Beware SpongeBob

These are the tomatoes that made it home from the garden yesterday. Handfuls of cherry tomatoes were eaten before Doodle took this photo.

Look out! SpongeBob is eyeing the tomatoes! (awesome photo by Doodle)

There she goes

Doodle jumping off the diving board at the end of swimming lessons.

Well, I've done it...

...I've added another bee-petter to the world. Sorry Mom. It couldn't be helped. I mean, they're just so cute and fuzzy!

Does it help if I tell you this is a male carpenter bee? He can't sting.

No, doesn't help? What if I tell you she was giggling here about his buzzing tickling her? No?

But look at his face! So cute! Totally makes me want to pick him up and snuggle him. And Doodle feels the same way.

Papa-Doodle climbing team

We went to the New River Gorge in West Virginia for the 4th of July weekend. We went with a friend and met up with a crew of his climbing buddies down there. With a bunch of laid-back climbers we had plenty of belayers when Doodle wanted to climb with Papa alongside.

Doodle looking like a natural. Papa helping with foot placement.

Other highlights of our trip to the New include: Doodle and Roo's first ride in the back of a pickup truck (on a dirt road out to a little-known crag), driving across streams and through mud puddles (with Doodle yelling "get mud on the windows, Papa!"), hiking out in a rainstorm the last day there, cool critters found on hikes and between climbs, and relaxing time hanging out with friends. It was a good weekend.

Red-spotted Purple

Doodle found a winged friend yesterday at Shingletown Gap.

It's a Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax) - such a perfect name for my purple-loving girl.

Gardening in the rain

We got caught in a rainstorm at the garden yesterday. Kids didn't mind too much.

Of course, by the time we got home the rain had stopped. They didn't mind that either, as there were still puddles for jumping and a gutter flowing with water perfect for sending sticks and acorns downhill.

Through Doodle's eyes: The Garden

Here's a glimpse of our garden experience so far as seen by Doodle:

plot marker, J digging in the rain, some of the rocks we unearthed.

"Mom, make a funny face!", kid garden bucket, and one of the many flag photos.

These flags are all over the garden.

Flag closeup, garden view, candid of Roo.

Self portrait.

Commence gardening!

It's garden season!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a 10' x 15' plot in the Penn State Center for Sustainability Community Garden this year. Saturday was our first work day in the garden, where we helped mark the new plots (including our own), ripped up some old fencing and moved some compost.

photo by Doodle

Sunday we decided to head back to the garden to work just on our plot. We started laying a rock path along the center of our plot. In doing that, J realized there was a large rock buried ~6" below the surface of the soil. We started digging and found a lot of large shale pieces.

J excavating. Photo by Doodle.

We finally got most of the rocks in that quarter of the garden excavated, and filled the hole with dirt and compost. J finished the path and we used the extra rocks to surround our plot.

Our garden after 5 hours of work. Note the stone fairy house in the lower right corner and the beautiful path laid by J.

We were at the garden for five hours yesterday and the kids did great. They love being outside. Doodle explored some wooded areas near the garden, which she loved until her unfortunate discovery of a nettle patch. (I learned she had found the nettles when I saw her stomping on something repeatedly. I asked what she was doing and she told me "Mom, this mean plant zapped me!" Yep, she was stomping on the nettles.) She's now a bit more wary of venturing into the woods, but hopefully we'll get her back in there soon, better able to identify and avoid nettles and poison ivy.

We are planning to grow: herbs, tomatoes, strawberries, onions, tomatoes, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, ground cherries and perhaps some more tomatoes.

Hooray for gardening season!

Of course

The one time in a great while that a photo of me, taken by Doodle, turns out looking pretty good...
...my costar has to make a funny face. Of course. Darn kids. :P

Spotted Salamander

We have a new critter around here. It's the elusive spotted salamander. See the spots? She regularly needs assistance crossing the street when migrating to her pond in the spring, much like the salamanders in the book Big Night For Salamanders by Sarah Marwil Lamstein.

Right now she's happily playing in her pond and requesting that I send some more flies her direction. Please excuse me. I must go find more flies for my spotted salamander.

Doodle outdoor cam: Fairy House

Doodle's Fairy House. Photo by Doodle.

A couple of weeks ago Doodle checked out Kristen's Fairy House from the library on a friend's recommendation. It's a video about Tracy Kane, the author of the Fairy House book series, and her niece going on nature outings and making fairy houses. Doodle seemed intrigued with the idea of making a fairy house. Later that week she and J built a fairy house in our yard.

Last weekend we took a family outing to the nearby State Forest just to get outside. We brought along Doodle's newly-finished nature bag, which I told her would work well for collecting fairy house supplies. She started wandering around near the trailhead, picking up leaves, rocks, bark, moss, and anything else deemed pretty or cool enough for her fairy house.

She and J built the fairy house shown in the above photo. She took the photo to remember what her fairy house looked like. Then she started gathering again to build another fairy house. I like that she's excited to get outside and look for beautiful and interesting things, and is now more closely observing small things we run across when we're out exploring. I encourage friends with small kids to consider making fairy houses (or slug houses or whatever you want to call them) as a fun exercise in observation with your kids.

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Go check out Go Explore Nature to see photos taken by other nature-loving kids as part of her "Give a Kid a Camera" feature.

Look over here, kids. Kids?!

Why is it so hard to get a pair of kids to look in the same direction at the same time?

Really. There are only two of them. It should be easy.

I think they're conspiring against me.

C.A.D.D. and the bellydance top

I have a confession to make. I'm afraid I'm a bit A.D.D. when it comes to crafts and baking. I start one project and have to work on four others before I can finish the one I started. It's pretty annoying.

Case in point: remember all these projects I have lined up? Plenty to work on, right? Guess not. Instead of working on ANY of those, I decided to design and sew Doodle a new bellydance top today. True, she only had one top up until now and it was constantly going missing. This frequently lead to games of "find the bellydancer's top buried in the toy bin" or talks of "no really, bellydancers ALWAYS wear tops. You need to wear something. Anything. Please." So a little sewing project in the name of sanity preservation, even if it wasn't something on The List, is overall a good thing. Right?

Here are photos in the now-standard crappy, flashless quality. The top is made of some purple velvet scrap I picked up at the thrift store, and tied with ribbon in the back. Doodle's gone a bit tribal too.

Cabin Fever!

Roo's been sick so we've put ourselves in quarantine since Saturday. Stuck in the house with a four year old, a 15 month old, and a restless mama. We've done lots of reading...

(Roo is signing book here. He signs that and 'sleep' regularly.)

...and we've had lots of dance time. We watched Episode 1 and 2 of Project Bellydance, so now Doodle is alternating which awesome bellydancer she's pretending to be (the latest is Shems, a Utah lady now in Baltimore. We love Shems!). Note Doodle's innovative costuming - she's using the pink ruffly skirt as a bustle for her sparkle skirt, and a red sequined "scarf" as a hip drape. All her own design.

Sassy action shot

Bustle view. I think it works, don't you?

We've also been baking, perhaps a bit excessively - I've since crossed off (and eaten) the vanilla pudding too. Today: bagels maybe, or possibly pasta if Roo takes a nap and all the stars align just so.
I've also been teaching myself to knit, we've set up our own living room farmer's market, and since yesterday have been pretending to be cast members of Stomp (aka drumming on everything in the house. I had no idea it would be quite so popular with the kids, but it's a lot of fun).

Add in lots of coloring, outfit changes, and birding (see the sidebar bird list? we added that undetermined hawk this afternoon with much jumping and shouting of "Ooh! OOH!" while looking out the kitchen window. Some of the smaller family members may have been standing on the kitchen table to see. Birds are cool enough to warrant that behavior, after all). When we're lucky there's the occasional Roo nap and you've got a picture of what we've been doing for the past few days while J is out of town.

Only 46 more hours until he's home. Not that anyone's counting.

Doodle's packing list

From the bloggy backlog, I present the list of clothing Doodle packed for our trip to North Carolina. (Yes, that was Thanksgiving. I just found the list I jotted down. Better late than never, right?)

When turned loose to pack her own clothes for our Thanksgiving road trip, this is what Doodle put in her bag:

• 7 short sleeve shirts
• 3 skirts
• 1 pair pants
• 5 pairs tights
• 1 pair socks
• 1 pair underwear
• 4 swimsuits
  

Apparently road trip = fun, warmth and waterplay. We ended up doing a little supplemental packing before we left.

Ouch! Hahahahaha!!!

While eating dinner last night, Doodle asked J to tell her something funny. J decided to teach her about puns and jokes. He proceeds to tell her the following joke: "A man walks into a bar and says ouch!" She laughs, then looks a little confused.
J: "do you know what a bar is?"
Doodle: "no."
J: "Well, a bar is a place where grown ups go to have drinks like beer."
Doodle: confused look
Me: "A bar is a building people go in to drink beer."
J: "But a BAR (gesturing as if holding a pole) is a metal thing like a pole. So if someone walked into it, and hit it, what would he say?"
Doodle: "ouch! Hehehehehehe! He says ouch!"

J: "okay, let me tell you another joke:
A string walks into a bar. The bartender looks over and says 'we don't serve your kind here.' The string walks outside, ties himself up and unravels one end. He walks back into the bar. The bartender says 'hey, weren't you the string I just told to leave?' And the string says 'no, I'm a frayed knot!' "
Doodle: "and he says ouch! Hahahahahahaha!!!"

Sooo we're still working with her on grasping the context of the joke.

But her joke arsenal is growing. She's got the universal punchline of "Ouch!" down, and now the interrupting cow knock knock joke is her favorite. Only in the Doodle version it goes something like this:
Doodle: "Knock knock!"
Me: "Who's..."
Doodle (interrupting, of course) "Moo!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Now I'm really not sure if I dare look for a kid joke book for her at the library on Tuesday. It could be really silly and fun, but could also involve a lot of laborious background explanation that takes all the funniness out of the jokes. We shall see.

In the mean time, anyone have more kid-appropriate jokes I can share with Doodle?

Eaten by a tiger

Doodle art exhibit, from December 2010. Artist's comments are in quotes.

"This is Papa climbing."

The line that goes out to the right and around is the rope "helping keep Papa safe".

"This is Papa climbing too. He has hair and a rope hanging down and hair on his chin."

"Mom, this is you," (points to center) "and this is a tiger eating you."

Wait, what?

All About Doodle - Four

The idea for this interview was blatantly stolen from our Awesome (former) Neighbors. Just to give credit where credit is due. All answers are Doodle’s; my notes come after the *.


Favorite Subject: Wishes like hugging bears for my birthday.

Favorite Song: Twinkle twinkle little star

Favorite Albums: No! (*by They Might Be Giants)

Favorite Videos: Thomas

Favorite Movie: Signing Time Happy Birthday to You

Favorite Books: Sheep in a Jeep, Sheep on a Hike, Ladybug Girl

Favorite Toy: Emily (* toy train she got today from Ari), parachutes (*old cargo chute from Granddad is hanging in her room as a fort right now)

Favorite Color: Purple

Favorite Person: Ari

Favorite Game: Run around with friends, Molopoly 

Favorite Place: the Dentist

Favorite Place to Go: to the Farmer’s Market, Hawaii
 (*we’re going to Hawaii for Christmas and she’s very excited)
Favorite Activities: get presents, play games, make friends, to color, watch movies in the movie theater, play at my play kitchen.

Things That Really Bug You: mosquitoes.

Your Secret Wish: the secret playground. *restated, emphasizing the Wish part: wishing to get a present that a friend gave me like a pretend candle
Your Best Friends: Ari and Sylvie and Jennifer and Lindsey and Hayley because she’s awesome.

Favorite Food: cupcakes, chicken soup

Favorite Trip: hiking, Hawaii 

Things You Don't Like to Do: sometimes I don’t want to say thank you because I’m sometimes grumpy at them. I don’t probably like to get spiders in my body.

What You Want to Be When You Grow Up: a princess or a queen or a prince. *restated, asking what job she wants to have when she grows up: I want to have a flower job. I want to study flowers.

Doodle's 4th birthday

Four years ago this amazing little person came into the world, into our lives. Before Doodle I never could have imagined I could love someone so very much.

We're busy celebrating her today.

Tonight I hope to read "On the Day You Were Born" with her. At the end we'll whisper into her open, curving ear, "We're so glad you've come."

Happy fourth birthday, my sweet Doodle.

Almost Four and ready to fly

The birthday crown

She's bouncing bouncing everywhere, reminding us at least once an hour that tomorrow she'll be Four!!!

While watching climbing/base-jumping/wing suit flying videos with J this morning, they struck a deal.

Papa, when I'm big like Jake, I want to fly.
Me too, Doodle.
Papa, maybe we can fly together!
When you're big enough.

14 years (+ 1 day) and she'll be old enough to sign her own waiver. And chances are, she and her Papa probably will fly together someday.

I'll be sitting by, watching and marveling at how the time has flown by. Just like I am today.