a photo capturing a moment from the week.
a simple, special moment.
a moment i want to pause, savor and remember.
~this moment~ t.rex
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Tag Archives: art
little artist
documenting a slice of time that i know i will remember as quinn’s artist phase of 2011… before finishing his oatmeal in the mornings, he is already at work, skinny markers and stacks of paper at the ready.
loving the facial expressions i’ve been catching… intense concentration.
riding a horse
another of him riding a horse, plus mama running. (i love how he is centaur-ish in this one!)
the four directions? a mariner’s compass? “a circle with an x marks the spot, and my name!” this one is so profound to me. may he always be so well oriented to his own compass!
dada will say things like “he has the clan memories” (see clan of the cave bear if you’re wondering…) he drew this owl with a broken leg (again, blew me away the way he drew the leg like a lightning bolt!) and he drew his dagger and knife, both in their sheaths, with which he could help the owl mend its leg and set it “three” again.
i didn’t even get the full story on this one- but does anyone else see cave drawings?
more petroglyphs?
this “aminal” has four legs, many eyes, and eight “milks”.
a bird with an insect in its beak and a fish in its talons. later, he clarified that the insect was “a squid”. well, alright then.
“a festibal!”
he has also been drawing a lot of airplanes lately, making up all sorts of configurations for propellers and wings… (he has been doing some careful cutting with scissors lately, he cut out a very small apple drawing for me one day, and also made me a new phone that he cut out very precisely, since my phone was broken for a few days…)
another plane, flying above a boat that appears to have (possibly) mama and dada on board, towing a small boat with a person that was likely going to be quinn… (my guesses- i think this one did not meet his expectations and he moved on to another one). the big boat contains three bunks.
another version of the 3-bunk sailboat
mama, dada, quinn, and a lot of dwarves!
our happy jack-o-lanterns! (you can see their candles inside. they are each perched on a mason jar, as we had them propped up on our table for a few days…)
here be dragonflies
when i moved to the oregon coast i was completely unaware of the fact that it is a migratory corridor for dragonflies. i hadn’t even known dragonflies were migratory. apparently, there are both resident and migratory forms of dragonflies among the many dragonfly species, and seasonal north/south migrations happen all across north america. this phenomenon happens on every continent sans antarctica. incredible.
get this. the ones that are born in the north and migrate to the south, are thought to be a different generation than the ones who are born in the south (offspring of the ones who originated in the north) and migrate northward. neato! this is similar to what happens in some butterfly species, but it is mind blowing, to say the least. i dare you to wrap your mind around how this can possibly work!
major directional flights reportedly follow the passage of cold fronts, and trace topographic leading lines… like our coastline, for example. some people apparently attach radio transmitter devices to individual dragonflies, to find out this sort of thing. with a combination of eyelash adhesive and super glue. you have to read the primary literature to learn those tricks of the trade…. according to these authors, attaching such equipment to a tiny creature is rationalized by the fact that they mate on the wing, and that they routinely carry prey larger than themselves. (however, are they going to successfully mate, and capture prey larger than themselves while hauling a radio transmitter?! hmmmm, something tells me that’s not the question being asked… it always bugs me when research critters are deemed “expendable,” as long as the research is “sound” and that goes for the research going on in my own lab!)
loosely related to this topic, i have just finished reading wendell berry’s life is a miracle, and have been challenging myself to really try to exercise all the different ways of knowing, and allow those ways to have conversations across disciplines in my head. what i mean by that is, you can take a subject (say, dragonflies) and look at it through the lens of science, or spirituality, or art… there are many different ways of knowing that complement each other, and yet the way i was trained in public school and university was very much to keep each discipline in its own separate little box. that includes the “multidisciplinary” department i belonged to in graduate school- i have to say that my education there was almost entirely accomplished within the scientific mode, and did not really do much to stretch me to cross disciplines. berry has a lot to say on this, and is far more eloquent than me, so i’ll leave it at that and continue with my own attempt at seeing all sides of the dragonfly…
at an earlier stage in my life, dragonflies were somewhat of a totem animal or spirit helper for me. only now looking back is it obvious how their movement, speed, and dynamic lifestyle were so fitting for that transient time of my life. attributes of dragonflies as spirit helpers (and ways they help) include:
finding true vision; visualizing and manifesting positive outcomes
tuning into deeply felt, but ignored, emotions
maneuverability and movement, propulsion into new ways of being and doing
transformations (they spend up to a couple of years in the mud as nymphs before they emerge and fly away! boy can i relate! and boy am i glad there are spirit helpers for this! transformation is intense!)
seeing around things from different angles; seeing color and light
“coming to understand who you truly are” really? that seems a tall order for such diminutive creatures to help with… still, they are miniature dragons, who better to help us slay (or befriend?) our inner ones…
hey, is it me? or do dragonflies sound highly qualified for the role of law-of-attraction mascot?
for a few years i saw not many of them… they’re baaaaack.
here’s my account of witnessing a recent mass dragonfly migration.
one of the things i do for myself is to occasionally spend my lunch hour on the beach. it’s part of the whole point of living here, after all. on september 24, 2010, i went to south beach state park and as i walked along the beach towards my “spot”, i noticed one or two dragonflies whiz by me, looking rather purposeful in their flight. after a few more, i realized i was smack in the middle of the southward annual migration (thankfully i had heard of it and knew what i was looking at!) when i got to my spot, i sat as hundreds of them flew past me in ones, twos, threes, and fours… not 30 seconds would pass in between a sighting. it was incredible! yet so subtle, that i am pretty sure the 20 or so other people out enjoying the sunshine on the beach did not even notice more than one or two of them, nor detect their unidirectional flight pattern. a truly awe inspiring half hour.
i took 25 pictures with my phone and magically happened to catch a few. i like these shots not because they are particularly picturesque, but because they show these little determined beasts in motion. (you can click on each thumbnail to enlarge and play “where’s waldo?” for fun.)
hello old friend, i am excited to learn so much more about you now.
when i first tried to draw one years ago, it turned out like a pressed dead flower (berry talks about “photographing the corpse” and how it doesn’t capture the essence of a thing, to know it scientifically in that way- the sum of all knowledge about a thing, does not equal the thing itself.) a few times in the past few months i have finally sat down to draw them again; but how to capture their movement on paper?
you can’t get a good look and really observe them until they stand still… or show up dead on the sidewalk on the bayfront. (yes i collect dead bugs…)
i’ve recently been exploring the idea of having a sense of place in the world, and how to craft a narrative of the life forged in that place. among the things i ponder are why i moved across the country, why some people never leave the town they were born in, and how a transplanted person such as myself could come to feel so at home in a new home, that they’d passionately want to save it from destruction. i feel this place has begun to take possession of me in that way, and me of it. the central oregon coast blows me away on a daily basis, and i fall farther and deeper in love with it. wendell berry has much to say (in not only this one book) about the importance of place and the importance of having a passion for a particular place, in our lives .
berry says of conversations with a scientist friend of his, “our conversation is always striving to be local and particular. it is full of proper nouns, names of places and people.” reading the dragonfly observations of the yaquina birders and naturalists, our local naturalists’ group, i read lots of that kind of language, and even recognized several familiar names of local folks. the narrative of place has been a topic on my mind quite a bit recently, and how we come to craft it- it seems to me berry has hit on something crucial here, with the local language thing. and aside from one’s personal narrative, people finding their way to loving a place wholeheartedly in this particular way is what saves a place, an environment, a habitat. science can study it all day long and can even tell us we “should” conserve, but at the end of the day, a place will be preserved only if someone loves it fiercely. i am with wendell on that one.
with regard to my dragonfly migration experience, one major thing stood for me from the ybn field notes: in 1994 it was noted that “previous Major Directed Flights have occurred only during the narrow 8/30-9/14 window.” i presume they meant that they have only been recorded then, rather than they had only occurred then. still, i felt kind of cool adding a new datum to the dataset, since my observation took place later, on 9/24. (i haven’t contacted ybn yet but plan to!) ybn only had field notes on the internet through 2003, so perhaps someone has already made a similar observation; also, from the notes, it is clear i am not the only local keeping an eye out for the wee dragons! for those who are interested, our local migratory dragons seem to be mostly of the species Sympetrum corruptum. the variegated meadowhawk, in the common tongue.
i find them to be very pretty, deep red and brown. i feel kind of defiant as a scientist, saying that. i guess i’m not “supposed” to think about whether they are pretty. but i do… and i want them to keep coming back here to visit me every year! it causes me to lay awake at night worrying about pesticides…
on 10/29/10 i had the chance to photograph a dragonfly up close, at seal rock state park. it wasn’t engaged in major directional flight, and was not S. corruptum, but i do not yet feel confident in its identification. but i do know there are people around here i can ask! people with names and faces and knowledge of obscure facts about insects.
as life is a miracle draws to a close, berry shifts from verbally bludgeoning e.o. wilson (yeah, you have to kind of look past that to find the good stuff), to a very personal glimpse of himself and his own family, particularly the lineage of fathers before him, and his son and grandson, all of whom have participated in farming for generations in the same place in kentucky. as one who has left the place of my birth, also a farm, and settled far away on a distant shore, i want to believe that i can nurture the same level of love for this land that i now inhabit, that i could have had if i had stayed put in rural central new york. i am not sure how that will go, but i am going for it, and i can already say that i love this place more than i could have imagined. at any rate, i am heartened by the little dragons of the air, who are born far away from where their parents were, and yet somehow know exactly where they are going and what to do. i am thinking that my inner dragons needed to grow some wings and take to the air… and i think somehow, i am going to know what i am supposed to do.
stamping fun
inspired by this post, quinn and i did some crafty stamping with clay yesterday. we used what we had around, which was sculpee clay, but the post talked about plasticene. i never follow rules, and tend to just use what i have on hand (this stuff has been around for probably a year in an airtight container and is still pliable), so this is what we came up with, and it was fun!
the sculpee clay had a nice consistency to it once i had worked it in my hands for a few minutes. we then flattened out one end of a clump of it, and made whatever shape. quinn enjoyed poking the clay with a toothpick. i used a fish button to make this one:
and had fun reshaping the flower petal stamp each time to make each one around the sunflowers become unique.
here is quinn’s sunflower, in his favorite color:
another fun technique was to use a cookie cutter to imprint the shape. the star shown here is done that way, as well as the bunnies pictured above, while the spirals were done with a long snakey piece wound into, (uh), a spiral!
i would agree with the author of the above-mentioned post, that one of the best parts of this activity is the impermanence of each stamp- just the act of stamping with it changes each shape until a stamp is pretty flattened out and ready to evolve into the next creation. it is a fun, dynamic process. we’ll definitely revisit this one throughout the rainy months…
quinn’s twenty-third month ~ self knowledge, christmas in ny, and bobbins
12-22-08
before i put quinn to bed, he and i were sitting on the couch we were just reading books and all of a sudden this ambulance went by and blared its siren JUST outside our house. it was really short- it wasn’t like when you hear it coming, it was just all of a sudden BLAM! quinn basically jumped out of his skin and was trying to crawl into mine. he did not even cry, but it was like he went deep, deep inside for about ten minutes. i was just holding him and he grabbed my hand and put it on his ear (i put my hand on his head/ear sometimes as he is falling asleep, or if he is going to sleep in the sling, it’s something i’ve done since he was tiny and i realized it seemed to really help him fall asleep and lately sometimes he’ll basically “ask” for it by putting my hand there) and he had his other hand grabbing my hair to keep my face right up with his face- i had very little range of motion, i was basically either breathing on him or kissing him, or looking right into his eyes, that was all i could move, he was clinging on so hard. i was just telling him mama’s here and whatnot and it’s ok, and that was scary, wasn’t it? and he couldn’t even talk at first, then eventually i said, did you feel really scared? and he WHISPERED “yeah” and i feel like i have never seen him that vulnerable… he got so little again in that few minutes. so we sat there. i told him what it was, what a siren was, what an ambulance was, and why they make that noise, and i told him about when he was born and we had to go in an ambulance because, honestly, that is the only reason i can think of that he would be SO affected by that particular sound. loud noises in general scare him, but THIS…. this was something beyond that. it totally triggered something for him, so i told him all that, in as least scary way as i could, and just held him and rocked him and then i asked if he wanted to lay down and have milk and he was still just above a whisper “yeah”. so he went to sleep but so did i, and then i woke up and came back out, but he was pretty fitful making dream-sounds until i came to bed, and several times i went in just to put my hand on him while he dreamed and breathe next to him so he’d feel me there, and that seemed to calm him down.
12-24-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
opened presents in AM with mama, saw dada after nap. left for airport 7 pm. drive in snow…. flying!
12-25-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
still flying! “ear ladybug” not sure what he meant by this… arrived at syracuse 12:20. Grampy and Uncle B picked us up in the “green car”.
christmas morning!
pdx… on the way to new york!
12-28-08
merry christmas!!!!!!!
quinn and i got to just relax and settle in today with my mom being the only one around for most of the day. yest was a different story. he slept the whole second leg of the flight, woke up as we landed at 12:30, and then was up and playing and seeing everything until maybe 5 and then napped ALALLLLLL evening and woke up at 11 lol. he then kept me up until 1, and i had been ready to nap with him at 5 so i was LITERALLY falling asleep reading him books in bed, i would get through half a page and doze off, and he’d go “mama” and i’d continue the page. then we slept until 8am. it’s the rew family farm… last night was the picnic and i thought quinn was gonna wake up for that but that was when he ended up sleeping till 11. so he missed the picnic and so did i basically- i took him up
to bed and when i got back down it was over. i got to hold talan and quinn together for a few minutes at the beginning right before q dropped off, and it was just so cool. talan is so squishy and has fuzzy head still and oh. he is just adorabubble. and quinn is having an incredible time playing with the funniest things. today he got more mileage out of a 12-pack of sewing machine bobbins (the little thingies you wind thread on) and we were stacking them and rolling them down things, etc. all afternoon. he and i didn’t evem open most of our presents yet it has just been all funky.
tonight i go to tim and nat’s, and tomorrow morning to mary ellen’s, and everyone comes back here tomorrow night for dinner.
uncle b
grammy and grampy and bobbins!
sunshine on the porch
baking bread
our old rocking horse.
helping grampy pay the bills
and some way better photos, from my mom’s camera!
headed home to oregon
1-2-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
pupple (purple)
pockets – compost
words in new contexts
Quinn loves the sunnins (sea lions) and calls to them a lot.
1-4-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“hi little milk”
“kiss milk”
“almost gone”
“crow in there outside”
panini and walk down to the ocean.
folk musician, age one.
1-6-09
had a conversation with my bff about how “quinn alwyas looks like a boy who KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS and knows what he’s doing.”
my response: i LOVE that you said this. more than you can imagine… it is really important to me actually because i see other babies and i see a lot of toddlers around with glazed over eyes and they don’t really seem to have much of a mind of their own, they just go along with things, or they have a tantrum or get into mischief sometimes, but it’s just different. quinn ALWAYS at ALL times has an agenda, and knows what he would like to do. or what he needs from me. and it is very encouraging because that has always been my goal. i believe that if you are constantly telling a baby no, and not giving them what they ask for, they learn that they are not capable of communicating their agenda, and they stop having one. whereas if i tell quinn yes, and i do my best to give him what he wants or at LEAST acknowledge “yeah those CDs sure would be fun to play with but here’s why we can’t…” which oddly enough is all he usually needs, then he’s happy to do something else… my point is, he has always been reinforced in knowing what he wants by being told he is a good communicator and therefore i think he has even MORE new grand ideas and schemes. i just love that you observe these things even just through pictures and stories, and you are picking up on things that are so near and dear to my mama heart and yet i don’t think i ever really put it to you that way before.
bff: “one thing i DO notice and compare to other peoples kids/stories, etc… is the way you two play. a#1) quinn is always doing something b#2) it’s something …i don’t know how to explain it…but smart and freeing…not a plastic toy that plays itself and lights up and makes noise. he makes his own noise and plays his own games. it tOTALLY comes across in the pictures…NO DOUBT about it…a) how smart he is and b) that he knows what he wants.”
me: i guess i think of it as a goal because of where i’m at in my own life, as an adult, and not really always knowing my own mind. i really want him to have a different experience, and to always know what HE wants. for himself… if that makes sense. i think it causes me problems, and i think it starts in early childhood. well it starts when you’re born. there are many moments like that- and yeah redirecting (let’s go make muffins instead) is a good way to deal, but at least for me, it is important to first say, i know you want to do x, here is why we can’t, i understand why it would be fun for you, or i understand you feel disappointed/sad/mad that we can’t. now let’s help ourselves feel better and go bake muffins…. or something along those lines. like not to cut off his plans for x, and distract him, i guess is what i mean- i guess for me the validating thing is a biggie- i let him know i heard him and his feelings are valid, even though we still can’t do x.
he wanted “doot doot” on the stereo and to lay on me on the couch with the pretty lights in the living room. (lately we’ve had “doot doot” on repeat – it’s pete seeger singing she’ll be coming around the mountain but quinn calls it doot doot) and then he wanted “rocking chair milk” when i suggested laying back down in the bed for milk. no, rocking chair milk. he does know his mind.
watercolors
1-7-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“in the garbo” and “tomp tost!”
1-11-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“hi little milk.”
“other milk pretty please.”
1-14-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
mom went to work all day. it’s fun coming home and running up to the window where Quinn is standing, watching him laugh hysterically through the glass.
1-15-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
latch-on kisses are hilarious. he is very affectionate. loves hugs and kisses. every so often he snuggles up – one day recently he just laid on my lap for a full five minutes, took my hand and “asked” me to play with his hair. We had a long “milk bath.” We had a talk about angry – “angee Quinn!” – mama and dada had been angry with each other. i told him the best thing to do was to use words if he feels angry and talk about the feeling, so he did.
1-16-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
Quinn’s language is amazing; though I have left off recording the new words he uses, it is only because he can say ANYthing now! he will specifically request certain CDs “bop diwin” (bob dylan), “bop marwey” (bob marley), “uncoo jewwy” (jerry garcia), “johnny hookoo” (john lee hooker). He now clearly says “outside” which not too long ago was “o-zye.” many examples of this new clarity. he parrots ridiculous phrases with his dad “what up dawg” (he asked me this in the bathtub), “sup wit dat dude,” “sup dude,” and so on. he is doing it with me too but it’s more subtle… “how bout min-amin?” i am always asking him what he’d like to do “how about…?” tonight i said “know what? we forgot your pink vitamins – we should go take those! and he replied, “know what? pink min-amins!”
I set up his shadow box tonight (we bummed the nails together actually), and he had fun adding rocks, people, and pirates. He stood there rearranging his little plan toy wooden people for quite some time.
As for the above mentioned CDs, Quinn’s favorite songs right now are trenchtown rock, she’ll be coming around the mountain sung by pete seeger (known as “doot doot”; i printed a CD with 12 copies of the same song to avoid having to get up every time he needs to go back and hear it again!) tangled up in blue, and teddy bear’s picnic (jerry garcia and david grisman).
1-17-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“noah day!” is what Quinn called today because we got to have trina and noah over to play! the boys had such a great time together. they had every toy in the house on the floor – trains, blocks, markers, balls, little people everywhere! oh, and the toolboxes – Quinn has two, and they are chock full because some of mama’s tools live in them now, too, as they became safe enough for Quinn to use. Both boys were rubbing their eyes by the time they had to leave and Quinn went immediately down for a nap.
what the grizzly knows (book)
1-18-20 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
bust a move at seal rock
giggling in sleep
rocks “plunk!”
1-22-09 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“silly mama/silly dada” and lots of 3-5 word sentences.
“yesterday”
“patoes in the fridgerator”
1-22-09
i am so impressed with him. tuesday we had him with summer for the hour while we went to counseling… and he did GREAT. did not cry when we left, or anything. then that night i was playing a puzzle with him, and i said, oh i saw you doing a puzzle with summer today, just like this one, did you have a good time with summer? and he nodded and said “yeah!” then he kind of got all serious and thoughtful and said “sad”. i wasn’t SURE that was what he said so i asked, did you feel sad? yeah. oh, were you sad when mama and dada had to both leave? yeah. and i said, oh i understand, that is a sad feeling. and then i said, were you happy when mama and dada came back to get you? Yeah!
and that was the end of the conversastion, he was ready for milk/bed. he is so awesome. i just love that he is starting to come up with his own assessment of his feelings…. like i am just learning how to do now at age 30. it wasn’t even in response to me asking how he was feeling- he just offered it out of the blue. my babe of a baby. he is TWENTY THREE MONTHS old!
quinn’s twenty-second month ~ “piddy yites”
11-25-08
some of his musical faves are:
baby loves jazz
taj mahal young at heart
not for kids only jerry garcia and david grisman
a children’s celebration of folk music
in harmony (sesame street tribute)
but he really loves regular music just as much, honestly. i can put on michael franti and he is just bopping away. he loves happy upbeat music basically, but even “pretty” quiet music gets him dancing- he is so into dancing, i just love it.
he’s riding on his moose and holding his apple that he asked to eat, and when he got the apple from me he put it into a yogurt cup to eat it- so here he is with it munched all the way down to the cup like an ice cream cone.
awe and wonder; christmas lights at the aquarium
11-28-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
Q and I went to nye beach this morning – no wind! it was nearly high tide, so not much beach was exposed. i drank coffee and tried to sit up straight and stretch while Q dug in the sand. he napped early and i napped with him, so no break, and then the nap only lasted an hour, so we had a few cranky moments together in the afternoon. later we went to the aquarium to see the christmas lights, Q was truly mesmerized by the reflections on the stream. he really liked the tunnel. we had more turkey for dinner.
11-29-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
we went down the coast today. first we stopped at the water spout because it was high tide. big waves today! then we drove up ten mile creek which goes into the siuslaw national forest. we hiked down to the creek (Q in the sling) we threw rocks in the creek (splash! plunk!) then hiked back. on the way home, we stopped at the cape perpetua visitors center to buy a map, but Quinn was taking his second nap so he didn’t go inside. then we stopped at the store where Q requsted “ba-na-nas” and went home for more turkey, sweet potatoes, and salad. Quinn had a good evening of coloring with mama, and went to sleep at 9.
11-30-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
4 day weekend. went for a wonderful mid-day sail. when we got home Q wanted to read zen shorts a whole bunch of times. his favorite character is the little girl, addy. (“where did addy go?” he asks when we are on a page where she is not depicted.)
he kept choosing his yellow fleece jacket all weekend- he LOVEs yellow. he has fleece in every color of the rainbow and sometimes i give him two to choose from, or sometimes i say what color jacket do you want to wear? if yellow is an option, he picks yellow. i finally had to wrestle him out of it last night because it is filthy and needed to be
washed (and not worn to bed).
sunday we went for a sail, which was awesome, the best sail yet, super nice weather but enough wind (not cold) to basically go across the bay, and it was just very cool. here’s the boy in the bottom of the boat, snacking.
12-1-08
i got him this new book, called zen shorts. i knew it was a bit older than him (amazon says it is K-grade 4 age) but i am just basically starting a collection, and don’t mind if he doesn’t want to read some of them until he grows into them or whatever.the first time or two i tried reading it to him, he got bored halfway and said all done. so that’s cool. but lately, and especially yesterday and last night at bedtime, he is now OBSESSED with the book. it is a story of three kids, addy, michael and karl, who met and panda named stillwater, and they each go to visit him and he tells each of them a story (all of which have zen meanings in them). quinn has a huge crush on addy right now- where did addy go? if i get too involved in one of the other kids, he’ll ask where addy is. but he does let me read through the entire book now, AND then he wants to start again at the beginning, or go back to an addy section and read that… over and over. i am so in love with my son. susan has said before (when Q started his “happy day” thing, which he still does) that she thinks he is a shaman or something. and i’m like…. hmmmmm. he is making me re-read and re-read these zen meditations to him…. or is he making me read them to MYSELF?
the last “zen short” in the book is called the heavy load. 2 monks are walking (on a long journey) and they see this woman who is scolding her attendants because she has no way to get across this puddle without ruining her silk robes, and they are holding too many of her packages to help her across. the younger monk notices, and keeps walking. the older monk stops, carries the woman across the mud on his back, and puts her down. she doesn’t thank him, continues scolding her attendants. the monks continue on their way. then hours later, the younger monk has been stewing about it all day, and he finally says, hey, that woman back there was so rude and yet you carried her on your back! and she didn’t even thank you! and the older monk replies… i put the woman down hours ago. why are YOU still carrying her?
it just dawned on me last night (after quinn made me read it for the 4011th time) that maybe i need to stop carrying some stuff now…….
12-2-08
he is pretty solid on green and red and blue and orange now. he has known purple and yellow for a while of course. he sometimes still mixes up the others, and i wonder about red-green color blindness and such, but i think it is just his brain getting them organized.
did i tell you he kisses me on the cheeks now? he says “cheek!” to get me to present one, then he kisses it, then grins at me, then turns my head and kisses the other one.
this morning i asked him to bring me his shoes and he said “tay mama” which i took to mean “okay mama”.
last night quinn asked to paint… so i got out a piece of fabric and taped it to the floor for him to paint on. but he got a little wild with the paint and while i had my back turned, he painted his whole face- i actually watched him surreptitiously rather than stopping him (it was much too late to save him from needing a bath anyway, so i figured what the heck) and he was so cute, the thoughtful look as he put red all over his right cheek. then i came back in and he told me “red face! red face!” then he was starting to get really nutty and trying to put his fully painted hands on furniture, so we got in the bathtub. he then refused to put on a diaper after bath was over, and ran into the kitchen to play, and then once again i turned my back for two seconds, and i heard “uh-oh mama, uh-oh mama!” and i look and he had pooped on the floor. hilarious. what an evening.
he is getting really good about not putting things in his mouth. he sometimes still does, like with a little devil look on his face. but like this week i got out the crayons. he has been doing mostly markers because they don’t have that inviting “eat me” wax smell like the crayons do, but now he seems like he understand to just color with them. so we color with “tans” now too.
12-6-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
aquarium with noah and trina. octopus, sea lions being fed, “hello butt” halibut, nummy-nee touch tank.
12-7-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
wake up: kiss! hug! happy day to you mama! up up up up up.
drizzly day. baked bread, books in rocking chair.
“quiet please!”
12-9-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
very independent about dinner – he opened (unzipped) his lunch bag, found crackers and apple slices left over, decided to put those on the plate with his half a breakfast burrito that I had showed him was for dinner, but had left on the counter because he hadn’t been hungry yet, then carried it all to his high chair, somehow climbed up into it and sat with the plate on his lap, eating.
12-10-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“wow, guys!”
12-11-08
yesterday after he napped he rode in the stroller and we went to the asian market to buy cookie cutters and thenwe made farm animal sugar cookies. after that i tried to get him to play with his dad who had just gotten there, and he kept coming back to me “tooking!” he loves cooking so much it’s hilarious. so he was spooning the beans onto the tortillas, adding the cheese. he thinks it’s the BEST thing in the world.
“read it again,” is something i hear a lot these days.
12-12-08
i put up colored lights on the mantle this morning before quinn woke up and he was totally in love with them- wouldn’t sit in his high chair in the other room, because “piddy yites!” (pretty lights) were in the other room. so he ate his bagel on the couch and just looked at the piddy yites and kept saying it over and over.
12-13-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
i’m noticing Q’s “k” and hard “c” sounds have markedly come along – milk has gone from “milt” to “mulk”. he can say kitty. muppin is already muffin. we baked this morning while i talked to grammy – so that i could talk to grammy, actually. anything short of baking would not distract him from wanting the phone! mostly inside all day, just the two of us. later went to the library when we got a little stir crazy. played with the trains and dollhouse for a while, then got out four books to bring home including “blueberries for sal” “alligators all around” “richard scarry’s best counting book ever” and “spots, ? and curly tails”. we read all four of these, and more, before bed at 7:15!
12-14-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
snow! woke up to snow on the ground! Quinn needed to go outside right away and check it out. we acted out scenes from ezra jack keats’ the snowy day.
12-15-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
snow day! woke up to snow on the ground (a little more than yesterday) and becky closed for the day so Q and i stayed home!
12-18-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
“yike olives.”
wanted to see dada, so I put him on the phone. “dada? oh, dada. talk to you later, bye bye dada!”
12-19-08
quinn started saying “pretty cool, huh?” i realize i say it all the time when i’m showing him things… so he was figuring out that he could spin this string with a block tied to the end, and it would swing around, and he kept going “piddy too-el, huh!” (a statement, not a question.)
quinn said my name the other day. he was sitting at the dinner table with me, and i was preoccupied maybe i was reading or just staring into space and he was going mama, mama, mama. (i realized after) and then he said,”mimi-beff!” i was amazed. he said it a bunch more times that night, but not since then (several days ago now.)
12-20-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
asked for a clementine “back together”
“bummer dude.”
“otay.”
“awight.”
doot doot on repeat.
12-21-08 (added on 8-20-20 from found notebook)
up from 4:30-5:30 needing “doot doot!”
painted this morning. rainy day – ona beach in am. very attached to raccoon and walrus babies – in sling, helping them go night night, feeding them last night (at 5am actually) he brought them to bed with us. brought them in car to go to the beach, etc.
