One Strategy for Photographing Unwilling Cats

When I got up this morning, I found Trevor sitting on his green stool, with an interesting arrangement of toys, books, and videos beside him. He told me that it was a cat trap. His plan was to trap one of the cats so that I could take a cat-and-boy picture.
I did what any compulsive blogger would do, and immediately reached for my camera. As I took this picture, Trevi was busy telling me that I wasn't supposed to take the picture yet, because the trap was still empty.

The book perched on top of the yellow dump truck is about a talking dog named Martha. Trevi particularly likes one part of the story involving a parrot, which is, I believe, what led him to make the following comment today:

"You know, Mummy, if I talked to a parrot and said, 'My favorite color is green. What's yours?', then the parrot would say, 'My favorite color is green. What's yours?', and then I would have to say, 'My favorite color is green. What's yours?', and the parrot would say the same thing again, and we would never be able to stop talking. Isn't that amazing?"

I guess it's time to get him some Escher posters.

The Three Piggy Opera

Clara played the Mother Pig in The Three Piggy Opera tonight. She has been practicing for weeks, singing the super sticky tunes that tell a musical story about those pigs and their differing opinions on house construction.
Clara's solo was the Aria. Proud, proud, proud.

The Star was humble enough to pose with her brother after the show (who, by the way, spent the whole time staring, in awe, at his sister up there on stage.) Thanks, Grammy and Grampy, for the roses!
This is a giant step up from performing the role of an onion in the Thanksgiving play. From Onion, to Mother Pig, to....what? Evita? I'm looking forward to watching her play every animal, every tree, and maybe, one day, a person. Way to go, sweetie!

Tree house

Our lovely new pool deck is nearing completion, and now it has the added features of a playhouse underneath, and tree access. Chad built an exceptionally cool and funky railing, and then surprised me by adding the funny face door down below. He built that door originally as a safety gate at the top of the backyard steps at our old house. Clara was just a baby then, and Chad made three faces in the door, with C, D, and C for noses. Today, Trevor was thrilled to find that his awesome dad had managed to squeeze in a little face with a T nose.

The kids have plenty of room to hang out under the deck, and it is a fabulous place for imagining you are in some secret cave, a mine shaft, or the galley of a boat. At the moment, though, the tree is their favorite spot. They have an old phone up there for making pretend calls to real people, and they both plan to spend a good deal of the summer just contemplating leaves.
When he is not sitting in a tree, Trevi is rarely sitting. He is quite a daredevil on the bike, and manages to eat pavement on most turns, despite the training wheels. You can tell by the look on his face that he doesn't mind crashing.
If you click to enlarge, you'll see that the logo on the handlebars reads, "Major Damage", which is exactly what Trevi would have inflicted on me if I hadn't jumped out of the way a couple of nanoseconds after this photo was taken.

Thanks for drinking all of that soda, folks...

....because those empty plastic bottles were turned into boards for our deck! Unfortunately, a few trees were harmed in the making of the stairs. Luckily, I planted thousands upon thousands of spruce and douglas fir back in my days as a treeplanter, so I think the karmic scales are still tipped in my favor. What's more, we're going to plant a maple in the front yard. Heck, I'll even finish off that bottle of Fresca tonight, so that tomorrow it may start its journey to becoming someone's deck. Yours?

Yay For Family Science Night!

I am a huge fan of any activities that fill the gap between dinner and bedtime. By then, Clara and Trevor are tired of one another, and both are prone to fits of crankiness. Since crankiness is contagious, we would be best to quarantine ourselves in our respective happy places. Instead, we try to do things together, and Chad and I keep our referee whistles at the ready. Tonight, however, we had a special, no-whistles-necessary kind of evening. It was Family Science Night at school!

The whole cafeteria was full of cool hands-on stuff to make and do. One of our favorite activities was using a magnet to extract the iron from Total cereal. Another big hit was using static electricity to make pepper jump and a soda can roll. Lots of friends from the neighborhood were there (man, I love our neighborhood), and the kids just had a blast.

We had a nice, infrared family photo taken:
Notice how Trevor has a warm nose, which makes him look very chimp-like, and how Clara's baseball cap is very cool. Also, my chin is exactly the same temperature as the rest of my face, which makes me look very attractive.
The absolute coolest thing was something I can't believe I have never seen or heard of before: Nuudles! These are biodegradable foam cylinders, made from cornstarch. I think they were invented as environmentally friendly packing peanuts, but someone decided they'd be a fun building toy. And are they ever! When you wet them with a damp sponge, they stick together, and you can build anything. Clara made some nice, abstract designs, and Trevor made a "Magic T wand", which is only magical when you wave it and say a word that starts with T. All his idea, I swear! I could never come up with something that creative.

But even after all of that considerable coolness, the best was yet to come. Because just before bed, Clara asked if we could make our own Family Science Night at home every Thursday, and invite all of our friends, because,
"Science experiments really help you to be a good thinker and problem solver, and I just want to share that with everybody."


And you can all ignore this video, because I'm just putting it here for my former student, Jens, who taught me how to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in Norwegian, so that I could teach it to my class. Thanks, Jens! They won't win any singing contests, but here it is:

Lemon Merengue Pie

Today I was really reminded of what an awesome husband I have. But the story started yesterday....
Chad and Trevor had gone grocery shopping, as they do each week, and we were all chatting at the dinner table about what we would have for dessert. This isn't usually a long discussion, because ninety-nine percent of the time we each have a cookie. Occasionally, on the weekends mainly, we have ice cream, and, ever-so-rarely, there is some other treat from a birthday party goody bag or whatever. Since it was just an average night, we were about to head to the cookie jar for some oreos. Then, out of the blue, Chad mentioned that he had bought a lemon merengue pie. I was surprised and delighted. "Wow! That's awesome! I can't remember you ever buying a pie EVER EVER in the 11 years I've known you!" I exclaimed. Chad laughed, "I'm just kidding. Why would I ever buy a pie? What would we do with a whole pie?" By that point, though, my mouth was watering at the mere thought of the sweet and tart lemon merengue pie that, for a few beautiful seconds, was almost on my plate. Chad hadn't thought there was any chance I'd take him seriously. And, really, why did I? It would be crazy to buy a whole pie. Unprecedented. Excessive. But I was still a teeny bit disappointed, and reminded Chad that it isn't nice to tease a woman about dessert.

During dinner tonight, I went into the fridge to get some ketchup, and what do you suppose I found?
It was the biggest, pouffiest, most merenguey pie you have ever seen. A sweet reminder that 11 years isn't all that long.
In the end, the pie was sickeningly sweet, and way too rich for any of us to eat more than a small piece. But it was the most memorable pie I have ever had.

Favorite Words and other Trevi Things

These thoughts have been kicking around in my head for awhile, so I thought I'd better write them down before they get displaced by an annoying song or a movie plot or something...

Trevi has a few words that he likes to include in virtually every conversation lately:
actually
accidentally
startled
delicate

Rats! An annoying song (from The 3 Piggy Opera) is keeping me from remembering some of the words I wanted to include here. They'll come to me eventually, and I'll edit.

Trevi spontaneously made some acrostic books the other day. The first had a page for each letter of his name, and read:
T: Tears
R: Rope
E: Ocean (I know, I know)
V: Vehicle
O: Oatmeal
R: Rope

The sequel was about Clara:
C: Key
L: Leak
A: Apple
R: Rail
A: Actually
The illustration for, "Actually" was a picture of me with an open mouth. Trevi said I was saying, "Actually, we're going to have Bocas for dinner".

Speaking of dinner, Trevor always likes to compliment the chef (I use the term, 'chef' in its loosest sense) when he's eating a meal. If I've cooked some pasta, for instance, he says, "You're a good cook, Mummy."
Last week, when Chad made him a sandwich for lunch, he said, "Daddy, you're a good make."

Okay, I remembered that I wanted to include a few of the past tenses that he still hasn't quite figured out. I love these:

goed
keeped
builded
teached
runned
drawed

Now I just have to be sure that I don't let these go uncorrected long enough that he crosses the line from sounding like a cute 4-year-old, to sounding like L'il Bush.

Trick or Treat

After spending yesterday as a cat (and boy) house, the cardboard box was transformed today into a "practice" robot costume. Clara's butterfly costume from a couple of Halloweens ago is now a wall decoration in her room, so she took it down and got all decked out too, in rehearsal for October. Here you see our little trick-or-treaters conspiring about how to wrangle some candy out of their grinch parents. Or, maybe this was taken as Clara was trying to teach Trevi those impolite Halloween rhymes about underwear and smelling your feet....

About a Box

All year, Chad has been wanting to install an attic fan, to send our hot air out through the attic vents, and keep the house a bit cooler. Well, I suppose ideally you would venture up into the attic to do the installation sometime in the winter. Then again, in the winter you are busy doing things like knitting warm sweaters, making hot chocolate, and sealing drafty windows...no time left to install fans. So today, as news anchors all over the Bay Area were getting ready to lead with stories about triple digit heat, Chad was climbing the ladder.
I made him pose for a silly action shot, and he was kind enough to ham it up for me.
The fan came in a nice, cardboard box, which quickly turned into a puppet theater......
And a cat house.
Er, that is, a boy house.
Eventually, we all found our way outside, where we spent the first of many, many Saturdays splashing in our not-too-cold, super awesome little pool.
Chad got the attic fan running (which is solar-powered, by the way....cha ching on the green points for us), and went to Lowe's to buy some recycled plastic boards for the pool deck! (Cha ching, cha ching! ) Our pleasure, Mister Lorax.

The First Camping Trip of the Year

Today's after school activity was backyard camping, set in motion by the fact that Clara made a sit-upon today at Brownies (which is sitting upon the green stool in the picture). Right after dinner, the pair of them rounded up their camping gear and headed out to "the wilderness". It was way too hot to be in these sleeping bags, but camping is really all about sleeping bags. And marshmallows.
They brushed their teeth and read stories outside. I found out later that sand buckets had been used as spitoons.
Both kids desperately wanted to spend the night out there, under the stars, watching for the owl that supposedly lives in one of our palm trees. I have a feeling we'll be busting out the tent when the weekend rolls around.....


Pool deck update: The stairs are done now, and Chad is moving on to the deck part, which will go along the top rail of the pool. Nice to have a handyman hubby, I must say.

All By Himself

After getting soaked by the hose and stripping down, Trevor disappeared into the house. He came back a few minutes later, declaring, "I got dressed ALL BY MYSELF!!!!!!" He was hesitant to pose for a picture commemorating the occasion, so Clara managed to convince him that I was just taking pictures of the new stairs that Chad is building. Here you see Trevi posing with our accomplice.
Nice job, Manny. You could not possibly be more cute.
He stayed dressed like this all the way until bedtime, even though his pants kept falling down.

More Stores

Every other game around here eventually morphs into some kind of a store. Clara started the trend ages ago, and Trevor used to insinuate his way into his sister's businesses, usually settling for the less glamorous jobs. Well, apparently he has had enough of being her lackey. These days, as soon as Clara gets out her little table and begins pricing her goods, Trevor sets up shop nearby.
Today, Clara wanted to get a jump on the season and sell a few Christmas ornaments. She claimed she was raising money for her Brownie Troop. Smart girl. She knows people can't resist a cute kid in a dorky hat.
Trevor decided to sell "birthday cakes", which were actually pebbles in a tiny clay pot full of water. (which reminds me that Clara has been making little air quotes with her fingers lately. Haven't the foggiest where she picked it up, and it threatens to start bugging me soon.)
There was a bit of healthy competition going on between the two vendors (more for my attention than for my money), and thankfully they turned to each other for business when things were slow.
I spent over two dollars, but at least I'm all stocked up for the next three birthdays and Christmases.

How I came to own a rubber scorpion

Trevi's first visit to the dentist was a smashing success. When I asked him about his appointment, he said, "You won't believe it! They have a tiny little vacuum that they stick in your mouth, and his name is Mister Thirsty!"
He charmed all of the hygienists, and came home with five toys from the prize box. Five. One was even for me. It's a rubber scorpion. All that good stuff, and he had no cavities. Phew! Now I don't have to feel guilty about waiting so long to get those adorable teeth of his checked out.

The Wind

We have lots of windy days here. And I'm not talking about gentle breezes. These are the seriously gusty, blow the birds out of their nests, "Why did you wear a skirt to work, you dummy?" kind of days. Nasty allergy days, when you can practically see the pollen flying around, and you just scratch your head and wonder why only half a dozen of the windmills over the Altamont Pass ever seem to be turning. On these days, we play wind games. A recent one involved putting leaves at the top of the slide and watching them blow down (or off). Another time, we let the wind roll cherries along the grooves in the picnic table (well, gravity actually played a big role in that one). And bubbles are always a great adventure in gale force winds. Today, it was a rousing game of "Tree Rockets".
Okay, so this is probably going to sound seriously unfun, but you've got to pretend you're four, and go from there.....
Trevi has a rocket blaster thing with foam rockets. You stick the rocket on the end of the air tube, stomp on the stomper part, and watch her fly. You can probably guess that I'm not all that enthused about kids playing with projectiles (that aren't sports related), but as projectiles go, these ones aren't too bad. So, the object of "Tree Rockets" is to get all four rockets stuck in the mulberry trees simultaneously. You need to work fast, and aim well, or else the wind will blow them down before you can accomplish your goal.
If a rocket is completely stuck, we toss a badminton racket up to dislodge it, which results in the occasional stuck badminton racket (looking for its birdie, perhaps?), and it usually takes a baseball bat to knock the racket down. Beyond that, we just sit and wait for the wind to pick up. The game usually ends when all of the rockets are on the roof, or in someone else's yard. And by then, it's usually time for dinner anyway. So, although the wind may wreak havoc with my contact lenses, it can be a great playmate for all of us.

Great Gram

As part of her homework this week, Clara had to write about something that makes her sad. Here's what she wrote:
Here's the frosting-face picture:
When my grandma died, Clara was only 4 1/2. Since then, she often stares at this picture, and talks about how much she misses Great Gram. It brings her to tears every time. But she makes a point of sharing her memories with Trevor, so that we can all remember together. We love you and miss you, Grandma.

Dr. Clara, DDS

Inspired by a trip to the dentist today, Clara felt compelled to open a dental office in our living room. Her first patient was given a cleaning (note the hygienic Ziploc gloves), x-rays (she made me step out of the room to avoid exposure), and two fillings. She also extracted two pieces of coconut shell from his molars (no idea how she came up with that one- I'm fairly sure that the dentist didn't find anything of the sort in her teeth today).
At the end of his appointment, Trevi (and all subsequent patients) got to choose a toy from the prize bin. The best part, though, and so very, very Claraesque, was the "goody bag". Prior to inviting anyone into her chair, Clara had collected our respective toothbrushes, pastes, and flosses, and stashed them in bags for each of us. She had then taken a sharpie to each bag and added illustrations of happy teeth. Our girl is nothing if not thorough. As each patient left the office, she handed us our oral hygiene kit, and reminded us to, "Brush and floss for a healthy smile!"

One of the differences between stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home dads

Dads make putting greens in the backyard. Well, it's a bit of a stretch to call this patch of tan bark a "green", except in an environmental sort of way (no grass=no watering), but if I say putting "area", it will sound like I have zero golf vocabulary. Par, birdie, eagle, club, hole-in-one, caddy, driver, four-iron. So there.
Chad created this little putt-putt spot, and Trevor embellished it with a path and a bridge, made from some of the scrap wood that is accumulating from Chad's latest project - stairs and a deck for our pool. Here's what the deck looks like so far:
This pool has actually been quite a comedy of errors since it saw its first drop of water last spring. We were so excited to take a step up from our tiny old kiddie pool, and figured that this one would be big enough to cool us all off simultaneously, and deep enough for the kids to actually swim in. The first glitch was that we needed survival suits to brave the cold water, and even with the suits, could only last about 10 minutes before hypothermia began to set in. In mid-summer, just as the water began to approach a reasonable temperature, it turned green. We shocked it, threatened it, and dumped in every chemical we could find, but the green stuck. After a summer of not swimming, we neglected to cover the pool completely before the mulberry trees started dumping their leaves. The result was a cesspool of rotten, disgusting, smelly stuff, which Chad had to drain and scrub away. So, fast forward to now, and a new plan for a pool that we can actually use. Chad has been working hard researching, and now the pool has a bigger pump, a solar cover, and the beginnings of a fabulous deck for toe-dangling. Chad has somehow been squeezing in this work between all of the seven thousand other things he does every day (you rock, Hun!), and I am looking forward to lots of lazy, hazy, crazy days this summer.

Making Peace with Barbie

I used to really wrestle with the idea of my kids playing with Barbies, for all of the obvious reasons. So here's a little twist: Now, when one of Clara's friends comes over and they decide to get out the Barbies, I practically squee with joy. I see now that Barbies are not the enemy. They are nice, age-appropriate, non-electronic, time-honored toys for seven-year-old girls (and at least one four-year-old boy) to play with. Clara and her friend Josie (who is also half Canadian, so you know that she is a cool kid) played Barbies ALL AFTERNOON. The Barbies went camping, they went swimming, they changed their clothes several gazillion times....they even got dressed all in red for a Chinese New Year's parade (I kid you not. Clara and Josie went from talking about Cinco de Mayo, to flags, to China, to dragons, to parades.) For four hours, the girls were completely engrossed in their Barbie Land of Make-Believe. Whatever subliminal warped-body-image messages Barbie was sending out, she more than made up for with her versatility and endurance today. Thanks, Barb. You're not half bad. Sorry for all the nasty things I've said about you in the past.

Pipes

More and more, Trevor is into the inner workings of things. He has a million questions about all aspects of plumbing, as he tries to piece together where the water comes from and where it goes after it disappears from sight. I love his curiosity, and I doubly love the fact that he is more interested than ever in helping me with the laundry.
He finds toilet pipes to be the most fascinating of all (with the esophagus and intestines running close behind - yuck! No pun intended, seriously), and consequently we have to take the lid off the toilet tank and watch the water go down every time we flush. Luckily, we're an "If it's yellow, let it mellow" household (TMI? Sorry...) so at least we don't have to go through the toilet dismantling routine every 10 minutes.
On a related note, our discussions with Trevi about the digestive system have been pretty basic, and I described the stomach as a small bag into which the esophagus takes the food. Now, Trevi wants to discuss the stomach every time he encounters any kind of bag.
"Is my stomach as big as this grocery bag?"
"Is your stomach as big as this grocery bag?" (I certainly hope not)
"Is my stomach as big as Clara's lunch bag?"
"Is it bigger than my Hello Kitty purse?" (yes, Trevor has a Hello Kitty purse)
"Is an elephant's stomach as big as a garbage bag?"
I see a lot more googling in my future.......

Garage Sale

After school today, we were hanging out in the garage as Chad packed up the car for his trip (Wildflower Triathlon this weekend). Clara, our young capitalist, asked if we could have a garage sale. I told her that we'd have to wait until the summer. So, she and Trevor started to have a "garage sale" of their own. They were each snacking on a bowl of dry cereal (Corn Bran, to be exact), and began selling individual pieces to each other. It was more of a fair trade than a sale, really, because they just exchanged equal, or almost equal quantities back and forth. Good thing they both share the same cold already.
I have been having so many of those moments lately where I look at Trevor and see such a big kid. There is hardly any babyness left. I remember going through the same thing with Clara when she was his age, and now that she has those big teeth, she has leapt forward again. Remind me not to watch Fiddler on the Roof anytime soon, because I don't think I can handle, "Sunrise, Sunset".

The Birthday Party

Trevor wanted to throw a little birthday party for Thomas the Train today, but he figured that all of the food, gifts, and guests should arrive in style. He took rubber bands and attached the birthday things to his monster trucks, then caravaned down the hallway to the shindig.
The guests, Robot and Masai child, brought cherry pie and cake with whipped cream. They brought a few magnets as well, and loaded up the garbage truck (center) with blocks full of marbles. Happy Birthday, Thomas!