The Tunnel

On Saturday morning we went to the Walnut Creek Wetland Center for the first time ever. We first went to the kids learning room, which was pretty cool. The kids liked touching the things on the "touch table" and coloring.

Simon coloring (Zac drew the stick-figure)

The kids check out items from the touch table

Alice points at butterflies on the floor puzzle she and Zac put together

The lady working at the center was kind enough to show us the worm compost and let Simon touch a worm.

Simon liked the worm better once I was the one holding it.

We had our obligatory snack time on some lovely rocking chairs on the back deck.

After we were fueled up, we headed out for a walk on the greenway adjacent to the wetland center. We were soon fortunate to come across a pedestrian tunnel under the roadway. The kids absolutely loved it (especially a certain tunnel-obsessed Simon) and they had so much fun running back and forth in it, that we abandoned our walk and just played there.

While the kids ran back and forth and enjoyed the echo effect, Zac and I amused ourselves by trying to take artsy pictures of the kids, using the interesting lighting of the tunnel.

 

Right next to the tunnel was a steep hill, so both kids enjoyed "mountain climbing."

We eventually headed back. The kids loved running over the bridge and gathering flowers and climbing some large boulders near the entrance.

Free Falling

This is one of Simon's favorite things to do right now. Alice can do more impressive jumps (where she flies in the air and lands sitting cross-legged), but she's imitating him because she sees that he's getting attention for it. Sigh.

Signs of a true Superhero

The bear family is safe under the protective powers of the cape!

Imagine my delight when later in the day I walked past Simon's room and discovered this mysterious superhero dusting a picture!

Sounding it out

This morning marks the beginning of the beginning. Alice was looking at the newspaper trying to sound out words, so I helped her read "up" and "at." She has the basic concept of saying the sound of a letter and trying to put it together to make a word. She still needs a lot of practice, (she confuses i and l, and sometimes m and w) but it's beginning!

I'm so excited because I am envisioning afternoons of leisure as Alice loses herself in a book while Simon naps.  That's gonna happen really soon, right?

Blue Mustache

My school had some Halloween-themed cupcakes leftover from something, so I brought some home for the kids (vanilla for Alice and chocolate for Simon). Simon loved eating a cupcake with blue frosting, and I loved seeing his blue mustache every time.

Pullen Park Amusement

Finally Sunday was a bright, beautiful, rain-free day. Alice requested a trip to Pullen Park, and we obliged. We did it all: the tire swing, the train, the boats, the carousel, tree-climbing... It was a lovely morning, if I just block out how much Alice whined the whole time. Perhaps because she felt she got cheated out of some fun one time we went way back in May, she wanted to make extra sure we did exactly what she wanted the whole time.

The kids at Marbles

After our twelve straight days of rain, we had a beautiful week. But then, just to spite us, it rained on Saturday. So we headed to Marbles, since we hadn't been there in a while. We always split up and each take a kid.

Simon enjoyed playing with the trains a lot of course, but eventually went on to other things. One place Zac took him that he really loved was this area where you build a car and then race it. I like how in the video you can see him notice that the other cars are about to race and he whips his car back off the track. Just think of all the thought and understanding that went into that little moment.

Meanwhile, I was with Alice, doing the pumpkin carving activity, where you scoop out the pumpkin yourself, then draw a face on it, and a local surgeon will carve the pumpkin for you.  We came on this day last year too. It is always disconcerting to see someone that operates on delicate humans stabbing into the tough exterior of a pumpkin.

The Art of Alice

Alice's art is always bizarre. She'll usually describe her scribbles as a hurricane or a storm or the Milky Way.  But sometimes you can actually see something recognizable in the pictures.

X marks the spot?

Alice says this is the Milky Way

Samurai octopus?

Self-portrait of the artist

Self-portrait

Alice learning to read at school

Alice's school had a special morning for parents to come in and watch their kids work.  So Zac took a couple hours off work in the morning, and stayed at daycare to learn about what Alice does all day. It is kind of neat because you can see the Montessori methods for teaching kids to read that are used at her school.

In case it's hard to tell, but they have a big case with drawers and each drawer has a letter and then a bunch of objects that start with that letter. The children take a drawer to their work rug and they have apparently been trained to make a little song for each object, saying the name and then emphasizing the sound.

In this other work, it appears that there is a box of letters, and the kids have a picture with the word printed below. Then they have to make the work with the letters from the box.  It's pretty cool, really. 

First mittens of the season

Alice needed her mittens this morning because it was a chilly 60 degrees when we went out to the van in the morning. It's all relative.

Firefighter Hats

We had local elections this morning, and our polling place is the local firestation. Zac took the kids with him, and they got free plastic firefighter hats.

Alice's idea of a good sandwich

Alice, who has yet to even complete eating half a sandwich in her life, decided she wanted this sandwich (slimy meat, jelly, and bread on the top and bottom) for her bedtime snack.

To her credit, she did eat most of it--but as you can see at the end, she took it apart and ate the meat separately.

Record-tying 12 consecutive days of rain

The 12-consecutive days of rain we endured would have been worth it if it were record-breaking, but record-tying is a bit anticlimactic. The last time parents in this area had to deal with their kids being stuck indoors for so long was 128 years ago, although really, they probably still went outside and fed the chickens and worked in the fields, or whatever children did a dozen decades ago.

Superhero sighting

As the rainy afternoon wore on, the only one who could save the day was Alice, the sunglassed superhero.

She ran around the house a couple dozen times, just getting the pent-up energy out. I think we're supposed to see the sun again on Tuesday...hang in there, children of the triangle!

Rain, rain, go away. Let the hide-a-beds come out for play.

And on the eleventh day of rain, parents everywhere, in final acts of desperation, opened their couches and let their kids jump on and burrow under the hide-a-beds in their couches.

Seriously. Zac had opened ours up on Saturday, and when we went to Grayson's for a playdate on Sunday morning, they too opened theirs up.

Alice and Grayson enjoyed jumping and playing on the pull-out bed. Simon stayed focused on the trains.

Back at our house, the living room was hopelessly messy, but the kids had a great time playing hide-and-seek  in the tunnels under and around the pull-out bed.

Afternoon at the Arcaro-Burbridges

Saturday was our tenth consecutive day of rain, so we were quite happy to get out of the house and head to Burlington for the afternoon. Simon and Alice enjoyed themselves immensely.

Symmetrical Menagerie

I love these little arrangements Alice makes that we find around the house.