Tumbler

This is Jamie:

 This is Jamie after he falls three feet headfirst off the playground equipment onto the dirt and wood chips, scraping his nose and bruising his forehead.  Poor, poor 2nd child.

Grandma's in Town

Grandma came to visit - we sandwiched time in Iowa as sardines in Ryan and Grace's 1-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis. 

 Remember my amazing brother?  Here are a couple of still pictures of his recital (well, one picture and then his name on the recital poster).  He played his entire last song with no music - it's kind of his trademark.

 The next 2 pictures are of Tiger, the notorious kitty that Grace rescued from birth (literally) and that Ryan is allergic to and that I don't think ever was meant to have a permanent role in the MacDonald household.  He was incredibly tolerant with both Lucy and Jamie, as you can see.  Lucy sometimes cries that she misses her best friend in Minneapolis, Tiger. 

 I spent half an hour or so looking for the silly cat one afternoon - I could hear his bell, but couldn't for the life of me find him in their small apartment.  Can you spot him?

And so the fun began.

Preschool Project

Lucy's preschool is doing a Valentine's Day party and I signed up under the "activity" slot.  I thought and web searched and thought some more, and ended up with this, which I'm pretty proud of.

I started off by printing hearts on cardstock.  Since this is getting the preschool touch, I then glued the cardstock to paperboard (cereal boxes, etc), making each sheet significantly sturdier.  I cut the hearts out with my trusty Cutco scissors that i paid $100 for fourteen years ago.  I bought them when I was nineteen and had a friend selling Cutco after she got pregnant and her boyfriend left her.  I clearly remember searching for an item I could afford and thought I'd use.  No regrets - even though my hands are way too wimpy to cut through a penny like Jill did in the demonstration, I bet they'd still do it.  Even hefty scissors were tough with the number of hearts I cut out, but this morning the purple indent on my middle finger is gone and I'm left with minimal palm cramping.  Last, I cut the adhesive magnet sheets and stuck them to the backs of the heart shapes.

 After watching Lucy play hours of Curious George on pbskids.borg (yes, she is convinced it's borg) I know that these are early math concepts: sorting, matching, and counting.

Though I think I made the right decision choosing to go into secondary education, I do enjoy channeling my inner pre-K teacher.  Now if only I could have remembered that the day I signed up to run the activity at the holiday party was one of the two days this month that I've got to stay late.  I hope they enjoy it!

And just for mom, who doesn't have a facebook... me and John Gidding.

My Awesome Brother

I got the chance to see Ryan perform at his flute recital at school in Minneapolis.  Yeah, he's pretty amazing.


Ryan's Recital pt 1 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

Ryan's Recital pt 2 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

Ryan's Recital pt 3 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

Eric's 1st Publication!

It's a pretty incredible feat for a 2nd year doctoral student to already have an article published (sources tell me).  Without hesitation ...

http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/

You'll have to scroll down a little and be on the lookout for the Virtual Classrooms header, with the article titled "Culture Jams: Critical Media Literacy in the Digital/Multimedia Classroom" by none other than Eric York at Iowa State University.  Yea!

If you do end up actually reading the thing, don't expect to understand a bunch of it.  I've been hearing about this for over a year now and it's still hard for me to get through.  It's academic writing in a discipline I've got only secondhand knowledge about.  If you do understand it, great!  (And there will likely be a job for you teaching writing somewhere).  Also, Eric wrote all the code himself, using HTML.  Again, if I tried to explain this I would fall miserably short and demonstrate my incompetence, but it took him a looong time to learn it and get it right. 

Also, thoughts on a name change?  This is not a challenge for the faint of heart ... google Eric York.  There are two separate and mildly famous Eric Yorks out there.  One is a wildlife biologist who died of the bubonic plague in 2007.  The other is a gay porn star.  Of all the luck, right?

Eric J. York?
Eric James York?
E. J. York?

Thoughts?

Botanical Garden

Pre-Christmas we went to DSM for the afternoon to go shopping (disaster, we drove around the mall for 20 minutes without finding a parking spot and left) and then to the botanical garden.  Lucy was thrilled.  It was kid-friendly and reasonably priced.  I'll have to go back in the summer to see if there is more, but the winter activity was in their massive greenhouse dome.  The rainbow sculpture in the front is pretty neat; I took a bunch of pictures from different angles.  It reminded me of a whale skeleton.  Lucy desperately wanted to jump the chain and climb on it, and I can't say that I blame her, because I wanted to climb on it too.

These are a couple of pictures of the Christmas decorations they had set up.  It was hard to get a picture of any of these around the number of people with a group of kids set up in front of  a camera with a tripod - obviously a popular place for taking the family Christmas photo.  Some of the decorations, namely the snowman and reindeer, were made of plant material.  The candy canes were PVC pipe, and reminded me of vent pipes for leach fields.  The scale of things is partially visible in this picture - the candy cane pipes are about 5 feet tall, with the tallest present about 8 feet.  There was obviously a lot of work put into these and I'm interested to see if the same decorations will re-appear next year, or if they've got a team that will change it around.

 There were also several different trees decorated with lights and ornaments.  They looked beautiful as it started to get dark outside.

Lucy loves the camera.  Me and Jamie from the perspective of someone who's 39 inches tall.  Jamie now spends most of his time sitting up and looking around, rather than sleeping.  Though he did spend the majority of the time in the stroller, he got out and crawled around the floor for a while too.  Jamie's the kid who just takes it all in.  I'm excited for him to start talking more, as I imagine what he has to say to be very different from comes out of the mouth of high-energy, no-indoor-voice Lucy.

 There were a lot of different rock walls to climb up and peek over, with perfect little footholds.  Lucy was excited and proud of being able to see things on her own, with little regard to the fact that some of these rock walls had over a story drop off the other side.  I spent a bunch of time tugging those little legs down off different rock features.

 Ponds with massive goldfish are always an incentive for hanging yourself over a 2-story drop.

 Feel the love.

 Feel the squish.

 The other section the botanical garden had was a Zen garden-type place.  I don't have a great camera (or great photography skills for that matter) but this was a long trellis walkway and all those white things are supposed to be doves.  This section of the garden had a very different feel to it.  It was much warmer, cozier with a low greenhouse ceiling, and quieter.  If I were the kind of person inclined to meditate, this is the place I imagine meditating.  Even Lu was a bit more subdued here. 

I'm not sure if this was intended to be something for kids or just for show, but it was a fake art station, complete with a painted-on pallet and book that didn't turn.  Lucy had a ball doing an art project.

After almost 2 hours, Lucy was not ready to leave at all.  It inspired us to get a membership to Reiman Garden here in Ames, which doesn't have the extra-large dome but does have an amazing butterfly garden.  Plus, is 40 minutes closer.

Ha!  I could have gone around and taken pictures of what looked like experimental varieties of plants they had growing, all named something funny or creative, but this one was my favorite.  Beware, Harry.

Christmas

And the big day :

 Lucy unwrapped all the presents - hers, Jamie's, mine, Eric's.  There were several presents that we found unwrapped that we're not really sure who they were from.  That's enthusiasm!

Unwrapping 2011 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

It was a very musical kind of year - Lucy got a drum, guitar (or a tuh-tar as she calls it), and the kids got shaker eggs.  Jamie was supposed to get a drum too, it's the second time Amazon failed me in a row.  Fortunately, Lucy's great at sharing.  Mostly.

Jingle Bells 2011 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

A couple of the highlights of the toys were the activity walker for Jamie, which he took off with at first, and has been wholly uninterested in since Christmas day.  He's really working on walking, is beginning to stand and balance for a second, and scoots along on almost anything he can.  Except the toy that I bought for him for that express purpose.  Hmmm.


Jamie's Walker Toy 2011 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

And the bouncy horse.  Lucy wanted a pink and purple horse she could ride on for Christmas.  Since we (Santa) had already gotten the kitchen, I didn't really plan on another big gift.  Outside of those two large items, we didn't spend that much on the kids, but it seemed a little over the top to me.  I was, however, convinced.  We got a Radio Flyer version, instead of the pink-and-purple request, and I don't think she even noticed.  It's huge and sturdy and should last for years and years.  Lucy's favorite thing to do on her horse is to make us pretend we're sleeping while she rides in, brings us gifts, and rides off waving with a Ho Ho Ho! so we can wake up on Christmas morning. 


Bouncy Horse 2011 from Kristin York on Vimeo.

What a great day, right?

Oh yeah, and if you didn't see the Christmas Eve post, scroll down past the Oh Deer.  I couldn't find it after posting, but since I had uploaded the photos the same day as the deer/car pics, it placed the Christmas post under the deer post.  Eric would probably have an answer for me about why it happened or what I could do to fix it (as would my tech-support student that's always saying "Oh, señora" in class) but you can just scroll...