Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Merry Xmas 2008 from Fionna and Abby
Do you love them now that they can dance?
P.S. Fionna is actually wearing the skirt from the bottom of the tree, not a dress.
P.S. Fionna is actually wearing the skirt from the bottom of the tree, not a dress.
Monday, December 01, 2008
If I could talk with the animals
Whoops! It looks like I blinked and missed posting anything on the blog for...oh...3 MONTHS. And it's not that things haven't been happening; there's been all kinds of goings on. In an attempt to share some of our cool pictures from the last season of fun, I'll try to organize things into some thematic posts over the next couple of sessions, to make it seem less like I missed the boat in terms of what a blog is supposed to be (which is...a chronology of events as they happen).
Tonight's post jumped out at me as I was reviewing all our photos. It seems that all our little adventures around here seem to revolve around wildlife. Here's a bunch of the creatures we've discovered around the house during the fall.
First off, we have the little gem of a Gray Tree Frog that climbed over our barbecue and interrupted a fall picnic of ours. They're supposed to be basically impossible to find around here except for at night, based on their call, and even then, you have to be willing to climb through mosquito-infested swamp. I highly recommend just waiting patiently with your family on the balcony and having one of them just wander by and random.
Their feet feel kind of...squishy.
Next, we have the mudpuppy who was living underneath the steps of our rock walkout into the lake. There were two of them actually, maybe a mated pair. Funny story, and a little bit creepy. Fionna and I were spending some Dad And Daughter time down by the water and we were using plastic shovels to pour sand down in between the cracks in the rocks. All of a sudden, Fionna exclaimed, "AHHHH! Daddy! A mouth" and starting doing a funny dance. As it turns out, the crack between the rocks was their chosen home, and they had emerged nose first (and spitting out gobs of sand), looking exactly like the space slug from The Empire Strikes Back. At least we know now where George Lucas got the idea for the visual. In any case, we brought one of them inside for awhile to show Abby.
These things ALSO feel...kind of squishy. Actually, they feel like a limp sausage casing part-filled with lake water. Charming. Fionna was very gentle with her new friend.
And now, we're back to Science North again. Geeze. It's great that we bought a family membership to that place, we go there so much. The kids aren't quite old enough to do anything ELSE in Sudbury yet whenever we make the trip over (like spend the time to have Vietnamese food, hint-hint kids), but boy, do they love the animals at the science centre. Abigail has finally gotten to the age where she can romp around the butterfly conservatory on her own. She's right at the sweet spot: old enough to run and chase, discoordinated enough not to be able to actually CATCH, and not so old as to have lost interest.
Her word for butterfly is "buh-EYE". This is her scrutinizing them through the giant pair of magnifying glasses. I'm pretty sure that at some point, I caught her trying to look through the solid wood parts of the things rather than the lenses, and she must have wondered to herself what the big deal was about them, but mostly, she was just copying Fionna.
Also during the same day, everyone got to get up close to a flying squirrel. This one is still sleeping and wasn't doing so much flying.
Awwwwwwww! So CUTE! And, because we all know that siblings need to be different in some way to exert their individuality, let's end off tonight's post with something that Abby worked hard to sculpt out of Play-Doh. When she was done, she presented it to be and said "Pih-ee!" (Pretty), knowing that her father would recognize it immediately. I didn't know that a love of early edition Dungeons & Dragons was genetic. I kind of pity the girls' 3rd grade art teacher, though, if this is the kind of stuff they're going to be making in class.
Wow. That last bit of the post got kind of weird. Time for bed.
Tonight's post jumped out at me as I was reviewing all our photos. It seems that all our little adventures around here seem to revolve around wildlife. Here's a bunch of the creatures we've discovered around the house during the fall.
First off, we have the little gem of a Gray Tree Frog that climbed over our barbecue and interrupted a fall picnic of ours. They're supposed to be basically impossible to find around here except for at night, based on their call, and even then, you have to be willing to climb through mosquito-infested swamp. I highly recommend just waiting patiently with your family on the balcony and having one of them just wander by and random.
Their feet feel kind of...squishy.
Next, we have the mudpuppy who was living underneath the steps of our rock walkout into the lake. There were two of them actually, maybe a mated pair. Funny story, and a little bit creepy. Fionna and I were spending some Dad And Daughter time down by the water and we were using plastic shovels to pour sand down in between the cracks in the rocks. All of a sudden, Fionna exclaimed, "AHHHH! Daddy! A mouth" and starting doing a funny dance. As it turns out, the crack between the rocks was their chosen home, and they had emerged nose first (and spitting out gobs of sand), looking exactly like the space slug from The Empire Strikes Back. At least we know now where George Lucas got the idea for the visual. In any case, we brought one of them inside for awhile to show Abby.
These things ALSO feel...kind of squishy. Actually, they feel like a limp sausage casing part-filled with lake water. Charming. Fionna was very gentle with her new friend.
And now, we're back to Science North again. Geeze. It's great that we bought a family membership to that place, we go there so much. The kids aren't quite old enough to do anything ELSE in Sudbury yet whenever we make the trip over (like spend the time to have Vietnamese food, hint-hint kids), but boy, do they love the animals at the science centre. Abigail has finally gotten to the age where she can romp around the butterfly conservatory on her own. She's right at the sweet spot: old enough to run and chase, discoordinated enough not to be able to actually CATCH, and not so old as to have lost interest.
Her word for butterfly is "buh-EYE". This is her scrutinizing them through the giant pair of magnifying glasses. I'm pretty sure that at some point, I caught her trying to look through the solid wood parts of the things rather than the lenses, and she must have wondered to herself what the big deal was about them, but mostly, she was just copying Fionna.
Also during the same day, everyone got to get up close to a flying squirrel. This one is still sleeping and wasn't doing so much flying.
Awwwwwwww! So CUTE! And, because we all know that siblings need to be different in some way to exert their individuality, let's end off tonight's post with something that Abby worked hard to sculpt out of Play-Doh. When she was done, she presented it to be and said "Pih-ee!" (Pretty), knowing that her father would recognize it immediately. I didn't know that a love of early edition Dungeons & Dragons was genetic. I kind of pity the girls' 3rd grade art teacher, though, if this is the kind of stuff they're going to be making in class.
Wow. That last bit of the post got kind of weird. Time for bed.
