10-25-09 (added 8-25-20 from found notebook)
“trina, noah, mama and quinn. we all picked apples for thousands of years!” (hand gesture as if counting on his fingers.)
“we are finding your house, noah, because that’s the truth!”
10-26-09
omg the apples. it was insanity. i found out from elizabeth at work that she went to this place and was able to pick buckets full of apples. i’ve been wanting to go pick them for a few weeks, but keep either getting rained out or we were going to go on the way back from camping hahahaha. maybe if we were coming back from 3.5 hours away that would have worked. this turned out better, since we got to go with friends. i figured we had 40 pounds but didn’t think about it and thought i’d weigh them when we got home- yeah 97. so far, we had apple crisp last night. tonight i’m making fish with a tomato-apple sauce to bake it in. there will be much applesauce canned, lots of canned slices, and dried apple slices… and in 2 weeks sarah has a cider-making party so i will make some of that too. and some of course just for eating- i’m storing them in the basement! oh it smells wonderful down there! i went down this morning for laundry… yum!
trina took this of us with the purpley-red apples!
quinn walking in rain pants. there are like old paved paths that are all overgrown and abandoned and forgotten, with lots of fruit trees around…
noah and quinn- noah is holding a woolly-bear catepillar
our apples, at home on the kitchen floor. all 97 pounds of them!
10-27-09
a general philosophy of the way i parent: climbing things, getting dirty, spreading his own peanut butter. if he’s not getting hurt, let him do it.
elizabeth is buying into a goat farm so she can get raw milk for her boys (i want to do this too but not there yet) and she is next year going to have her very own goat babies to raise… that i will get to bring quinn to see, and we can help take care of them when they’re out of town, etc. and she is learning to make her own cheese.
so i told her we got 97 pounds of apples and tomorrow we are going to go to her house and make applesauce with her and her boys. she has a cool apple-peeler-corer-slicer thingie that you crank and it does all that stuff so it saves a lot of work. yay i’m excited. i think quinn will have fun.
we ate albacore tuna for dinner last night- quinn CLEANED UP. he loves fish so much. i also made this awesome carrot/cabbage thing (i know, sounds kind of meh but it was soooo yummy). and quinn devoured the carrots too. (anyone would though. they were stir fried with sesame oil, tahini, honey, and garlic. yum! they were practically candy) but quinn looked at them and said “yay carrots are my favorite!”
10-29-09
it was kind of anticlimactic signing the agreement- we still have the parenting part to make sure is finalized then sign that too but that seems to be pretty much a non-issue. maybe even this week? dare i wish it? but babysitter flaked, and quinn hadn’t napped, so all three of us went in the room with don, quinn fell asleep on me, and we talked briefly and then signed it. coparent was ok with adding in a clause of basically if a major repair is needed soon after the car is handed over to him (the brakes) we will re-convene and decide what to do with it, how the deal needs to reflect that. but otherwise- we are done.
it’s signed. phew. quinn slept “like a baby” through it all. oh wait, he is still a baby. just a big one. it was cute, he just leaned on me and went out, no milk or anything. i hadn’t even known he hadn’t napped, so i heard his breathing change and was like hey, did he not nap?
tuesday night we were all over, we went to story hour at the live-berry (library) and met up with renee and ellie, who is so cute, and cuts her own hair (and the cat’s) and uses words like “automatically.” there were halloween books and felt board thingies and then a pumpkin painting craft. then quinn and i went to becka’s house, to borrow pirate garb for my costume from nikki (becka’s roommate, who i also know from work). i get to be a green pirate just like the “mama pirate” in quinn’s pirate collection so that worked out well. we stopped at the store to buy quart jars and brown sugar for our wednesday project….
yesterday was fun, we went to elizabeth’s house and made applesauce together. (12 quarts- 6 each) and quinn got to use the apple corer-peeler-slicer tool she has (it has a hand crank thing it’s very cool and fun) and play with wyland and cole and watch his first diego movie. then after we got all the applesauce made, we took the boys for a walk, they live right on the bay/flats so there was lots of squishing in rubber boots in the mud going on. crunching dried up dead crab bodies, that sort of thing. quinn had a great time. then we went home, he had another micro-nap (it was short at don’s too- woke up when i put him in the car) this time he napped in my lap in the rocking chair, which was actually super sweet and he got all sweaty on me but it was only for an hour and i just sat and read and drank my glass of water.
i woke up at 5:45 on my day off, to sew a pirate costume. i think it turned out cool, but quinn hasn’t tried it on yet so i hope it fits. i sort of did it by eye….
10-30-09
quinn is doing funky sleep right now. i believe he is about to grow another 6 inches… monday night he devoured a plate of tuna, then tuesday night he devoured a plate of carrots (and ranch.) and even wanted bites of my salad (lettuce?! i mean ok, it is smothered in ranch, but he hasn’t liked lettuce for months… he IS a toddler.) he ate other stuff too but it was like 3 whole carrots. that was what was remarkable to me. and then the sleep, he has been not napping or micro napping, and then yesterday so weird. he woke up briefly at 8 but wanted me, cried, his dad was there and he went back to sleep…. until after 10! then did not nap…. went down at 7pm, which i thought would be for the night- i was hoping, because i was ready for bed at 9… then he woke up at 9. we stayed up, carved our pumpkin, did more apples to put in the dryer, mixed up cookie dough for me to bring to work (cookie friday! halloween brown sugar cookies!) and then went to bed again. oh, and we played with quinn’s new pirate umbrellas. (cocktail umbrellas. yesterday i went to junk stores and dollar store and did some halloween shopping (AND got two pairs of jeans for me, cords and 2 shirts for quinn!) and got really into it- so i got quinn a little pumpkin bucket (it’s made of fabric over some sort of frame. hard to explain, but think of the plastic ones we had as kids…) i spent very little, but got him a bunch of small treats- 3/$1 glitter glue, a matchbox car, 2 pirate appliances (they were kitchen magnets- a tea kettle and a toaster oven but they are the perfect size for pirates!), a big square of blue silk (a silk scarf- people actually sell “play silks” and i totally understand… it can be ANYTHING- a cape, water under the pirate boat, butterfly wings, a flag…. the bottom “filler” in his halloween bucket, etc. i got him a jolly roger pirate flag for his costume…. anyway all i gave him when i got home was his flag, for the costume, the rest was gonna be a surprise but i left it out thinking i’d show his dad this morning, but then quinn woke up and saw it before i remembered to hide it. alas. he has his pirate umbrellas. (not alas. he had fun. and i don’t care what day it is!) he didn’t even touch the rest of the “treats” yet. we don’t want him having any regular candy… i’m going to give him an organic lollipop and some fruit leathers in his bucket… but i’m so not into the high fructose corn syrup- so i hope he doesn’t get handed a bunch of m&ms and snickers at the market. i don’t want to have to take it away…. though if it happens once or twice, ok. then i get to explain to him about healthy food, etc. i already do this, but i guess in the halloween context it is going to be a process the next few years…..
here is a picture of quinn holding cole’s hand
and a picture of our jack-o-lantern. quinn designed the whole thing. and he likes HAPPY faces the best!
i read somewhere people have their kids leave all their candy out for the Great Pumpkin to come and collect on halloween night, and the GP replaces the candy with a toy or whatever…. some dentists will buy candy from kids for $1 a pound, and send it overseas to the troops- etc. but i would rather him not even go collect a bunch of stuff, to then have to have it taken away…. i am hoping for that. i do not even feel ok letting him eat ONE piece of it… i have been so careful with his diet (yeah yeah yeah ice cream and yowipops notwithstanding) but the reason i think quinn can regulate his sugar intake (and he does! we went weeks without a mention of ice cream) is because the sugar he gets is not the toxic chemical version…. HFCS is evil.
we dress up for the market tomorrow (last market of the year!) and there are supposed to be fun activities there at the market, and then we will nap. and then do whatever we feel like- hand out candy if we get trick or treaters, which we may or may not (our road is a bit off the beaten path but not WAY off, so who knows.) we might go check out a crazy neighborhood (there are a few where the street gets shut down, etc) just to see all the other kids in costume- whatever he wants to do, basically. or stay home and bake pumpkin bread and light our jackolantern. he is HILARIOUS. last night after we gazed at our jackolantern for a while, he got a Q tip that he declared a match, and wanted to light the candles in my ears. (i lit the punkin’s tea light through its mouth). he told me, that he had to get the fire out of my heiny. “let me see your heiny so i can get the fire!” oh i was laughing so hard. i asked him if fire comes out of dada’s heiny too, and he said no. i said only mama? he said yes. once he had his fire, he told me to sleep so he could light the candles, and he stuck it in one ear (tickled!) and then as he climbed to the other side kept telling me “keep sleeping!” and then he’d light the other “candle” and then tell me to wake up, and then say “ooooh you’re glowing, mama!”
i got inspired at salvation army yest to get quinn some other dressing up stuff- i picked up a tiger tail/ears/mittens set, and that blue silk scarf. i want to designate a basket of dress up stuff. i’ll put his pirate stuff in there after halloween, have my mom send out some of our old halloween costumes, put in some fun shoes and hats, etc. oh i also got a pair of funny glasses to put in his basket. same idea- i think he’s at the age where dressing up can be fun. dragons and wizards, that kind of thing….
remember when i used to threaten to kick peoples heads off if they messed with my friends? i think now i will just threaten that fire comes out of my heiny. LOOK OUT WORLD!
11-2-09
last night during my 3 hours of free time, i DID NOT SEW. but i spent the entire time up to my elbows in apples. it was actually kind of fun and meditative. i had ani on the mp3 player and just cranked out apples and made 4 quarts of applesauce (actually 3 of them were apple-blackberry.) and 5 quarts of slices for making pies/crisp. all canned and in the cupboard. and then sliced up another batch to dry in the food dryer. i have filled 2 gallon ziplocks with dried apples so far. but i really made progress last night- it was seriously a lot of apples.
daylights savings!!!!!! damn it! last night i was lying in bed thinking to myself, will the real 10:45 please stand up?! i mean, isn’t quinn supposed to go to bed EARLIER when we fall back? it was effectively 11:45 in his body when he finally fell asleep. we first started laying down at 9:30, which was the old 10:30 which is past his bedtime already…. yet he had such a hard time falling asleep last night. we ended up getting back up and taking a bath. and it was NOT sugar related! he had a grand total of one yowipop for halloween.
deprived child.
actually quinn is not entirely deprived. he had the lollipop, because it was advertised that kids could trick or treat at the FM on halloween, so i had them to give out. i got those, because i’m ok with quinn having them… and not ok with him having much of the other stuff- nothing with HFCS etc. and he asked for one pretty soon after we got there…. then he asked for a second one pretty much right away. i told him that was ok, if he really wanted to, but that i wanted him to take it easy on the candy because it might make his body feel weird- and i said to keep checking in with himself if he felt ok, and if he started to feel funny to stop eating candy. he was like i want a yowipop mama! so he chose a blueberry one, and he started to eat it….. then he wanted to share it with me…. and he seriously got like 3 licks into it and lost interest completely, and wanted to eat popcorn instead. he also was given a cookie (with orange frosting and sprinkles!) and he just held it in his hand and admired it and looked at it…. then set it down and walked away. didn’t take a SINGLE bite. it’s so cool he can self regulate. but he ate about 6 fruit leathers this weekend.
we are totally off of our ice cream kick, too. he has really given it a rest. hot dogs are even in moderation now…. ok maybe 3 times a week should not be considered moderation but……. it was like 7 nights a week for a while.
people have fruit trees, lucky people, and then let the fruit just fall and rot- sigh. it is everywhere. cities full of starving people on the streets, with fruit trees in their backyards that go completely to waste.
instead of being useful and making fruit leather and dried apples which i plan on putting in homemade granola bars (bought all the ingredients yest! trina’s recipe…they are good!).
blackberry-applesauce! it is yummy!!!! (i used some of my frozen blackberries…. all free fruit! and it is freeing up freezer space since now they are canned… and i NEED freezer space, i get my 20 lb local organic free range happy turkey in two weeks, for thanksgiving! susan might come thanksgiving weekend!!! why am i still in parentheses?!?!)
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/daniel_quinn.html
11-3-09
the point of the article to me seems to be, your kid can’t help but learn, just by living life. so even if they are in a daycare or something, or even school, the hours they are with you, and Living Life, they are learning…. the titles of all the unschooling books are all like “learning all the time” and so on- like why have a designated brick building where all the learning has to take place? i loved his point about how in our culture, the food is all under lock and key……. so true! and so wrong!
i guess my point is, i try to distinguish between child care (who is caring for the child, is it a parent or outside caregiver) and schooling, because if schooling is happening at home, it doesn’t have to happen in any sort of particular way at any certain time of day (during work hours) etc. for me and quinn, school is on wednesday saturday and sunday, and evenings. know what i mean? and i’m not sure, but i might be doing it the same way even if his dad was just providing basic care but not doing any “schooling” with quinn- like if that was all left up to me, i still don’t think i’d put him in school, even if i’m working full time.
i could see quinn choosing to be max some halloween. or piglet. last night he had all of his “babies” lined up and apparently he and his dad had named them all according to the characters of winnie the pooh- picture of him (in flannel shirt and no bottoms lol) with “tigger” in his hand, who is getting ready to “bounce” all of the other friends into the water (off the couch)- from left- piglet (the little sock monkey), owl (penguin), rabbit (big sock monkey), eeyore (blue dog), pooh (koala aka baby bear), kanga (big sea lion, with bandana for pouch), roo (little sea lion).
oh, i forgot tigger was a blur- he’s a patchwork elephant named elmer, on other days. i just ordered the tao of pooh and the te of piglet to read. i love them. i have always thought there was so much depth to winnie the pooh books, but this really takes the time to say why, and i so totally agree with what he says!
{(added 8-25-20 from found notebook)
Quinn makes up great game/stories about helping find eeyore’s tail and “bum” it back on with a hammer, bringing eeyore a balloon and helping him put it in a useful pot, and having tigger bounce the friends into the river, splash! roo gets bounced in a lot, but he likes it. “i’m swimming!” he shouts. it’s only kanga who worries. she has a green bandana “pouch” for keeping roo safe. it is fun to watch quinn make up the plot lines and orchestrate the interactions. probably the most fun part is hearing him use such great language! “perhaps eeyore would like me to bring him a balloon,” “shall i?” other great pooh lingo: blustery, meanwhile…
}
so…. quinn has recently started dropping the f bomb.
both coparent and i feel we have been “being good” with our language but…. yeah. it slips out. for both of us.
quinn looked up at the cat the other night and told her (did i tell u this already?) “get down off the f&*%ing freezer, kitty!”
oh my.
i turned my head away from him briefly because i could not keep from smiling and it was hard not to laugh out loud.
i turned back to him and validated like the validator i am: “boy, you sure want kitty to get down off the freezer, huh?”
and moving right along, i whisked him into the next room to do something else….. trying to make it be not a big deal.
cut to last night… the last two nights he has had a hard time falling asleep for bedtime, for some reason, even though he is waking up from nap when i get home from work. and we were in bed, from about 9:30 on, and it was about 11 and he was still not asleep, and i had the light off but he was just moving around and being generally restless. then he started asking me to turn the light on.
turn the light on, mama.
mama, can you turn the light on?
i need the light on mama.
*
*
*
turn the f&*%in light on, mama!!!
so i did.
11-5-09
i think partly it’s the full moon coinciding with daylight savings… i stayed up a bit later than i should last night too. although with quinn it also seems to be a growth-related thing. he napped for all of 20 minutes yesterday, but then went to bed at 9 as i was pulling out of coparent’s parking lot, he was ready to sleep right away. so i stayed up finishing my various kitchen projects (making ketchup from the tomatoes from my garden, and making granola bars, and scooping out the pumpkin that i baked so we can do more pumpkin bread tonight.) and then i read about how children who don’t get enough nature experience have ADHD, and read about sourdough bread in my “encyclopedia of country living” and chuckled at the way the author talked about “catching a wild yeast” which i feel is awesome, and i so appreciate it because silly me has been wondering forever how you “make” yeast “from scratch” without buying the package- i am saying this in all seroiusness, i even have recipes, that said “yeast” but then it was like add yeast, i’m like WTF HOW WITHOUT BUYING IT. and so yeah you “catch a wild yeast” is how. duh, i know i am like a molecular biologist/microbiologist geek but…. it took me a while to understand. (ohhhhh they’re airborne and they come to my potato water and plant themselves- ohhhhhhhh.)
pumpkins- the first jackolantern we made is totally moldy. but i showed quinn and told him how now it is time to put our pumpkin in the compost. “but i wanna keep it!” well sweetie, i know, but if we don’t put it in the compost it will rot right there on the counter and turn itself into compost anyway. “but i wanna keep it!” well….. “but i wanna keep it!” yeah….
so i let it sit there another day- so he can see MORE mold growing and know it is ready to be composted. i told him we get to have all new pumpkins next year, etc. he is not into it. he wasn’t even into me baking the other one (only one of them was a pie pumpkin, the other one was a cheap ass one so i don’t care that it went moldy). i told him but we can make more pumpkin bread out of it! his response: “but it has a face!”
as for the f bomb, no new “sightings.”
the only other time i heard quinn say it, was when i said it about something “fucking _____” and quinn said, “no mama, it’s ‘fucking buoy’.” i laughed that time- it was a day when they had been out in the boat crabbing and i just know his dad had said “fucking buoy” that day. busted. we are not telling him it’s a bad word- it’s not! it’s only bad because people say it is… we plan to teach him the whole “there’s a time and a place” type of idea, like we don’t care if you say it around us, but not around grammy and grampy please. that type of thing. because SOME people think it’s a bad word and would be offended, etc. but for now we are just DOWNPLAYING IT as hard as we can.
yesterday we had gymnastics, then went to salvation army to the first wednesday of the month 50% off sale that i have never yet made it to! i have found 3 pairs of jeans there in the past few weeks- score! yesterday was the third. and also another big soup pot (or applesauce, if you will), and an old fashioned meat grinder. it’s like a hand cranked thing that clamps to the counter and you put the wheat berries (or meat) in the top and they come out ground up on the side. quinn had SO MUCH FUN cranking it last night (we are working on learning how to make sprouted wheat bread- have the sprouting down, but our first attempt of grinding we used the blender and it was not great. second attempt we used the meat grinder- better. but i think there is another attachment for it that wasn’t with it, that would be useful…)
then after sal’s we went to sarah’s house for the first time, and helped her pick apples for saturday’s cider making party. it was cool- we just hung out and chatted and picked apples. quinn and gracie played. hope got passed between sarah and i and we took turns using the apple picker thing (long pole with baskety thing on end).
text from coparent this morning:
“livingroom hundred acre wood. pirate house new house for owl. penguin in pirate house.”
quinn is so much fun!
11-7-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)
i woke up with the flu. Q woke up talking about pooh (a dream?) and when i told him i was sick, he said, “you sleep. i’ll go down and get your vitamins and bring ’em to you.” he actually went down by himself, but got distracted “making coffee” for about a half hour (i snuck down to the couch and let him do his thing, i was hurting!)
lately he is “a little baby fox” quite often, and asks me (the mama fox) to scoop him up.
dancing a lot to “low rider” and “happy and you know it.”
11-9-09
mmm quinn and i made pumpkin bread last night from one of the jack o lanterns. it’s yummy!!!
quinn is doing fine, he fortunately didn’t catch whatever i had. he had a great weekend, just being around the house. on saturday he would just play and then come over and climb onto the milk dispenser (me) on the couch whenever he needed a check in. and even sunday he was super self-entertaining. i got a GREAT video of him singing this land again, IT IS PRICELESS!!!!!
when i woke up on saturday i realized I AM SICK and he woke up at the same time and i told him i was sick and he said, “you sleep. i will go downstairs and get you your vitamins and bring ’em to you.” i love this kid. he DID go downstairs by himself, i was THAT out of it (i tend to hover by the stairs when he goes up or down), but i snuck down to the couch soon afterwards. he actually got distracted from the vitamin mission (he can’t reach them anyway, not even with his stool) and was entertaining himself “making coffee” for a half hour.
11-9-09
11-10-09
probably going to make more applesauce with elizabeth this weekend, so that will be fun for both of us. 🙂
yesterday quinn and dada set up a fishing game, in the living room. they tie a long string to a stick, and quinn stands up in the loft and fishes over the railing. dada attached a piece of bendy wire on the string and quinn has a little “bait” fish he can hook on (the fish they colored and cut out, it was an all day project). and then he fishes, and dada can hide the hook under the loft and put on whichever fish he wants, or “seaweed”, and then he tugs on it and quinn gets all excited: “i feel a FISH pulling on my fishing line!!! i better reel it in!!!” it is sooooooooooooo cute. he napped when i got home last night 🙁 but then he and i played fishing for an hour.
11-13-09
i just got approved for a car loan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
quinn stories this week; there are a couple biggies
1. one night earlier this week (might have even been sunday?) he decided he was going to sleep in his “yittle” bed. and he has said that before, then laid down and gotten “tucked in” but then he generally does that for 2 seconds then comes in the big bed. well, he was very torn this time. his little bed has been in the big closet off our bedroom, because we can set up the tent in there and it’s like its own little room essentially. but it’s really just storage mostly. and the tent never got put back up after camping, so his bed was just chillin in there on the floor. anyway, i was asking him if he was ready for me to turn off the light and he said, yeah. then i went to do it and he said no! and i left it on… and i finally asked if he wanted to come back in the big bed, and he said no, i said do you want to stay over there in the little bed- no. i wanna be by you! so we moved the yittle mattress next to the big one, and he slept in it all night! he has slept in it a lot this week, though i confess in the middle of the night when he wants milk i pull him over into the big bed.
2. darn now i can’t remember what i wanted to write for numbah 2 lol. and i am going to leave this here, as a monument to motherhood.
other stuff- he has been doing more pooh stuff, but yesterday he also was acting out parts of the lorax. (he stood a few pieces of firewood up on end to be truffala trees, complete with the lids to his kitchen pots on top, he had dada cut him an ax out of cardboard, and he designated his teddy bear as a “thneed.”)
oh! the other thing was #2 he asked dada “can i have a skateboard?”
i’m not kidding! he has never asked for any “things” before, and he has very little knowledge of skateboards at all, but yep, he asked his dad for one! we are both TOTALLY clueless in that area, i wouldn’t even know where to buy one around here!
he has seen people riding on skateboards, occasionally. one family who we’ve bumped into at the mouse factory and at the farmers market (at fm: hey, don’t we know you from the mouse factory?) are skaters, the dad is major big time skateboarder, you see him skate all around town. and one time at mouse factory, he had his board there and his son who is 1 was on his knees on it, with one foot pushing himself around really well, it was cool. and quinn wanted a turn, and got really upset when he had to give it back. the only other thing i know of, is that he watched one episode of diego while we were at elizabeth’s house that one time making applesauce, and diego has a skateboard (i think.) so that is his sum total of skateboard experience.
11-16-09
the thing with having so much going on is i start to worry whether i’m doing any one of the things well. yoga for example i am not doing well at all, i am lucky if i make it once a week right now. but i am renewing my commitment to go at MINIMUM once a week since my back seems to really need it these days.
in my sweater, by request on his part (and he wanted a hat and socks. and told me “that’s it.”)
paint
more paint- the large blue rectangle was the one in the previous pic with a little green on it. and he is turning little rectangles blue
arugula sprouts
paint finale (red after he came home from dada’s last night. oy vay what a mess!! and i usually do not say that! you know me! but i was going bonkers. quinn said “i’m not bonking you, mama!”)
scooter from free pile it’s not a skateboard, but a good interim until we find one…..
you know, i’m glad i have a few little videos, because he seems SOOOOO much yittler in video, for some reason. the still photos can really age him somehow, unless you notice the dirty face cuteness. in the videos i always feel he looks younger than he is….
11-17-09
on thursday, quinn will be 1000 days old. random fact, i know. i was given a book called “the first 1000 days” by my midwives, at the shower, and it is like a baby journal with artwork by nikki mcclure… anyway, quinn and i are having a 1000 days party tomorrow at some point. i bought him a really nice drum that i have had my eye on and we’ll make something yummy to eat and blow out candles and look at the book and maybe do some stuff in it (like there are pages he can write on and a spot for his hand prints and whatnot, so we will do those things.)
i am by no means finished putting everything in it that i want to, but i will add stuff as i can, but the important thing is that the stuff i write about will all have happened before thursday- wow he is getting bigger!!!!!!
any excuse to have a party around here.
11-19-09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgGo-ASdRk0
that is video of quinn yesterday, scooting down the paved trail at south beach state park… very pixelly and the sound of the wind is crazy but he is still cute. you can see “piglet” (sock monkey) in the “carseat” (pocket tied onto handlebars). last night the majority of the bike got painted green while Q was at the shop, and they also screwed yogurt cups onto the ends of the handlebars- dada said it was quinn’s idea, to trick it out with yogurt cups.
i made him a panda bag to hold his drum and book so i could hide them out in his “little house” in the yard, and then i drew a treasure map that he found when he woke up from nap, and we went on a treasure hunt. we had ice cream with candle-blowing-out at10 am, and then at 9 pm we had muffins and smoothie with more candles. so many parties all in one day. the scooter trip was really the highlight of the day, it was so crazy windy but it was nice just to be outside in the sun!
11-20-09
it’s rainy and still dark out and i’m at work in the dark.
i cleaned a lot last night with quinn, and it was nice and he seemed content to just play or help me clean, and this morning got my dishes done so tonight i can finish up diapers for the craft fair tomorrow. we have to get up SO early. i’m hoping he’ll fall back to sleep in the car, i will just have him dressed ready to go tonight when he goes to bed. we leave at 6:30 or 7 at the latest- 7 is not unheard of for a wakeup time for him, but it is his very most earliest, usually he is more like 8 if left to his own devices, especially if i’m still in the bed with him.
for thanksgiving, we all got invited to lee and kate’s for dinner. i had no plans, susan was going to try to come out but she can’t. i have a turkey i am going to make for quinn and myself on saturday or something…. it’s my food ritual of the year, to make all that meat, freeze most of it, eat a lot of it, make turkey stock, make soup for the next year. it is an 18.5 pound organic happy turkey from my fm friends randy and sarah. love them.
but anyway, we’ll all go to lee and kate’s because they are such nice people and it takes some of the “who has quinn” drama out of things and simplifies life in so many ways. i will make a pie. easy. lee is who i bought my salmon and tuna from. kate helps him, and also works in the local bookstore. quinn and i bump into them in the co-op ALL the time like seriously every time we are there. and they host the weekly folk music jam that coparent goes to on saturday nights, which is how he knows them to begin with. they live out in beaver creek, which is outside town and very very very out there in the woods, and so pretty and they have a property with a bunch of hippie cabins on it, and a big barn where they play the music- it’s set up with microphones and amps, it is dedicated for the purpose of music, and in the other part of the barn they have a skateboard ramp and basketball court and play area for kids. it sounds really cool. i haven’t been yet, this is all just from coparent’s description.
quinn is scooting like a pro now! he totally glides along-at first, he was kind of going really slowly and deliberately and he wasn’t really picking his foot up for long and gliding- he TOTALLY was doing it last night all through the house, apparently he spent a lot of time on the scooter yesterday with dada. oh and i love how he commentates- he tells about his one foot being on the skateboard, and his other foot “dancing” along next to it. LOVE HIM.
11-21-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)
“we’re project-ing.” (beading on pipe cleaners.)
“i’m picking up all the garbage that’s left in the small town of House.”
11-22-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)
building bird feeders with dada, watching stellars jars and talking about how to sneak up to the window slowly to see them, or sitting very still on the back steps so birds will come close. “if i hold my hand flat maybe a chickadee will come and sit on my hand!”
11-23-09
his 1000 day treasure hunt was fun, and cute, and he appreciated the map. he has me “tell me about my map” sometimes. he is just so cute. one of his pirate books has a treasure map in it, so i actually drew it to kind of look like that one… he noticed how similar it was, and i think it made him happy. he hasn’t done much with the drum yet, so we’ll see. yesterday he brought his bag to the aquarium, to carry his drawing book.
we did the craft fair on saturday…. it was good to see trina and noah, but i do not need to do anymore craft fairs. those are not my people, it is not nearly as cool to be stuck inside all day with old ladies as it is to be stuck outside at the fm all morning with people who actually give a hoot about organic cotton…. oh well. i made $23 which did not even cover what i spent in gas and the table fee… oh well. at least i sold SOMETHING. and got to see friends. and it was good to find out- seems like going with the flow for the winter means, working on the online avenues… seems like that is where the universe is pointing, with strong emphasis.
so that ate saturday….. sunday was good though! we made muffins- quinn vetoed panini saying “no we gotta MAKE muffins.” then i said, we could make blackberry, blueberry, carrot, which kind do you want to make? “CARROT!”
he KNOWS what he wants.
i am enjoying a carrot muffin with my coffee right now as a matter of fact.
that it was his idea was the best- i was so totally ready to not even make coffee, just be lazy and go buy one. he totally got me motivated and inspired. and i am glad we made them- i WANT to use the carrots in my freezer. and for the $2.75 we would have spent on ONE muffin (plus another dollar for coffee) we made 12 muffins… i’m sure we spent less. god i love owning a copy of “the joy of cooking!” couldn’t live without it! i was ready to wing it, with my other muffin recipes, but i figured they’d at least have a carrot cake recipe in there that i could take out some sugar, they did, AND carrot muffins, so i didn’t even have to improvise!
so then i convinced him to get out of the house (he seemed content not to go anywhere but i was in the mood to go out) by saying we could bring our drawing books to the aquarium and draw the fish. he was in. we went, we brought colored pencils, we both had our books, we drew fish, birds, and octopus. the sea otter came right up to the window to love us. quinn still knows his way around like a champ…. it was good stuff. we renewed our membership- we will be there a lot, now that all the tourists are gone for the year!!! and now that we have days that are on and off showers- it’s perfect, if it starts to rain, you go in and look at seahorses. it clears up, you go outside and see the sea lions… it’s set up really well for the climate we have here.
then quinn napped, i sewed a few things i’ve been wanting to make him, then took him to the shop and he built a bird feeder with dada, for the backyard at the orange house, so cool. i did more sewing and put my chainsaw together…the usual.
quinn told me a few times this weekend “i don’t yike you.” and he told his dad last night “i don’t yike you, i only yike mama.” it is kind of something he is going through. last night afterwards, i brought him home and we talked about all the things he DOES like about dada (do you like it when dada reads you stories? yes. do you like it when dada plays pirates with you? yes. he answered yes to it all.) but then when i said something about dada being here when he wakes up tomorrow, he said “no, because i don’t yike him, i only yike you!” sigh.
i have this funny feeling that i was not allowed to grapple with that as a kid, it was just not acceptable and i was told you do like/love whatever or whoever, end of story. so that is definitely making it easier for me to hear him processing that type of thing- like oh, he is just processing.
also plenty of “tell me you yuvv me as big as the sky and as big as the ocean, mama!” this weekend too. so there is that to balance it out.
what he doesn’t yike, is me not being there with him…. he is most definitely not into me going to work. there has been a lot of play lately, centered around him “going to work” on his scooter, and whether i come with him to work, or i stay home, or whether we get to have kisses/hugs/boops when he leaves or comes back, or he will call from work (in the kitchen) “say you miss me!” and i will say “i miss you! come home now!” and he scoots back “home” (the living room.) he is definitely doing a lot of work on that theme.
it knocks me off my feet every time someone says something about not being overly “no”-y with quinn and saying things in a non-negative way and letting him make choices himself. i don’t know if i have articulated where i stand on conditional love/obedience vs having his own internal moral compass stuff. i think obedience should be a very low priority in raising children… that is why i try to word things in a “yes” manner instead of saying no.
i don’t think anyone thinks of quinn as “bad” in fact i get LOTS of comments on how “good” he is, and i even think people are like, huh, who knew you could not spank and yet still have a child turn out “good”. i think people assume that you HAVE to push obedience and compliance or they won’t happen, but yeah i think quinn tends to be a “good” kid BECAUSE i treat him with respect, like he’s not just some semi-person, he is a real actual person, and deserves to make choices for himself and be respected and spoken to like a person (as do i) and i just think people are surprised and hence the comments- they hear me speak to him the way i do, then they kind of marvel, wow and yet he behaves! but they completely miss the connection.
my main philosophy is that the stronger a connection i have with quinn, the more i can rely on that connection when he IS acting out in some way that is hard to deal with. if you set it up to always be adversarial, it will always be adversarial. if you set it up based on trust, you can always come back to the trust. it also seems to mean that he doesn’t act out as much- he feels pretty secure in his connection with me- he can do anything, and i will still love him, therefore he doesn’t feel the need to test it all that much.
it’s eye-opening to listen to people talk about “showing kids who’s boss.” the kid has no question in his mind the big people are the bosses, do we need to drill that lesson in? and why? why are we in such a need to BE the boss? of a 2 year old? give me a break.
33 months!
i just measured him last night, he is 38.5 inches tall! holy crap! haha i just googled some random growth percentile thingie and he is in the 87th %ile for both height and weight now. he is so normal! but still, there is such a range, and he sure seems to tower over all the 3 and 4 year olds! i imagine his head circumfrence is still in the 100th %ile. but yeah he is still my little baby but dang he is a big kid! scooting around the house with his foot dancing along beside him.
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