Swimming

I have been lazy about blogging lately--but I have to write about Emma learning how to swim! She actually accomplished this over a week ago; one day we were at our friends' pool and she asked if she could take off her life jacket. I readily agreed--she can stand on tiptoe in the shallow end, and it was hot enough that I was in the pool anyway. So she did, and she allowed me to hold her hands and help her to swim along, kicking her legs behind her. Then she asked to try it herself--and off she went! She was absolutely tireless, even wanting to head into the deep end. I put two swim noodles under my arms so that she could paddle along and grab onto either my hands or the noodles--and she was fearless.

Now it should be noted that Ben does not swim without a life jacket, so he wasn't terribly happy to see his two-years-younger sister swimming along like a duck. The next day he said he wanted to learn to swim, too, so I did the same with him. However, he completely lacks body fat--whereas Emma is a chubby bundle, he's more like a bundle of sticks!--and he had a much harder time staying afloat. He gets cold far faster, he has to kick much harder, and liking the water much less, he is tenser than Emma is. He did graduate to the point where he would swim in the deep end with a noodle, something he was never brave enough to try before, but he is not paddling along the way Emma does. I reassured him that we have all summer for more lessons and he'll get it as soon as he's ready, and Rachel and Julia helpfully pointed out that they were both later swimmers, 7 or 8 before they were confident swimming alone.

Anyway, I'm proud of my little girl, and joked that we should change her middle name from Grace to Goldfish!

--Jen

Daily Quote

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

--A.J. Liebling

Reading!

Emma is a reader!

For over a year, she has been interested in letters, writing, and the sounds of letters, but has resisted actual attempts to help her learn to read. She took the approach that it was fine for her to ask as many questions as she liked, and it was fine to help her do pages in workbooks, but she didn't want to hear anything from us when it came to showing her how sounds went together to make words. She would write actual letters to people and to fairies, painstakingly asking how to spell each word and writing the letters carefully (sometimes backwards, sometimes circling the page if she ran out of room, sometimes vertically-- but if you looked the letters were in order) and because she has been read to since infancy, she has many, many books memorized--so she would sit and recite books verbatim. She just didn't want to go through any actual organized process called "learning to read." I kept thinking she would read any minute, because she was so good at all this other stuff, but she didn't.

Then last week, during yet another interminably rainy afternoon, we were snuggling on the bed in my room, just idly talking and playing around. She asked me to play a spelling game with her, and so I started spelling some 3 letter words--pat, dog, ran, red, set, etc.--and to my shock, she knew what almost every one was! She was also excellent at telling me other words: when she told me what P-A-T was, I then asked her how to spell cat, mat, hat, fat, etc. and she did that easily. I said to her, "Wow, Emma! You are so good at this, I bet you'll be reading soon!"

Her response was: "Well, technically, Mama, I can already read--I know what noises all the letters make!"

After I stopped laughing, I pulled out one of her favorites, "Bing Bunny". She read it to me. This wasn't too surprising, because as I said, she knows a lot of books by heart. So I made her a story on paper with simple sentences and my version of illustrations....we'll skip those! But the story was something like, "The hen had a hat. The hat had a bow. The pig liked the hat. The pig got a hat, too." She read it pretty well, just a couple of mistakes. So the next day we went to the library and picked out some of those dreadful easy readers--and by the way, do people get paid to write this garbage? And is it any wonder that most kids think reading is boring???--guaranteed material she doesn't know word for word. And she read those, too, with some sounding out and some mistakes. Yay!

She still isn't at the point where she'll allow me to trot her accomplishment out to people. She gets shy when I tell people she can read and will clam up. But she is on her way--and anyone who knows Emma knows she won't stay shy for long!!

--Jen

Daily Quote

Life itself is the proper binge.

--Julia Child

Strawberry Picking

Yesterday we went to Wickham's Farm in Cutchogue with a group of homeschooling friends for strawberry picking. We missed out last year--the time slipped by and before we knew it the berry season was over--and were determined to go this year, so when I saw the group trip I lost no time signing up. We've picked peaches and apples at Wickham's before, but we'd never had the farm tour. We got a great long hay ride all around the farm and our guide pointed out all the crops and told fun stories about the farm, which has been continuously farmed by the Wickham family since before the Revolutionary War! We saw peaches, apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries....and I may have forgotten some! I was amazed to learn that they actually get rid of their trees after some time; the trees have a certain shelf life where they bear the best fruit. Maybe it's because I am such a subpar gardener, but I can't imagine ripping these beautiful trees up and throwing them on a scrap heap, then starting all over from seedlings! However, it goes without saying that they know what they're doing, and I don't!

The day started off threatening and overcast; the trip was nearly rescheduled. But in the end we went, thankfully--because the sun came out and it was gorgeous. Not too hot, light breeze, no bugs. After the hay ride, we learned about the bees the farm keeps and we picked our luscious fruit, then picnicked and played with our friends in an open field with a convenient picnic pavillion. I stopped in to the farm stand and bought honey (from their bees, naturally) and two dozen homemade donuts......talk about delicious. I am thinking of trying to make them here!

We each got a big quart box to pick, so we ended up with two gigantic bowls of berries. We used half for our traditional strawberry shortcake dinner, and now have enough berries to last us at least two days around here! My mom always had a day where we had shortcake for dinner--and this is the real deal--no crummy sponge cake or canned whipped cream, but homemade butter biscuits topped with sliced strawberries juicy with sugar and fresh whipped cream with pure vanilla added in. To die for, simply put. The kids look forward to it--but nobody can ever eat all they take! It's that rich.

I'm always kind of sad after we go strawberry picking--it's the first milestone of summer to me other than swimming. However, after looking at the Wickham picking schedule, we may be picking quite a lot of fruit this summer!

--Jen

Daily Quote

You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again.

--Tom Petty

Enough With This Weather, Already!

I am not going into a diatribe here--but come on, we have had the rainiest spring EVER here on Long Island. This weather is just plain inappropriate, and it is ruining our good time. I expect better of the months of May and June. They are generally two of the most gorgeous months we have...though, actually, Long Islanders experience nice weather most of the year. Still, I am pouting. We are almost finished with the school year, and have not been able to enjoy enough time in the yard, on the patio, or on the beach for my liking! We were supposed to head into the city tomorrow for a day at Victorian Gardens (tiny amusement park) and bumming around....rain date. We went to the Long Island Game Farm on Tuesday and endured standing in a downpour for about a half an hour--though thankfully, that blew over and we enjoyed the rest of the day. Our staycation last week had unexpected weather interruptions that didn't make me happy. Enough already!!

However, I will say that it hasn't been completely miserable. We have had days since April that have been positively summer-esque, and those have been real treats. They just haven't been as numerous as they usually are. I'll leave you with photos of the kids in our neighbors' pool...despite the rain, we have been swimming several times. And our lovely neighbors Linda and Dennis are away in Maine again till the end of June, so we have the run of their flower garden and strawberry patch, too!

--Jen

Daily Quote

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

--Bob Dylan

Tree House

The kids have wanted a tree house since we first decided to buy our home. We have a maple tree in our back yard that is visible at the side of the house--it must be very old, for it is one of the biggest maples I've ever seen. It has a huge trunk that splits into four trunks about five feet from the ground. It makes a platform there that Julia has used for fairy games, but we have always wanted to put a tree house in. I was never quite sure how to broach the subject with Matt, because of course he would be the one doing all the work on it! After he built the chicken coop from his own plans, I knew he could actually do the job, but wasn't sure he'd want to. However, some time ago he promised the kids that the tree house would be the next warm weather project after painting the exterior of the house. (Privately, I think this was one of those promises that is designed to get kids off your back--but a promise to children is never forgotten, and we held him to it!)

I prepped him all winter--well, okay, nagged would be a better word for it, I guess. At least, Matt would say it was a better word! We planned a "staycation" in May, where Matt would take the week off of work, and we'd do all sorts of fun things we'd always wanted to but never had, AND he would work on the tree house. This past week was the week, and we have had all kinds of fun. Visiting family, a pool day, Fire Island, the Children's Museum of the East End, seeing "Up" in 3D, eating out...and working on the tree house. The first thing to understand about Matt and a project like this is that there is a lot of thinking involved. He is not one to dive in and build something--that is more like what I would do if left in charge--and believe me, if I built a tree house it would be very likely to fall out of the tree in a week! So his thinking is very important, very necessary, and worth it in the long run. In the short run, however, it made for a very boring "family project"....and so, it has become Matt's project. His original idea was to make a platform between the 4 trunks, about 15 feet up in the air. He was going to hem it in with railings, and a rope ladder tethered to the ground would take the kids up. No roof, no walls. Sounds simple.

Well. There was the hurdle of getting high enough to actually work in the tree. We have a wonderful ladder (ever seen the infomercials for the "Little Giant"?) but what with the root system of the tree, it was hard to get the ladder steady and close enough to the tree to work properly. He solved that by wedging a piece of scrap lumber into the tree that he could stand on. Very clever. Kind of scary, in my opinion! especially since he kind of fell a couple of times before he figured out the very safest way to wedge it! Then there was the problem of getting the supports into the tree--and don't underestimate this, because as I said it ceased to become much of a family project after a while. Simple logistics demanded this too--we can't both fit on his improvised work platform. So imagine him trying to hold the wood, the screws, and the drill all at once....I respect him very much for making it work! He rigged ropes to hold the board in place so he could drill effectively.

After hours and hours of labor, yesterday he was able to lay the platform, then climb up and drill it into the supports. Keep in mind that he also had to saw the platform to fit into the tree, with curved edges to fit the trunks into place! I get a headache just thinking of it. Once the platform was up, we realized with some dismay that it was...well... smaller than we might have hoped for. And once he made the railings it would be even smaller. I was trying not to sound disappointed, because I knew how very hard he'd been working. However, my dismay was real because I imagined only two kids fitting on that platform at one time. We have four kids. Not to mention their friends. So I was picturing the bickering about who got to go up, how long their turn was, when do I get to come up, etc. etc. etc. Something else to add stress to our days. Yay.

And then, my brilliant husband came up with a brilliant idea. He was at first going to extend the high platform, build it out from the tree to make it larger, with beams under it at an angle to the tree to hold it in place. That seemed like a great idea, and I left him to calculate how he would accomplish this. Then he called me back to the tree with his more elegant plan--two levels! I had thought about two levels myself, but my thought was to put a platform under the high platform, like bunk beds. I hadn't mentioned it to Matt because after that thought, I realized that a lower platform would be that much smaller than the higher one--because of the trunks of the tree. His idea was far better. And that was to make a platform about 6 or 8 feet lower than the original one, against the tree trunk with beams at an angle underneath to hold it up. This would make it like a pirate ship, with a deck and a crow's nest, and when we added a rope ladder from the ground to the first deck and another from the first deck to the high deck, would also solve the difficulty we've been having finding a rope ladder long enough! Did I mention brilliant?

So now, he is at Home Depot, buying some more hardware and lumber for the extra platform. He will work the rest of today and then goes back to work tomorrow--so very unfortunately, this is going to have to be relegated to a weekend (dare I hope evening??) project. Which means it will be a while before the kids can use the tree house. However, I think it will be worth the wait!

--Jen

Daily Quote

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

--Ernest Hemingway