Pumpkin Picking 2011

Playing catch up, yet again.  Anyone reading who has talked to me recently knows I'm working my tail off and not sleeping (much).   This trip to Black's Pumpkin Patch was a couple of weeks ago.

Mariel and I went last year with the kids here and had a great (though weird) experience.  We talked about going back this year, just because when we were there it was like we were part of the family.  You can't not visit your relatives on the holidays, right?  So I rounded up a crowd of my mommies and promised them a great (though weird) time.  This year was a little bit different...

Yes, it was still weird.  There was no ISU tee-pee this year.  Replacing it was this "spaceship" to play in.  It's a grain silo, tipped over, and decorated with random stuff like seats out of a van and a cordless phone.  Baby J got the stroller-eye view.

The control center, with an instrument panel and screen.  My favorite part is the aliens in the corn - that there is no window out the front to see from inside the ship.

And on to the "petting zoo".  This year we had some free-range turkeys near the spaceship, a llama, and the pigs.  I find real animals to be much uglier than their cartoon counterparts, and these pigs were no exception.  The kids got to toss corn cobs to feed them, and you can see Mr. Hay-hideous down there had to extract himself from whatever dung burrow he was in to investigate the corn.  The gal in the white shirt and the hat was our tour guide, so to speak, and gave one of the kids a hard time for trying to double-dip in the corn cob toss.  Really?  Was there a shortage of corn cobs there?

 Next was the all-important pony ride.  Lucy was much braver this year, and the pony was just as sad.  He wasn't, however, tied to a picnic table when we showed up; he actually had a stall.  Again, more about our tour guide later, but the kids were heaved (literally) onto the pony and dragged off after just a quick lap around the barnyard.  Below are the other Lucy and Bowen, a friend of Lucy's from preschool and his little sister.

 Our beautiful family and Carson.

 All the big kids: Gabe, Silas, Bowen, the other Lucy, Lucy, and Carson.  It's really hard to get six 2-to-4-year-olds to look at the camera at the same time.

 What?

 Beautiful Jamie.  My (sigh) Iowa boy.

 Ready, set, go!  Off to the pumpkin hunt!  When we went on our trolley ride to pick pumpkins in the patch last year, Mariel and I got such a kick out of the execution at Black's.  We rode out into a hayfield and had to hunt for a pumpkin in the tall hay.  This year the hay was quite a bit shorter making the pumpkins a little more obvious.

 Ann and her pumpkin and her other pumpkin.  I think Hayden weighs in a almost 30 pounds.  J's a round baby and Hayden's even rounder.

 Mariel and the boys.

 So maybe "pick your own pumpkin" is a bit misleading.  So maybe the tour guide in the white hat was curt and rushed, treated the kids badly, and hurried us through and out.  So what.  The kids had a great time.

 Best.  Pumpkin.  Ever.

A Random Parking

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 Arriving home from work by noon means I still have some time to act like a stay-at-home-mom, having lunch in the park with friends on a Tuesday afternoon.  The usual crowd here: not-so-baby-anymore Nico, friend Gabe, friend Silas and Lucy.  We all brought something to share, and Nico ate most of it.  Those guys put Lucy to shame - I'm interested to see if Jamie eats like a horse when he's big too, or if it's just a coincidence that the boys I know are all great eaters.

I love this next picture.   I think it shows how much Lucy loves her friends and the great dynamic the three (usually) have.

Everyone got in on the picnic action, even baby J.

As there is only one swing at this park, the kids had a system of rotating turns as the swinger and the pusher worked out.  It was very smooth.

 From here on are all pictures taken by the kids.  Which kid took which photo I don't know, because they were very good and careful, passing my camera around for turns.  Today's photo session was portrait.  I think I did have one picture on my camera of a pine cone but almost all the pictures were of our friends.

It was a beautiful day to be at the park.  Though it was a bit windy and chilly, we're lucky to have had another long and warm fall here in Iowa, and even luckier to count these families as our friends.

Happy Birthday Mommy (Lucy)

Not so long ago while browsing the toy section of a shopping store, Lucy spotted the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse rocket ship with spaceman Mickey.  She was thrilled, wanted it desperately, and was crushed when I wouldn't buy it for her.  This was about the same time we started talking about Mommy's birthday.  Well, wouldn't you know it, Lucy decided she would get me the rocket ship for my birthday.  And she didn't forget.

Somewhere inside my there was a little voice telling me that this was a Very Bad Idea, that it would set a terrible precedent.  But it was so stinkin cute I just couldn't help but LOVE the fact that she wanted to go out with Daddy to buy me that rocket ship for my birthday.  In the photo you can see Lucy showing off her wrist where the (you guessed it) purple watch that she also bought for me should go.

So with great fanfare I opened my gift, surprised and excited.  Lucy then told me that she was the guest and I had to share my toys.  We're already talking about what she wants to get Daddy for his birthday...

The Pool

Another catch-up post.  No, it's not still that nice here in IA.

This summer I bought a pool pass for the kids and I.  It worked out to be that I had to go 14 times to make it worth the money based on what I'd pay for just a visit.  I went ahead and bought the pass, before remembering that last year Lucy was TERRIFIED of the water.  We got her in and swimming once, and it was a stunning victory.  Fingers crossed at the start of the summer, we donned our suits and went.  Huge success.  

The pool is new multi-million dollar facility with three separate areas: the zero-depth entry kiddie pool, the traditional pool, and a lazy river.  It also has three adult water slides, two diving boards, an numerous fun spots for the kids.  The structure below was at the center of the kiddie pool.  That big red bucket at the top, probably eighteen feet high, filled with water and tipped every five minutes or so, dumping water all over whoever was standing below.  There was a warning mechanism that clanked when it was getting close that some engineer probably got paid a lot of money to design and that prevented kids (Lucy) from the unwanted onslaught.  Lucy did, once, feel brave enough to stand under the bucket.  Once.  Also included is the red pwisty slide (Lu still has a hard time with those Ts).  At the very start of the season she was going down this twisty slide like a champ, but then was standing too close to the slide part, slipped, banged her head as she tumbled over, slid down and ended up face-first in the water at the bottom.  And never again.

 This is the beaver slide, which took half the summer to work up to courage to do.  I wonder if that has more to do with the ferocity of the obstacle or the fact that upon approach it looks as though you are about to be eaten by a massive, overly excited beaver.

 

 We spent lots of time on the lazy river this summer.  Lucy and Eric are in one of the coveted "blue tubes" which were reserved for kids at least 48" tall and who could ride the water slides that empty into the river, but on the last day I asked nicely and they said Lucy could ride the blue tube.  It also looks easier when you're not trying to balance a non-sitter and make sure a non-swimmer doesn't fall in the drink.

 Me and baby J.  A friend recommended this protective sun suit which was fantastic.  Plop a hat on this kid and he was good to go in the blazing sun all summer long.  He's such an agreeable baby, willing to be propped in a tube or just hauled around.  A great pool participant.

And our whole family.

Preschool

Sweet relief!  After 2.5 weeks of daycare roulette where Lucy stayed with 5 different people (2 of whom she did not know at all) we are off to preschool and settled in.

Lucy with her teachers Miss Karla and Miss Shireen.  The other little girl is named Stella.  Miss Karla is new this year and she seems wonderful.  We're lucky to have both of them.

As you can see, it was really hard for Lucy to settle in on her first day.  She spent a lot of time crying and clinging to Eric's leg.  Ha!  I got a chance to drop her off last week because Jamie had been sick and it was too funny.  She jumped right out of the car and told me "my preschool is this way."  When we got inside the building she dumped her coat and backpack in the middle of the floor and ran inside without so much as a wave over her shoulder for me. 

It's a new (hectic!) arrangement for us, with me off to work at 7am with Jamie at the sitter in Nevada, and Eric sleeping in until 7:30ish with Lucy who goes to Small Wonders at 9am and continues onto campus until anywhere between 5 and 9:30pm.  Then me finishing teaching at 11:10, racing out the door to meet Jamie at the elementary school by 11:20 (sitter picking up an am preschool kid there) and trying to get to Ames, which is 10 miles away, by 11:40 for the 11:30 pick up time.  Phew!  Thankfully the staff at preschool was so willing to stay an extra few minutes with Lucy.

I saw pictures someone posted of their kids' first day of school with signs that had their grade level and thought it was a neat idea.  So here we are with Lucy's preschool sign.  Proud big girl, proud mommy.  Lucy did take that picture of me, too.  She's getting pretty good.

Yes, it's preschool.  I colored the sign.  You can probably tell where Lucy "helped" color, though.

And yes, they asked every kid to have a backpack, so we HAD to get one with the princesses on it.  On an aside, there is a Waldorf school here in town that a couple of my friends are sending their kids to that doesn't allow the kids to have any clothing or accessories with images from the media on them.  What?  Thank goodness Lucy's not there.  I had looked into the Waldorf school here thinking that it would be similar to the Montessori preschools in Maine that many of my friends sent their kids to with great success in individualized learning and creative expression.  Nope.  The school here is a little too extreme for me, and I don't think Lucy would have done well there (and not just because she's not allowed to wear her princesses.)

It's funny how she can look so big and so little at the same time.

Preschool?  When's it my turn?

Jamie Eats

Again, a little out of date.  Baby J has started eating food, both earlier and more enthusiastically than baby Lucy did.  With Lu it was almost force-feeding; with Jamie he just can't get enough.  He started in on the intent stare and mimicking chewing a bit before four months, but I waited until we were home from Maine to start him on anything solid.  This sequence is from his first bite (of applesauce).  He started off very smiley but it was not exactly what he had expected, I think. 

Now he chows down everything I give him: applesauce, banana, pear, peaches, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe, prunes, sweet potato, carrots, green beans, peas, yogurt, and baby crackers.  So far.  Oh and brownies and Cheese Its too (lovingly stuffed in an open mouth courtesy of our favorite helper, Lucy).  And thanks to my neighbor Joanna, I'm using my immersion blender to mash up my own baby food, which I never thought of it with Lucy.  All this food and I haven't bought a single jar. 

I still can't get over how what a great eater he is.  Are boys just hungrier than girls?

The Zoo

Back to work and way behind on posting anything!  This was actually weeks ago, before I started the school year, but it was lots of fun and I'd hate to leave any pictures out.  Behold, the wonder of the zoo.

We began our tour at the aquarium, which was kind enough to provide this toddler-sized window for maximum viewing excitement.  There were also some tanks that allowed for stroller-side peeks as well.

Lucy just could NOT believe there was a Nemo, a Marlin, and a Dory at the zoo.  And they were all kind enough to pose for a picture together for us.

Can you tell how much fun we're having?  Mr. Cool is, well, cool.  But I think he had fun.

This is a shot of our train ride.  Don't worry, Lucy wasn't holding Jamie while the train was actually rolling, just for a few moments while everyone boarded.  There was probably also a big smushy kiss and an "I love this baby sooo much."  It's great to be a big sister.

 There was a goat feeding station (do all zoos have this?) where Lucy got to get a little dirty.  You can't see but this goat looked like he swallowed a massive ball.  Imagine that, perfectly round in the middle.  I wonder if there are any researchers who study the long-term health effects on the goats in the feeding pens.  There has got to be some consequences of this lifestyle.

My personal favorite this zoo trip was seeing the penguins.  I'm not sure what kind these guys are but they were tiny and they were funny.  We ate our lunch on a bench watching them so we were there for quite a while. 

One of the reasons we went to the zoo was the dinosaur exhibit. There have been hundreds of ads for this, come see the dinosaurs before they go (it's a traveling exhibit).  I should have known with the quantity of ads about how cool they were to see and how much your kids were going to love them that they weren't really that cool and my kids wouldn't really love them.  It was interesting, and from an engineering perspective the robots that powered them were, in fact, pretty cool.  Unfortunately, much of this was lost on Lucy and poor J just slept right through all the commotion and roars.  It's a Mount Rushmore.  I was a bit disappointed, but it's one of those things I had to see for myself.  It probably would have been cooler if they were all kinds of bright colors like we see on Dinosaur Train.

Though my favorite exhibit was the penguins, giraffes have for a very long time now been my favorite animal.  There were five or six of them roaming around a grassy hill here, and several times throughout the day when you could feed a giraffe!  We went, but the line was about twenty kids long.  Since I figured the experience was more for me, I didn't make Lucy wait.  We went back, though, about half an hour later and got right in.  Note that this giraffe is eating on his own.  This becomes important soon.

Here Lucy is, waving her $1 lettuce leaf at the giraffe.  There were also a whole lot of other kids with their parents against this fence, also waving their $1 lettuce leaves at the giraffe.  The giraffe was supremely uninterested.  Can't say I blame him.  It was the third of the daily "feed a giraffe" times, forty minutes and probably thirty kids into the lettuce leaf waving.  Plus they have food out.  When a giraffe did swing his long neck over, there was inevitably another parent with freer arms than me who dangled their kid out so he/she could be the one who fed the giraffe.  I underestimated Lucy's interest in this activity, because we must have been there for fifteen minutes, waiting patiently (and not) for our turn.  Then she dropped her leaf.  So we bought another one. 

 

Finally a giraffe headed our way and this #@*hole next to us started teasing him, pulling the lettuce away every time he stuck his tongue out to grab it.  Seriously?  I'm sure Aunt Grace has stories but what kind of person teases animals at the zoo?  Especially an animal that has a crowd of people who are frantically trying to get its attention?  For the dignity of my children, I held my tongue.  

But sweet success!  That is Lucy's little hand about to get licked while I balanced Jamie on my hip, dangled Lucy over the edge of the fence, and took pictures without looking at the camera screen.  Yeah super mom.

Feeding the giraffe was a great way to finish our zoo trip.  We bypassed the gift shop and both kids were asleep in their seats before we were even out of the parking lot.