cross the streams

Blues has some type of head cold this week. Nothing really serious, just crabbiness and a low fever. So he's tromping around the house, grunting, smashing things, and leaving a trail of goo. He's basically like a toddler sized version of the Stay Puft marshmallow man from the end of Ghostbusters. He's the destroyer and it's terrifying.

happy easter

We had a beautiful, sunny Sunday today. Both boys were up nice and early in the 6 am range. Ellis, who typically hates getting dressed, appeared in the kitchen stark naked with his clothes under his arm and declared he was ready to go find his Easter basket. Trey sneaked outside to hide them while Ellis dressed. Here they are, champing at the bit...

Ellis circled the yard before speculating that his fort would have been an attractive location for any parent or bunny hiding a basket and.... success!!

Trey had Maddox, who apparently walked right by his basket without expressing any particular interest. But they both enjoyed digging into some loot. Ellis was at first perplexed by the Slinky, then loved it, then destroyed it by bending one of the coils while it was extended. Ah, the classic phases of the Slinky life cycle.

After church and an Easter egg hunt there, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather to make some garden progress. The boys were shockingly amenable to this course of action by sleeping (Blues) and digging in the ground (Ellis). We planted broccoli, kale, chard, and spinach seedlings plus some spinach and chard seeds.

It's telling that Ellis's mouth is open in this picture. The child talked nearly non-stop during the time we were outside. "What kind of rock is this, Mom? No, this yellow one, Mom? You don't know? Does Dad know? Watch out there's an earth worm. Did you know earth worms are really good for farmers and gardeners? And which are we? We are gardeners. Oooh, Mom I'm going to be using a rake for this. You use your hoe, Mom. Okay, Mom? Use your hoe on that part for the chards. Are you doing it? These chards need a really good place to grow." And so forth. He is part detective, part foreman, part cheerleader. Very bossy and inquisitive. I'm happy he's so enthusiastic and curious, but maybe he could go do it by Trey for a while?

Speaking of which, Trey built me these sweet row covers which we're hoping will extend our season a bit. The danger of frost isn't really passed, yet. And though what we've planted are all good, solid cold weather crops, I'm hoping we can get them to jump up a bit faster by keeping the frost off and providing a bit of extra warmth. Also, in the background you can see he's in the second weekend of removing a tree that shaded the upper bed of the garden part of last year. Ellis was a bit concerned because the hammock hung from this tree last year, but we explained we'd relocate it this year. Trey managed to bring most of it down last weekend without injuring himself or the house. Yeah!

school break

Ellis has a break from school this week...spring break, I suppose. So, I get a glimpse of how much worse a stay-at-home parent I would be to two kids than one. This change in routine has made an extra challenge and carved a fine point on the fact that I don't really know what an appropriate level of activity to provide really is. Not helping the situation is the still crummy weather. While I've tried to get them outside, it's been grey, cold, and windy for the most part.

Monday morning while I was still changing and dressing Blues, Ellis decided to break out the Easter egg dying kit. Unfortunately, it contained various methods for dying eggs instead of just the rather innocuous dry tablet that you dissolve in vinegar water. This included little packets of "paint", which I believe were actually pressurized such that they were impossible to cut open without spraying concentrated dye all about the room. Thanks for nothing, PAAS, you jerks! But, the photos look sweet, no?

On Wednesday, we traveled to the aquarium, hoping it would be slow because a lot of folks seem to have left town. No such luck as the aquarium was packed with folks visiting from other towns. Way too crazy to be much fun. Also, Ellis wanted to stop by the cafe to get a soft pretzel. Tragically, the aquarium cafe is under new management and no longer serves soft pretzels. In a lapse of judgement, I offered to make him some later that afternoon. However, using this recipe, the results weren't as bad as I'd expected. In fact, I had just the right amount of success to be truly dangerous. If they'd been an abject failure, it would have signaled the clear end of my pretzel making days. But they're just close enough to the ones we remember from Bammental days to make me want to keep trying/ get obsessed/ seek out food grade lye on the internet. Cause nothing goes better with small children than boiling pots of lye, right?

We have been outside a little bit, though, and turned over our garden. Nothing's actually in the ground yet. It's hilarious to see Maddox out and exploring the outdoors. I guess I forget that he really hasn't been out much since last summer and then he just kind of rolled around a bit. He's been faced with the double challenge of 1) walking in "outdoor shoes" and 2) the uneven ground. And he's not adapting too well. Plus, he hates touching the wet ground, and when one is constantly falling over, one must touch wet ground to right oneself to a standing position. Alternatively, one may just fall over and scream until assistance arrives. Guess which he chooses?

dormant oil, active kid

After last year's endeavor to get many fruit trees into the ground, my mom has been after us to be conscientious about spraying them to ensure good, bug-free yield. This is sound advice, and the recommended spray is just oil plus an emulsifier and not some terrible-sounding insecticide.

However, google tells me that the best time to apply this spray is before the bud break, during a period with sustained day and night temperatures between 40 and 70ºF. Does this exist in Vermont? I think not. Further advice was that the loss of a few buds will be outweighed by the benefit of reducing the tree's load of pests. Oooookay, so we'll try it.

Ellis was very game for this because he really wants to grow lots of fruit. Quote from this winter: "Mom, won't it be great when we have our own apples with no stickers on them?" Furthermore, he was with me when we bought the sprayer and keen to try it out. We talked a bit about how the oil will land on the bugs and stop them from breathing and so they won't be able to get in and ruin the apples. Then Ellis gave me a lecture all about how he does not like worms in apples because they are the bad worms, but some worms, such as earth worms are good for our garden soil and we should never kill them. After weeks of discussing the Japanese tsunami and military intervention in the Middle East with him, the black and white simplicity of good worm vs. bad worm was most welcome.

weekend roundup

Last week ended rather stressfully. I had a phone interview on Thursday and then, Thursday night, Trey lost his boss's dog (found the next morning) and we lost our baby sitter in one fell swoop. Thus, I went to Ellis's school's annual auction on my own. Probably better for our finances that I was in a bad mood, though, as I didn't have the will to bid on things.

As a result of Thursday's excitement, both kids were up late, which resulted in crabby baby and sick Ellis. Ellis has been teetering on the edge of an ear infection for the past month. How do those bacteria live in an ear that has a tube inserted? I don't know. We're back to ear drops and a likely visit to the ENT later this month. Sigh.

At any rate, Ellis was crying at school on Friday morning so I ended up having to run errands with 2 monkeys in tow. Luckily, a bit of ibuprofen plus some ice cream seemed to provide him quite a bit of symptom relief and so he was in good spirits. So here's two piggies eating ice cream...a scoop of strawberry for Maddox and a crazy triple scoop "volcano sundae" for Ellis. He was pretty bummed that it didn't "erupt" with chocolate sauce and, to be fair, the picture on the menu did make it look like it might. After his initial disappointment he just announced it must be dormant and said "mom, that means only smoke comes out of it and no hot lava."

the upper valley

A few weeks ago we'd planned a trip to visit Catherine in Baltimore in conjunction with a business trip of Trey's. Unfortunately, the trip fell through at the last minute, as did Ellis's hopes of museum visiting and hotel pool swimming. So Trey and I decided to do an overnight trip to south eastern Vermont. This area is apparently called the upper valley as it is located in the upper region of the Connecticut River. Though I'd heard this term on the VPR weather report often, I never really knew what area they were talking about. An unfortunate lack of curiosity, but I digress.

Our primary destination was the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich. We first made a quick stop at the nearby King Arthur Bakery Store, where we browsed a bit, ogled some giant Viking stand mixers, and grabbed some pizza (okay, and a cinnamon roll) for lunch. Now, onto the pictures from the museum...

Ellis kept asking me before we left how many "decks" there would be. He meant levels and there turned out to be many.

They had some great, hands-on demonstrations for all kinds of basic physical phenomena. Here's the ever popular coin funnel, with enhanced ramp for adjusting the angle of entry.

One demonstration that I liked, maybe better than Ellis, involved giant vats of soapy water, from which hula hoops or strings were drawn up to create giant tunnels or walls of "bubble". Here are Ellis and Trey trying out some small wire structures in the soapy water and Ellis building his own ball chute.

There were also some very cool animal artifacts, including a whole body moose mount plus a swatch of moose hair just for petting and a collection of birds' nests so we could compare architectural styles. There was also a pretty extensive collection of live animals. This included brook trout (verified by Trey as having excellent coloration and, thus, clearly being fed a natural diet), a side view of a honey bee hive (looked very healthy), some painted turtles (including "babies" hatched from eggs collected using a special permit from the state as they're a protected species), and leaf cutter ant (watching them toil was really amazing). Here's an enthusiastic animal lover:

There was an also a set of demonstrations randomly sponsored? designed? blessed? by the Blue Man Group. Of course, Trey and I could only think of one thing, but the exhibit was really about sound.

And here's the "I was in a band in college band". I wonder where their children are.

Overall, we really liked the museum. The variety of exhibits was great and geared across many ages so Ellis and Maddox both had a great time. They were both really well-behaved, which was a miracle after a nearly 2 hour drive of "Ellis, don't hit your brother", "Ellis, don't touch Blues", etc, etc. Even though there were a lot of children there on a Saturday, there were so many different demonstrations it never really felt crowded and Ellis had plenty of time to try anything he wanted. We ended our day at a hotel near Ascutney ski resort and Ellis finally got his swim. It was nice not having to drive home, but I think we could manage it as a day trip next time and it would really be worth it.