pictures not seen

Ok, so the idea was a good one. A camera that is always with me because I have my phone with me. And I did good -- I bought one with enough megapixels (as many as you can get in a camera phone) so that the quality of my pictures wouldn't be totally embarrassing.

What I didn't take into account was a very bad mixture of personality traits: my propensity for taking pictures of flowers and my inability to remember to set my camera back to "auto" after taking them. So for the last several days my camera has been set on "macro" and all my photos have been ridiculously blurry, except for those two flowers I managed to take (which I'm planning on using at another time, so you don't even get to see those!). So much so that I won't even subject you to them. For a fine example, see the first photo in my last post. I blamed it on the rain at the time. Little did I know that my incompetence was truly to blame!

So you will NOT be seeing a picture of my new white chickens lying in a pile on on top of each other in the corner of the pony paddock yesterday morning. Why were they doing this? I have no idea, it's truly one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in regards to chicken behavior. Bizarre enough for me to pull out my phone and take a photo. As soon as it snapped, they realized I was watching, and I could hear the leader say "quick! There's a human watching" and they instantly dispersed and began acting like chickens again. I'm reminded a bit of the "Click Clack Moo" book and am half expecting a note with demands for more comfortable bedding to appear on my doorstep.

You will NOT be seeing pictures of J getting his very first professional haircut ever. I nearly passed out when, after finishing up with Zoo Boy (who just loves a good coif), our hairdresser turned to J and said "ok, so is it your turn now?" and J happily agreed yes and jumped into the chair. They had to mop me off the floor with his locks.

You will NOT be seeing pictures of the ADORABLE half-grown spotted twin White-tailed Deer fawns that J pointed out as we were driving into Stratton Brook State Park in Simsbury, CT, today. Too bad, because we were pretty close, and they were just darned cute!

You will NOT be seeing pictures of Zoo Boy finally figuring out how to swim with his floatation vest on. Actually, you may not have seen much in those photos anyway -- just a speck out in the water. Once he figured out he could swim, he no longer had any use for the shallow water.

You will NOT be seeing pictures of J figuring out how to paddle on his boogie board. Or of the look on his face when he fell off the boogie board and wound up under water for an instant. Or the look when he realized he was actually OK with that. (Actually, someone probably should have been taking a picture of the look on MY face during that sequence....)

You will NOT be seeing pictures of the friends we met at the park to go swimming with. Actually, come to think of it, you wouldn't have seen pictures of them anyway as they don't want me posting about them. (That's just thrown in there as a tease, because they read my blog :-)

I wasn't expecting that you'd see a blog entry from me at all tonight, actually, but just look at how much I had to say about nothing! My mother always said I own a pretty large shovel and know how to use it....

swim lessons

J's been taking swim classes this month, put on by the Recreation Department of the neighboring town (where the lake beach we frequent is located). I'm pretty careful about what I sign my kids up for, so I watched the lessons as they took place during the first session before calling to see if they had openings for J. I liked what I saw: the instructor seemed like a real nice, funny, good-hearted girl, and the kids were a collection of 4 and 5 year olds (just the age I like to keep J in with in classes) at about the same skill level as J (as in, not much water skills at all). The description of the class was pretty basic -- entering and exiting the water safely; putting face into water; blowing bubbles in water; learning how to float and kick. I showed J the classes going on and asked him if he wanted to do it, too. Of course, his reply was an enthusiastic "YES!! Yes, oh yes, I would LOVE to take swim classes!" (You need to realize that he responds this way to ANY suggested activity -- the boy has a zest for life! Gotta admire that.)

So we started this week. Turns out, they changed instructors on us. The new girl seems a little sour. She's a little stern. She gets frustrated a bit easily. But J still loves her, so that's good enough for me.

What's troubling to me is that the makeup of this Level I class is entirely different than the class I observed. These kids are SKILLED. There's half a dozen of them, and they're all already swimming underwater. HUH???? I doubled checked to make sure this was a LEVEL I class. Yup. But I guess folks wanted the afternoon time slot, and Level 2 wasn't an option at that time. So the first thing the instructor asked when they first entered the water on Monday was "who here can go all the way under water like this?" while immersering herself completely, hands on top of her head. Swiftly everyone in the class except J raised their hands and yelled enthusiastically "I can!" and proceeded to plunge into the water. J raised his hand and yelled, equally as enthusiastically, "I can't! It's too hard for me!" (That's another thing you've got to admire about the kid -- he doesn't let a lack in skill squelch his enthusiasm!)

So while the rest of the class is working on stroke development, floating with face in the water, diving for rocks, etc, J is working on trying to get his face close enough to the water to blow bubbles in it. He's sure that he'll learn to swim any day now, and keeps saying "soon, I'll learn how to swim!". After class he excitedly dashes over to where Zoo Boy and I are playing in the water nearby to tell us about and show us all the things they learned in class. He loves the kids, he loves the games they play, he loves cheering on the other kids as they swim. He loves the entire experience. So I signed him up for the next set of Level I classes too. Why not, we're at the lake anyway. He's not going to be swimming this summer, that is very clear, and was something that we knew from the get-go. If he manages to stick his face in the water ONCE, it will have been well worth the enrollment fee for us. Already he's going into the water on his own up to his shoulders, which is a pretty big deal for him, and something he's VERY proud of.

This is also the first class where I've chosen NOT to inform the instructor about his Autism or Sensory Integration issues. If she were to ask or express any concerns about him, I'd fess up, but as far as she's concerned, he's just a little wimpy about the water. I'm happy to leave it at that. If she knew, she'd compensate for him, and not push him. He's at a point now where a gentle nudge from another adult and the motivation of peer pressure is going to go a long ways towards hleping him learn to stretch himself and overcome his obstacles. He's coming home and practicing his "lessons" in the bathtub. He's convinced that he will eventually learn to swim (and I have no doubt that he's right). It doesn't bother him in the least that the other kids in the class are light years ahead of him -- he's obviously extremely proud of his own tiny steps towards becoming comfortable in the water. And I'm obviously extremely proud of him. He's definitely one of the most remarkable children I've ever had the pleasure to know. And I have the priveledge of getting to live with him for the next dozen or so years!

And speaking of remarkable, here's our beloved Zoo Boy, who should have been born a dolphin. It's extremely obvious that he's more than ready to learn to swim. He's tooling all over the lake on his boogie board, kicking away like he was born to water. He's jumping up and down and spinning around, splashing and cavorting, making friends with every other water-loving being he can find. I offered to sign him up for swim lessons too, and got the standard Zoo Boy answer: "No thank you. I don't swim." Yeah, right.

the banana slip

J came into the kitchen the other morning, eating a banana, which is his typical pre-breakfast snack. He looked at me, and dropped the banana peel on the floor. I launched into a lecture about where the RIGHT place to put a banana peel might be, but he interrupted me.

"I was trying to make a banana slip."

Banana slip? Banana split maybe (that's me, always thinking about food!). OH! Banana SLIP. As in, you step on a banana peel, and you slip. Got it!

"Oh, you were going to see what happens when you step on a banana peel?" I inquired, pleased with myself for figuring out the puzzle. Delighted, J nodded, and I dropped the peel back on the floor and said "knock yourself out!"

J feigned a casual approach, then very deliberately set his bare foot down on the banana peel. A very dramatic scene ensued, with J flinging himself too and fro, sliding around the kitchen, grinding every ounce of banananess into the floor, ending in a flourish with him flinging himself to the floor and claiming "Oof! I slipped on a banana peel."

I looked down at the mess and simply stated "Now there's banana goosh all over the floor." J happily chimed in "And all over my foot!", waving his banana-encrusted foot in the air for me to see.

We both laughed as we cleaned up his foot and the floor, and I said "Well, I guess now you know what happens when you step on a banana peel".

I'm hoping once was enough with that experiment. At least until he's big enough to effectively wield a mop.

how reading happens

This is from the endlessly-fascinating-stuff files. I've been observing Zoo Boy's reading-readiness development over the past year with great interest. Today he had a pretty big step forward, that I happened to think to capture on film.

J learned to read on his own by the time he was four years old. He was obsessed with letters from as early as 18-months (prior to that he was obsessed with shapes, and knew all his shapes -- including the less common ones like decahedron -- by the time he was 2 years). He would come to us with puzzle letters and want to know the names, and all he needed was to be told once, then he'd carry them around repeating the name over and over again. He had figured out that letters make up words by his 3rd birthday and was on the fast track to learning to read, when we accidentally stumbled across Between The Lions, a PBS show primarily about reading. The show distracted him with phonics and he spent the next year fiddling around with that instead of forging forward with his decoding skills. Just before his 4th birthday, he pulled it all together, and presto, was reading. At a very advanced level. Decoding at least -- he could pick up the NY times and read it aloud, quite accurately, but of course he didn't have the comprehension for that (though it scared the wits out of many relatives, who we had not warned about this ability of his, when he'd pick up the paper at their house and start flawlessly reading the headlines). We've been working on filling in the comprehension piece -- at age level of course! no newspapers!! -- ever since.

However, the actual process J went through to learn how to read was mostly a mystery to us -- the way his brain connected certain pieces didn't always make sense to us, and he just suddenly seemed to make huge leaps overnight for no apparent reason. We didn't do a thing to help him learn to read (in fact, we were pursposely NOT doing anything to lend to it at that time, realizing by then that it was the obsessive nature of Autism that was driving this desire to read), yet it happened anyway.

So with Zoo Boy (who is not affected by Autism) I've been enjoying the ride. Yet still at an earlier age than many kids take an interest in reading, probably spurred along in part by the fact his brother reads, and in part because the boy just ADORES books.

About a year ago, Zoo Boy started to figure out that it was the words on the pages of the books that told the story. He started pointed to signs and words in books and asking what they said. He learned the alphabet around that time, as well as how to recognize numbers 1 - 9, and has in the last six months or so learned to count to 100. (I want to stress that neither The Map Man nor I have done anything to encourage any of this -- we are not pushing for early readers/math wizzes -- in fact, the irony in all this is that I'm the sort of person that would have been perfectly unphased if our kids hadn't shown any interest in reading until they were well past the age most kids start to read.) The past couple of weeks, Zoo Boy's interest in having short words spelled for him, seemingly out of the blue, began and has increased in frequency over time. "Mommy, how do you spell car?"

But today he took a major leap in the reading-readiness department. As J and I were finishing up our lunches, Zoo Boy left the table and started playing around with an alphabet zoo puzzle he has (pictured above) -- each animal interconnects with the other, and has the first letter of it's name on it, with one animal per alphabet letter. He turned to me and said "How do you spell Mommy?" I told him and he made a frustrated face and complained "I can't do that, I've only got one "M". He brightened up a moment later and said "I know, I'll spell my name!" and asked how to do that. I told him, and he pulled out an animal for each letter and lined them up, turning to me proudly to show me. I just nodded my head at him, and he asked me how to spell a couple other short words. As he pondered the third one he made, he tested me. "How about ratatouille?" (Guess what we went to the movies to see yesterday!) I said "I think that word is too long and has too many of the same letters in it. He pouted over that for a minute, and then I swear I saw the lightbulb go on over his head.

He trotted down the hall and returned with a picture af various bugs, labeled with their names. Then he said "I can spell fly" and set forth picking out the animal letters he needed while refering to the picture. He triumphantly moved aside to show me "fly" spelled with a flamingo, a leopard, and a yak. I smiled at him and he went back to work, spelling all the other bugs on the chart as well. (He's working on "dragonfly" in the above photo.)

He's certainly well on his way to figuring this all out. Glad I didn't spend any money on expensive reading curriculums....

saturday sojourn

We're really enjoying our Saturday evenings at the shore. After putting in a full day's work around the farm, there's still enough time to drive down to the beach and arrive just about the time it's starting to cool down, yet we still have a couple of hours to enjoy ourselves. By the time we get there, the crowds have all left, and we pretty much have the beach to ourselves. And since the waves aren't intense (this is Long Island Sound, so the ocean waters are broken up by Long Island before they reach the beach), we can be relaxed and give the boys plenty of space for exploring on their own without worry about them getting swept out to sea.

Zoo Boy waits his turn in the surf with The Map Man. I don't really like swimming in ocean water -- too cold, too salty/sticky, just not my idea of fun. But The Map Man grew up going to the Jersey Shore with his family, so he loves the ocean and the beach. (Although he complains that beaches on LIS are hardly beaches, what with the rockier sand and the lack of waves.)

J flashes his muscles in front of our blanket. Since there's not many other folks around this time of day, we can park really close to the pavilion, walk through, and just drop our stuff as soon as we hit the beach. That's always something I've not liked about going to the beach -- all the hauling of stuff. But this way, we're able to park so close that if we need something, we can just run back to the car and get it, and the stuff we do bring with us doesn't have to be carried far. It's taken out all the stress of beach-going, and we're left with just the fun part!

The boys play on the lifeguard chair. The state is a little strapped for funding at this point, and this particular part of the beach does not have a lifeguard. It's a really big beach, so there are other parts with lifeguards, but we're both watching the kids, so we don't worry about it. And it leaves the fancy high chair available for pretend play.


Sunset, time to pack up and head home. This park is on a curved penninsula, so you can almost see the sunset over the water -- a little unusual for an East Coast beach!

There are a lot of really cool salt marsh areas and trails and places to explore at this park, we're looking forward to checking it all out with the kids in the Autumn. For now, while the weather's hot, we'll just keep letting them enjoy the beach and the water.

other critters

I promise, this will be the last of my series of posts about Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory in South Deerfield, MA. If you want to see other installments go here or here or here or here or here. I really REALLY loved this trip, as you can tell.

This week we've been transition from our June theme of Ponds/Frogs to our July theme of Butterflies. Visiting the Butterfly Conservatory was a natural excursion for the Butterflies, but wasn't I surprised to find that it made for a good transition trip, too. The Conservatory actually has a fairly good collection of exotic frogs! Of course, they are kept in tanks apart from the Conservatory itself (can you even imagine all those frogs in the Conservatory, eating up the butterflies?!).

The first photos is a nice Red-Eyed Tree Frog.

And I love this photo -- can you see the two Red-Eyed Tree Frogs asleep under the leaf?





There was a really nice collection of poison Dart Frogs too, but they were pretty difficult to photograph -- this is about the only one I got a half-way decent shot of.






They also had a great collection of exotic insects (huge, creepy looking things -- typically insects don't bother me, but they were really giving me the heebie-jeebies -- they too were difficult to photograph) and lizards. This Chameleon (I don't know the species) was only one of several different types.

I'm also having a great deal of luck getting Bearded Dragons to pose for me this week. (See our museum visit for another of my bearded buddies.) This particular Dragon is named Sugar, and one of the workers gave her a bath while we were there. Her mate, Spice, has a tail sticking out from under that log. I've got pictures of the two of them together, but I liked that she was "smiling" for the camera in this one.

butterflies, part three

This is the third in a series on the butterflies we saw at Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory in South Deerfield, MA. For part one click here, for part two click here -- for posts about our visit, click here and here.

I'm not entirely sure which butterfly this is, but it's pretty! A Lacewing, maybe?

A female Cairns Birdwing -- if I was organized, I would have put here near the photo of the male, which can be found in the first part of this series. But I didn't realize until just this minute that I had photos of both the male and the female. Go figure!

A Giant Swallowtail.







A Banded Orange, visiting my mother's hand.









A Rice Paper getting overly familiar with me (that's my leg, the photo is taken looking down my body). This guy was perched on the edge of my shorts and was probing up under then with his tongue. It was really tickling me!