The kids? Let's start there.
Hannah is full of advice. Now that she understands so much about the world around her, she wants you to understand it too, in case you don't already. She can also explain a very simple thing in great detail. This is a cool thing to see, and yet it's also extremely tedious. I am reminded of a section in a fantastic book, (Grace) Eventually: Some thoughts on Faith by Anne Lammott, where she says even if she's sitting down with Jesus himself, if he keeps repeating himself, and filling his sentences with Um's and Like's, it will drive her around the bend.
Talking with my beautiful Hannah can be like that. But you just need the space to listen. And then you realise she's got some amazing things to tell you. Sure, the things some people think are important, like math stuff, and how the water cycle works. Yeah, she's got that stuff down cold. She gets why the seasons change, that seeds grow, how to spell her name and read loads of basic words. Cool.
But she also knows how the gears work on her bike, why going uphill in gear 6 makes her cry, what bird sings us awake and to bed (psssst! the Robin), that tent caterpillars are beautiful, how to care for a 2 year old and find ways to get her to understand why you need your slippers back please, how to run the DVD player and skip all the crappy previews, why the stuff in the Playmobile catalogue looks cooler than it really is, the value of waiting for something, whether it's the Oak Bay Tea Party or Ice Cream Saturdays, how much you can find in a tide pool and how cool it is to watch a Heron hunt, how confusing Japanese myths can be, how many strawberries she can eat in a given day (3 pounds), how to design a birdhouse (we're going to build it this month), where the key items are in the produce section, how to lock her bike up, why her cheaper lock is annoying to use, that if she suffers through hills all the way to Government House there's a great ride downhill all the way home, how Hawaii was formed by volcanoes and why mangoes and pineapples grow there but not here and that if she doesn't pester her mother for popsicles before 9am the day will go better. And that even though it looks to her like Mama does nothing all day, being a stay-at-homer is actually a lot of work, because Mama says it is dammit! No school-based education will ever teach her all of that.
This year Leif expanded on his math skills, looking into mapping and graphing through a really cool book we owe much on at the library. He continued to explore all the books on his shelf late at night after we were all in bed, then he re-read all his Chirp and Chickadee magazines. He left his love for Sudoku and crosswords and poured it into his new passion for hockey and soccer, reading large encyclopedias on each while the night time hours ticked by. He has begun to teach Ivy about the flags and the countries, where we live and why Mama's favorite flag is Japan. He has moved from juggling on the ground to juggling one-handed while hanging from a branch in the Willow tree. He reminds me that he can still count to 10 in French, and he still does not feel like learning anymore of it yet. He's discovered that a baseball mitt and a wooden shield work just fine as goalie gear for hockey, and he's felt both the thrill of triumph and the sting of repeated defeat in soccer. That families around the world live differently than we do, and lots of what they do looks pretty cool. That a hero in a story can be unsure if they are doing right or wrong, and can still fix things if they choose the latter. In a list he's maintained the past few months about himself, some things never change (name, best friend) others can (favorite colour (currently pink), favorite country). He's tried sewing both by hand and with a machine, and sees the benefits of each, and how Mama gets anxious to help in either case. He's observed glass blowers work their craft, and commented that it must take a lot of experience to do that. He's developed a thing for ice cold showers, and still needs review on which bottle is conditioner and which is shampoo. Tonight he asked me if I could do less chores and spend more time with him. Sigh.
We've had some big discussions this year. The moral implications in the original Willy Wonka movie, why it's not cool for a science supply company to sell baby American Bullfrogs to classrooms to raise and release, that if someone you think is your friend keeps tricking you to do what they want and screwing you in the process it means that they are not your friend and you need some street smarts. Recently, after Hannah was stung twice by a wasp at a friend's house, we found a nest in construction in our playhouse in the yard. We took it out so we would not be housing harmful bugs, and saw that there were wasp larvae in each little tunnel, each one a writhing tube of white sluggy-ness. And we felt the unfairness, as we watched them squirm, of our needing to kill them for our own comfort; who are we to decide we come first? We sat there, the nest in my hand, and tried to think of another solution. Could we just move it? Could we spray ourselves with toxic crap to keep them away? None of it would work. And as we talked about it, they started to fall out of their nest, as it began to come apart. They squirmed in the soil, and we buried them there. It felt shitty. Then we found 4 more nests in progress in the eaves of our garage. After I knocked them down and the parents flew away, we looked at the way they were built. We knew from Burt Kitchen's book how they digest wood scrapings and turn it into paper (hence the name Paper Wasp), and meticulously shape each spherical egg-spot into a perfect symmetry. When we looked closer, we noticed greenish eggs in the center spots, and then tiny white eggs in the outer ones. Each outer spot also had a clear drop of sticky-looking nectar in it.
We added all the nests to our growing collection of cool things from nature. Over the year we found animal skulls and long bones, snake skins, odd shells and huge dead barnacles. Bird's nests and bright feathers, cool fungi and tiny acorn tops, red leaves and dragonflies stiff with death. It's a great variety of treasures, now taking up an entire book case in the dining room.
Ivy has learned the benefits of saying 'please' and that if she says 'No YOU do it' to my requests to bring me her plate, it gets her nowhere. She's perfected her odd pronunciations of words, and incorporated really big words into her vocabulary. if she spies a boat in the water or a pair of shoes on the power lines, she makes sure each of us sees it also. She prefers to do her cooking naked except for her 'napper' (apron) and selects different nappers for different tasks (pizza-making vs. tea serving).
She knows the special time you can create when you gather your babies around and just sit with them.
And that if you accessorise properly, you can turn the most girly gift into something all your own.
When I pulled her yellow crocs out of the summer box of stuff, she put them on and asked me to 'take a picture of her in her yellow crocs'.
Once again this year we took in the Victoria Highland Games, always on the Victoria Day long weekend and now in it's 73rd year. Between the dancers, pipers, big men hurling heavy rocks, whiskey tasting booth, huge police marching band and skydivers in kilts, it was a day to make ye proud to be a Scot!
A favorite memory of my childhood is watching the pipe band parade in Kincardine (on Lake Huron in Ontario) in the summertime. The police band at the Highland Games can rouse the same feeling for me, of being with family, as I was as a kid, and this year was no exception. The sound quality on this is the pits though. Just imagine it.
Now that we are done raising Painted Lady Caterpillars, Hannah has adopted 4 tent caterpillars (ugh, yet gorgeous on their own in fact). They reside on her bedside shelf, and one has cocooned itself already. It was a great chance to see that each kind of caterpillar makes a different kind of cocoon or chrysalis. Now I need to go learn all about these kinds of caterpillars, so we know when to expect our first moth.
Our little yard is home to weekly sporting events, be it soccer, hockey or basketball. Here is Leif taking a shot on his dear friend Taro.
Now that we've ripped out our garden beds and grass, I've got a yen to grow some things. Argh. So in big containers, under an old plastic sheet, I'm nurturing along some peppers, zucchini and tomatoes. Here are their lovely first buds. Who knew tomato buds were so furry?
We spent the last days of May getting our heads in a summer way. We cycled along the water to Ogden Point and walked out along the breakwater to the light house at the end. It was extremely windy on the water.
We watched a kite surfer cut across the water and thought there was nowhere with a better backdrop for such a great activity.
Then we cycled back along the water to Clover Point, to watch the paragliders and try out our own little kites. As the gliders soared above us like giant handicapped birds, the kids sat, stood and lay down to fly with the wind as best they could.
Ivy insisted on holding Hannah's kite all by herself. And of course she let go. I chased it on my bike, and found it one block over, strung over power lines and then hanging down in the street. I returned a few days later with the pole pruner and snipped the kite free of it's string. Hannah loved me yet again.
And no family update would be truly complete without mention of our solo feline housemate. Bodhi is still Queen of the manor, though her recent diagnosis of hyperthyroidism (which explained all the weight loss) has now returned her the status of pharma-kitty. But it shouldn't hinder her graceful aging, and it gave us all a much needed reminder of how much we love her.
Now you're all caught up with us. Drop us a note to let us know what you're up to this summer. I promise to try not let weeks go by between our posts.
Kisses,
C
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