limerick – Page 14 – little thoughts

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – at the fire station

Posted on 2015-10-152015-10-15 by kristinabean

Rondel has a deep and abiding love of firetrucks. As an infant, one of the first imitative sounds he ever made was a firetruck siren (seriously – he was 5 or 6 months old, sitting there with his toys, making siren noises!), and now, if he hears a siren coming, he runs to the big window upstairs, asks to go outside, or (if we are outside) almost frantically tries to get to the nearest road in case it is going to pass by. We live less than a mile from the biggest station in our city, so we hear and see the trucks fairly often, but I wondered if there was a way to see them up close and personal.

To my delight, I discovered that our city offers free tours of the fire station as long as you have a group of 6-20 people! Completely against my personality and preference as a shy, logistically-challenged individual, I recruited some other families I knew, called the fire department, and set up a date.

The ladder truck (the biggest fire engine) had to leave for a call just about the time we arrived for the tour, so the firefighters showed us some of the other vehicles – the support trucks, the IT van, and the community care ambulance. That ambulance is one of the more fascinating and unique things about our fire station. Using funds from a federal grant to study ways to reduce health care expenses, they converted the ambulance into a sort of clinic on wheels, and take it to low-level 911 calls that would otherwise have resulted in an ambulance trip and an ER visit. (This type of call can include a headache, a baby’s fever, a cut that might require stitches, and so on; the firefighter who helps staff the community care vehicle told us that we would be surprised at the calls that come in.) In addition to providing immediate medical care with the onboard physician’s assistant, they can provide basic health education to equip people to deal with non-emergency situations on their own in the future. It’s a pretty awesome idea and I hope it makes a difference in our community!

{pretty}

The boys weren’t quite as interested in the community care concept as I was… fortunately, the ladder truck returned and they were able to check it out! Rondel walked around the whole truck with the firefighter, listening to him explain about all the different tools stored in each compartment on the truck (the ladder truck carries some heavy-duty equipment for cutting through roofs or into cars). He wasn’t so sure about sitting on the front of it but he let me get a picture at least.

{happy}

The icing on the cake was when he realized they would let him sit in the driver’s seat and pretend to drive the truck. I don’t think he ever wanted to get out!

{funny}

It’s a little hard to see, but his jaw is dropped open in awe or disbelief here. This was the moment he reached out and grabbed the steering wheel for the first time – I think he thought he was literally driving the firetruck.

{real}

True to my aforementioned logistically-challenged self, I scheduled the tour at a time that overlapped with Limerick’s morning nap (in my excuse, I had to schedule it a few weeks in advance and he was transitioning from 3 naps to 2 at the time). He probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if he hadn’t been so tired; he spent most of the hour-long tour sitting in his stroller just watching everyone else. He did get to check out the second-row seating in the ladder truck though:

He was loving it despite his exhaustion when – of course – they got another emergency call and we had to whisk the kids out of the truck. Oh well. I’m sure we will go again sometime! The firemen were incredibly welcoming and friendly, and very accommodating to the little kids (my friend with older kids canceled last minute, so we only had toddlers and babies). So thank you very much, Mesa Fire Department! You rock!

Don’t forget to head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today!

family life

baby-safe edible finger paint!

Posted on 2015-10-142015-10-12 by kristinabean

This is probably one of the simplest finger-paint recipes out there (and unfortunately I can’t remember where I first saw it, to give credit for the idea). It takes literally less than a minute to mix up, and is completely safe for the baby who tends to put everything in his mouth.

From what I remember on the original site, it does also dry well on paper, but I just used it on the highchair since only Limerick was playing with it. (Rondel was camped out on the sofa resting off a fever, poor kid).

All you have to do is add some food coloring to sweetened condensed milk and voila! Perfect paint. It has just the right consistency to spread easily without running, and the colors blend together marvelously for another dimension of play and experimentation.

Rondel, with his sensory defensiveness, has never been a fan of messy play like this – he deeply dislikes the feel of anything slimy or sticky on his hands (he will play with drier things like dirt, sand, sidewalk chalk, and crayons, though) – so this is one of my first forays into the world of finger paint. Personally I love finger painting… I love feeling different textures on my fingers and seeing things meld and change as a result of my motions. While I can rationally understand Rondel’s sensitivity and dislike, it is nice to be able to enjoy this sort of thing with Limerick! And he definitely enjoyed it.

The one downside of sweetened condensed milk paint is that it is incredibly sticky. Limerick had to get a shower after this to clean it all up, and I was finding sticky drips of paint on the floor where the high chair had been for hours afterwards, despite my efforts to clean everything thoroughly right away.

The highlight, of course, is that I got to eat some of the condensed milk right out of the can… and lick some off the highchair tray before washing it… and turn the leftovers into hot fudge sauce later… these are much better perks than the cornstarch paint alternatives could possibly afford, and I think they make the stickiness worthwhile 😉

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – RAIN!!!

Posted on 2015-10-082016-03-17 by kristinabean

{pretty}

This is a desert sage. It’s not actually related to culinary sage and the leaves aren’t edible, as far as I can find out. But it is a good landscaping plant so it’s all over the city and this particular one lives right outside our front door. Here it is, sparkling with the fresh rain, rejoicing with us in the cooler, wetter weather.

{happy}

I love the rain, but no one loves the rain more than a young child set free to run around in it! I didn’t realize how much I had mellowed with age until I saw the exuberant glee of my babies running and splashing and exulting in the downpour.

the walker gives him so much more independence!

I don’t think he stopped moving the whole time it was raining 🙂

When I was younger I didn’t want to age and mellow, to lose the fierce intensity and passion of adolescence and young adulthood, or the wild happiness and anger of childhood. To me, adults seemed to have lost the ability to deeply feel life – to truly experience its terrifying highs and devastating lows. I think what I’m beginning to realize now is that it’s possible to mature in one’s reactions to the roller coaster of life and emotion without getting off the roller coaster or taming its hills and curves. That is, I can still feel everything just as deeply – enjoy things just as intensely, become angry just as quickly, and so on – without letting those feelings control how I treat others and respond to my environment. Also with age comes greater understanding of the passions that burn inside my heart, so that I’m not caught totally unawares by them, and can in turn direct them to areas of greater and more lasting value (so instead of letting the power of my emotions be wasted on a crush or a car cutting me off in traffic, I can use them to rejoice in the beauty of great music, or delight in the presence of my husband, or grow fiercely angry at the injustice surrounding immigration, abortion, or homelessness). It’s not dulling my conscience or my emotions – simply deepening my understanding of my emotions and bringing them into greater unity with my conscience and my reason. And it is a good thing, despite the fears of my youth!

{funny}

Rondel noticed the raindrops landing on the driveway, leaving the little wet splotches behind, and started pretending to pick up the fallen drops and eat them. It was really cute – and then his daddy joined him and it was even cuter 🙂

{real}

And, no surprise, we have more dirt-eating. I can’t get this kid to stop putting dirt, rocks, and sand into his mouth. Where does the fascination lie? I can only imagine it tastes terrible (from my one childhood recollection of tasting sand intentionally, it wasn’t pleasant). He seems happy about it though…

I hope you all have had a great week too! We have been so blessed out here with four (four!) consecutive rainy days. This never happens in October in Arizona! Join the linkup at LMLD and visit the other blogs – they are such a good source of encouragement and happiness in the simple everyday aspects of life.

family life

brotherly love – a scene

Posted on 2015-10-03 by kristinabean

Earlier today Rondel climbed up onto an armchair and asked if Limerick could sit with him on the chair. Since Limerick had just been trying to get up into a second armchair, I thought he would like it, asked him if he wanted to sit with Rondel, and then put him up in the chair with Rondel. I wasn’t exactly sure how well it would go – Rondel can swing between an almost aggressive physical affection for his brother and a panicky meltdown if they get within two feet of each other – but given my ongoing goal of increasing their love and companionship, I was willing to give it a try.

And to my utter delight, Rondel put his arm around Limerick with great tenderness and drew him near in a hug with the sweetest smile on his face – and Limerick burst into the biggest grin ever.

I wish I could have gotten a picture! It was so incredibly sweet, and such a fulfilling moment as their mom. This love, this joy in each other’s presence, is what I’m trying to nurture in their relationship, and I pray that it continues to grow through the rest of their lives.

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – thankful for the things I do have

Posted on 2015-10-012015-10-01 by kristinabean

{pretty}

We may not have much space, especially outdoor space, but we have room for the beauty of green growing things:

{happy}

We may not have lots of space to run around, or big places to explore and build forts and play games, but we have the security to play with carefree happiness in the space we do have:

{funny}

We might not have space for me to back up enough to capture the whole of our tiny yard in a picture, but we have space for the boys to play together where I can capture them both at once like Rondel asked me to:

Parallel play – and the impossibility of getting them to look at the camera, or at me!

{real}

We may not have woods and grassy hills and flowers so they can touch and see and smell the wonders of nature, but at least we have a garden so they can feel the dirt on their hands… and taste it in their mouths! The realities of toddlers!

There’s dirt in his mouth, on his face, and on his hand!

No clue why he’s eating the pot… I don’t ask anymore

To be real with you, it makes me happy deep in my heart to see Rondel with dirt in his mouth and on his hands like that. The garden is one of the few places where he’ll relax enough to get truly messy: he’ll use his whole hand to dig in the soil instead of using one finger or a scoop/tool like he prefers to do with sand or play dough. (He won’t even touch gooey or slippery things, like cornstarch slime or Jello…) I know that letting him get dirty and become comfortable with his hands and body in the soil will have huge payoffs for his sensory processing skills, and since he really hates getting messy at other times (even with food) this is our stepping stone to improving his tactile processing skills. For me, even if nothing in the garden bears fruit, it’s worth it just to see my boy getting dirty without being bothered or wanting to be cleaned up instantly.

Go visit LMLD for the rest of the link-up! I hope you had a wonderful week as well 🙂

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – enjoying the end of summer

Posted on 2015-09-242016-03-17 by kristinabean

The garden is starting to take off! I think this is one of my favorite times of year, when I get to watch the new life springing up out of the ground. We’ll see if they make it to an actual harvest though 🙂 I don’t have the greenest thumb in the world!

{pretty}

{happy}

And of course it is still warm enough here to play at the splash pad in the afternoons (and probably in the mornings too, to be honest – our highs are just beginning to flirt with the 90’s when storm fronts come through, and then they jump back up to triple digits). Rather than mourn the lack of any significant autumnal season, we’re choosing to enjoy the summer fun as long as we can. Honestly, too, those late summer storms make this one of my favorite times of year: the nights are sometimes cool enough to leave the windows open, the mornings are fresh and clean-feeling, the days are softly warm and perfect for water play, and in the evenings the great dark clouds roll in with thunder and pouring rain.

{funny}

Rondel’s developing his own will, figuring out how social dynamics work, and beginning to test some boundaries (not much, though – he’s a pretty compliant child). I’m actually really enjoying seeing his own preferences and opinions grow, and watching him learn how to express them in appropriate ways! A funny side effect of it is this little fake pouty face that he makes when he wants someone to do something in a very specific way, and he knows that it’s a kind of ridiculous want, so he tries to pout when he doesn’t get it but can’t quite keep a straight face.

{real}

When do babies normally start holding their own bottles? Limerick can’t seem to coordinate his. Sometimes he’ll try to pick it up by the nipple and then stuff the nipple in his mouth (sort of in the same way that he’d pick up a bit of food and stuff it in his mouth), and a couple times he’s managed to get his hands around the bottle part and lift it up, but then he doesn’t seem quite sure how to get the right part into his mouth. So in the meantime we hold it for him when he gets thirsty.

(That’s my hand holding the bottle… his are passively at his side. Sigh.)

I hope all of you in other parts of the country are enjoying your beautiful fall weather! Join me at the LMLD link up today!

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – a busy week

Posted on 2015-09-17 by kristinabean

I really do have some great pictures this week from our visit to the splashpad on Tuesday (I’m trying to go as much as possible while the weather is still warm, because it’s a great way to get the kids out of the house), but I haven’t gotten them uploaded from my camera.

There should be some pictures of our little garden on there too. We’ve planted beets, corn, basil, sage, mint, and oregano so far and they’re doing ok, except for a row of the corn that looks pretty burnt. Now that it’s starting to get cooler, though (highs in the 90s!) I’d like to plant my leafy greens for the fall growing season, too – it’s just about the right time to plant cilantro, arugula, kale, and spinach – all of which seem to be hard to eat when purchased from a store but which are tossed easily into just about every meal when available in the backyard garden. Do you find that to be true in your house as well? The store-bought produce will often go bad before I use it all up (especially greens), but anything that we grow ourselves is devoured immediately!

Sometimes it seems like life is a juggling act and I’m a very clumsy juggler – at least one ball always seems to be getting dropped. On a positive note, we got a lot of laundry and house-cleaning done this weekend, thanks to my very helpful husband, so I don’t feel overwhelmed in every area of life right now, just the normal two to three areas. The kids had peed on all the beds so the laundry was fairly important… and spilled a bowl of cereal (dry) under the couch, so vacuuming was rather needed as well… so it goes with toddlers, I suppose.

I do have a {real} picture for the first time, though, from one of the more hectic nights this week!

What do you do with a baby who wants to see what you’re doing and be in the kitchen but won’t consent to being held still in a wrap and is too unsteady and short to stand on a chair? I don’t know what your solution is, but apparently mine is to let him play sans diaper in the kitchen sink… The toddler heard me putting said baby in the sink and requested to play as well, and surprisingly they played together in peace for the 10-15 minutes I needed to finish getting dinner made.

You can see all the groceries still sitting out on the counter too… they didn’t get put away until after bedtime. But at least it was all clean and straightened up before I went to bed, so I wouldn’t have to wake up to the mess! It’s the little things 🙂

Don’t forget to head over to the link-up and visit other blogs! It’s encouraging to see the crazy and the happy in everyone else’s life, at least for me – it gives me the reassurance that we’re all in this together and no one is doing it perfectly, but that we can all choose to see beauty and find contentment right where we are.

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – labor day

Posted on 2015-09-102015-09-12 by kristinabean

For Labor Day my mom and I were both free (we work at academic institutions that frown upon working on Labor Day!) and I took the babies down to her house for the whole day. We spent the morning getting her garden ready for the fall planting season (all our seasons are different down here in the low desert) and swimming in her pool, then swam again in the afternoon after my husband and dad were finished working and could come down, and had a delicious gumbo for dinner courtesy of my mom and brother. I’ve never actually had a gumbo that I liked before… I think this one is going to have to enter my recipe files!

{pretty}

climbing on the oregano in the raised bed garden!

(By the way, I’m so thankful that we live near my parents! The boys and their grandparents have a really special relationship, and it always makes me happy to see all those people, whom I love so much, loving each other and enjoying time spent with each other.)

{happy}

Some advantages of helping my mom with her garden: transplants of oregano and mint to take home to my garden, along with some basil and sage from the nursery (we all went with her since she wanted some new pepper plants), and a bag full of processed oregano from the massive overgrown oregano bush! She and my brother have been processing the leaves with a bit of olive oil in the food processor and freezing it in ice cube trays (my idea – and I harvested the oregano – but they did the more tedious work of stripping the leaves). It really is a handy way to store excess fresh herbs, and then a cube can be pulled out to use as a sauté base for vegetables, or part of a light sauce for pasta, or even as an herby sauce for a white pizza.

(I thawed one last night and used it as the beginnings of a pasta salad dressing, with a touch more oil and a bit of red wine vinegar to brighten it up, in lieu of lemon juice)

{funny}

I love the look on this kid’s face! And he loves jumping into the pool (actually, he likes to hold your hands and kind of step in off the side into the water… he did jump all by himself with both feet a few times though!) – and swimming in the pool, and knocking Daddy down in the pool, and pretty much everything to do with the pool.

What’s my {real} for this week? Just that all good things come to an end, I guess 🙂 I’m not very good at getting pictures of the {real} in life, now that I think of it – maybe I’ll show you guys the state of my kitchen floor one week…

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend too! Check out the rest of the link-up here 🙂

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – birthday fun!

Posted on 2015-09-032015-09-14 by kristinabean

Still playing catch up on the pictures here… I have pictures from this week but they’re still on the camera and I’ve got all of August’s pictures to process first! Hopefully I’ll be up-to-date for next week 🙂

{pretty}

For Rondel’s second birthday back in July we visited the zoo! And our zoo, being in a hot desert environment, obligingly has a spashpad where the kids can cool down. Limerick was a huge fan.

{happy}

This baby is seriously in love with water play – here he’s enjoying one of the Rondel’s birthday presents.

And here’s Rondel himself enjoying the water! He’s a bit more cautious than his brother but once he gets past his initial reluctance he has a lot of fun.

{funny}

I don’t actually have any pictures of him looking happy while opening presents, even the Hotwheels Mustangs from Grandpa – he was just so utterly serious about the whole process! It’s really neat how important every little thing is to toddlers, and how all the experiences we are so familiar with are brand new and somewhat exciting, challenging, and frightening all at once to them, because of course they haven’t lived through it all before.

{real}

My sister got Rondel these peas and we made the mistake of letting him open the afore-mentioned Mustangs first… he had eyes for no other gifts once he saw those cars! Limerick, however, decided that the peas could be for him instead, if no one else wanted them, and immediately attacked them with great delight.

It’s very nice, you know, how little kids don’t hold you to some standard of perfection as their parent – they just ask for your love and attention. They don’t really care about the presents, or about how beautiful the cake was (creatively imagined but only somewhat successfully executed, if you want to know), or about how many people are there celebrating them. I’m sure their desires and expectations will grow with them, but so will my understanding of them and my relationship with them, and it is this knowledge that we’ll be growing together that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed about all the parenting milestones ahead of me.

So happy 2nd birthday Rondel! Here’s to many more years of love and laughter together.

(Go check out the other {p,h,f,r} posts through the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter!)

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – sister time!

Posted on 2015-08-272015-09-12 by kristinabean

For the link-up at LMLD this week I have the pictures from my sister’s visit from Seattle! It was so nice to have the whole family together for a few days, enjoying each other’s company.

{pretty}

Just look at those beautiful fat baby cheeks! Limerick may be short but he isn’t lacking when it comes to rolls of plumpness.

{happy}

My sweet little sister playing with Rondel – he took to her right away despite his typical reservations around new people – maybe he remembered her from his infancy, or picked up on the love and family vibe going around. Either way it made me so happy to see them together, two of the people I love most in the whole world.

And another happy! My sister’s husband acting silly for the benefit of the baby 🙂 Funny how babies always seem to bring out the ridiculous and disarmingly un-self-conscious side in people.

{funny}

And when it comes to funny things babies do? Apparently Limerick decided that beer would be a tasty and appropriate substitute for his normal milk and water! Watch out dear Auntie!

{real}

For the real I don’t actually have a picture, just a confession – these pictures are from way back in June! I just finally uploaded them onto my computer this week. But the joy of spending so much time together was too good to pass up on posting, despite the delay.