Easter and beyond

Home from Hawaii, and right into Easter!  Zane had been looking forward to this holiday, because he knew he would get more candy.

Zane's dip into philosophical questions continued from our trip.  Whenever a holiday like Easter comes up, I feel like it's a good opportunity to talk about why people celebrate it, and what Michael and I and most of our family believe (or don't).  On the way to a puppet show we had a long conversation in the car about symbols of spring, old celebrations, and Christian Easter beliefs.  Zane wanted another god story. I gave him a synopsis of Jesus' life and explained which parts I thought were true. Then I told him about the Christian beliefs of the son of god, dying for sins, rebirth, and Heaven. Zane was very upset at the death, and then decided he liked the religious explanation with coming back to life. Once again, he likes the god version of the story. Very interesting to me, but it also makes sense for his level of understanding how the world works.

I think the talk of heaven also got him thinking about what is outside space.  On the way home from the puppet show he asked, "What's outside space?" I said it was just more space, on and on, filled with stars and planets and galaxies. "But what's outside that?" Well, some astrophysicists say that our whole universe might be just one of many, some with all of the same things in it we have in our universe. "Oh! So there is another copy of the book If I Built a House in it!" Yes! There probably is!  OK. Teaching about parallel universes: done.

The Saturday before Easter we went to the zoo for their annual egg hunt.  Michael took Zane last year, so I was excited to go this year.  Actually, it was kind of a bummer.  There was nothing in the eggs, and then you turned them in!  At the exit to the zoo, they had candy to choose from, but it's not the same as discovering in eggs.  As much as I hate for Zane to get tons of candy, I think next year I'll look for a hunt with more reward.  We had fun on the carousel, though, and it was a beautiful day so the sides were all opened up.

The next day at home, we discovered the Easter Bunny had visited!  JoJo was very interested in the basket, which is what she usually sits in when she gets combed.  Also, the Easter Bunny had used JoJo's own hay in the basket, which made it smell extra yummy.  Zane was excited to find eggs all over the living room with candy in them!  His Easter basket also had a bug collecting kit and a nice ceramic tea set.  I would say he was pretty pleased with his haul.  At breakfast I let him have his very first Cadbury Creme Egg.  As I expected, it was too rich for him to really eat very much, but it was still a very special treat.

We've had a few adventures this spring so far.  Our cousin Leah and her fiance Matt came for a visit, and we had a rare sparkling clear day.  We all went up on the Seattle Great Wheel, which I've been wanting to do for awhile.  We had a fantastic view, and the ride was amazingly smooth.  After we were done Zane had a really great time in the arcade on the pier below.  I think my favorite game involved stomping on spiders.

Later in the week I took Zane to see Adventures with Spot at the Seattle Children's Theater.  I didn't think it was quite as fantastic as The Cat in the Hat or Dot and Ziggy, but Zane seemed to like it a lot.  Next I'll take him to Pippi Longstocking, which I'm really looking forward to!

A few days later we went back to Seattle Center for their annual spring break Whirligig.  They had about 10 different bouncy houses set up, and several of them were obstacle courses.  Zane loves obstacle courses.  I didn't take him last year as I was worried about him getting creamed by older kids.  I actually did see that happen this year, but Zane laughed and loved it.  He was always finding older kids to follow around and roughhouse with.  As I watched in great anxiety, I composed this haiku in my head to help calm myself down:
      Zane careens inside
      The obstacle course of doom
      I learn to let go

We had a chilly and drizzly trip to Kelsey Creek Farm for their annual sheep shearing event.  I was surprised how interested Zane was in the fiber arts room.  We spent quite a long time watching wool dyeing, carding, spinning, and knitting.  And then, by god if there weren't bouncy houses.  We finished up with that and headed home, full of kettle corn and hot dogs.

In May we have started to have some really excellent weather.  We had our first trip to the beach of the season, and I could have worn a sundress and been warm.  It was amazing.  Today we did our first family walk down the stairs and in the woods nearby Golden Gardens.  Zane's legs are much stronger for going up the stairs than last year.  He still go mighty tired out, though, and has gone to bed early.

I'm especially proud of our trip to a local fire station.  I organized this for Zane's entire preschool,  and I felt a bit nervous about being responsible for everyone having a good time.  I was most anxious about taking the bus there and back.  In the end it all went of really well, and I just needed to be a parent chaperon while letting the teachers be in charge.  The firefighters were awesome, and I was especially pleased that a woman firefighter led most of the tour.  At first they quizzed all the kids on their fire safety knowledge, and they let us know what to do if an alarm went off.

Then we got to see the truck, and handle some of the equipment!  Zane had been bored at the first part, but he was front and center for the rest!  He is hefting a nozzle in the photo above, and he claimed later that it wasn't heavy at all.  One firefighter showed off some sort of mechanical gripping claw, as well as an axe.  He asked if anyone wanted a finger chopped off, and one boy eagerly offered his hand.  All fingers stayed on.

A third firefighter then showed all of the equipment he had to wear and why.  I think the kids liked this most of all.  The firefighter kept saying, the more gear I get on, the less I look like me!  I look more like something scary, but I'm still just a firefighter.  Every time a new piece of equipment went on, Zane kept shouting gleefully, "I still know it's you!  I still know it's you!"  I thought this was a great way to help kids not be scared of a big, heavy breathing black monster coming at you in a fire.

Then  the alarm went off!  We all quickly stood to the side and filed out of the station.  The firefighters quickly suited up and the truck was off with lights flashing.  I was a bit disappointed that they didn't use their siren.  I'm not sure how much more they would have showed us, but I don't think we missed much.  Maybe they would have let some kids into the truck.  I thought it was really a great ending, though.  Later on they offered to have us come for another tour, but we were satisfied.


And speaking of heroes, a big part of our life lately has revolved around superheroes.  A number of kids at school talk about superheroes, and Zane was ecstatic when I found a Spider-Man t-shirt for him in a pile of hand-me-downs.  I looked around the library catalog and found a bunch of superhero stories just for little kids.  They don't have much physical violence, mostly just some witty repartee and getting wrapped up in webs.  Zane is enraptured by these books.  Some of the books are pretty bad, though.  One introduced about 15 different superheroes, and only one was female. All the male super heroes were outside doing super things, while the one girl was in the frickin kitchen! How many editors and artists and publishers saw this and thought it was a great thing to publish?! Aaaaaargh!  I've managed to bend the superheroes to my will, however.  We have had some problem with getting Zane to poop in the toilet, so some Spider-Man t-shirts and a sweatshirt have been dangled as rewards.  So far they've helped a lot!  Way to go Spider-Man!  My hero!

Now if only Spider-Man would eat vegetables in his books.  We really don't do well with this.  Zane eats raw and cooked peas, carrots, and corn, but not much else.  Michael and I are not great role models here, either.  We all eat tons of fruit, but veggies get short shrift.  I decided to try fruity smoothies with vegetables in them, and I got a cookbook from the library to help.  I got Zane involved in the prep, and he absolutely loved it.  He claimed he like the smoothies, too, but they did not actually enter his body in more than minute quantities.  Darn.  I should probably keep plugging away, but I feel defeated.

Physically Zane is getting great exercise for his body.  He comes home from school most day covered with cuts and bruises, and I consider that to be the signs of lots of good climbing attempts.  We're trying something new, though!  A few months ago Zane saw a bit of the ballet Swan Lake on Sesame Street, and a few days later he told me he'd like to try ballet.  I was surprised!  I know a few girls and a boy from school go, but he'd never expressed interest.  I was hesitant to sign up for expensive lessons, but I didn't want to quash his interest, either.  I asked at the local music and dance school if he could do a trial class, and they said sure!  We went on a Sunday and it was awesome!  The teacher was a male dancer/acrobat, and he had the kids running themselves ragged and then acting out a story with a princess, a fairy, and a dragon.  He spent quite a bit of of time flinging Zane in the air, too.  And through all that, Zane learned first and second position and plie.  Plus, the big bonus is that parents do not go into the dance room, so I can sit outside and read!  We were sold.  I can't wait to go back next Sunday.

OK, so that gets me all caught up with stories!  I hope I won't get so behind again for awhile ...

Hawaii

In March I had a series of nasty colds, but surely I would be better before our trip to Hawaii on the 19th!  Yes, I was finally getting better!  Then, the Sunday night before our Tuesday morning departure I felt that tell-tale tickle in my throat and ears and a bad headache.  I felt really, really cold.  I took a sick day on Monday and felt so tired and cold all day long, plus my throat/ears/head hurt and I had a deep yucky cough.  I really thought that resting would help, but of course I still needed to pack and do laundry and run errands.  Monday night during dinner and bath time my eye began to itch and ooze pus.  Oh joy.  I called the consulting nurse to say I thought I had pink-eye (which had been going around Zane's school).  I thought they would tell me not to get on the plane!  I was soooo tired and all I wanted to do was go to bed early, but instead I drove 30 minutes to the nearest Group Health urgent care clinic.  I could hardly see through the goop and painful eyelid.  Yup, I had pink eye and a fever.  They gave me stuff for my eye and a face mask to wear on the plane.  I ended up getting home in time for a pretty good night's sleep, and the next morning we were off!

The first morning in Hawaii I was sitting on our lanai looking at the ocean and thinking what a bummer it would be to be sick for the whole trip.  Ha ha!  That won't happen!  But it did.  Being on vacation is not very restful.  Also, Zane went to bed at Hawaii time (late) but still woke up at Seattle time (early) every day.  Both of us had horrible coughs that kept us up all night, so we were both exhausted and cranky a lot of the time.  I could never rest enough to get better.  Halfway through our trip Zane came down with a fever, too, but he seemed to bounce back pretty quickly.  Miraculously, Michael never got sick.  So that is the background noise for our trip.  It could have been better, but at least we were still in Hawaii!

This year we returned to our favorite condos at Napili Point Resort.  They are not in an overly built up area in terms of malls and stores.  There is a lovely crescent of beach that we can get to with just a short walk along the seashore.  Right in front of the condos is a cove filled with turtles and corals and fish.  In the mornings I could watch the turtles from our lanai, and one day I counted seven on the surface at once!  On our first day at the beach near our condo, two turtles came right into a tide-pool area and Zane and I could see them from only about three feet away!  Very cool.

On our first day Zane and I headed to the beach.  I had rented a huge bag of beach toys ahead of time, and they were waiting for us in our condo when we arrived.  It was a great mix of stuff.  We set out to the beach and got right down to digging!  After a while we went for a walk along the rocks to see what we could see in the tidepools.  We saw the turtles I mentioned before very close up, and lots of fish and arthropods and urchins.  When Michael came along he and Zane went out for another jaunt along the tidepools.  This spot on the beach was one we returned to just about every day.    One day Zane found a small hermit crab in one of the tidepools.  When we returned to Seattle Zane made a treasure map for our friend Mike, as he was going to be on the very same beach a few weeks later!  He sent us a picture from the beach with his map and some treasure he discovered.

I had rented some snorkel gear for myself and a life jacket and boogie board with a window in it for Zane.  Last year he had finally gone in the ocean water on the last day, so I was hopeful we'd get in this year, too.  That never did end up happening.  I'm not sure if maybe it was because we were both sick and tired.  One day I tried really hard to get him to float on the boogie board so he could see the coral reefs, but he was just too scared, and I didn't want to push him.  There's always next year!  We did have way more fun in the swimming pools this year for some reason.  So we had plenty of days where we at least got wet a bit, and then Zane would come back and have loooooooong hot showers.

Although we were sickies, we still managed to get out and have some adventures.  Last year we had a nice ride on the Sugar Cane Train, and we did that again this year.  This year we played a game where we tried to see how many fruit trees we could see.  Mangoes!  Bananas!  Papaya!  Fig!  We capped it off with the obligatory shave ice.

Last year I had wanted to go on a submarine ride, but after a disastrous day at the aquarium we decided to put it off.  This year we booked ourselves onto a ride, and it was fantastic!  The boat ride out and back was pretty exciting all by itself.  When we were heading back Zane said his favorite part was riding on the water.  We'll have to do a boat ride somewhere this summer, or at least next year in Hawaii.  After taking the boat out to the dive site, we got to see the submarine surface from the previous tour. 

When it was our turn to get on, we had to climb down a ladder into the sub, and Zane managed that pretty well.  Inside the sub we had a pretty small space to sit in but it was neat to see all of the controls in the cockpit up front.  The dive was neat, and then everything was bathed in blue light.  While we were chugging along to our first view we had a bit of trouble with Zane getting bored and goofing off, but then we finally got to see some fish out of the portholes.

The boat operators had promised a sunken ship, and Zane was very excited to see it.  He was convinced it was a pirate ship.  I was worried were going to have a very disappointed boy, but then our guide passed around some photos of the ship being purposefully sunk, and good golly if it didn't look like a pirate ship!  It had been a replica of a whaler (see it here), but eventually it needed to be scuttled, so the submarine company bought it and sank it for an underwater attraction.  Zane looooved the photos of the ship being sunk -- it was the thing he talked about most after the ride.  The ship itself was neat, too.  Zane has decided that real pirates were on the ship when it was sunk, but they swam away and were OK.

When the sub surfaced and we got back on the boat to take us to shore, there was one more treat in store for us.  A whale breached about 20 feet from the ship, stuck up its tail, and then poked its head out of the water.  Wowie zowie!  Michael and I were more impressed than Zane, I think because we knew how really special that was.  We saw many whales playing off shore this year, but this was our first close encounter ever.  Since Zane enjoyed the boat ride so much, I think next year we should go on a whale watching tour.  When we got back to land we had lunch in Lahaina and even visited a few stores.  I thought Zane was looking especially cute with his lemonade.

Our next adventure was our annual drive up Haleakala.  Last year Zane surprised us by loving the drive up.  We had forgotten our warm clothes so we froze a bit at the top, but it was a good trip.  This year I remembered our warm clothes!  Zane had woken earlier than usual that morning, so I expected him to sleep on the way up.  He did pass out, but as we drove up, up, up, it became clear that he was really getting sick.  He felt very hot and began breathing more rapidly as we got higher and higher.  When we got to the top the sky had cleared and the wind was low, and it was warm and beautiful.  Zane was hot and sick.  I got him out of the car for a pee and he said "Mama, I can't stand up!" and he cried.  I got a pee out of him, and then after a quick look around we headed right back down the mountain.  Zane's breathing calmed down as soon as we got down to about 8000 feet.  When we got back to civilization I stopped at a drug store to get children's fever meds and some Fever Bugs which give a good quick temperature.  He ended up liking those a lot.  His fever went away that evening and he was right as rain except for a cough.  I think he got my bug.  I hadn't been careful with contagion since I thought I got it from him in the first place, but I guess not!

Near the end of our visit we had some gray skies and I decided our last adventure would be a quick one to a nearby whaling museum.  Zane did pretty well in it, and I was surprised at how interested he was in a lot of the stuff.  For some reason he was in poopy mood, though, and wouldn't let us get a good picture of him with a whale skeleton.  The museum is in a big shopping mall with a very neat series of waterfalls, and that kept him pretty happy.  That and the ice cream and his very first small Lego projects we brought back to the condo.  We had fun putting them together, although they turned out to be still a bit too fiddly for his little fingers.

I've noticed in the past that when we go on vacations, something about the upheaval in routine kicks Zane's brain into action.  When he was smaller he would learn new skills.  On this trip he asked us a series of pretty interesting philosophical questions, just about one per night.

Tuesday:  "Mama, tell me about the God man."
Wednesday: "Who owns the Earth?"
Thursday: "Is there humans eating humans?"
Saturday: "Where does the earth start?"

I had a lot of fun talking about these and coming up with some answers.  He's keeping my on my toes!

Well, Hawaii was fun, but kind of low-key due to our health.  The day before we left I made a doctor's appointment for our return to make sure I didn't have any gruesome disease I would pass on to my co-workers.  I didn't, but I did get some meds to help clear me head.  My ears had actually been plugged up for about half the trip.  When I got back to work I found out that it was a feature of the particular bug going around, and several of my co-workers and friends were also shouting "What?" and coughing and hacking.  The meds seemed to have no effect, and it took about another two or three weeks to really get well.  I sure hope next year's trip to Hawaii goes better!

Finishing Winter

Wow, it's been two months since I posted!  I'll try to do a roundup.  I even discovered an old blog post I began and never posted.  Stay tuned for a series of three catch up posts to get us done with winter, to Hawaii, and beyond Easter.

Winter ennui has not been bad this winter, as we didn't have the weeks and weeks of pouring rain of the past two years.  There was rain, and it was cold, but there were also rays of sunshine.  In February we took our first visit to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma.  Since I didn't grow up here, I had never been there.  It was a bit of a drive, but that can be part of the adventure.  Zane enjoyed seeing new stuff, and the Tacoma Dome was pretty exciting to pass.  First we spent a bunch of time in the kids' play area, and then had some lunch.  This zoo has many water creatures not in the Seattle Zoo or Aquarium, so we set off to see those.  On the way we saw wolves, musk ox, reindeer, and arctic foxes.  Then we got saw the polar bears!  One was swimming with a toy right next to the viewing window and we got a great close-up view.  Those are big beasties!  Then we wound through the aquarium and got to see walruses!  They were so rubbery and blorpy in the water, and then when went topside to see them out of the water, they made the funniest, rudest sounds!  Zane actually didn't like the noises, but I thought they were funny.  At the end of our visit we saw South Pacific reef fish and sharks.  I thought the sharks would be a big hit, but I think Zane was getting pretty tired out.  I let him have a big disgusting lollipop thing on the way out, and then he passed out on the way home.  All in all a great adventure!

Zane's been having some great adventures with classmates, too.   Izzy had her birthday at Fox Hollow Farm, where he got to play in kid-sized two story play houses, a bouncy castle, had his first pony ride, a train ride, and best of all electric cars with a stick shift that Zane drove all by himself! His good friend Evelyn is in a soccer class next to Zane's section, and they often play after class.  We also went over to help Evelyn dismantle her new house and then had Evelyn over for awhile to give her parents some more time to work on the house.  We also had Ryder over one afternoon.  Zane has been having a little bit of trouble sharing his toys, but I hope he'll get over that.

His focus has really improved with art projects, which really makes me happy.  He's been asking to use the real needle and thread rather than his big yarn and holes sewing cards, so I set him up with a button and a piece of felt.  At first he had trouble wrapping the thread from one side to the next, but once I showed him how, he quietly sewed and sewed.  I was so proud of the result I saved it in his art box!

A favorite activity at school is the bead work.  Zane loves to do it at school, and is very pleased that he has had lessons on the big beads with string and also the little beads with plastic elastic for bracelets.  He's got a bit of a hoarding problem with the beads, but we decided if he puts them on a string, he can bring them home.  Now we have a big tea-can full of various strings of beads.  Sometimes he'll cut them all off the strings and make new necklaces.  We also have our own bead kit, so there is no shortage of supplies!  One day he combined the sewing cards with thread and beads and made some lovely beaded stars.

The parent-teacher conference was really interesting again this time.  It's so wonderful to get feedback from people who know your kids but are not family or friends. He's doing really well, and his only behavior problem seems to be an over concern with rules.  He will go up to other kids and try to intervene rather than get a teacher.  Now, where we he get such an anal trait from?  I wonder ...  I like that better than some kids who have more severe behavior problems!

At home we've been having behavior issues with some "deafness."  He just doesn't listen when I say no!  Very aggravating.  I find myself saying "I said NO!" quite a lot. He's also been working on getting just a bit sneaky, but he's really way too naive to pull it off.  One day after being genuinely sick, he said he was still too sick to go to the grocery store, but when kung fu time came he perked up and suddenly got well.  Hmmm.  We didn't go to kung fu.

This is the time of year for nasty colds, but so far we had avoided those.  For some reason, though, Zane had really regressed on his toilet skills.  Every day I was bringing home bags of wet clothes from school and doing laundry every night.  Poop never went in the toilet.  When we had our parent-teacher conference in March I asked about this, and they said it was normal, and they would try sitting him on the toilet after lunch to encourage a bowel movement.

Health-wise, I also began massaging Zane.  He knows I go to a massage once per month and wondered what happens.  It has really helped a lot with getting him sleepy for bed.  He kept asking to go for an official massage, so I took him in February.  He managed to hold still for a little while, but mostly he was interested in all of the cool stuff in the massage room.  Karen managed to teach me a few more techniques for him and Zane even tried some massage on me!

I had been having problems with my back and leg which were diagnosed as sciatica.  Many months of physical therapy had reduced the pain, but it just wouldn't go away.  Then one day Zane and I took advantage of some beautiful sunshine to go to a nearby playground.  While holding him and going up some stairs I tripped and fell.  I twisted to one side to not squish Zane, and my neck and head got smooshed against a wall.  I heard a series of crunches in my neck.  I rolled it out and kept playing, with the idea that I wanted to keep my muscles loose and warm.  The next day I was very surprised that I was only a bit sore in my neck -- the crunches must have been a positive adjustment!  However, my lower back soon began to ache, and in retrospect I can see I re-injured the disc in my back that is causing my sciatica.  The pain got worse, and I finally made another doctor appointment and was eventually referred for x-rays and an MRI.  I turns out I have a bulgy disc that doesn't need surgery, and may well take several years to heal.  Sigh.

Well, I leave you with a batch of chocolate chip cookies we whipped up for Rob at the Train Store, and the promise of another blog post to come about going to Hawaii!

Big Boy

 

Zane has been growing!  I will do an official measurement on his half-birthday (2/15), but I think he has grown about 2 inches in the last 6 months.  That's how much he grew in all of his 3rd year!  I'm making quite a pile of clothes he no longer fits into and many pants that used to need a belt or cinch in the back now stay up fine all by themselves.  This morning he claimed that his heel and one toe grew overnight.  Lately I've been staring at him to try to absorb the New Zane that is now part of my life.

In addition to body growth, his brain has really been expanding, too.  I think school probably has a lot to do with it!  One big change I've noticed is that he is very into imaginative play.  He likes to have all of his toys talk to him, and he concocts elaborate scenarios which must be played out Just So.  Any deviation is very frowned upon.  Some games must be played over and over.  Here are some current favorites.

Underground Mousie: Zane hides under a blanket along with my right hand which is the Good Wolf.  My left hand is the Bad Wolf, and the rest of me is Mousie's pet dragon who has to sleep outside the underground cave.  Bad Wolf comes howling and growling to eat Mousie and Good Wolf.  Mousie directs the dragon to breathe fire on Bad Wolf, who runs away howling.  Repeat.

Angry Frogs: Little rubbery frogs Blue, Yellow, Green and Red hide camouflaged on appropriate parts of the Fischer Price town.  Purple is angry that he has no purple to hide on.  Purple recruits big blue sparkly bean bag frog to ride into town and try to find the camouflaged frogs.  They can't find them.  Camouflaged frogs attack.

Rocket to the moon:  Michael and Zane do this at bedtime, and I only hear a bit through the monitor.  Involves mice, a crocodile, and some others who go to the moon and get red and blue cheese to bring back to earth.  Lots of countdowns, blast offs, and re-entry  adventure.

Speaking of bedtime -- Zane has been dry in the morning on most days.  He wakes up and asks for help if he needs to pee.  He was adamant that he was wearing pull-ups and not diapers at night, and he was anxious to wear only underwear.  We have a waterproof bed pad under his sheets, but I'm not excited about changing the whole bed in the middle of the night.  I ordered a little pad to go on top of his sheets, and we now are going overnight with no diapers pull-ups!  Zane has been excited.  He said, "Now I don't have anything on my butt!"

We have been exploring a lot about the real world.  For some reason Zane mentioned he would like to dig up the bones of Bijou, our dear departed cat.  Many years ago I collected the skeleton of another cat, so we looked at those instead.  He said "Wow!" a lot, and that was very satisfying to me.

We were talking about where our food and meat came from, and I tried to explain butchering.  I have a book from the library called "Field dressing & butchering deer : step by step instructions from field to table" that should help explain things a bit.

Finally, in terms of exploring the world, we've been getting out a magnifying glass and carefully exploring things in our Cabinet of Curiosities.  Fossils, mineral specimens, bugs in amber, egg shells, skulls, arrow heads and the like.  This is the kind of stuff I always dreamed of doing with my child!

Michael donated a DNA model to Zane's school, and apparently they had a lesson on it, because several kids told me it was "lemonade" or "lemon juice", and "it has my spit in it."  Well, you've gotta start somewhere with concepts!  Zane's really been enjoying all of the lessons he has at school.  Michael and I are so glad we were able to get in.

On the social side we've talked about President Lincoln, slavery and emancipation, MLK, assassination, and racism.  Heavy stuff, but I believe he needs to know about these things from the get go.  Current thinking for adults and children alike leans towards doing everything we can to talk about difficult subjects, not brush them under the rug.

There have been some terrible viruses going around Seattle.  We got our flu shots early on, and luckily we haven't had anything like that.  Still, we have had a series of colds going through the house and hitting everyone.  One was particularly bad and Zane finally had his first sore throat.  Poor guy sounded all raspy, his coughs sounded like seal barks, and he was too tired for several outings we had planned.  The cold really got Michael, too.  For some reason I escaped most of the phlegm and sore throat, but I got completely exhausted and dizzy off and on for about a week and a half.  I hear there is a norovirus going around, and I really hope we can avoid that.

Zane had his first dentist appointment!  I've been brushing his teeth and only recently switched to a fluoride spit-out toothpaste.  I thought I was doing a good job, but then one day I saw dark spots on his molars and panicked.  I got him into a kids' dentist pretty quickly.  Zane was excited to go and was a real champ during the whole experience.  I think the staff were impressed by his obedience and happiness.  It turned out the spots were merely stained pits.  Whew!  He got a nice fluoride treatment on his teeth, a clean bill of health, and a nice relationship with the dentist and hygienist.  We'll be back in 6 months!

I've been trying to get crafty lately with Zane.  He seems interested for about 5 minutes, and then moves along.  We worked on the Wheel of Time together and some valentines, but I did 99% of the work.  Too bad!  I had visions of us happily creating art together.  Maybe it will come.  He does some work at school, but I guess at home it's different.  The Wheel of Time is a calendar I'd been wanting to make for a while to help him understand the passage of days, weeks, months, and seasons.  So far it seems to be helping!

Last fall Michael and I took Zane to see a Cat in the Hat play.  We weren't sure how it would go, but he loved it!  On Superbowl Sunday Zane and I went again to Seattle Children's Theater to see Dot & Ziggy.  This play was on mats in the lobby rather than in the theater, and the actors moved through the audience.  They asked for help with songs and actions, and Zane had a blast!  He did the Hokey Pokey with such abandon and sang The Itsy Bitsy Spider so loud that the actor playing Ziggy really noticed.  After the play Ziggy told Zane he should join the company.  Zane took this quite seriously and told Michael he would be in the next play.  In April I'll take Zane to another stage play about Spot.

Here's a little Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to take you out.

Welcome, 2013!

We had a really wonderful Christmas this year.  Zane is old enough to anticipate it and really enjoy the whole experience.  In the week before Christmas we baked Christmas cookies, but somehow it wasn't as fun as last year when we had candy eyes to put on the cookies.  The Cookies store which had been in Ballard for many years lost their lease last year, and I didn't know where else to buy cookie eyes.  It was good we had cookies to leave for Santa, though!  We found Santa at the mall, and this year Zane had the courage to talk with Santa.  He expressly forbid the camera folks to take his picture, and then he relaxed.  He asked Santa for an enormous yellow mobile crane, and Santa said he would see what he could do.

Last year I tried to interest Zane in Christmas songs to no avail.  This year he liked the Rudolph sound track and I also sang him Jingle Bells, Frosty, some carols, and The Twelve Days of Christmas ("She has a lot of stuff!").  I would often hear him mumbling bits of the songs, and he tried some singing with me.

On Christmas Eve day Zane came down with quite a fever.  He slept twelve hours the night before and woke up at about 100 degrees.  He had quite a low key day and a long nap, but was luckily starting to feel better in the afternoon.  It would have been a bummer to be out of commission on Christmas!  Finally I said we could demolish the gingerbread house.  This was a highly popular event.  All the sugar stuff in the house this Christmas has helped me learn to relax about it a bit with Zane.  I have rarely seen him eat much.  He really wants it, but it can take him three days to finish a good sized cookie.  He seems to have some pretty good self-regulation.  At bed time we got cookies and cider out for Santa, and peas and carrots for the reindeer.  Zane was not quite old enough to be too excited to sleep, which was good for us!

Christmas morning came, and Santa had come through!  There was the most amazing mobile crane.  This puppy is taller than Zane when fully extended!  I asked Zane if he was surprised that Santa brought the crane, and he was not in the least.  He seems to expect Santa to fill orders on demand.  We'll see how that develops in the future.  Zane also got basic Hot Wheels tracks and lots of candy from Santa, plus lots of good stuff from Mama and Daddy.  I'm pretty pleased, too!  I got some nice jewelry from Michael (he's good at that), but my favorite of all is a black cardigan with an aqua octopus on it.


In the afternoon we headed to Zane's Grandpa's house to visit with the Gibson clan.  We gave the cousins a bunch of cool presents which went over well, and Zane opened a couple more from us as well.





The day after Christmas was a bit of a letdown for Zane.  I think he had a bit of Post-Christmas depression.  He was lying on the floor looking at the tree, and he said in a small voice, "When will the next special day be?"  It was a bit sad.  I think he was still feeling under the weather, too.  In fact, I would say he was sick with the same mysterious thing for just about all of vacation.  He would seem fine for an afternoon, and then be very tired again the next morning.  Unfortunately, at the very end of vacation he got his first ever sore throat along with a deep barking cough, and that kept him from a long awaited play date with a friend.  That was very disappointing for all of us, because Michael an I had planned to see a movie!  Oh well, c'est la vie.  Zane did get a few visits with friends earlier in the vacation, though, so he wasn't totally lonely.  I also took him on an outing to the Science Center and the Aquarium.  He went to the Zoo with Michael.

I also got to go out!  I went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Science Museum before it left, and I also got to see the Hobbit on the day Zane was too sick to see his friend.  It was very exciting for me to go out!

The weekend after Christmas Zane helped me take down the tree.  It was really dry since we got it pretty early this year. I thought Zane would be sad about taking it down, be he really got into it!  Unfortunately he tumbled head over heels down the stairs while backing up to take lights off the tree.  Luckily he wasn't hurt too badly, but it was plenty scary.  Now that the tree is gone our living room seems huge, and I feel guilty that I ever complained we don't have much space.

We've been having a pretty extra soggy winter, but New Year's day was clear as a bell, and cold enough so that the sun sparkled on frost in the morning.  I had hoped it was a portent, but now we are back to sogginess.

Zane is also back to school, which is marvelous for all concerned.  I'm getting back to the gym (ow), and also getting some stuff done.  Oh, except that Zane seems to be entering another no-nap phase.  I sure hope he goes back to sleeping, because he is not very nice to be around when he skips his nap!  When he gets bad we just hook him up to the crane and WEDGIE!  Just kidding.


I hope you all have a wonderful 2013!

Holiday Adventures

We've been having lots of holiday adventures, but someone has been camera shy lately, so I haven't been able to capture all of it.

Every year Seattle Center has Winterfest.  On the last Wednesday night in November I took Zane there expecting to avoid the crowds, and boy was I right!  We had just about everything to ourselves.  First stop was the rinky-dink indoor ice rink which is just awesome for a beginner.  They have walker/sliders made up for learners to push.  The ice is pretty rutted, but it does the trick!  Zane was looking forward to it, but as I laced up his skates I warned him not to be disappointed if he couldn't even stand up in them on the floor.  As I laced up my own skates, he stood up and took off walking!  I was amazed.  Then he headed right out onto the ice.  When we got out on the ice, we were the only ones there!  After some initial surprise about just how slippery ice really is, he took to it with enthusiasm.  I've seen so many kids with jelly for ankles flopping all over the ice, even with glider/walkers, but not my boy!  I am very proud of how well he did.




Then we headed over to the Armory to see the model train village, which we got to see last year.  This year Zane got to have a turn driving the train!  Another bonus for going on an off night.  Zane has been asking to go up on the Space Needle elevators, and I'm always saying, "No, it's too expensive."  Today I decided, "Why not!?"  So we added a spur of the moment trip up.  This is the last year Zane gets to ride free, so it was a good move.  On our way up to the elevator doors, we were the lucky recipients of a free cheesy photo.


Zane has often seen the elevators going up and down and has said he wanted to ride in the "buckets."  So as we went into the elevators and up, absorbing the fabulous view, I was puzzled that he wasn't more excited.  Then when we got out at the top and stepped outside, he burst into tears!  What!  What!  Was it the height?  The cold?  The wind?  No, it turned out he was bitterly disappointed that he wouldn't get to ride in the "buckets."  I explained that the elevator we had just been in was the bucket!  He had been expecting to find some sort of fair-ground like ride with boy-sized buckets zipping up and down.  He hadn't quite grasped the perspective and size of what he was seeing when he looked at the Space Needle from afar.  So, a little disappointing, but I'm still glad we did it.

I had been planning on getting our tree later in the month, but on the first weekend in December we had a morning with no rain, so I decided to go for it.  It's so rare to have no rain this time of the year, and I really didn't want to drag a sopping tree into the house.  For the past few years I've had little apartment trees, but this year I opted for a full 6 feet.  We don't have much space in our living room, though, so it had to be a skinny tree.  We lucked out and found a pretty good one in the lot in about 2 minutes!  Zane is my kind of shopper.  "Yeah, this is good!  Let's get this one!"  No hemming and hawing for us!  After we got it home and upstairs, Zane decided for some reason that it needed to be pruned and set to work with his little safety scissors.  They did a pretty good job!  I figured I'd cut the bottom branches off, anyway, to make space for presents, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.



Last year Zane didn't pay any attention to the decorating, but this year he liked unpacking the ornaments and hanging them.  The whole process took a couple of days due to much examining of each thing, repairing the stuff that broke, and meticulous placement.  There are a bunch of ornaments near the bottom, no lights near the bottom in case chewy JoJo investigates, and no tinsel in case JoJo gets a hold of that, too.  A unique decorating plan, but it seems to work alright.

Our next adventure was a visit to see the lights and sights in downtown Seattle.  We took the bus (which is part of the adventure!) and ended up making a it a four hour excursion.  I had hoped to go on a carriage ride, but Zane wasn't up for waiting in lines.  We had a carousel ride and then bought a balloon airplane from a balloon sculptor/twister.  We walked around to see the stores, but I was pretty unimpressed by the displays.  Most seemed ordinary with just some extra baubles and tinsel.  No animatronics or Santa's villages.  We tried to go see the gingerbread house display, but the line for that was too long, too. We capped off our visit with the snow fall (soap suds) in Pacific Place and a yummy burger and fries in a diner.  I think this part was the highlight of the whole trip.  Still, with all the walking around we saw quite a lot of interesting street life and street art and music. When we got home Zane set up a drum set like some of the home made ones we saw on the streets.

After a day playing hooky from school so that we could go swimming, we spent the afternoon making saffron buns, or Lussekatter.  Zane's little art table turned out to be the perfect baking table for him.  He helped me mix and knead and shape the dough.  I ended up nixing most of his "designs" as they were just blobs and pancakes and I wasn't sure if they would cook properly.  He did end up with a ring and a snail, though.  I thought they turned out to be absolutely delicious, but Zane was disappointed as he was expecting something sweeter.

This week's project was a gingerbread house!  I bought a kit for the house, and then extra fruit and nuts and pretzels to replace some of the candy.  Zane enjoyed this much more than the saffron buns, and now he wants to eat it.  I told him he could start eating it on Christmas Eve.

Today we took a trip to the mall, and after some shopping and a stint in a massage chair Zane decided he was ready to see Santa.  He emphatically did not want his picture taken, but he did a very nice job of  telling Santa that he wanted the big yellow mobile crane from the front of his truck catalog.

Tomorrow I have cookie baking planned!

Behavior has been generally very good as have naps.  I'm pretty sure the two are related!  Today we had no nap, so we shall see how the evening devolves as we try to go to Kung Fu with Daddy.

Another Holiday Under the Belt!

 

Halloween: Check!
Thanksgiving: Check!
Now for Christmas.  I always loved the rituals of holidays when I was growing up.  Then, when my family was scattered and when I lived in Seattle with no snow to set the mood, they just weren't the same.  Now I'm enjoying them again with Zane!  It's fun to explain the holidays, read books, buy/create new decorations, and do art projects.

The weather this year produced some really lovely fall leaves (as far as Seattle can do!).  I remember an art project my Mom did with sealing leaves in waxed paper with an iron.  I figured we wouldn't do this too often, so I threw in the shaved crayons, too, rather than make that a separate project.  Zane loved shaving the crayons, and was excited about the iron.  I made him wear his little cotton gloves just in case he touched the iron, but who needs pants?  :)  It was a fun project to put together, but interest quickly waned on ironing them enough to stick together.  I think Zane liked shaving crayons most of all.  His sheet came out OK and is in a window, but mine fell apart.  Maybe if I had done the project with my pants off I would have had better luck.

Early in the month we had our very first parent/teacher conference at Zane's Montessori school.  I made the day even more exciting by organizing a boy trade with two other families so we could all go to our conferences.  First, when I picked Zane up from school we brought Ryder home with us.  Then, Ryder and Zane went right across the street to the Cole's to be with Henry and Caz while Michael and I had our conference.  Next, all four boys came to our house!  Henry and Caz went home after about an hour and a half, and then Ryder stayed until 5p.  Zane and Ryder got to chill in one little chair while snacking and watching Dinosaur Train.  They even got into a slo-mo wrestling match which was incredibly cute.  Now, I am a gal who has always avoided babysitting like the plague, but I figured that now I am a parent I had better get a stiff upper lip and learn the trade.  It wasn't so bad!  The chaos was kind of fun. Zane did much better at sharing his stuff than he would have done just a half year ago.  I think it helped a lot that these boys were well known friends from school, and they already had a lot of experience sharing with each other.  And now I have earned some time for Zane to go to Ryder's house!  I think Michael and I will find a movie we want to see and take a weekend afternoon off some time soon.

The parent teacher conference was really interesting.  They had a whole worksheet filled out with Zane's progress in various Montessori environments: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math.  Since Zane is just three his work is mostly in Practical Life (sweeping, stringing beads, pouring tea ...), but he has done a little Sensorial (sorting graduated cylinders) and Math (counting stuff).  Language comes later.  Zane also had done an interview with the teachers where they asked him about things he hadn't had lessons on.  He thought letters and numbers looked like worms; now, I know he knows most letters, so I think he was being a little silly and truthful.  His counting is pretty good, and he knew lots of shapes, including an octagon!  The thing that impressed me the most was on the back of the interview sheet he was asked to draw a self-portrait.  We've never done any kind of people or animal drawing together, just scribbling.  And there was a little sausage-body with stick legs and oval shoes!  I was amazed.  One teacher said that many kids watched other kids do the interviews, and so he probably had an idea of what was going on and how others did the drawings.  We were also happy to hear that Zane's behavior is very good, especially since we have had trouble at home lately.  He goes to an adult for help when things go wrong with other kids, he doesn't generally cause trouble, and he is very polite.  Whew!  All good things to hear, and we are very proud of him.

That evening Obama was re-elected and I felt a great sense of relief.  I didn't realize how worried I had been until it was over and I cried just a little.

Zane's behavior issues from the last post have calmed down a bit, but most of them are still there.  I think we have learned to anticipate and avoid some, some have died down a bit after Zane finished experimenting with them, and some are still rolling along.  Napping seems to have come back, so I think that is helping quite a bit.  Life is definitely better.

One exciting development is that I think Zane read a word!  I've been sick so Zane and I have been watching more TV than usual together.  One day we watched a Sesame Street where the letter of the day was X.  I showed him how to make X with his fingers.  He knows most of the letters by sight, but not always.  He's more familiar with letters in our names, like M for Michael and J for Julia. Later we were watching an animated version of Where the Wild Things Are, and the story talked about Max.  As Max's boat floated by, Zane said, "Why is his name on the boat?"  I was floored!  Nobody had pointed that out, so he had to have read it!  It is a short simple word with very familiar letters.  Michael and I told him how proud we were, and he smiled.

We had our first small Thanksgiving together.  A larger family dinner didn't work out, so I bought a few small things and made a dinner sans turkey.  I enjoyed cleaning off the table, getting out the table cloth and nice dishes, and having a fancy meal.  Zane was super excited about the fancy dishes, and could hardly wait to try the apple cider "wine" we all shared.  We actually had to leave the house while the food was in the oven, as the anticipation was killing him.  We played with a friend down the street for a while, and then ate dinner together.

Next up -- Christmas!  I'm looking forward to this, as every year Zane can enjoy it and look forward to it more.  I bought an advent calendar.  I've got lots of things planned, like ice skating and seeing the mini train village at Seattle Center.  I'll try again for a carriage ride downtown.  Santa at the mall, shopping for Daddy and JoJo, wrapping presents, getting the tree, decorations, cookies ...  Our schedules can be tight, so I've got it all mapped out for the month to make sure I don't miss something by accident.

It should be fun!

Hell Week

Just about exactly when Zane turned three, he started to have episodes of defiance and anger.  At first I thought it was just because he was going through a lot of changes.  Potty training, leaving daycare, starting school, going on a trip to Maine.  He also had begun to skip naps at school.  I was confident that this phase would pass soon after we got back from Maine and settled into a routine.

But no, it got worse!  Because he was skipping naps at school and only having to stay on his nap mat for 30 minutes, he decided he no longer needed to nap at home.  I didn't get it at first, and I just thought he was having an occasional bout of wakefulness, which had happened before.  We began having hysterical fights about staying in his room for nap time.  One day he was shrieking and screaming at me and crying.  He finally was sobbing and told me to say I was sorry!  I felt so bad.  What was going on?  Why did he feel like I was abusing him when we were doing what we always did?

He also began having blitzkrieg flashes of astounding anger.  We had never experienced this with Zane before!  What was going on?  He would be fine one moment, and then all of a sudden would snap and shriek and yell and try to run or struggle.  He would lash out and hit.  The trigger could be something like, "it's time to put on your shoes."  There was no reasoning with him.

Mid-October was just the worst.  It was Hell Week.  We did have some fun going to a how-to-fight-zombies book release party with Michael doing a martial arts demo with his horse chopper, then to Zane's first play The Cat In the Hat, and later in the week a trip to Remlinger Farms.  But at any moment he could have a full freak-out breakdown, even about things we thought he would like!  After the play, he got incredibly upset when Michael bought him a super cute puppet he had been admiring!  I began to have chest pains, and I was afraid to announce any changes to Zane, because I never knew when he would explode.  I still followed regular routines and rules, I didn't give in, but I was stressed about it.

So, I checked out some books.  I started reading about three year olds and positive discipline methods.  I'd read some of these things before, but I needed a refresher.  I reached out to other parents for advice.  Basically, the upshot was that Zane was being a completely normal three year old, testing his boundaries and his new-found independence.  One book (and a friend), said that they fight most against their primary caregiver, and don't be afraid to just get a sitter.  We found through talking to other parents at Zane's school that they were having similar issues.  School is wonderful for teaching independence, and we were seeing the blow-back at home.  The child thinks, "I can make almost all of my own choices at school, so I get to at home, too!"  Nooo-ho-ho-ho!

I gave in to the idea of Zane giving up his nap.  He does have to have a 30 minute rest period, just like at school.  I bought a special clock which shows in red how much time is left within the space of an hour.  He can see exactly how much longer his "imprisonment" in his room will go on.  If he asks for us to come in, time gets added to the clock.  I also use the clock at bedtime to help him see how much time is left before lights out.  It helps us to get him in his pjs with teeth brushed in time to read a book.  He can see if he is running out of time, and one night even said, "Mama, get me dressed quickly!  Time is running out!".  Hurrah!  The upside of having no naps is that he goes to bed earlier, so I have more time to myself at night, and sometimes in the morning, too, as he is doing all of his sleeping at night.

We are being stern about the surly turns of mood.  I make Zane restate complaints in a positive way.  If moods don't improve he starts to lose belongings.  I find I even lay out consequences ahead of time, even before his mood turns dark.  That helps to keep the surly turns at bay.  Every day is still a lot of work, but I think things are better in general.  I'm glad we're working through it, but I sure will be glad when this phase is over!

Remlinger Farms

For years I have been hearing about the glory that is Remlinger Farms.  It's about an hour away, so in past years it had seemed too far to go with a little one who needs naps.  Now that Zane is older and can last a lot longer, we took the plunge!

Remlinger is ostensibly a great place to go for harvest stuff, but it has tons of rides and fun for the kiddies.  I knew it might be wet, so I carefully got Zane kitted out in rubber boots, a raincoat, and I brought an extra set of dry clothes for him.  But then I forgot all that stuff for myself, except I did remember my boots only because Zane reminded me.  After we had been there for about a half an hour it really started to rain, so I put the camera away and didn't get many photos.  I did however, get completely soaked.  Luckily it was pretty warm, so I didn't get cold.

At first Zane spied a train table inside by the bathrooms, and I thought I wouldn't be able to drag him away.  Then we got out into the rides area, and right away he wanted to go on some mini-canoes.  Due to the wet weather there were no lines for rides, and Zane floated around the loop 4 times.  He only got out because the train was coming!  The train was a wood-powered steam engine with quite a long set of cars attached.  It took us on a great ride around the farm and then through a minimally haunted tunnel.  Zane loved it!

We headed out into the rain to play on stationary tractors and a fire truck.  Then to the antique cars that run on a track.  Zane was very excited that he got to drive!

I only convinced him to stop for lunch and bathroom breaks by saying that I needed to go or eat, and I needed him to help me.  After lunch he caught sight of a sandbox, and of course we got stuck there for a while.  This kid would choose a sandbox over just about anything else.

We ran through a blow-up haunted house ten jillion times, and then made it over to a bouncy house.  Watching Zane in a bouncy house always stresses me out.  There are always big kids in there acting like maniacs, and Zane is drawn to them like a moth to flame.

Zane then "drove" a stationary school bus, where he ordered me to wait out in the rain until school was over, and then I could get back on the bus and go home.  Harsh.

It was time to head over to the rides!  Several of them were sized just for kids, so Zane had the thrill of going on a carousel swing and a mini Ferris wheel by himself.  A girl got into Zane's Ferris wheel box with him, and they had great fun pretending to be lions escaping from a zoo.  Meanwhile, I huddled under a sliver of an edge of an umbrella and dripped.  Then we got to go on some very wet whirling pumpkins, and we could control the up and down motion with a push bar.  Oh the power!  I was about done in by the whole day and the wetness, but we still had the roller coaster to do.  It was a teeny tiny little thing, and Zane was determined to go on.  I am not a roller coaster fan, and it was almost too much for me!  It was the only thing we did all day that Zane didn't ask to do again.  I asked him if it was fun, and he said yes.  Then later that evening he said it was scary except that he liked the "flat parts."

We managed to pick out a pumpkin before we left, as I felt it would be very sad to drive an hour each way to a farm and not get an actual pumpkin.  At that point in the day we were not at all choosy.

We got back to the car and I took off wet boots and jackets and got our dry shoes on.  Zane was lucky to get his nice dry pants and socks, too.  All I had was a McDonald's napkin to wipe my face dry.  What a fun but exhausting tip!  Zane has mostly not been napping these days, but he sure fell asleep pretty quickly in the car.  I think we shall have to come back in the summer and have more fun!

Maine 2012

 
In mid-September Michael and Zane and I took a trip to Maine to visit relatives.  Zane was great for the trip, but there was some nasty turbulence during one of the flights that I did not like.  At.  All.  I used to be a very nervous flyer, but luckily I am now only a little nervous.  When they told those of us waiting for the bathroom to sit on the floor immediately and find any seat to buckle into ASAP, I only died inside a little bit.  Obviously, we survived.

As usual we first spent a few days in the peace and quiet of Harpswell with my Dad and my stepmother.  The weather was lovely, and Zane really liked the big yard.  We spent quite a lot of time exploring and playing.  My Dad has many garden plots, and Zane immensely enjoyed helping dig out weeds and truck compost to the garden in a wheelbarrow.  My Dad found a fireplace shovel for Zane which was just the right size!  We'll have to get ours out, too.

My "little" brother Brady is now 26, and his cedar play equipment in the side yard was now used as a grape arbor.  It looked like it had been taken over by rot and lichen.  At first I didn't want Zane to get on it, but it turned out to be amazingly sturdy!  Way to go CedarWorks!  I even discovered it was sturdy enough to hold me on the swings, too.  We ought to send them a testimonial!

A necessary part of every trip to my Dad's is a meal at the Dolphin Marina.  It had been completely rebuilt since my last visit, with an even better location and view!  The food was a wonderful as always, and we were blessed with an amazing sunset with rising crescent moon that even had the manager stepping outside to take photos.  Michael is a big fan of Cook's Lobster House, so we went there, too, and saw another amazing sunset.

My Dad has a boat in the harbor at the Orrs Bailey Yacht Club, and I was hoping to get Zane out to see it, but the weather wasn't quite right for it.  Instead, Pa Jim (my Dad's grandpa name), took us out for a row and a beach walk.  That's Zane and PaJim at the top of the post by the Cribstone Bridge.  Zane really enjoyed the row and was a very good boat rider, just as he had been when my Mom and I took him in a canoe in the spring.  He only got worried when we got out at a beach and pulled the boat up a bit.  He didn't want to walk far and wanted to get right back in the boat, which I thought was odd.  I asked if he thought the boat would float away, and that was it!  I assured him it was very safe, and then we had a great time on the beach.  I was very impressed that he even thought of that possibility and was concerned!  I hope he always pays attention to detail and keeps himself safe ...

We got in a nice walk in the woods before we needed to leave for Camden.  Behind the Harpswell Town Hall and transfer center is a great set of trails.  I had forgotten that it is also a place that people like to build fairy houses!  We had a nice relatively flat walk through the woods, saw estuaries, and saw fairy houses and renovated one (fairy houses are made of found natural materials and should be small and look like they blend in with the landscape).  Then we took a shortcut, and you know how that goes.  The old trail turned into a steep and rocky washed out gully.  We climbed over and under and around trees and scrambled up slopes.  It was awesome!  Zane only pooped out a little at the end.  He even named a beetle.

It was finally time to say goodbye and head to Camden for the rest of the family.  We managed to get in lunch at Moody's Diner and for dessert Zane had his first whoopie pie!  Such a shame he couldn't finish it, and I had to eat some.

Camden was chaos.  My Mom has a lovely house with a guest room.  The guest room was currently occupied by my brother's family of four while they got ready to leave on their cruising adventure.  This was wonderful for Zane, who was very excited to see his big cousins.  I ended up coming down with a nasty cold, and I had a lot of trouble sleeping, so I was physically miserable for much of the time.  I loved having people around for Zane to play with, and the big family dinners around the dining room table were a treat for me.  Zane loved all of the new toys (little Legos!) and books and games to play.  Grandma's white board was a big hit, too.  Julian and Ian had homework, so Zane was very serious about doing his own, as well (preschool activity sheets).  We had one near tragedy when Zane fell off cousin Julian's shoulders while Zane was trying to climb down from a bunk bed top he had been forbidden to go up on without an adult nearby.  Zane really clunked his head and gave all of us a heart attack.  Both Julian and Zane learned a bit about listening to their elders.  I'll bet it lasted about three days.

We took Zane and Julian to the Owls Head Transportation Museum.  I thought I had remembered there were interactive exhibits, but at first we had a hard time finding them.  Zane was a little put out that he couldn't fly an airplane.  Then we found a little plane that let you experiment with airplane controls and see how they worked.  Michael and Julian headed off into the rest of the museum while Zane and I hunkered in the gift shop playing with trucks.

Luckily Michael and Julian discovered the mother load of kid fun!  There was a corral of tiny metal vintage-esqe cars to drive.  An old fashioned bus went around the grounds, but Zane wouldn't leave the mini cars, so Michael and Julian went on that.  Then there were about five winged bicycle contraptions that were loads of fun, but a bit tough for Zane to manage.

Then, we spotted the sand box.  Paradise!  A sandbox loaded with mini heavy equipment and surrounded by actual heavy equipment.  We go in sandboxes all the time back home, but Zane can never get enough of digging in sand or dirt.  It was pretty hard to drag him away.

One disappointment was that the gift shop no longer sold Michael's favorite spark plug mug.  We have one at home, and he was hoping to buy a backup.  I don't even see them with a quick internet search, so I think ours is now extra precious!

The weather in Maine had been pretty lovely, but the one day we planned to watch Ian's football game it was cold and rainy.  Zane and I tried to watch it, but we ended up heading back into the car.  I really wanted him to nap, so we went for a drive.  He didn't nap, but we did see a lot of farms, and an amazing lot with lots of broken down old fire trucks.  I have no idea what that was all about!  I just typed derelict fire trucks in hope maine in Google, and found the place!  Firefly Restoration.  The big silver barn is what we saw and drove around.

I planned our Maine trip to be at the same time as the Common Ground Fair, so it was time to go!  This is a real rural arts fair, with no fairway of rides.  I remember once seeing a woman spin angora yarn straight from the back of a very contented angora rabbit.  We had loose plans to find my friends Ann and Jon, my Dad and Stepmom, and the rest of the Camden crew there.  When I was growing up the fair was much closer to Camden, so I had no idea the car ride would be so long.  Luckily, Zane found it all quite interesting.  Then we had to hike at least a mile from where we parked in a field to the fair itself.  We found out later there were shuttle buses.  Just before we entered the fair Zane stopped to play on a huge pile of woodchips.  Lucky we did, because Ann and Jon spied Zane on the pile, and we were able to spend the fair together!  If we hadn't stopped to play, we never would have found them.  We spent a bit of time looking at a log splitter and Zane investigated some garden sheds that looked just like hobbit houses.














Ann and Jon knew the layout of the fair and managed to get us to the kids' area pretty quickly, after a stop for fresh yogurt with maple syrup.  The kids place was awesome!  Right away Zane honed in on the hammering area and whacked a bunch of nails into logs.  Then off to the mural board with about twenty minutes of splashy artistic fun.  The soapy water for cleaning brushes was as much fun as anything.  Then off to the threshing!  I was excited about that.  I've always wanted to try threshing, and here it was for the kids!  I gave it a whirl, too.  It was extra great, since I got Zane a new book for the airplane (Peasant Pig and the Terrible Dragon) which had threshing in it.  I'd tried to explain it to Zane, and lo and behold here it was!  They were going to do winnowing next, but Zane was off to the hay jump.  I tried to get a picture of him in mid air but didn't quite manage it.

We finally tore ourselves away from the kids' area with a goal of seeing big horses.  On the way we got side-tracked by a garden weaving project.  There was a basket of fibers and plant bits, and anyone could contribute.  It pretty cool to show Zane how weaving worked and then pick stuff to put in.  It turns out Zane's skills lie more in unraveling.

There was a wonderful stall selling garden art, and there was a glittering array of baubles festooning a fountain.  Zane asked about the money he saw in it, and I explained about wishing.  I gave him a penny and he said "I wish I had a real penny!" And then he threw his penny in to the pool.  Hmmm.

The day was hot, and we were starting to get tired out.  On the way to the horses we stopped at the rabbit house.  I thought Zane would love it, but for some reason he was not at all interested.  I asked at the spinning hut about the angora rabbit, and a lady said we'd just missed that.  While Michael, Ann, and Jon looked at bunnies (they are bunny people, too), Zane and I wandered outside and saw mules pulling a cart and also slower horses pulling a cart, both for rides.  I let folks know we were headed to track them down.  Zane and I spent quite a while around the horse paddock watching pacers, seeing folks harness their horses and mules, and looking at a pony with a cart.  Zane saw a sawdust pile and of course had to go dig.  We finally reconnected with the others, and Ann led us to the horse cart rides.  Whew!  I was ready to sit for a while.  We had a lovely plod around part of the fair grounds, and while we were riding we heard, "Zane!  Zane!"  Grandma (Mom) had found us!

After the ride we got some food with my Mom and tried to find the rest of our family with no luck.  Then it was off to find our car.  This time Jon told us about the bus shuttle, and we had less of a slog to the car.  As we were finally pulling out of the fairgrounds Zane said, "Let's turn around and go back!"  It was really a great trip.

I had hoped to get apple picking and a hike up Mount Battie in, but that just didn't work out.  Apple picking was only on days we couldn't go.  When we finally got around to squeezing in a hike up to the tower on top of Mount Battie, Zane turned out to be too tired and cranky, and we didn't make it.  I can see now in pictures from that day he was pretty tired out from the trip.  We did manage to see a snake and a toad!  I also taught Zane the magic of writing on a flat rock with another rock.  This was unfortunate, as Zane then wanted to write on all of the rocks.  On a rocky hill.

The trip ended up being exhausting and a bit overwhelming for me as I was sick and didn't sleep well, but it was still great to do it all.  We made a lot of wonderful memories!  Next visit out will most likely be next summer when my cousin Jason gets married.

I leave you now with a few video highlights.