Once an Iowan, Always an Iowan

Thomas decided this afternoon that we should have a “garden feast” for dinner tonight, and he spent quite some time rummaging through the garden to find everything ripe and ready.

We had pesto pasta (made from our own basil), sauteed zucchini, and some little bits of odds-and-ends beans, broccoli, and tomatoes.

I convinced him that we didn’t need to eat the pumpkin today, and he agreed that we could use it as a centerpiece.

Not pictured are the cucumber lemon-berry popsicles we made for dessert (though in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that the berries and lemonade were store-bought).

Yum!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Overheard between Thomas and the neighbor girl he’s playing with:

NG: let’s pretend there’s a bad guy coming.

T: okay, but there aren’t really any bad guys, are there?

NG: Thomas, I’m sorry to tell you this, but there are real bad guys.

T: In real life, you mean?

NG: yes.

T: oh, I know that, but we have a very strong door.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Here’s where we have been spending a lot of our time. The excitement of the last few weeks is that Thomas has become a good enough of a swimmer to go off the diving board and get himself back to the ladder. Maybe not a big deal to most, but I’m a proud mama.

password: jump

diving board from Andrea on Vimeo.

Maggie, too, loves the pool, and is well on her way to being a swimmer in her own right. She has no fear, as evidenced by this strange thing she has taken to doing in the baby pool. She sits down, sometimes says “backwards!”, and then throws herself backwards into the water until she’s completely submerged, then flips over, pushes up with her hands, and gets her face back out while floating on her belly. The first few times she did it, this totally freaked me out, but she loves doing it and does it over and over, always correctly righting herself. We will definitely have to keep our eyes on her around water, since she has no fear about submerging.

password: submerge

“backwards!” from Andrea on Vimeo.

We have been reading chapter books with Thomas for about a year now, and I must say that having the chance to revisit some of these classic books and seeing them through the eyes of a little guy experiencing them for the first time has to be one of the best perks of parenthood so far. It had been so long since I’d actually read the WInnie-the-Pooh books, for instance, that I had totally forgotten how awesomely funny they are. And Pippi Longstocking, a favorite of mine from movies as a kid, is even better in the book. We’ve done lots of the other expected reads, and right now we’re right in the middle of The Hobbit.

Thomas is loving it, and I have to admit that I take much delight in the fact that he cannot resist the pull of a cliffhanger chapter-ending. Tolkein, of course, is a master of the cliffhanger, and no matter how long we’ve been reading, he begs to read “just a little bit more” every time we finish a chapter. I feel pretty sure that he has many nights of under-the-covers flashlight reading ahead of him, as soon as he admits that he can actually read.

We just finished the part of The Hobbit where Bilbo saves all his friends from the giant spiders of Mirkwood. (shudder.) When Bilbo and the dwarves (well, all but Thorin) were safe, Thomas interrupted me to say:

“Mom, I think I figured it out. In this book, whenever it seems like Bilbo and the other guys are going to die, they aren’t really going to die. They always find a way to escape. They have already escaped from the trolls once, and the goblins twice, and the wolves once, and the spiders once. I think they are always going to be okay.”

I guess I’ll have to stop asking him “what do you think is going to happen?!?” whenever Bilbo is in a tight spot. He’s already figured it out, and he’s pretty much right.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thomas’s Preschool End-of-Year Program was last week. This is perhaps only really interesting to Grandparents and Aunts/Uncles, because it is long. About 8 minutes. The first part is the play. They performed The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf. Thomas is the green crayon. Unfortunately, the kids spoke pretty quietly, so it’s sort of hard to hear. Still pretty cute, though. In the second part, the kids sing a couple of songs. As you’ll see, Thomas sang all of the songs, but he didn’t really do very many of the actions. I’m not sure why, because that’s usually his favorite part. Then at the end, each kid had a chance to perform something individually. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Thomas did great! That’s probably the cutest part. Thomas’s song starts around 7:26.

I was really proud of Thomas. Especially for those of you who have seen him in Christmas pageants and preschool programs in the past, it is remarkable how much he has grown up. Sniff.

The password for the video is “crayons”

Preschool Spring Program 2011 from Andrea on Vimeo.

Or, er, in our backyard. Yikes.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Courtesy of our artist in residence, one for his room and one for Maggie’s. That’s a cardinal in the upper right-hand corner of the picture on the right.

Fun and engrossing for Mr. Thomas today.

I hope that this will be the first post in a renewed presence on this blog. We shall see. In the meantime: here’s one of Maggie’s current favorite activities.

This may be easier to watch if you click through to vimeo, where the video is actually stored.

Just in case you’re wondering, at the end when she starts babbling, she’s saying “baby” over and over because she sees my phone and knows there are photos and videos of babies (I.e. Herself) contained therein, which she is begging me to show her.

Password: markers

she’s an artist from Andrea on Vimeo.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I hope that this will be the first post in a renewed presence on this blog. We shall see. In the meantime: here’s one of Maggie’s current favorite activities.

This may be easier to watch if you click through to vimeo, where the video is actually stored.

Just in case you’re wondering, at the end when she starts babbling, she’s saying “baby” over and over because she sees my phone and knows there are photos and videos of babies (I.e. Herself) contained therein, which she is begging me to show her.

Password: markers

she’s an artist from Andrea on Vimeo.