bit

sometimes I don't know where she gets it from, Mark or me... but I am confirmed over and over that it is an 'interesting mix.' The humor and the deadpan together... it is hard to tell where one ends and one begins.

We were watching the older Fantasia Dance of the Hours and I was telling her the 'choco-dye-as' crocodiles as she says them were going to eat the hippo that was asleep and she told me no they love her, they love her they are super dragons, they are chocodyas, see they supers....(they have capes) the super chocodya going to love her and save her he coming to save her there he is!' And then the main crocodile comes up and holds his finger up like superman and comes 'to the rescue' and makes batted eyelashes at the lady hippo. Mark and I were laughing, and he said 'yes, she is a thinker....' because I have been saying that here on the blog often. And then when it was all done, she is saying 'they did it all safe they did it!' so I clapped. I hear a very serious little voice say 'no clapping.' and she is sitting over there disapproving at me.

I can see this alligator toy on the Christmas list from Mama.

Last day of September

bouquet of zinnias


harvest
A few tomatoes, two peppers, lots of black eyed peas and a few assorted other cowpeas. About two quart bags of green beans, and another of yellow tomatoes. I gave all the split yellow tomatoes to the dogs and they ate them right up. There were enough field peas shelled out to fill one of those larger sour cream containers, about a pint, I think.


dry whippoorwill cowpeas and provider green beans
I was impressed by the variance of colors

The Provider green beans that I left on the dying bushes are starting to dry and produce dry seed for next year. I am so happy I let them dry.

We have a HUGE cardboard box from work that I brought home last night - it is about four feet square. I intend to toss that out on the lawn after we get home from Grandma's today and let Esme go to town with it. I have some paint and a brush - I might even let her do that, but would need to look at which clothes she has on first! Mark said maybe let her do that on a warmer day and have a camera ready and a garden hose. It is a bit cold out today - don't know if we'll have another warmer day!

Esme cracked me up earlier with this: We were downstairs washing vegetables and she looks up at the ceiling. Daddy is upstairs coughing with his corncob pipe. She says: 'Daddy. He smokes. He coughs. *gets pouty look and shakes her head* He supposed to learn to be a dragon! Not good.' I had a really hard time not laughing out loud because she was so very serious about it. Mark said she hadn't told him that one before but she often tells him 'gesundheit' or asks him to excuse himself after he coughs and gives him the same sort of disapproving look.

Last night we were watching Fraggles and Moki was running off saying she had to go had to go and leaving a sad crying monster that wanted her to stay. Esme said 'She go to work!' She also said that later when another Fraggle disappeared into a hole and everyone was looking for her. I have had to do a lot of negotiating and explaining again about going to work to her - she wants to come, she wants to see - she wants to help, carry bathtubs and find parts to fix faucets. She is Super Esme, she can help. She doesn't know why she can't, only that Mama is leaving and she can't come with. She says she is a door and I can't pass through. She says she will get in my lunchbox. She gets all ready and then is mad that she can't come with. Every day she comes up with something else. She is such a thinker.

46.75 months

Wanted to save these here for the future, even though we are a week away from the 47 month update. Esme has taken an interest in writing letters lately - which is good, because Daddy was afraid in the computer era she'd never learn handwriting at all! Here are her attempts at a few things. Mine are on the left and her (sometimes multiple) attempts are on the right. These are two sides of the same paper scanned in - so you can kind of see the other side 'bled through' on the scanner.

I get a day off tomorrow, and I think I need it!

A hippo and crew

button tea


prototype
I haven't decided whether this will be the 'larger' or 'smaller' version... Esme said it was the mama when I was thinking it was the baby.


The whole crew is having 'button tea.'

It is raining and dark again... who pulled that number for all of my days off? Anyway, no dress pictures for a while again.. just imagine pink and purple versions of this one, but the purple has a much more pleated skirt and the pink one has a lamb picture sewn to the front chest.

My mind's eye has an odd point of view

I have a very active imagination, and it doesn't stop when I go to sleep. Last night in a dream I was going through a fishing basket of small stuffed toys in a large sitting room that seemed right out of some magazine (probably was, I looked at several last week and my photographic memory does things like that). The little 'sitting room' was off of a larger 'antique shop' which is a common dream theme of mine, wandering through rooms of random things looking at things many of which I have seen elsewhere in antique shops, garage sales etc -- my brain saves them there ;) But, those toys were unlike anything I had ever seen. They weren't children's things in particular, they were just curiosities made up my brain? There were little 'people' figures and a boat, a few plain balls and squares and then I found this 'bird' toy. This is as close as I can get to it now that I'm awake, the one in the dream had more white on it and the lines were stitched in as embroidery and/or quilting. All the little blue things were floppy 'wing things' on the top level and the bottom level had several pointy triangles that made the toy bounce in your hand when you tossed it back and forth. In my dream I was struck by both a 'log cabin quilt' feeling and a 'totem pole figure' feeling to the object. I handled it for a bit until someone started talking to me (in the dream) about another room I had been in, which I thought was frankly strange compared to this one which was why I had come in there to sit down.


the finished first draft, looks a lot like a turkey
Esme likes it, it has a weird charm

It reminds me of this pair of toys I made for Esme when she was five months old. I considered them her 'mimsy' toys, and they were made while attempting to make something else ;)



I guess my brain is just wandering down the same kind of paths in different directions. I need to finish the hippo toys I am working on and take some pictures of the dresses I made this week... but a basket of soft 'curiosities' doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'd like to make up a few of the people, too... they looked like doll versions of old clicky playmobil figures I used to have as a kid.

Notes:
Last night I put calamine lotion on my arm where I feel like I have poison ivy - and Esme wanted to get me a towel, or a diaper wipe, or anything she could think of to get the pink stuff off my arm. That was pink stuff. It should not be there on Mom's arm. She kept coming up with ideas, and looking it over to get more ideas. Earlier when I took a bath she told me she would get a doctor to fix me because I had owies there, or she would get some duct tape and fix it... or we'd use soap on it. She is a thinker I tell you - every day lately she comes up with all of these ideas. I'm still smiling inside about the hippo puzzle piece, as well.

She was writing letters for me in the bathtub with her soap crayon. She got 'o', 'i' with a dot just fine with no help or prompting. Then she said she was going to make an 'h', but it was actually a square. She got mad about that. We had to talk about 'h' having just a line in the middle, and she eventually got that - and made another 'h' on her easel for me later in the night. 'S', '3', 'Z' and '5' are confusing her. She can make one of them, and then thinks about the others and asks me to make one and looks hard at it, and cries because she can't figure out how to "change her hands" ie: make her hands do that instead of what they are doing... She worked on it for a little bit in the bathtub, and at the easel - and I had to change the subject because she gets so worked up about it.

bits

I was making a pair of hippo toys for Esme last night with an open mouth, finally getting back to this plan from way way back.....because I saw a Playmobil hippo that was aweseome, but didn't want to spend that much on it. She saw me looking at pictures to make the pattern from - pictures of hippo toys plastic and wood and fabric and real hippos, as well. Later I was sewing and she comes up to me with a wooden puzzle piece I haven't seen in ages - it has a hippo on it. Mom, look, a hippo for you! Are you happy? *love*

gotta run to work - still in that haze. Esme had a wonderful time at the birthday party and did not want to leave, of course. She roughhoused so badly with one of the boys they could have made their own football team!

of Pie Bread, sorghum and gardening

Two bits of the broom corn I've planted this year.


White popping sorghum, fresh from garden
I think I picked this too early... need to research more
There is more out there.

a good post about sorghum grain
definitely harvesting mine too early...
but if we had chickens they would still like it.


red sorghum broom corn
picked too early as well, but dried now
more of this out there, too


we go wheee on swing

We all went to the library this morning, and the grocery store. It was a nice day out. Mark found another Land Before Time DVD and now Esme is engrossed between that and Commander Keene Atari game. She has been out to the garden with me three or four times today, helping me plant and look at me use the 'bug salt' and draw in the sandy patch she has found. I told her the Sevin was 'bad bug salt' and she should not touch it so she would not get sick.

Esme and I made pancakes today - well, she helped me do some of the measuring and mixing. I told her it would be a pancake, and she said 'man cake?' I could tell she was thinking about a gingerbread man. When she saw the first one on the griddle frying up she said 'no man cake. you make a pie.' I let her taste some. 'It is bread. Pie bread. It is good.' So pancakes are pie bread. And it is one of the few things I've made on a whim that Esme has eaten all of what I gave her.

I was craving apple and carrot and garlic... so I made another 'Mama soup'.

1 small red delicious apple (Fuji would have been better), cored and diced
half a can of sliced carrots
a cup of fresh field peas and snapped green beans
basil, onion powder, 2 cloves of garlic
I wanted to put some green split peas in it but didn't want to wait on them.. should have done it.

I ate half of that without the broth alongside several pancakes. It was a good combination and there is the other half (and the broth) in the fridge with two more leftover pancakes. The dogs really enjoyed the pancake mix leftover which was mixed with some water to clean out the bowl and poured over their dry dog food.

Out in the garden I found lots of beans and field peas. There are enough of them coming in I am trying to freeze some now. I planted more dent corn and beans and also some garlic from my spice drawer. I need to put in the Sandhill order very soon so Grandma will get her garlic soon! I also put some Sevin dust on the garden, which I had hoped I wouldn't have to do - but I need to protect the small ones until they get big enough to survive all of the chewing insects.

I also bought a yard of purple fabric for a long-sleeved dress for Esme. That is in the dryer and I'm waiting on it to finish.

//candid photos Mark caught last night after I crashed. Esme crawled up into our bed and crashed down beside me after that. He snapped the picture before he picked her up and put her in her own bed.



like mother, like daughter...
That is our favorite warm wooly blanket with the diamonds on it...

Newspaper, moon, and singing

A bit nearsighted...


So, find any cars yet?

She doesn't know a lot of words yet, so this is mostly pretend. Notice the newspaper is upside-down? Ha. She does like to pick out the letters, though, and make comments about the pictures. Daddy says watch out, she'll want to buy the Ford.

Notes:
I am still constantly amazed by the fact that Esme knows the moon no matter what phase it is in. When we are out in the garden sometimes, she also takes care to see if she can see the moon and/or the sun in the sky and tell me where they are. Whether it is a small thumbnail of a crescent or a full circle, she has always known that it is not something different, just the same thing looking a little different. She understands it is the moon even in the daytime. She has not *yet* asked me why it changes - or why it moves, but she knows that it does and spends time observing it.

To think back, she has almost always been able to see it from our windows - as we have windows all around the main room of our house. She has been able to see it from her bed at night and has woken me in the middle of the night in recent memory to talk to me about it.

I am reminded of all of this by something she did at Grandma's today. She had Grandma's flashlight (which I told her was for Grandma to watch out for big brown bears outside at night) and put it on the floor switched on and so the light was facing the floor. It 'glowed' and Esme called it the moon. She had a toy sheep and told it and us to come look at the moon. She had been playing that game the other day with the real moon. She was showing her toys that they could see the moon out the window near the door. Each toy would say 'oh I see it - it is so pretty' or something similar. Then the toy would go get another toy and show the moon to the next toy.. and so on, and so on. Then the next morning she still wanted to play the game - but it was daylight. She held up a silver round button out of her button collection to her baby mouse toy and played again that he was looking at the moon. After that she found a round white translucent button and told the mouse that it was the sun, so hot, be careful. It may just be coincidence but she was also holding the 'moon' on one side of the desk and the 'sun' on the other side. How much is coincidence, and how much is just instinctual observation? She surprises me so often.

//The other day I was in the post office for a LONG time. I mean long. I was trying to do international registered mail, and there is a lot that they require for that. Mark was singing the 'Go down to the river' from the soundtrack of O Brother Where art Thou, which was playing on our CD system. Esme was telling him 'no no no' and would not sing with him at all. I did not know what she was complaining about - what song had been playing etc.. Mark just said she didn't feel like singing. Later on (same day or not, can't remember) we were out in the garden and picking tomatoes and I hear Esme singing something and am trying to make out the words 'go don ta'da'ribber to play, stubbying about that ga'da way, and wear rose and crown and down to the ribber to play...oh sidders, let's go don..' I had to focus in and really think - because she was missing every other word and getting softer as she realized I was listening. Now we are working on the words and she is proud she knows some of the song ;) Other songs she is working on: 'I'm a sweet little bird in a gilden cage' (Tweety) and George of the Jungle (which she thinks is about Curious George) and Jingle Bells, which I hear almost daily. Farmer in the Dell is still a daily occurrence and I'm hearing more Happy Birthday, mostly sung to toys.

//also before I forget - a few weeks before that we were also picking tomatoes and she was singing 'I wish I had a robot friend' from South Park. *roll eyes* She made me pretend to be Awesome-o the robot while she was Butters. We have no reception on our TV, only a DVD collection, which she has mostly memorized. Match that with her telling me I can't 'take her beer' when I took a drink of the Sprite can we were sharing at the flea market. You might tell we have a huge Simpsons collection to get that one. Neither Mark nor I drink canned beer at ALL... and she often tells me she is Homer Simpson, or Bart, or Maggie, or rarely Lisa. She said she was Homer when she was floating in her green pool ring and that she was eating donuts. And she now calls her red baseball cap her 'lucky red cap' and says she is Bart when she wears it. I'm not complaining - there is much much worse she could be watching, and considering the amount of 'real world' interaction she gets otherwise, she has to learn some of that somewhere... or she'll not realize that some people ARE mean to each other, like last year when she let a younger child smack her right in the face and didn't even think to defend herself. She never imagined someone would ever do that to her. :( poor girl. Daddy and I have had to put up with a little of 'I don't love you' and 'I'm going away' from her lately, too.. but she always shows she is just trying it out and seeing what we are going to say about it. She is overall an extremely sweet and compassionate child with a lot of patience and focus when she wants to have them. Moreso, I think, than many her age.

//Grandma had some sproutable wheat berries in her freezer from 2008. I made an educated guess it was hard red winter wheat. Grandma gave us some, thank you! I tried out a small amount in a plot square in the garden. I have some coming in the mail in a bit and will decide what to do with that when it comes, based on what this does. Also, the knitted blanket reached 'halfway' last night. It is now half the size of the Indian patterned blanket I always wear around my shoulders when it is cold.

early morning garden clowning around

The sad little fall garden... inside the weed overgrown but
still producing larger garden!

It was 53 degrees outside this morning at 7:30 am. Esme and I dressed appropriately and went out to plant a small row of radishes and check on the state of all of the 'seed babies' in the garden.

Rodale article on black radish, with really good writing. Just as I am thinking about ordering a packet for next year's fall planting, and trying another set of radish out in the garden this fall as well.

I didn't get much done out in the garden this morning, just the row of radishes planted. I noted that the Esme cranberry bean is the only one of the three experimental 'cranberry' type beans up at the moment. Those were planted on Thursday. I chalk that up to it being 'wetter' ie: fresher, than the other two, as it was from this season's seed.

The lentils are looking interesting on day 8 from planting
This is similar to what the garbanzos looked like in this Gardenerd article.


The lemon marigolds are blooming beautifully.


The purple hulled peas on day eight


Esme had me draw Pocoyo, Ellie and Pato in the dirt the other day. It is still there, and I took a picture for her.

And there was lots of clowning around in the garden.


Look up... uh... not that much.


It's a leaf!


Hats off, go West young man
I have no idea how I got this shot - I love it.

one year of growth

I've been using the doorknob as a gauge of how much she has grown. This was September last year, and September this year. It's almost as good as a measuring tape in itself!

tiny germination pictures and a daffodil dress

Out in the garden taking pictures of the fall plants as they come up. Why? Because it is so cool to see tiny things 'become.'


lentils, smack dab in the middle, so very tiny


lentils


purple hull peas

I spent about an hour out in the garden and found a red tomato, lots of yellow ones, field peas and black eyed peas and beans and more. A whole new string of zinnias is drying in the garage and there were about a handful of dry Mississippi Silver cowpeas hiding from me under a leaf from a stalk of corn. The pinto beans have reached 'shelly' stage again and I am again so happy to have planted them this year.

The fall planting is : pinto beans reseeded from another plant in the garden, purple hull peas, calendula from the Kirk Estate's seed packet, radicchio and green lentils from Cherry Gal, and a few red lentils from a store packet. There are a few other 'trial' seeds on one side, a single squash seed from the Jarrahadale to see if it will germinate and a single kernel of dent corn and handful of broom corn bits, all from elsewhere in the garden during that morning. *ha* I shouldn't even write down that I did that!

Been thinking of trying a garbanzo bean to see what it is like. someone else has already done it and posted a great article. It sounds like an interesting plant and a great one for a dry season!

And I tried sewing the other night, and it was a failure. I thought I could make something larger because Esme has grown so much. But, as usual, she is not a standard 'across the board' size. I went back again last night and tried a second time.


a 'flower' girl

This is McCalls 7708 size 3, with skirt and bodice alterations. I want to call it her 'daffodil' dress. The printed fabric is from Hong Kong and is very very tiny girls watering daffodils. Also the other colors of the dress were in my stash and seemed to fall into that same vein. I finished the zipper, sleeves and tie backs this morning just before we went to the grocery store. I am glad it fit!

Esme is such an odd size... her chest and waist measurements are still a size '2-3' while her length measurements are a size 4 or 5. I have to extend all of the dress bodices and all of the pants legs. She is a strong, 'solid' three year old, just taller than they consider her age to be. And these are vintage patterns - modern patterns don't seem to fit her at ALL... she seems to fall in a size '1' for chest measurement for the modern pattern I've made for her before.

A lady at the store admired her dress and said 'she can't be three...' I told her she would be four soon. She said, 'Well.. even if she is almost four... she's such a big girl!'


hugging cats

The cuspid tooth that has been bothering me broke off at the stress point today. It is now jagged, but finally doesn't hurt there. It is not a front tooth, only visible if I grin really wide. I will likely have to get a dentist to look at it and see if they can file it down.. if they will even do that. If it didn't have the jagged edge on one side I would not have even noticed that part of it was missing. Mark said if he had lost a piece of tooth he would have definitely noticed... I told him it was just that ready to be gone. I never had braces and I have all of my wisdom teeth - which caused a lot of pressure!

tiny notes

Very tired, and now it is cold enough for sleeves and pants and an extra blanket on the bed at night! I went out in a hooded sweatshirt to pick the beans this morning. Several of the Shackamaxon beans have turned purple and begun to swell with some seed. I hope they make it. I took two inside to dry and left some on the plant. The first beans came off of the Mayflower bean, took long enough! We had a hard rain and I was worried about saving seed on a few of the items. Harvested several whipporwill cowpea pods for eating - the green on green speckles made me jump at first as I opened them - then I remembered that they are supposed to be speckled. I had just had a purple hull pea pod with speckles on those because a caterpillar was living in the pod halfway down... so my temperature was set by that, already ;) Also the calendula from last Friday's planting is sprouting, but no lentils or radicchio yet. I am wondering if the cold weather will end out the tomatoes once and for all?

Tried to make Esme a dress last night but it ended up large in the neck and small in the armholes. It was a size 6. I might be able to save it, but the fabric I used was leftover from another dress of hers, so it might not be a total loss anyway. It has been over a month since I've sewn - I should have known couldn't just get back in the driver's seat and rip something out in a few hours like usual.

Esme was playing with my pincushion and she usually pushes any needles down into the cushion one by one and I have to go find them. Thus, also, I've gone to keeping only one out in the cushion at a time. I was looking for the one I KNEW was there, and was not finding it. I called her over and asked her to look at my needlebook full of new needles and go find me the one like it she had had. She thought hard, then ran off downstairs (I really hoped she had not taken it there!). She came back grinning and had something behind her back. She presented me happily with an aluminum pie tin. *facepalm* Clever, though, she found something that looked like all the glittery silver needles! While she was downstairs I did find the missing needle - it was pushed down in but I had a hard time locating it.

mail came today: blue sweet corn (blue jade), lina sisco beans, black plum tomatoes and lots of herbs.

I went out to the garden just after work and found VERY tiny threads of growth where the lentils are planted. I will see if I can get a picture tomorrow. Maybe I'll have this new dress finished tomorrow, too. It kind of looks like a daffodil with the color combination ;)

46 months

46 months

It is a few days away, but I want to jot a few things down. I might come back and update this after a few days have passed.

Esme has a huge imagination that is coming out all over the place, now. I am 'Spy sheep' and she is 'Spy duck' out in the garden looking for Dog to help him build his POOL (Word World episode) or I am Frog, and I need to wear a hat and go fix the accident (lamp broken in the other episode). She likes to dress up in hats and sunglasses (even ones that are too small) and rollerskates and pretend she is someone else. She tells me she is Super Esme and can fly and that she has a letter S on her chest (while puffing it out at me). She says I am Super Mom and have to come save her because she is tied up like the family in the Incredibles and she needs to get loose and roll like the little girl. She sings songs about 3/4 correct or makes up wild versions of them with lots of emphasis and drawing out the last few words. That makes us laugh. 'The cheeeeeeese staaaaaaands aaaaah-loooooooone.' etc. She does little Looney Tunes things often in her play, and has no idea why we are laughing when she ruffles back imaginary tuxedo tails to sit down and 'play piano' or when she is walking around the room almost daily with her fingers clasped behind her back, bent over and pacing saying 'I thinking... I thinking about... *food/toys/tv/play outside*' and then stops and puts one finger up and says 'I know! I need food/toys/tv/play outside. That will do it!'

I laughed at her yesterday because she was telling me she was thinking about a Christmas and I needed to go find presents for her to see. She talked about Christmas for hours, and sang 'Jingle Bells' while lying on the bed with her feet waving in the air. I am having a hard time thinking about much to do for her birthday or Christmas yet - she is such a generally happy kid who has most everything she could think to want. She would be thrilled with balloons, and a cake with candles! About the only other things I can think of are an everlasting supply of fish sticks, chicken noodle soup and flowers to pick outside ;)

She is still very strong. She has done very well with her PT, only wetting a few times at night and once when we were all doing garden work far from the houses and she didn't know how to ask until it was too late. She gets up and goes to the garden with me nearly every morning, but she is getting less enamored of that. I chastised her several times this week when she brought me the produce container and said I was a 'stupid mama' for leaving it somewhere else. She's halfway right, but sometimes I mean to leave it over there and she follows me around the garden trying to make sure I have it near me out of some personal fastidiousness. She does that a lot. She decides something has to be some way, and then insists upon it. She does not like to be laughed at, or bypassed when she is having a fit. Today at Grandma and Grandpa's house she was being overly serious about playing on the keyboard and told Grandma 'no do not wiggle your foot. I playing.' What a kid!

I came home tonight from work and Mark said that she had been ignoring her food at dinner so he put it in the fridge. She didn't realize that until she wanted it again.. and it was gone. He said she fell down on the floor and curled up and went to sleep because he kept telling her that it was in the fridge because she had not been eating it. Instead of being rational she decided to go to sleep - and was still there when I got home. I convinced her to walk downstairs with me - but the entire time I ate my half of the dinner she laid belly-down on her stool and cried and pouted. I put her food back in the fridge when I was done and she cried and screamed again. I told her it was bathtime, we do not bring food in the bath. She stopped the waterworks immediately, and went to take a bath. Now, a cleaner and less-upset child is eating the food and drinking milk while watching Aladdin.

She has been spending a lot more time on her computer than with her other toys. But, look at the example she has between Mama and Daddy. She plays Starfall and several flash games and is beginning to understand several words by sight and spell a few words with her word processor from memory. She can now arrange letters of a word she knows on the fridge or with her letter tiles and mostly get them in the right order. We gape at her sometimes when she does the math problems on the games by memory and we KNOW she doesn't know how to multiply - she just has memorized which ones go where even when they are mixed up - and is trying to get everything 'in the right place' so she can see the dog dance. She loves to draw in Paint as well, and is starting to draw things like smiley faces and 'letters' 'thats a C' etc... and be happy about it.

She is also learning the finer points of what is corn, beans and pumpkinn seeds - she still wants to call them all beans. Corn beans and pumpkin beans and bean beans... I'm talking to her about how the seeds are babies which grow in the ground to be the mama and daddy plants, and how bees drink the liquid out of the flowers and then the flowers become the beans which Mama eats, they are Mama food. We have discussed this several times out in the garden as she watches bees drink and helps me pick things. Sometimes I explain to her as I sort seeds in the house at the table and she helps me put things in containers and/or sort out colors. She has a great time with those special things. She has a lot of patience for moving around 'little things', - a similar project she had fun with was putting small beads onto a dowel she was holding until all the beads were used up, then turning it upside down and putting them back into a jar. She gets that kind of patience from me, I am certain.