Come, Mommy

A Milestone and A Playdate

lieslf — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:52:40 +0000

I was outside tonight watering the roses. Through the window I could hear the rumbling of our clothes dryer. There’s nothing unusual about that sound, especially in a household with small children, of course, but it turns out that this load of laundry was indeed just a bit special. We were drying, for the last time ever, a load of diapers.

Three weeks ago we started potty training with Kieran. The first couple of days we weren’t sure he was going to take to it at all, but once he had a couple of successful visits to the bathroom, the lightbulb went off in his head illuminating for him the idea that using the bathroom is ever so much easier than waiting for Daddy or Mommy to change his diaper. And it’s been smooth sailing ever since. We had him in diapers at night initally, but he’s been so dry in the morning that we’re switching to training pants for now, and I don’t think he’s going to need those for much longer.

We are so proud of him, and so happy to have our diaper bag toting days behind us! And Kieran is loving his new freedom. The only downside is that now he wants to visit the bathroom any time we go to a new place just to check it out, silly guy. Sometimes when children reach a new milestone it’s a bittersweet moment, but not this time. This one has everyone here doing the Happy Dance!

In other news, today was an extra fun day for the boys and me. Despite getting a late start out of the house, we managed to make it down to South Jersey to visit Suzanne, Sean, and Allie of Mimilou fame. We hit some road construction going down and back but actually even that worked out well since spotting graders and excavators kept the boys busy and minimized the number of times the famous, “Mommy, are we there yet?” question was asked.

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen our friends – Kieran was still crawling then, and it was lovely to see them all again. The kids picked up where they left off last time, and even in the heat, the boys enjoyed a walk to the park and playing spies on the climbing equipment with Sean and Allie. Allie was also very sweet to Kieran by taking on the role of his little Mommy and carefully shepherding him up a ladder, and then pushing him on the swings. Wjile the kids were playing, Suzanne and I got to catch up, which was wonderful. All the way home the boys kept asking when we could go back and play some more. Thanks for the fun playdate, guys! We definitely need to get together soon, perhaps to do some apple picking.

So that’s the latest news hot off the Menagerie House presses. It’s a good to be ending the summer with fun and friends, and we’re planning to make the most of our remaining weeks of summer break.

Meet Willie

lieslf — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:06:05 +0000

He’s our new pet here at The Menagerie House. Obviously he is a guinea pig, and he’s eighteen months old. Some clients of our vet needed to rehome this gentle little creature, and so our vet gave them our name as being an animal-friendly family. The last of our ferrets, Houdini, passed away in January, and our vet knew that we were missing having a small and fuzzy friend in the house.

Guinea pigs need a steady supply of fresh veggies, particularly greens, in their diet, and the boys and I have been having fun picking grass and dandelion greens for Willie. The boys ask to feed him his morning parsley when they get up, and they love to give him tickles and kisses.

We’ve had him for two weeks now and he has settled in well. Initially he was a bit skittish with us, but now he runs to the door of his hutch and squeaks when he sees us. Liam is looking forward to introducing Willie to his 1st grade teacher when she comes by for a visit this week.

Guinea pigs often live to be 6-7 years old, so we’re looking forward to lots of fun times with Willie.

The Swingset

lieslf — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:19:49 +0000

Or as Grandma calls it, “The PROJECT”! It was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it. Even in the heat wave of the last few days the boys have been out swinging every day.

Here we have Liam swinging away and pretending to be an Army helicopter pilot while Lieutenant Kieran mans “The Fort”.

Thank you again to Kevin, Grandma, and Pop-Pop – we love our swingset so much!

Hugs,

Liam and Kieran

July Wrap-Up

lieslf — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:20:41 +0000

Well, July is over, and it was a fun month here in the Menagerie House. We went to Texas for a week and then returned, grandparents in tow, to continue our visit with them. They were able to stay almost two weeks, which was a lot of fun, and then the last few days of the month we spent catching up on chores left undone while we were visiting and playing. I’ve been holding off on writing this post since I have misplaced my camera and there are some fun pictures on it, but it’s hiding itself well and I was able to swipe some photos from Grandma, so I’m going to go ahead with the quick wrap-up.

We spent a week in Texas just after the July 4th holiday weekend. Kevin was able to stay only a couple of days due to work pressures, but the boys and I stayed all week and had a truly great vacation. Our first day there, my cousin Scott, my Aunt Tess, and my Uncle Jay were able to come up from Houston and spend the afternoon. This was a great experience since believe it or not, it has been almost twenty years since we’ve been together as a group. Tess and Jay were at our wedding in 1990, but Scott and his family were living abroad at the time and couldn’t make it. So it was really wonderful to see them again and pick up our relationship where we left off. As my Aunt Tess mentioned, if it wasn’t for the children running around, you would have thought that no time had passed at all since our last visit. It was fun to introduce Liam and Kieran to them, too, and Liam is still talking about how nice Tess, Jay and Scott are.

From left to right: Aunt Tess, Scott, me, and Uncle Jay (WordPress is giving me trouble with image size tonight, and I’m hoping I can come back in a day or two and enlarge the photos here.)

Kevin’s sister Janet and her children, Ethan and Alexa, came up for Sunday as well, so we had a full house and a lot of happy, excited children running around and screaming. It was really a fun day all around.

We spent the rest of the week doing a little of this and a little of that. There was lots of time in the pool – even though it was actually cooler in the Hill Country than it was back home, it was still pretty warm and a swim in the late afternoon was really refreshing.

Here are Kevin and the boys cooling off on Sunday afternoon.

There is currently an exhibit of dinosaur skeletons and other interesting dinosaur-related items in San Antonio. The boys, Grandma, and I went there one afternoon and we all really enjoyed it.

Here is Liam holding a jaw from one of T-Rex’s smaller relatives. It must have been quite a vicious time back in the Dinosaur Age judging by the looks of those teeth.

After the exhibit we were all hungry, so Grandma treated us all to lunch at a nice Italian place on the Riverwalk.

Kieran loved his ravioli (he calls them “pillows”), but the best part of lunch was still the dessert.

During the week we also took a trip to Sea World where we saw many beautiful marine creatures. The boys got to feed dolphins and alligators, and they loved Shamu’s live show. We also had time for a couple of trips into Blanco to visit GiGi and Uncle Bob at their apartments there, and we even stopped to do a little wading in the Blanco river. It was a full week, for sure.

Then on Saturday we all got up nice and early and flew home. The boys really missed Kevin and were so glad to see him at the airport! Pop-Pop had business on the weekdays, so Grandma stayed with us then, and it was fun having her here. We did a lot of playing and visiting and somehow the days just sped on by.

Then, on the last weekend of their visit, Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop helped us put together the boys’ new swingset. We bought it from a neighbor who was moving right before we left town. During our stay in Texas, Kevin did some repair work on the beams, and then after we returned home Grandma did an amazing job of painting the set. It wasn’t easy as it is a large structure, and the heat has been intense this year. She spent several afternoons out in the soupy afternoon air painting the set for her grandchildren. Then on Sunday, Kevin, Pop-Pop, and Grandma put the whole set together. It was a lot of work from start to finish, and we are so grateful to Kevin’s parents for all their labor on this project!

It was worth all the work, though, as the boys just love their swingset and are spending several hours a day playing on it. It really is terrific to have such a wonderful piece of play equipment in the backyard, and I know we’ll get lots of years of enjoyment out of it. With my camera missing, I can’t show the finished project right now, but I’ll pop out tomorrow and grab a shot with my phone so everyone can get a look at out new toy.

That, in a nutshell, has been our July. Add in swimming lessons for Liam, and lots of playing with neighborhood friends, and you’ve got pretty much the entire story. It’s been a lot of fun, and now we’re looking forward to a relaxing August before we have to get back into school mode in a few weeks. I’ll be back soon with pictures of our swingset, and our first August news – a new pet at the Menagerie House.

Thanks for reading!

Vacation!

lieslf — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:41:23 +0000

Just a quick placeholder here-we are off this morning to spend a week in Texas with Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop. I may blog from the road or I may save it up for one big post when we return-that remains to be seen. Also-I have photos to show of the presents I made for my niece’s birthday, so those will be fun to post, too.

Have a fun week, everyone, and I will be back soon!

July 4!

lieslf — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:37:07 +0000

We had a fun family weekend over the 4th, and I will post more about that later. But for now, this is Kevin’s show.

For the last several years he has worked for a fireworks company on the Fourth as a pyrotechnician, one of those guys that gets to actually shoot the the big shells at municipal fireworks shows. As usual, yesterday, he was at work. And we have the video to prove it. Enjoy!

Weekend Update

lieslf — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:48:07 +0000

It’s been a busy week here since Liam started the first of his two weeks of camp at his school. Kieran and I have been driving him over and back each day, stopping of course to let Kieran spend an hour or so on the playground and then running any errands that need to be done. And also Liam started swimming lessons this week -two lessons each week for the next 8 week, in the evening. It all adds up to a full week.

I did however promise myself I would post a couple of fun things we did last weekend. Kevin’s company is working “summer hours” this year, which means he goes in an hour earlier in the mornings, but then he comes home at lunchtime on Fridays, which is great because every weekend has a bit of a long weekend feeling to it. Last Friday we drove down to the beach in the afternoon. We walked along the boardwalk for a bit and got some dinner at a rooftop restaurant. The food is average, but really, sitting up there in the sea breeze, watching the people swimming, and the boats coming in and out of a nearby river, is just a wonderful finish to the week.

Here is Kieran waiting for his dinner to arrive.

After dinner, we went down the boardwalk a bit so the boys could ride some of the fun things they have there.

Kieran loves to ride these pink elephants.

Liam’s current favorite ride is the Ferris wheel.

After we’d tried some rides, we walked out onto the sand for a bit of digging and wading.

The boys played in this crater for quite a while. Every time the waves came up, it would fill with water and become their own private pool.

Here the boys are running in to escape one of the higher breakers.

Kieran was enjoying having Daddy swing him around through the breaking waves.

After we had had enough wading and digging in the sand, we rinsed off our feet and legs, put our shoes on, and walked back to the car. The boys managed to stay awake for the drive home, but fell asleep shortly thereafter. It was a fun evening, and being this close to the shore is one of the things we like about summers where we live.

The second fun thing we did this weekend involves some manual labor. Neighbors of ours are moving, and their new house has a swingset already. The set in their backyard however, is only a couple of years old and is in great shape, but the new owners don’t want it, so for a couple of hundred dollars and some assembly, it is now ours. The set is in pieces across our backyard at the moment, but Kevin will spend tomorrow afternoon sanding and desplintering the beams, and since he has Monday off, we can use that to start putting the set together. When we get the set put back together, it will look something like this. Obviously, Kieran and Liam are quite excited about the new addition to our backyard!

Zoo Trip

lieslf — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:34:07 +0000

One day this week I took the boys to a local zoo. It’s not one of the big zoos in Philadelphia or New York-those are fun too, but we had quite a heat wave going on and we wanted something to do that would get us out to enjoy the relative cool of the morning before the afternoon heat hit the upper 90′s. This zoo is a kind of strange place. On the one hand, out front it is a pet store that does sell puppies and kittens. I know pet store puppies and kittens often come from puppy mills and the cat equivalent, so I do wish that they were not selling the animals. However, when you walk through the pet store and see the zoo, what you see is a home for a lot of wild animals that were initially purchased as pets by people who ultimately learned the hard lesson that wild animals do not make good pets.

So these former pets have a good life at this zoo-it’s not fancy, but all the animals have lots of space, toys, good food and clean water, and a caring staff. They have animals you might expect in this situation-wolves, dingo-domestic dog hybrids, lemurs, baboons, spider monkeys, and many kinds of smaller, cuddly-looking animals. They also have some giraffes. Now I have no idea who on Earth would think that giraffes just might be the perfect backyard companion, yet there they are. So anyway, there is some good being done here with these animals, and the boys love to come and run around and and watch the animals play.

We spent a happy morning running around and watching the ring-tail lemurs swing around in their trapezes. We watched the wolves running back and forth with a huge ball. Liam and Kieran occasionally were chased by some chickens of various breeds-the place has some free-range domestic chickens, and this time of year their are chicks around. The boys would get too close to the chicks either by accident or by intent when trying to pet the young birds. Then an angry mama chicken would scoot across the grass at the boy, wings flapping, cluck-cluck-clucking, and beak snapping. At one point one of the mother chickens actually managed to touch Liam’s hand. He ran to me unhurt, big blue eyes wide open, and said, “Wow, Mommy, that chicken is really scary when she is protecting her babies. I think that what sounds like ‘Cluck, cluck, cluck,’ to us, really means ‘Don’t mess with my babies, mister!’”

I had to agree with him as angry chickens do look like they mean business. Liam showed me where the chicken had nipped at his hand. “Mommy, I’m lucky she didn’t really peck at me. That would have hurt. Hey! I think I’ve just discovered what the word ‘henpecked’ means!” And off he ran, looking to tell Kieran of his new vocabulary edition. ( This is what we call “Summer Schooling”.)

It turns out that the chickens are not the only domestic birds in residence at this zoo. There are some Guinea fowl, and also about a dozen peacocks and peahens. One of the peacocks is an albino-he really is pretty. Our Indian friends invariably describe these birds as “varmits” and “pests”, and that they certainly can be as they are not shy about running up and grabbing tidbits of food from people, trash cans, or the grass. Ill behavior notwithstanding,though, these birds certainly are beautiful. Liam found one long tail feather lying on the ground, and he picked it up, admiring the “eyespot” at the end of the feather. He got another vocabulary addition when he asked about how the feather shows all the colors of the rainbow as he waved it back and forth in the sun – I told him the word for that is “iridescent.” I love language and words, and it really is fun to share that passion with my son.

Liam ran back and forth across the grass with his brother, and after a bit he noticed tail feathers lying in various spots on the ground. Together the two boys made a game of running and picking up the feathers, and before long, they had a big bunch of beautiful feathers. Of course they both wanted to take the feathers home. I thought to myself, “What are we going to do with these feathers when we get them home?” After all, the feather are over three feet long, and the boys must have picked up about a dozen of them. But they really wanted to keep their feathers, so I promised they could keep them, and as it was turning hot, and the animals were all beginning to nap, we agreed it was time to go home.

Both boys fell asleep themselves on the drive home, so I had time to think about the issue of what to do with the feathers. Finally I thought of a spool of rainbow ribbon that I have that Liam really loves. He used the ribbon to wrap his teachers’ gifts on the last day of school, and we had some left over. I wondered if he might want to tie the feathers together into a bunch and use them to decorate his room.

When we got home I gathered up the feathers and tied them with the ribbon. When I showed them to Liam he was just so excited that he bumped his head on the stair rail jumping up and down with excitement. After we tended to the little goose egg on his head, the boys and I went upstairs and Liam found the perfect spot to display his feathers:

The picture doesn’t quite do the feathers justice because it does not pick up all the colors of the feathers and the beauty of the eyespots at the ends of the feathers, but you can get the idea. Liam tucked the feathers into the the foot of his bed, and they make a bit of a canopy overhead as he sleeps. He is quite in love with his feathers, and I have a feeling the collection will grow as we revisit the zoo. Kiri has some feathers of his own, and of course he wants his own beribboned bunch, so we have a little more crafting to do after our next trip to the little zoo.

Right now we are in the midst of a fun weekend that is giving me lots to blog about, and so that shall be the subject of my next post – thanks for checking in, everyone!

With Hugs from The Menagerie House!

June Is A Busy Month!

lieslf — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:24:52 +0000

At least in this family it is. There’s all the end-of-school chaos, and then we have several birthdays in the family this month so there’s something going on just about every day this month here. The boys and I have spent the week enjoying the first few days of summer vacation – they’ve done a lot of playing with their trains, and I’ve been trying to catch up on all kinds of projects around the house that have been left half-done during the school year. I’m hoping this summer I can actually do my Spring cleaning and reorganize the closets and the pantry. That’s the plan anyway-we’ll see what actually transpires in the end.

Anyway, this is the post from last week with Liam’s last day of school and my birthday, along with a few snapshots of things that have been going on this week here at the Menagerie House. Last week on Liam’s last day of school, we had a sweet little festival to mark the end of kindergarten. We arrived at school and went out into the play yard. As the children romped and played, the parents worked on a craft project-a little butterfly puppet-that was meant to be a toy for younger siblings to take home at the end of the day. After the puppets had been finished, we formed a big ring together and had circle time for everyone. We then went inside to share a snack together. At the end of snack, the older kindergarteners-the ones who will be going on to 1st Grade in the fall-presented a puppet show as a gift to their parents and siblings.

The children had been working on this for several weeks. They made the puppets and the set. It was a story of a little boy and girl and the various adventures they had as they played through the year. There were a number of animal characters, including a little bird who always chirped exciting suggestions to the children when they needed a new idea for a game to play. Of course they had a loving mother and father who supported them in their adventures, and they always returned home a bit wiser and more worldly at the end of each day. The children worked so well together handling the puppets that I found myself getting lost in the story instead of just focusing on Liam – it is really amazing what children can do when they have the right support around them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience by the time the show ended.

At the end of the show it was time to leave, but Liam took a moment to give his teacher a gift he had made for her. Kevin cut a squirrel figure out of some poplar wood, and then Liam spent quite a bit of time sanding the little fellow down to silky smoothness. He then decorated him with Stockmar beeswax crayons all over the surface of the wood. The little creature is an “oven squirrel” – holding him by the tail, one can use the groove behind his neck to pull out hot oven racks, while groove over the paws can be used to push them back in. Liam made a squirrel for his teacher and one for each of the two assistants, so he really did a lot of work putting these gifts together, and I think the teachers thought the squirrels were very sweet.

A freshly sanded squirrel…

…and here is the very colorful finished product. The beeswax crayons make the squirrel smell like honey!

After Liam handed out his gifts, it was time to leave. I will miss this kindergarten scene in the morning next year, and I’m looking forward to doing all over again with Kieran in two years’ time.

After going out to lunch with friends, we went home and had a birthday party. The boys treated me very well with strawberry shortcake, ice cream, and homemade birthday cards. I really couldn’t ask for anything sweeter or more fun. Here are a few shots:

My boys!

(Aren’t all three of them adorable?)

Cutting the cake…

Mooching for crumbs…

And here’s Kieran mugging for the camera. I love his curls. I told him the other day he is so not allowed to get a hair cut!

So it was a fun day – the last day of school and my birthday all at once. Since then we’ve been trying to get into some sort of a routine for the summer. We haven’t quite figured out our schedule yet, but we’ll get there. We’ve been to the park several times, watched a couple of movies, played in the sprinkler, played hopscotch in the driveway, and gone for bike rides around the block. Typical summer stuff!

Kevin and I planted some snapdragons and marigolds in a small bed under our dogwood out in front of the house….

I think this bed will be really nice once the plants mature and fill things in a bit more.

The butterfly garden Kevin put in last summer is doing very well, particularly the echinaceas.

Back inside the house, my orchids are blooming really well this summer. The flowers are beautiful, and they stay around for weeks.

I love the deep purple of this bloom…

I just love these plants!

Moving right along to other lovely things, I present…

…Liam and Casey. Every boy needs a dog, and these two are best of friends.

Then, finally, to finish out the week, this afternoon was Liam’s first piano recital. He started taking lessons after Christmas, and today the teacher had her students present a little recital for parents. The children write their own songs and learn to play piano by playing their songs, so we were treated to a number of wonderfully named pieces. There was “The Little Frog”, “Princess and The Pea”, “Flying to the Moon”, and Liam’s final piece was entitled “The Cat Knocked A Marker Into The Piano.” The children played really well, and they seemed to really love sharing the pieces they had written with us.

Liam’s turn to perform.

Listening to his classmate play.

After all the children had performed their pieces, they finished with a parade of puppets.

Marching with their puppets…

Taking a bow at the end of the show.

After the performance was over, we went outside for refreshments. The children ran and played under the trees while the parents talked. It was a good show, and a good day.

It’s been a week of milestones here-the end of kindergarten, and a first piano recital. No wonder everyone looked a bit tired tonight. Now we are looking forward to a summer of swimming lessons, playing outside, catching fireflies, and listening to the crickets at night.

Life is good!

Lookee Here – Baby Wrens!

lieslf — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:34:35 +0000

We had a fabulous day today – it was Liam’s last day of Kindergarten, and so his class had a festival day complete with a puppet show performed by the children. Today is also my birthday, and I had a wonderful birthday lunch with Kevin and the boys and friends from Liam’s school, and then we had a celebration at home this evening. All of this was just amazing and I have a lot to blog about, which means that I don’t have time to write it all down tonight, I will get to all of that this weekend when I can do a decent job complete with pictures rather than just cramming a few things together tonight.

However, there is one very sweet thing that the boys and I discovered today that I just have to show everyone. First a little background-we have a little red birdhouse that we bought from Duncraft two summers ago. Each March since then we have faithfully cleaned out the house and hung it from the light on our back deck, outside the toy room door. Birds have used it each year to raise young ones, and this year is no exception.

We have had Carolina wrens nesting around our house for several years now-readers who have been around for a while will remember our little wren who accidentally got inside back in 2007. Anyway, about three weeks ago Liam and I spent an afternoon watching a “Mommy and Daddy Wren” pair fly back and forth from a place where our neighbor had cut down a pine tree and left lots of needles to the birdhouse. Back and forth they flew all afternoon, flight after flight, each time carrying in one long pine needle. A wee bird would fly through the entry hole of the house, carefully tug the needle into the house, stay there a few seconds apparently arranging the needle, and fly out again back to the needle pile. This went on for several hours, and then the adult birds seemed to disappear.

Several days went by, and we did not see the wrens, although the nest remained in the birdhouse. In the meantime we were distracted by a pair of downy woodpeckers who have been raising a family up in our redbud tree. We have seen the parents visiting our feeders and feasting on peanuts and sunflower seeds. We have heard them calling to the babies, but the nest was too far up to be easily seen. Then on Monday, Kieran and I were sitting on our dining room floor and looking out onto the deck. We saw the adult downies come down to the feeders, and then within a few seconds they were joined by four juvenile birds who were very clearly just learning to fly and navigate the collection of feeders we have out.

It was very sweet to see the youngsters fly inside the feeders and peck at the seeds. It was not unlike watching human babies learn to feed themselves. Just as babies inevitably spill food and end up wearing some of it, the birds had a similar experience. Each baby would peck gingerly at the seeds. Once in a while each little bird was rewarded by being able to grab one or two seeds, but a lot of the pecks resulted in either not getting a seed out, or else dislodging a small cascade of seeds that would travel down and slide off of the birds’ backs. Eventually they got the hang of it and were able to get a decent meal out seed by seed.

Since then the downies have been out and about at the feeders and flying around the yard. I still was not sure what became of the wren nest until Tuesday when the boys and I were combing Casey on the deck. We were finished and went back inside, leaving a football size pile of dog fur on the boards. Not long after we went inside we heard the Carolina wrens calling to each other, and all of a sudden they were down on the deck grabbing bits of fur and flying them up and into the birdhouse. Evidently dog fur makes a great lining for a nest made of pine needles!

Then, this afternoon, we heard an amazingly loud chorus of baby birds cheeping loudly and constantly. Whenever we got near the back door the birds would quiet down, so we couldn’t be sure if they were in the birdhouse or in a nearby tree. We tried to get near the birdhouse as quietly and slowly as we could, but each time the birds would quiet down, and it was too dark inside the house to see much of anything.

Finally I had the bright idea of holding the camera up just outside the opening of the birdhouse…I took a series of shots…

…not much to see here…

…I think maybe I see the edge of a beak??…

…mmmmm, I’m not sure at all…

…BINGO!

When I finally did get a quick peek into the nestbox I could see four little mouths all gaping open. Each little mouth could hold a blob of food the size of a pea, and the wee birds are just incredibly adorable. I have never gotten such a close-up look at baby birds before, and I feel so lucky to have gotten a glimpse this afternoon. Kieran and Liam are just as excited by our surprise babies as I am- we’ve never been able to get such a close look at the wren nests before. It will be fun to see the babies grow and fledge over the next few weeks!