I was elated beyond belief.  I will miss that precious gummy little simile.  But that little emerging tooth is like the promise that we are, in fact, making progress.  That she will, indeed, grow into an easier phase and that there is hope of me maintaining some amount of sanity.  I'm sure that some day I will look back on this first year of her life and see it in the rosy light of nostalgia.  But today knowing that it is just a phase gives me the hope I need.

Friday, March 2, 2012

science

I can't help it- I love science.  As a high school physics teacher I suppose it has become second nature to me to see the world around me as an opportunity for science.  One of my graduated students once came back to me complaining that I had 'ruined' a ski trip for him because on the slopes all he could think about was acceleration and coefficient of friction and angles and such; I considered it a job well done.  When I say I love science, I do not mean that I love memorizing the facts and learning the equations.  What I mean is that I love the way science sees the world. It observes and notices things instead of taking them for granted; it sees every situation as an opportunity to explore and experiment and understand.  Science engages the world and asks exciting questions and finds innovative ways to answer them.

And so, not surprisingly, one of my FAVORITE things about being a mommy is getting to do science with my kiddos.  Nothing brightens up my day more than getting to explore something with Jonathan from his perspective.  Little people are designed to notice and explore the world around them- it is how we learn everything from our first words to social interactions to how to run and jump.  And the best part about toddler science is that there is so much of the world that is new to them that almost anything you do or see can turn into science.  Yesterday, for example, Jonathan was sliding toys down the small slide we have in our playroom- again and again and again and again the way only a toddler can.  Bored to tears, I finally said "I wonder which one slides the farthest?"   We then started sliding them down 2 at a time and noting which went farther.  He loved the experiment and before long started noticing other things- like that the ones that bounced tended to go further.


Last week, as I pulled into our driveway, I noticed that our wigelia bush was starting to sprout little buds.  So after we dumped backpacks and lunch boxes in the house, I  said "Jonathan, I have something special to show you".
He came dashing over and said "What?!?"  (the boy loves surprises)
I said, "Come with me- we are going to look at a bush!!"
"Oh BOY!!!" he started jumping up and down like I said we were going to the moon.
I grabbed a scissors and we ran out to the wigelia.  I pointed out some bare branches, and the leaves on the ground.  I asked him how the leaves got on the ground.  We talked about what happened to all the leaves in the fall and then I said, "It is almost SPRING! That is when the plants all grow brand-new leaves"  He looked at me like I was crazy.  But I proceeded and pointed out the little buds and asked him if he knew what they were.  He didn't so we cut off a branch from the bush and took it inside.  I let him dump water in a vase with a measuring cup and then we put the branch in it and put it on the dinner table.  He was expecting it to change right away, so I explained that we would have be patient and watch carefully.  I told him that we would have to look at it every day to see what happens to those little buds, but he kept running back into the dining room every 2-3 minutes to check on the branch anyway.


Thankfully they started to bloom quickly and we could notice some buds opening up by the next afternoon.  And by the end of the week viola- science and home decor combined!



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