Park

Martin and Maddie went with me to the park. This park has a frisbee golf course so we wandered around on the pretense of looking for abandonned frisbees. We didn't find any.

It rained hard all day today, and the ground is still saturated from the latest melting snowfall. Maddie fell in the mud and Martin get really wet.

Bunny Rabbits

Caleb and Maddie picked out these Rabbit ears for their cousins Isak and Lucy, but after we got home from the store, they put them on, hopped around the house and ate carrots. Here they are coloring with a new box of crayons. Everyone still wanted to wear their rabbit ears. I think that we will be getting a different present for the cousins.

playing at the park

The kids enjoy playing at the park. This park is actually just the playground at Martin's school. It is pretty fun.

We even found some jumpropes, which Caleb loved.

I am glad everyone likes to play outdoors.

Late snow storm

We had a late snow storm this weekend. Just a few inches of slushy snow fell Saturday night but it gave us an excuse to put on the snow clothes and play.

Here Martin is 'shoveling' the driveway with a croquet mallet. Later he used a regular kid-sized snow shovel. The snow will all melt today, so we just shoveled the driveway for fun.

Everything, especially snow, is more fun with kids.

The Lemur

Maddie has a Lemur suit, and she loves it. In October she wore it almost everyday. Today she got it out again, and wore it to pick up Martin from school. She got lots of attention, as kids asked her if she was a raccoon, and she looked especially cute hanging from the monkey bars and walking in the balance beam with her tail behind her.
The Lemur suit is made from low-quality polar fleece because I made 3 of them for halloween this year. They looked great new, but after several monthes of daily use, her suit is looking a little shabby. She really does dress up a lot.

Maddie hurt her finger recently and she told us that one of the tradegies of her injury is that it is no longer comfortable to be on "four legs". Pretending to be 4 legged creatures is more difficult. Fortunately Lemurs walk upright, so Maddie can still be a lemur.

She asked me to tilt the couch so there is space between it and the wall. This is the new 'lemur house'. She played at a friends' house and their couch had a space behind it, so Maddie decided that we needed one as well.
Creative play is important for development.
The creative portion of Maddie's brain is doing very well.

Gardening

Today I found FREE garden supplies on craigslist, so I called the lady, and Ben picked them up onhis way home from work. We got several bags of topsoil, peatmoss, and potting soil as well as houseplant fertilizer and a Jiffy seed starter kit. We had some seeds sitting aroudn the house so tonight for FHE, we started seeds. Caleb put the seeds in the little cups of dirt. He figured out how to do it really fast and got angry when anyone else tried to plant anything in his dirt cups.

Ofcourse he just kepy pushing seeds into cups, so there may be 4 or 5 seeds of different kinds in his little dirt cups. I originally gave him 4oclock seeds, but by the end he was planting corn. By the time they sprout I will be able to figure out what they are, either that or we will just have an interesting garden this year.

We also repotted several primroses, which got everyone very dirty. It was very rainy today so we did all of this in the garage and on the kitchen table.

I hope that some of this stuff grows.

all that fun water

Maddie and Martin are taking swimming lessons once a week. Martin does pretty well, his class is pretty dificult, he is in level 3.
Maddie is in level 1. She has a lot of fun. One time she wouldn't swim towards the wall and get out, she just swam away from the group. The assistant teacher had to get her and drag her little life jacket over to the group. Then he had to do it again. Then Maddie wouldn't climb the ladder, so she didn't get to jump into the water. The instructor threatened to make her sit on the side of the pool, so Maddie stayed with the group after that.

After the swimming lesson Maddie said
"It is hard to follow directions when there is all of that fun water"

Summertime

Martin made a list of thing that he wants to do in the summertime. Here it is.
2. go fising in a canoe
2. watch birds
3. play outside
4. go to bowling alley
5. Go to beach
6. read
7. play on computer
8. rollerskating
9. biking
10. hiking
11. Buy board games
12. make a blocking (I have been talking about making a barrier for the end of the driveway so our balls do not roll into the street and also so cars do not turn around in our driveway. This is what Martin means by a 'blocking')
13. chop wood
14. do someting good
15. pretend to go camping
16. go camping
17. get ping pong board and paddles
18. do an experiment
19. get me a pair of rollerblades
20. go to mini golf
21. vacation
22. get wet
23. project
24. play on a soccer game/team
25. frisbee golf

So Martin makes a lot of lists and I like them because they show what how he thinks. Since this list has been written we have purchased Martin some rollerblades ($2 at SVPD) as well as some ping pong paddles. We play ping pong by hitting the balls off of the walls in the basement. It is like low-speed racket ball. It is actually a pretty fun game.

Adventures in Transportation

SO I found a lawnmower in craigslist, $50 and it runs and looks pretty good. I had to drive out about 12 miles to pickit up, and then remove all of the carseats to haul it home. I was thinking, wow, this will all be much easier when we have a van.

Now I think that we REALLY need a van. Our old car is having problems.

Unfortunately our car, a great car in 1998, doesn't work as well as it used to. It doesn't ding when you leave the lights on, so it is easy to leave the lights on, and then run out the battery.
I did this at the local McDonald's a few months ago and the helpful employees came out and push started me. It was quite the thing to see.

But yesterday Ben left the lights on all day long and the battery was too dead to jump, too dead to push start. Our neighbor Doug drove Ben to work, they attempted a jump, then removed the battery, took it to a car place and then put it back in the car. This was like 3 trips and 2 hours of time for our neighbor.

In the mean time, Maddie has a class saturdays at 11am. We had no car, so I transported her there and back. I didn't run all of it, but I ran most of it. Maddie and I got to talk a lot. It was actually pretty fun.

Dentist

Maddie chipped a front tooth when she was 2, and recently that tooth has become gray, so today we went to the dentist. Maddie loves the dentist. She has no cavities!

I think my kids have my teeth, I have never had a cavity. Ben has had a lot of cavities and he has a couple of crowns. We tell our kids that if they do not brush their teeth they will have to get a gold tooth someday. This scares them, so they all bruch their teeth. When Ben's crowns need to be replaced, he will probably get tooth-colored ones. Perhaps by then our kids will have good brushing habits and will not need to be threatened with metal teeth.

Maddie talked to the dentist and the hygenist a lot. She likes to talk. I hope that means that she is self assured.

botanist or warmonger

Martin watched a show on gardening in wisconsin, specifically the green bay botanical gardens. He made a list of plants that he wants to plant in our garden. The list included Moon beam coreopsis, and Eveline.
I only discovered this because he was asking me about what zone wisconsin was in, I told him 4, but the TV said zone 3. So I explained that zone 3 plants would grow in zone 4 and then he was happy.
I thought "Martin is a little botanist"

That night when Martin went to bed, he taped a paper to his ceiling above his bed -he sleeps on the top bunk- and on the paper was the following list;
***********************************************************
Have war! with Caleb
get the following items; rubber bands, rubber band gun.
instructions: rubber band gunin basement in box full of toys. Rubber bands in kitchen on the shelf in the drawer.

(there is an illustration showing that the rubber bands are in the middle drawer)

notice: read all before doing anything.
get armored after getting dressed.
P.S. wake up maddie now!
all other supplies on bed. OK get dressed beware.

signed
Martin
*************************************
On Martin's bed were a bunch of stuffed animals. I guess that they are ammunition in case he runs out of rubber bands. The way their wars usually work out is that Caleb throws stuff at Martin and Maddie while they throw stuff back at him. I try to discourage the wars in general but this morning when Martin was executing his plan, I just encouraged him to not shoot rubber bands directly at Caleb.
I am sure that this shows some sort of lifeskill besides warmongering.