The Birds and The Fish

Time for adventuring this morning!  The boys had their adventure bags, loaded with pencils, notebooks, binoculars, magnifying glasses, and water bottles.  Beanie had her adventure bag ready with her camera, drawing book and colored pencils, story book for the car ride, and stuffed animal because she just has to have one with her at all times.  Its required somewhere in her girl handbook I think.  I had my adventure bag ready with the camera, wipees, mosquito spray, and the birding book.  Daddy's adventure bag is really the baby backpack and consists of the Squeakers...and some water bottles.  We loaded up and headed to Cherokee Marsh, a new destination for this group of wanderers.


We were excited to find prairies and woods, as well as a trail that led to the river.  I love being able to take pictures of the trees and flowers for identifying later, pointing out bugs along the way hoping to find some kind of wonderful new nature discovery to share with the kids.  Usually, Otter is the only one who gets as excited as I am about these things, but I keep trying with them all.  Beans sometimes gets interested and Smoosh is slowly getting attracted to the little things that crawl.  Daddy does a great job of entertaining us all along the way, recreating Dora exploring or some kind of bizarre lost captain of the woods.  The man does an excellent job in the comedy department.  There was a neat observation tower the kids could climb and Beans found a little spot where she could yank out her book and draw a little bit.

The kids actually sat and listened to birds for a few seconds while I grabbed out the bird book with high hopes of sharing my infinite wisdom on identifying birds by their songs and flight patterns with the books illustrations of their feather colors and beak shape.  But, Smoosh and Beanie decided too much sitting and observing was not terribly exciting and ran off in search of more mobile adventures before I could even get the book open.  Otter and I sat, listened, and watched for birds.  Squeakers did her best keeping Daddy on his toes by running after Beans and Smoosh, often tripping and falling on the stones in her way.  We walked further down the path and found a nice little dock where we could sit on the water.  Daddy  was the first to point out some splashes in the water that were definitely from fish.  We all sat to watch.  Then one by one, Beans got up, Smoosh got up, and Squeakers rolled over out of her backpack almost into the water.  Maybe she wanted to taste it?   Time for them to go, and Otter and I to be left alone again to just sit and observe.

There are times where that old part of my life as a scientist gets a little chance to come back up and get a fresh breath of air from all this mommyness, and this was one of those rare moments thanks to those big splashes.  Otter and I started to notice they were all splashing in the same spots, all in the same pattern at the same intervals.  In one great big circle.  Too cool.  They weren't eating, they were, you know, ummm...trying to pass on their genes!  As a person who specialized in developmental biology and probably knows a bit too much about the mating habits of other species, this was a terribly exciting event for me to actually see randomly on a Saturday morning adventure out with my kids!  Unfortunately for me, my excitement for this sort of event is not shared by family members.  My enthusiasm was not matched in the least when I exclaimed "Oh look, all those fish are mating!  They're not eating, guys!!!  They're all mating!!"  Otter was a little bit interested, Daddy feigned a spark of delight at my discovery, and Smoosh proceeded to throw sticks at the big splashes in the water as I was trying to show him the fish.  Bean lifted her head for a moment, then went back to tinkering in the grass.  Did they not realize that in the animal world this only happens once a season?!?!?  How could this not be so incredibly cool to them??!?!  No one else thought that sitting on the dock and watching the fish for another 20 minutes or so would be nothing short of wonderful, not even Otter.  Sigh.  I begrudgingly got up from the dock and joined the rest of them as they decided the water had been entertaining enough for them and they wanted to find more adventures back in the woods.  There it was, my brief 10 minutes of scientist, delicious as it was, now gone and back into mommy-mode. 

We did more discovering out in the green and eventually found our way back to civilization.  As soon as we got home though, I spent a good deal of time looking up carp and pike mating habits trying to determine what fish we had seen out there.  Its good to let the scientist in me indulge in my guilty little pleasures every once in awhile.  And I marked my calendar to make sure we "adventure" out there around this time next year...you know, because it was so nice out and all...

In The Garden

No expectations, rough start to the morning, but great fun had by all.

Why Can't it Ever Just Be Easy?

Wisconsin has decided to do its best impersonation of Virginia this year. For winter, we had barely any snow. It is now May and was almost 90 degrees outside this morning and humid. What is going on?!?! I am very against the video games and TV and hate being inside when the nice weather does finally come. So, we decided to pull out the sprinkler and not let something like stinkin', sweatin' hot weather bug us...no, no, no...with young children, there are always plenty of other things to bother us so we might as well not let the weather be one of them. With great expectations, the morning started off well enough. These are two warnings alone that my morning is not going to go smoothly - expectations and a smooth start. Here are Smoosh and Squeaks in their new swimsuits from Mama. Can you feel the excitement?

Yup, there it is - all that excitement for that sprinkler, just waiting to get out the door and feel all the fun pouring out the spouts. We got it plugged up and the joy began...well, for Squeakers. Smoosh found that his expectations of water gushing forth into high fountains of joy were a little bit bigger than the sprinkler was willing to produce for him.












So sad. That's OK, we try, try, and try again. For my litle man, I was willing to keep finding something for him, even if that meant digging through the basement to find the sprinkler that actually moved and might be able to meet his expectations a little better. This is where it all went screwy. Found the sprinkler, hooked it up. Fantastic high gushes of water. Yeah. Then began the lifting of Squeakers trying to put her into the water, followed by the "put her down mister," and the time outs. There was of course trying to help me figure out how to make the sprinkler rotate and then turning the sprinkler on me completely. After a time out because I really did not want to remove him from all of the fun, he came back and decided that he wanted to grab the sprinkler and run around the yard. I was taking so many deep breaths trying to remain patient, I was beginning to hyperventilate. Squeaks had learned at this point to stay away from her crazed brother and decided that playing in the fresh cut grass while she was wet was much more fun anyway. By the time Smoosh had decided to run to the front of the house to chase a bird, I finally gave up and decided I was defeated, yet again. My ideas of a fun morning, children happily playing in the sprinkler, were dashed. I grabbed the baby up in one arm and dragged the other one in. I won't document how in case Social Services decides to use this blog as evidence one day. Forgive me readers, as I don't have pictures to share all the excitement that occurred outside after the ladybug sprinkler.

Once inside, I got the baby stripped down, thinking it would be good for her to walk around naked as a jaybird for a few seconds to dry off so the grass might come off easier. Really - don't I have four children? Don't I know better than this by now? In that 10 seconds it took me to walk from one end of the kitchen and back, she had dumped the dog food bowl all over the floor, peed half in it, half on the floor, than sat down in the puddle of pee that had made it onto the carpet; the carpet that is covered with dog hair because both pooches are shedding like crazy. My little baby girl was now covered in dog hair, pee, and cut grass. Fantastic. At least I could throw her in the sink and shower it all off. Smoosh, meanwhile, had decided his underwear looked much better on his head and was running around screaming about it. I was glad that it was at least on. At that point, it was time for all 3 of us to take naps and call it quits for this morning. I think we might be playing some Wii this afternoon.

Here She Comes, Toddling down the Street

She walks better in heel boots than I do. I didn't even know I had these any more; she's great at exploring the depths of our closet and pulling out some relics.

Some of Otter's Haikus

Now he's in 4th grade
So it is time for learning
All about haikus.

(that one was mommy's)

Sitting in my desk
Teacher babbles on and on
Summer, please come soon.

Pretty leaves from trees,
laying on the cold cold ground
waiting to be found.

A flower shoots high
Peeking at the surroundings
It questions nature.

My project is late!
I am waiting for grounding.
I am so, so dead.

It hides my being.
It disguises my own mind
The veil cloaks my life.


He's a pretty deep kid, that Otter guy:)

Beanie Reading

This is how the princess reads
on a warm sunny day.
The sun is out, the birds are chirping.
Winter is far away.
Her majesty has decided
Outside is no longer a bad thing
The cold is gone, the snow is melted.
She can now enjoy the spring.

My Roosters

One of them spent over 20 minutes trying to climb to the top of the coop. He first tried it with his homemade "grappling hook," but much to his dismay, this cranky ol' hen wouldn't let him attach it to the weather vane on top or let it slide underneath the shingles because they would rip off. After attempting to climb through windows and up on the flower boxes, he finally decided to pull over the playhouse, climb on top of that, and then to the top of the chicken coop. He called it cheating. I called it improvising. As soon as he made it to the top, the larger rooster came home and with one step on the railing and one more step onto the roof, he was sitting right next to the little one. Two roosters proudly perching on the coop:)

As always, my mama hen mind fast forwards years when I see these scenes. I know that those precious 20 minutes of watching my kiddo problem solve and try, try, and try again will all too soon turn into only a leap and bound when he grows up and has those long legs like his daddy.