Make that arbor weekend

Two (more) new trees in the ground make a total of seven now in our back yard. It is beginning to feel like the oasis we had in mind three years ago as we stood looking at a yard of grass, grass, and more grass. I don't find grass overly appealing. When it's soft it's nice to lay in or walk across barefoot, but to keep it soft all summer long requires copious amounts of water and fertilizer, which in turn also calls for continuous mowing. Everything about lawn grass seems rough on the environment.

We didn't actually take out a lot of grass today, but I got to spend a lot of time looking at the gardens we have put in, and remembering the yard as it was three years ago before all the back breaking labor of sod removal. I can imagine, when our house was built four years before that, the workers unrolling sod blanket after sod blanket to carpet the entire relatively large lot, but I doubt they imagined how much work we would eventually go to in order to undo theirs. I need to mention that we've had lots of help along the way, mostly from our parents. Today, for the task of putting a ten foot tree with a 24 gallon root ball into the ground, we have Jon's dad to thank. And Calvin, who had a wonderful time getting muddy, muddy, muddy.

So that was our weekend, spent mostly in the yard and gardens, mowing, edging, weeding, and planting two trees (not to mention settling Calvin's seedling into a pot so it can get a little more size before we put it in our ground), and finishing just in time to enjoy the sun that finally came out in the last few hours of Sunday.

These last two photos are courtesy of Calvin cam.

Sunday in pictures

Too windy to play outside...

Clear as glass

I have a terrible confession: it is a hard thing for me to follow a thread of interest through a day.

We started today in the middle ages, with the clear intent of reading through all the middle ages books we'd gotten from the library. All of them because Calvin is a determined child and that's what he wanted to do. It wasn't far from there to the illustrated book on the authentic building processes in late medieval castles and cathedrals, and it wasn't the stories themselves, or their heavy stones, or the references to kings or religion, that caught Calvin's fancy, but the simple question: how do they make the glass?

Yes, sometimes it's following the thread of interest that's the hardest thing to do. I know, I absolutely know, that the kind of education I want Calvin to have is one of empowerment, one that teaches him to trust his dreams and make them happen and that kind of education begins with honoring his interests and teaching him to take the step past the "I wonder" or "I will", straight into the doing. I know this, and still I am driven to respond to questions like "I wonder how they make glass" with "we can find out later but first let's finish this book," and how often do we remember to go back? The moment is gone. I don't know why it's so hard for me to follow his threads when in actuality it is the easiest and most rewarding thing in the world to do. But I did it today; We marked our place in the book and looked up glass blowing right away, and it was fun, and fulfilling, and rewarding. And easy. He asked, we looked it up. We watched almost thirty minutes of video on making antique glass and then he wanted to watch it again, and wanted to be sure that I saved it so that he could return to the topic at some other time.

And then there was more reading, and more reading, and piano, and more reading, and book cataloging, and laundry, and more reading and piano with dad (and pets galore because they all come out at feeding time), and, lastly, a return to the glass making discovery. YouTube is my friend, and I already had field trips to Greenfield Village on the brain, but now I'm moving them up in my mental calendar. And through it all I am gaining a new skill, one that is sure to be my best friend through of all of our days together: I am learning to follow his threads.

Too soon, too soon

We finally went to Egypt today. After we practiced piano, read some Oz, straightened some things around the house, went to story time, shelved in the library sale room, exercised, had lunch, and made dinner (for the crockpot), we finally entered Egypt. And in so doing talked about the difference between ancient and modern. Then we read some of the myths or stories of Ancient Egypt. Then we talked about the pryamids and about mummies. And you know what? That's actually a lot of talk about death. Mummies are dead, and all those ancient people are dead, and Seth actually murdered Osiris. Sometimes I plan things through very carefully...and then miss the forest for the trees, as I found out later in the day.

It was a good day here, and I don't mind dark and rainy days, but by evening the rain was snow again and the temperatures were falling. I look towards the spring flowers still adorning our table after our weekend party (which failed to actually summon spring) to keep my spirits up, but I miss last night's fog. Fog is mysterious and allows you to believe you are anywhere on earth. Anywhere, because suddenly you have no neighbors. Plus it reminds you that the air is warm enough to hold moisture, and the melting snow is filling it to the gills (ha ha).

Late in the day, after some extra cleaning and finally shrinking our table back to size after the dinner party, I checked on Calvin, who was in the other room after having finished his own chores of emptying the trashes (tomorrow is garbage day) and feeding the pets. He was "writing" a story as part of his "acting out a story" (how he refers to all of his play acting or pretending) about a cat who had been killed. The people who loved the cat very much didn't know what had happened and he was writing a sort of memoir so that they would, and so that the cat could be remembered.

Clearly he is thinking deeply now about death, and his story is reminiscent of one we (very mistakenly) saw on a video about rhinos last week, when three of the rhinos were tragically killed by poachers (and if I had known that was part of the video rated for kids his age I would never in a million years have borrowed it from the library as part of our Africa exploration). We talked about this cat, the circumstances of his death, and about the people who loved him, for quite some time. Calvin was clearly sad, affected. I was horrified.

He is working through some things that definitely bothered him, and now I have to worry that I have erred irreversibly. Would talking about death with regard to Egyptology have been so bad if it was not coming immediately after that oops of a video about rhinos? Would the video about rhinos have been given a second thought if it had not been followed up by talk of mummies? My instinct tells me that regardless this is healthy development—finding a way to work through an upsetting issue by "writing" about it, something he used to do by "interacting" with his imaginary friend, Mouse. But my heart tells me it is broken. Is he not too young to have to work through such misfortunes? I cannot protect him forever, but wouldn't it have been okay at least until he was five?

Don't let the dog play the game

Perhaps you've seen the Pigeon books by Mo Willems. The one that I always think of is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. I'm not a fan of the Pigeon books, but that was immediately what came to mind when I saw this series of pictures on the camera today.

Don't let the dog play the game.

Please, please let me play the game?

I'm good at games. Really.

If you let me play the game I promise I'll be good for ever and ever and ever.

Well if you're not going to let me play the game I guess I'll have to go cry in the corner. Boo hoo! ... Have you changed your mind yet?

You didn't let the dog play the game, did you? Phew! Thanks a lot.

And if you're not annoyed yet, then the Pigeon books are probably for you. Personally I think it's adult humor, sarcastic in nature, innapropriately aimed at children. The Piggy and Elephant books (There is a Bird on Your Head!) by the same author is a better series with a similar dry humor, minus the sarcasm. We kind of enjoyed those.