What enjoys grape jelly, oranges, suet and meal worms?

That's right! Orioles!

I am sorry for the not so great pictures. The hazy rainy day caused some problems in addition to having to shoot through the sliding glass window with a hollering kid wrapped around my leg.

There are two in this pic, one is up in the tree behind. I have seen 4-6 different birds usually in pairs. They decimated the oranges and liked the jelly, but the new oriole feeder needs some perches added so it is easier for them. Now if we can just get them to nest or get some orchard orioles we can take over the world no one will care.

Putting it Back Together

Progress on the boat is really moving now. The planking is fully repaired right up the to where the outwhale will sit. The inwhales are sanded and ready for finish. Notice the thwarts are missing. Where are they?

Oh there they are! I feel bad for the one on the left with the boring grain. That one on the right looks even better in person.

We also put in the rear seat so it feels more like a boat now.

Next up: mount all seats, final sand of hull, stain inwhales, final fit for breasthook, fiberglass...and I am not going to put anymore as it gets over whelming.

Vocational Training, II

Today we had to make some temporary repairs to the exhaust on the Blazer. As always, the tail pipe broke in both places where it was welded to the hooks.

Ellis handed me a lot of tools, whether I had asked for them or not. I also had a hard time explaining to him that being under the car meant rusty bits were going to fall in your eyes all of the time. I am not sure how his rear end got so dirty.

This is how he spent most of his time. On the drive up ramps he was able to situp under the car and watch which he thought was the pretty darn cool.

A Long Day, A Long Week

Well it has been a long week and it isn't over. Ellis went back to the doc today because his fever is high. She doesn't think there is anything to worry about, but he has some bad ear infections. We are beat because of platooning childcare and work. (By the way, Rachel hates it when I say, "platooning childcare" and I don't know why.)

After that we went and got everyone a treat: two boxes of yogurt in a tube for Ellis, Pepperidge Farms chocolate pecan cookies for mom and fancy soda for dad. Ellis sucked down two tubes on the way to have supper, then had nothing else for supper. Then the ibuprofin got going and he got his wildness back and now he is in bed, a little warm and weary again.

My diet today consisted of a bacon cheeseburger, a coney dog, a giant plate of nachos at a giant burrito joint, and one third of a pecan half. Before anyone hollers too loundly about the lousiness of the first three items, I want to point out that it was a single not a double bacon cheeseburger, a normal not a foot-long coney and I only ate enough nachos to feel a little uncomfortable. In the old days (10 years ago), I could eat like that indefinitely. Tonight, I feel like I need a lemon cleanse and a colonic.

Now, you might wonder about that pecan. Long after dinner, Rachel snuck down to have her cookies with milk and Ellis caught her attempting to eat a cookie without him knowing about it. So, he got his cookie and tore into it not finding a pecan for a number of bites but when he did he declared, "I don't like peanuts!" From there on he started taking smaller bites working around the nuts. He hit a big piece and plucked it out, a bit soggy. His mother told him I would eat it, but before he gave it to me, he broke off the last crumb of cookie for himself. That pecan couldn't have been cleaner of cookie if he had used a dental pick. Stingy.

Last night I took him to the co-op for some herbal remedies to aid in the expulsion of ear puss and we followed our routine of getting him juice and some bulk raspberry hearts. When I maneuvered toward the cashier, he put his hands up and said, "don't we need to get sumping to eat?" (They have a nice hot bar and salad bar in the cafe attached to the co-op.) The boy has good instincts, if there is food around, at least check to see if you should eat it. I don't know what I was thinking.

Groundhog's Week

Well, well, well.

There it was, Tuesday. A week into the antibiotic and who calls? School, "Ellis was flushed and crabby so I took his temp and I wasn't going to call unless it was 100.5 but then it was 102 and then I have to call..."

Doh! So to the doc again, "Wow his ears are almost as bad as before. Guess we have to amp up the antibiotic."

This means that a week into a ten day course of antibiotics, the amoxicillian hadn't done crap and whatever the improvement it didn't stick. All the while, my dad's entire job site is sick, half with head colds and the other half with a three day run of the pukes. Even my dad took a day off with the cold and you know things have to be pretty bad for him to take a day off. I can only remember two days in my first 18 years of life.

I said to Rachel that this has been a bad winter in Michigan with it seeming like everyone was sick an awful lot, kids and grownups. She suggested that is because the whole state isn't sleeping well because of the economy.

In other Ellis news, we realized this week that he divides the world into babies and big kids. I was in the backyard with a 55 year old guy the landlord had sent to figure out how to get the tree off of the wires and when I came in Ellis asked me, "Who was dat big kid? Where did dat big kid go daddy?"

He can now identify five birds at the feeder: redwing blackbird, cardinal, blue jay, woodpecker and dove. The other day he said something again about wanting to eat a dove. His mother asked him how he was going to catch it and he said that daddy would. When asked how he suggested that she should give me a bag.

And finally, in my previous post about his atrocious behavior, I forgot to include what was perhaps his most endearing moment of the evening when he spit out a chewed up wad of quesadilla by bending over his plate, shoving it out with his tongue and letting it fall two feet to the plate. All with a look on his face that indicated the thing was so disgusting he couldn't bear to touch it for one moment longer. He was able to tell us though that it was the cooked onions in the quesadilla that led to the disgust. A substantial improvement in communication. However, tonight he found a cooked onion in his fried rice and realized we aren't listening anyway.

I should add that he has been really good about playing or watching a movie so we can get work done even while he isn't at daycare. This has improved substantially. Let's hope I don't jinx it.

Let's turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.

Since the medicine has wiped out his ear infections, Ellis has been more, shall we say, wild. Tonight we aet in front of the fireplace because the furnace was out and Ellis was on a genuine tear. He chased the dog with a cowboy hat, whooping like a savage  and hitting her with it, he bowled over every ottoman in the house, played a long and prolific game of "Wall-Rammer" with his wagon, wouldn't sit down and eat the oranges he had demanded to have with this dinner, and to really top it off he was terribly, audibly gassy. This was on top of a pee accident, which I will not detail, except to say that it was of the variety that can only happen to a little boy.

I looked at Rachel and said, "He is sort of a little ball of offensiveness tonight."

She said, "Yeah, like a toddler Beetlejuice."

random bullets of Easter eve

• Today we visited with my family and my sister Bridet's in-laws in scenic Dowaiac, MI.  "Grandma Linda" laid out a wonderful lunch including a surpisingly delicious banana salad involving bananas, whipped cream, mustard, peanuts, and vinegar.  I am not being sarcastic here.  Both Grandma's recall their mother's serving this when they were kids.   Some of these recipe gems from the early 60's really deserve a revival.  
• Ellis slept through lunch and then refused to eat anything- too many other kids, too many heretofore unplayed with toys- until we left.  As soon as we were in the car and headed home, of course, he asked for "two crackers", "some more two crackers", "anudder cracker" and so on.  Finally we got home and he announced he was hungry.  I suggested yogurt and, when he agreed, figured he'd select a squeeze yogurt, which we don't usually have in the house and are a bit of a treat.  He headed to the fridge and I presumed he'd return for opening assistance.  When he didn't, I headed to the kitchen to investigate.  I caught Ellis using one hand to close the fridge; his other arm had the 1 quart plain yogurt container balanced in the crook and the tiny jar of maraschino cherries clutched in the hand.  How he came up with this combination I don't know, but Trey declared the cherries (a favorite of his usually) ruined after their yogurty bath.
  
• Trey is planning to hide plastic Easter eggs in the yard for Ellis tomorrow.  This thought hadn't even occured to me or maybe I thought Ellis was too little to enjoy it.  Trey rebuffed me with, "Which part is he too young to enjoy? Eating candy?  Or finding brightly covered plastic objects in the yard?"  Touche.  
• We have been eating way too much fast food lately.  We're considering place a moratorium on any emporium that sells fries, a dicey proposition considering Dexter's A&W drive-in practically just opened for the season.  

More bird feeding

On Wednesday, I came up out of the basement after several days of our return to winter that has made us all homicidal, regicidal, fratricidal, suicidal or some combination and found this scene recurring at the bird feeders. Since the hawk, I am keeping the camera by the back door. The gold finches are getting bright yellow quickly and the starlings are getting a little too comfortable. But the red-bellied woodpecker is really the thing that made my day.


And then they all spooked at the same time. It turns out this picture let me get a positive ID on that woodpecker. That was a male. The females have a rose-tinged belly which must give them their name.

You Call That Progress?

The boat project continues and is about to gain some big momentum as my buddy John has the week off work and  can't help but go out and work on the boat.

The pink patches on the boat are Bondo, the great autobody filler. You might say, "What? Bondo. I bet they didn't use that in 1935 when it was built." To that I say you are right. But, the point of what we are trying to do is create a great looking finish that is far more robust than the old-fashioned canvas. The Bondo sands nicely and will let us create a very smooth hull that will make the finish easier to put on and be better looking when done.
Much recent effort has gone into motors. We decided, if you recall, that a vintage motor would be a good choice, but that the pre-1950 motors were less reliable, harder to come buy and harder to get parts for. So we decide on an early 50's Johnson Seahorse and it turned out there was one in the barn at the farm. I bought a second one on eBay which is in somewhat better shape.  We are calling this one the A Motor (pictured above) and it has already been made to run. I found the last little part we needed for it in a junkyard in Minnesota. Below is the B Motor which currently does not have spark. A gas tank for it is on the way from eBay. The gas tank sits on top and is part of what shrouds the fly-wheel which you see exposed. The A motor will need some tuning and various checks. The B motor will have to come apart so we can chase out the gremlins.

Ok, Ok, Here Are Some Train Set Pics

I know many of you heard of our trip to the train show and the large number of special Brio/Thomas the train pieces we bought from a local guy who makes things the big companies do not. Of course, being from Snooty Town, he uses maple that only comes from dead falls and no chemical finish. Some of the pieces we got included the little round house in the lower right, the crossing piece that the trains cross as they leave the round house and a variety of special switches, crosses, bumpers and adapters (female or male on both ends...oh, can I say that on a family blog?). The variety of what he had and what we bought is big enough that we can't use all of the fancy pieces at one time until we get a bigger basement and more basic track.

It has been implied, well more like directly declared, by Rachel that the trains, much like the bird feeders, aren't really for Ellis but for me. I believe these next two pictures prove otherwise. Ellis enjoys the trains at least as much as I do.

In addition to the fancy track, this particular setup uses the safari, zoo and fire-rescue sets that Ellis has received as gifts. In this picture a fire is blazing behind the red bridge, but Ellis is more concerned with segregating the zebras and rhinos before a tragedy happens.

Road Worker and Militia Bunny Get Married

In his easter basket, Ellis got a cookie decorating kit from Grandma Lise, complete with pre-baked but sadly broken cookies. We put it to good use anyway.
Here Ellis is looking through the decorating possibilities while mom bakes up some new cookies. I have no idea what that look is about, but I feel like we should have a caption contest for it. Does that finger smell bad? Did he just liberate a particularly nasty boog? Is that finger his arch nemesis? 

After that we got around to decorating and even Ellis required the precision of a bag to apply the icing. 

Of course there was also some eating.

And perhaps some over critical analysis of the flavor.

But not so much that he didn't deem it worth finishing.

And the tray of finished cookies. The fish were odd for easter but we wanted to try them. Maybe they are Jesus fish, yeah, that's it. I especially like the little brown bunnies. The sitting bunnies by me have costumes on. There are two dressed for an evening out, a roadworker in an orange vest and a militia bunny as well. There is also one running bunny who is running because he is on fire. The fish are rainbow and speckled trout and there is one with a light green belly who has been sickened by pollution.

Exploratory Arts

With recent posts showing Ellis doing things like working on boats and now working on cars, you might think we have him on a vocational rotation program. When I was a kid we had such a program in junior high that rotated you through shop, art, home economics and maybe another thing or two. Sadly, autoshop was only available in highschool and by then I was burdened with college prep.

A few weekends ago, we finally got around to putting a new blower motor in the Blazer. I would say, all in all that Ellis's "help" only added about 50% to the duration of the project, but added at least that much enjoyment too.

As you can see, he was definitely interested in what was going on. He generally insisted on having the tool that I most needed which is why in this picture he has the little ratchet and I am holding a wrench inappropriate for the job. Prior to his mom taking the picture, I had been attemping to coerce him into a trade. He was having none of it.
Here you can see him clearly disagreeing with my plan of action. I think he was saying something about someone with tiny hands would be better able to reach under the blower motor and get the last #@%! screw. Sure, cast-boy.

We managed not to break anything else and even stayed pretty clean, until the last moments before I was going to close the hood and Ellis dropped three or four tools down into the engine compartment. They fell through and landed in the shroud that was fully of greasy grime. By the time I had snaked my arm in and pulled them out, I was filthy. Then he tried to throw something else in and I grabbed his arm transferring grime to him which he promptly wiped on his forhead. All of this lead to a cast-in-a-bag bath moments later.

A New Way to Think About Bird Feeders

Yesterday I was working from home when we lost power and internet briefly, probably due to the snow. Just in case I went to peak out at the tree in our yard that leans heavily on the wires to see if it had finally pulled something down. What did I see, but a small hawk sitting up in a tree watching our feeders intensely.

This sort of adds a dimension to the idea of "feeding the birds", or at least allows me to claim that my feeders serve multiple tiers of the food chain. 

I had to zoom in a lot on this pic to get to the level you see here, so I don't really have a good enough view to identify what type of hawk this is. Additionally, the juveniles of so many species look so similar, that it is hard to differentiate them and I am suspicious that this one was a juvenile. Red tails don't generally feed on other birds preferring succulent bone popping rodents but maybe he was eyeing our squirrels, in which case he can feel free to treat our backyard as a laid-off, overweight computer programmer would a chinese lunch buffet. 

I did see it fly away and in flight it didn't look like a red tail either. Maybe a sharp-shinned, Cooper's, or broadwing? I have seen evidence once or twice that a hawk has taken a bird in our yard, so maybe he will be back.

cripes!

Yet again, Ellis was sent home from daycare with a fever this afternoon.   Figuring enough was enough, Trey took him straight over to the pediatrician's office.  He was promptly diagnosed with a fairly severe double ear infection.  Even our hippie-type pediatrician went straight to a prescription for oral amoxicillian and expressed amazement that Ellis wasn't screaming and crying in her office. So, Ellis apparently has a pretty high pain threshold.  She also figured that Ellis's frequent fevers and susceptibility to colds may have been a results of this ear infection being present for weeks or even months. The doctor mentioned if one of his parents (me!) had struggled with chronic ear infections, he may have the same problem.  In that case, he'll need that high pain threshold.  Ugh.

Meanwhile, it was snowing and 35 degrees here today, I had a 8 hour marathon meeting at work featuring various unpleasantness and the "g" and "h" keys on my laptop are failing intermittently.   And tomorrow I'll be combing the shelves of the health food store looking for child friendly probiotic foods beyond yogurt.   Oh, I think I hear those peanut butter eggs calling me from the freezer....

a hazy shade of winter

This weekend Ellis received, not one,  but two Easter baskets.  We hope to put up a few more pics from both Grandmas' baskets in the next couple days.  Grandma Lise sent some cute Easter decorations, including Easter egg shaped twinkle lights and window decals of bunnies and Easter eggs.  

One may wonder whether there's some type of strange optical illusion or Photoshopping going on in the background.  No, indeed, it actually IS 5 inches of snow.  In fact, we only did this bit of Easter decorating because Ellis's daycare (along with all the area schools) had a snow day today.

Ellis and I had a pretty fun day at home today, but I ended up feeling kind of sad by the end of it because 1) work prevents me from spending days like this with Ellis more often and 2) it felt just like November and, at some subconscious level, I began to believe that the cold, grey days of winter were starting all over again.

It is hard to be 2 yrs. 9 mos.

Ellis had his doctor's appointment today. The cast came off, the elbow looked pretty good in the ultrasound and he was allowed to come home without a cast or splint. The final say will come when the ultrasound is reviewed in detail to make sure there isn't too much motion between the bones. The fluid in the elbow was gone though, which is a good sign and Ellis is using it.

Ellis continues to catch every bug that blows by his little nose. I was called at 3:30 yesterday because Ellis woke up from his nap at school with a 102.5 degree fever. I gave the school permission to give him a dose of ibuprofin. When I got there, it had been 20 minutes since his ibuprofin, the fever was up to 103 and his favorite teacher had his socks off and a cold cloth on his forhead. He cooled off minutes later, but was obviously very sick.

Getting sick a lot has taught him one thing. As we were driving home, the ibuprofin started to bother his empty stomach (he hadn't eaten his lunch) and a solid 15 seconds  before he puked he declared, "I need my bucket." Not bad for a kid that young if you ask me. If I was into milestones, I would tell you he was both potty-trained and bucket-trained at 2 years, 9 months.