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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Long Stemmed Dandelions

My yard is full of dandelions.  I remember the dandelions of my childhood as short, squatty, grubby little things.  My dandelions now are not like that, either because my memory is bad or my dandelions are different. 

These dandelions are tall, graceful, sprightly things, leaping up towards the sky, defying the lawn mower and enticing the toddlers.  These dandelions have stems that you can braid together.  Stems that are easily six inches long, towering far above the lowly leaves and the grass.

These dandelions wink knowingly, forecasting lemonade and fireflies, nodding towards the porch swing and whispering of guitars and margaritas, of ice cream cones and barbecue, of squirt gun wars and bubble wands.  They glow, fluorescent yellow, and if you pluck their glorious crowns, twisting  fluff in fingertips, the sunshine spreads to your fingertips as well.  Dandelions shorn, their locks sit in a bowl on tabletop, then I bake them into cookies to fill bellies and fatten joyful souls.

Now that crop are all grey headed grannies, bobbing in the breeze.  We pluck them and initiate our little ones into the summer ritual.  Dandelion seeds float through the breeze.  Did God design dandelions to be irresistible as part of their protection against eradication?  Our crop will be mighty and plentiful next year, that much I know.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Friday, April 09, 2010

Signing

We haven't ever done a whole lot of baby signing, but we've used some basics consistently...

milk (for nursing)
more
all done
thank you
please
sit down

I think it is incredibly helpful for the pre-verbal toddler to be able to express whether they're all done eating, or want more - and I think it cuts down on fussing, too!  We signed to Nathan for months and months before he started signing back (at around 14 months or so? I think?), but I know that he was understanding what we were signing to him long before he signed back.

I don't know whether we'll keep growing our vocabulary or not now that Nathan is starting to talk so much more, but I'd like too. :)

There are lots of online resources for signing... including youtube!  I've found lots of videos demonstrating signs, which is so much easier for me to copy than an instruction book.

Do you sign at all with your little ones?

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Milestones

Someone had a birthday. 


He is now two.
There were bubbles involved.  And cake.  And a hair cut... those curls peeking out in the photo above are now no more... and my baby boy now looks like the big boy that he is!  We gave him a big set of thrifted mega blocks, too - which, by the way, I washed in the washer.  They had a distinctly funky smell, but there were SO many that I quailed a bit at washing them by hand, so I dumped them all in and I put them through a series of rinse cycles with just water, then bleach, then  just water, then vinegar.  A few of them, I've noticed, still have a bit of a musty smell, but I know for a fact that they are CLEAN, so I'm ignoring it. ;)

Some milestones he's reached recently include showing an interest in coloring (versus eating the crayons), blowing bubbles, stacking blocks well, saying thank you (instead of just signing it), saying lots of new words, including plane, train, eat, food, hurt, done, wagon, stinky, shirt ("sooot"), pants, jeans, yum, and on and on. 

And then we had Easter... you can't see much of Miss M's adorable outfit, but you can enjoy the boyish, fresh look Nathan sported. 



Speaking of Miss M, she is walking well and steadily and everywhere, saying Mama, Dadda, uh-oh, touch, and tree, waving bye-bye to people, trying to climb things, following her brother everywhere... and generally being achingly, amazingly cute...

It has been so fun watching them both have verbal explosions in the past few months!  I'm sure that they'll really be talking by the end of the summer...

Thursday, April 01, 2010