bits of the garden and the weekend

Sometime after this weekend my vacation begins... we'll see when. My nephew called and asked if I would visit them in Minnesota when we could afford it... I told him that really was very hard for us not only because of the cost but because of how long it takes to get there and back, and how young Esme is still to sit still that long etc... His little sister is nearly the same age, so he kind of understood that last part.

I have gotten very little sewing done as Esme has been wanting to play outside and that has led me to the garden and other tasks out there during these past few days. I've actually read two books this week which is something I have not done in a long time. We've been spending a lot of time in our garden, and Esme has had a few playdates. We went swimming in the lake yesterday and it was MUCH too cold for that. Esme said 'I'm a fishie' and relearned how to swim with her lifejacket on - but I'm hoping she doesn't catch a cold from it. At one point she was laughing so hard at Daddy's shriek of 'COLD WATER' that she swallowed some lake water and returned some strawberry shake she had earlier back into the lake with the water.... *yuck*.. and then she wanted to swim to the other end of the lake and not get out! We did convince her we would come back sometime when it was not quite so cold...

Some days this weekend her mood was very good and at some times during today it was quite awful indeed, mostly because of the heat and Mama and Grandma both not wanting to be out in it while Esme was 'hot' on the idea to the point of tears. She is also not happy with Mama in general that I am asking so much of her with the PT. She HAS had some progress and is telling us when she needs to pee much more often. It's a start. I'm going to enforce it harder on my vacation again... but we're getting there slowly. She was throwing a doozy of a fit when we returned from Grandma's today so I convinced her into a bathtub full of warm water and eucalyptus soap and she felt much better after a bit. Then she got to play outside again while I was weeding the garden, which made her feel even better, until we came back in of course!

Daddy walked down to the lake with us and collected shasta daisy seeds. We've gotten a nice crop down there over the past few years, and have enjoyed them immensely. Esme loves to pick three at a time - one for her, one for Mama and one for Daddy. I've set them to dry in the garage and will try to resow them in other places out in the property. I've bought several other varieties of perennial daisy like seeds to see if they will flourish and bring some long-lasting effects. We also have marigolds, a geranium and some zinnias planted in the garden (all annuals) and I'll be trying to save the marigold seed to see how it will do in another round.

Our corn is getting very tall, the pumpkins and squash plants are HUGE, and the beans are starting to flower. We have flowers on the tomatoes and peppers, and a handful of radishes every few days. I keep planting more ;) Our cucumbers are not doing very well... they are very small while the squash planted at the same time is getting ready to flower. I've put a few small rows of different sunflowers and indian corn just to have some pretty things on the edges. It is so much that Mark says we have no more room for anything in there ;) And I still wanted to ask him to plant the potatoes that are in the kitchen sprouting on the bottom rack!

heard Esme say words like 'clover', and 'healthy' today. She also told me 'maybe' this morning when I asked her if she would try to put her hat on after we cleaned up a dirty spot she saw... obsessive little thing when she sees something she thinks needs cleaning! She will fret about it until it is made right. And she keeps telling me the road is 'danger' and that I have to stay off of it entirely WITH her and not cross it at all because we will get run over. This is difficult when we have to cross the road at the point to go to the garage... and I basically have to pick her up and CARRY her across the road while she has her freakout about getting run over and then when we are on the other side she calms down. But man... what a reaction. Daddy did a good job enforcing that idea on her when the loggers were out here with their big machinery. They're mostly gone now, but may come back for a bit to help with Grandpa's clearing from our road. I'm glad she understands there is potential danger (we are very very rural and it is OUR driveway, not the main highway) but she still has to learn that really she needs to look OUT for danger, and if there is none, she can cross that road and get to the other side.

bits and green leaf dress

Esme called it the 'all green leafs, no flowers' dress
fabric from Mockingbird Threadworks, Huntingdon, TN
Timeless Treasures owls collection

This is the first non-pants item I've made her in months. This is the dress that was supposed to be a sleeveless 'sun' dress type.. but I miscut the facings and had already sewn them on. It looks okay as a short sleeved item, and she likes wearing it, so it isn't too thick at the seams. I also shortchanged the zipper sewing on it.... probably will need to be cut apart and redone in 3 to 6 months.


Jump!


Two jumps (actually meaning, you come jump too!)

bit of a run by post with pictures of the 'green leafs' dress I made for Esme this weekend. I'll update it with more text later on in the day. I have two days off now, Friday 'on', and then the weekend off. That is a big thing, a mini-vacation of sorts. I'll get my real vacation (5 days in a row) in early June... I forget when, about the 6th or 9th. Time isn't my forté, especially when there isn't enough of it.

Farm then flu

Stormy, the miniature horse, showing off



Esme with Mary-Ann
being shown how to feed the donkeys bread


Esme feeding donkeys


Mary-Ann said these were Jerusalem donkeys,
named that for the 'cross' pattern on their back


There were eleven, total...
many of them had been taken on from
one lady who had kept them until she had died.
She had fed them peanut butter sandwiches every day.
Mark said he knows these kind of donkeys can live 40 to 50 years each.


The alpacas were new acquisitions and they are still skittish. Esme had called them 'big bunny rabbits' at first
We took Esme to a farm of an acquaintance who rescues donkeys and horses. Esme really loved seeing all the animals and was very good and listened to the lady. We took some pictures and will get them up later. However, perhaps from the hot chicken house or just from not having coffee for the morning (it was a long drive, and it was hot out), I had a terrible night after we got home. Altogether, it feels like the flu. Esme crashed early yesterday, as well - and woke in the middle of the night. She seems to be doing better, probably within normal for her. I still feel pretty awful but nowhere near as bad as about eight last night - when I am glad there was a bucket nearby!

I've called into work today, which I never do... and will hope the rest of this goes away. Esme did let me sleep longer this morning, after she got back to sleep at 4. I still feel like I could sleep another few hours!


A pretty magnolia

Finished Sweater and Truck Ninja Kid

I posted the other week about Esme getting up into our truck bed all by herself, and being so surprised about it. Here is some of the act, in action. Also--> click on this linked animated gif to see my photo montage of the action.


Our Ninja kid, in the back of the truck
Those are the 'gaucho' pants I made last week.

There was only just enough of the leaf pattern fabric to make this length and that width of pattern - made up the rest with some green fabric I had stashed and it worked out very very well!


The 'pivot moment' when she hauls herself up over the edge
She might get up here ten or more times in just a few hours... Doing that she is going to get some muscles on her, like her mama has, too. I caught the entire process on the camera but haven't strung them together into a 'video' yet.


Realizing I'm taking pictures and yelling about it


diving into the back of the truck to get something


I let her try on my new finished sweater
She was asking me where the rest of the buttons were as I snapped this picture.


a view of the side and some of the back pattern


Outside looking in
Trying to catch the sweater on me in the reflection, it fits me much better!

It is made of JoJoLand Rhythm merino 100% wool yarn, in the colorway 'Winter Ice', and knitted on size 6 and 7 needles. I have saved this yarn for several years and there was just enough to make this 'vest' out of, which had no pattern used for it. There are no sleeves and the buttonhole edging is wavy, but it is still very nice!


Pogo, taking her closeup

language developments

bits : I'm 'Mommy' now, and it has taken me as a nice surprise. I hear 'Mommy Mommy Mommmy' now when she is just sitting across the room and wants to know if I'm listening. She is also using other words I haven't heard before, like 'mad' (Daddy you MAAAAAAD, that not a cookie! for when Daddy pretended to be so hungry he could eat us instead of waiting for a hamburger.), 'cloud', 'what do you know', 'I am so happy', '-ing' forms of words (raining/walking/swimming), using 'am' properly instead of 'I the Esme' or 'I hungry', and the words DANGER and CAREFUL said to us a lot now. She says 'It will be alright', and 'I feel all better/you feel better' and 'we fix, get duct tape and fix' and other things that almost make us laugh. One of her favorite things to do lately is to say 'You are not a *doggie/tiger/dragon*' when we rar at her, or to pretend to bite and then say 'No puppy do not bite me I am not a cookie' or do not blow air at me, I'm not a bubble, do not pet my hair, I'm not a kitty etc etc.. taking all those different qualities of things and relating them to the action and vice-versa. She is paying attention to a lot of different versions of words and trying to repeat them - but not getting it all worked out correctly, yet.

There are also a few things she says that are just WEIRD, but do make sense, if I think hard about it.

'I can't reach this potty, no water' for meaning 'I don't have to pee.'

'That's too far.' for something she doesn't want to do. (was 'too ball' before and I think she just wasn't using all of her sounds).

'POP. That bubble is raining.' describing the small bits of water that mist out of the air when the bubble pops.

'You need another one socks.' for meaning 'You had socks on and now do not, but need some.'

I put flower pattern underwear and a whale pattern shorts and t-shirt on her tonight after her bath and she cries out 'I am the beautiful. I got whales. I am beautiful.' *very cute* She told Daddy as he plays his Minecraft game 'Look, you find your garden. You find your garden. You find your way home. Look, it's morningtime! (he came out of a tunnel into 'sunlight'). And she likes to watch his 'garden' grow in the game - 'look it grow up, grow up!' Every time he walks into a thing of fire she says 'ouch ouch burn butt!', told him to go take a bath and go to sleep when he came to his 'house' in the game and when it is raining on him she said he needed an 'umbrella'.

dream and sweater knitting update

last night in my dream I saw a few things that would be nice to do with Esme. Finger paint on plexiglass outside with the hose this summer, and also large cardstock letters like the small ones she used to have in her pink suitcase kit, but glued to magnets or velcro so she can stick them up on a place on the wall. I think our whiteboard in the room would be great for that - maybe make her some bears and a 'house' and trees that stick up, as well -- things to think about for my vacation coming up. In the dream Esme was playing with another girl and I was talking to her mom - we were sharing what the girls liked to do and she showed me the letter squares strung on a piece of ribbon and also sticking up to a felt wall in the room. I have the weirdest 'realistic' dreams sometimes, that have good things to teach me. Esme and I have been 'playing toys' as she calls it often lately - and she is using her imagination all over the place, so I'm just tuning in to that ;)

I'm making some progress on the sweater - have the front and back all done and sewn together and it seems to fit 'ok', not perfect, but this is the first one I've made for myself that got this far. I made the buttonhole band for the front last night before I went to bed - but I may need to cut it off and try again, as I forgot that when binding off to use much larger needles to avoid the edge getting so tight :( I was trying to stretch it but I think I'll really need to just redo it. I am down to ONE ball of that yarn left and still have armhole edges and neck edge to do.... not sure if it is going to make it.... maybe I can find some more stashed around here but that might be 'it' and have to use something else.

Out of an entire page of sewing thread colors - Esme picked this one as being her very favorite color. And black. She said she wears this and black. I'm VERY certain I would never have picked that out for her myself. I tend to dress her in baby blue or middle greens quite often, and that goes well with her eyes. The last fabric she chose at the fabric store that I HAVEN'T got a clue what to use it for - was just about this shade.



Madeira brand thread, color orchid
oddly.. it is about the same color as my blog background! And I don't have that as my blog color because it is MY favorite... but because it is the easiest on my eyes as I read and look at the varied colors in pictures. Very odd how some things just fall together.

I almost forgot this - but a week ago when we made a 'FREE PUPPIES' sign on the floor with markers we gave Esme a green marker and she traced over every letter pretty accurately. I haven't seen her have much interest in writing for a while - but she was interested then and did a good job following the black lines we had drawn.

Tiny PT update and reading

Two nights after we have settled in and are not going anywhere for a while I've put Esme in underwear and a t-shirt and she has used her potty most of that time with just needing a few reminders. I can sometimes get her to use it in the morning when she wakes up before putting on a new diaper or sitting around in pants without one for a while. We're making some progress.

We also had some preliminary 'functional' reading yesterday. I was driving and Esme was finally being good for once during the day. We had promised her if she was good at the last place we went she would get a 'tiny french fry' as she calls them, to discern them from hash browns, which are 'big french fry' to her. She was good, so I went to stop at the McD for her, which is across the street from the Burger King. Esme starts saying 'Buh-kuh Mama, Buh-kuh!'. That is where Daddy usually stops. I was already turning so I said we were going to get french fries there - and she says 'no mmmmmm.... Mmmm? French fry? fourteen sixteen? a Puh and an Aaaaa and a Kuh(C) and E (trying to pick out letters in the playplace sign)'. She is trying to pick things up but interpreting them in her own way. 'fourteen sixteen' is what she says whenever she sees a lot of numerals and doesn't take time to pay close attention, and also the drivethrough #s 1 and 2. Then she called them letter 1 and letter 2. Very silly, but worth recording for when she really does blow out picking things up accurately I can go back and look and see how it progressed :)

For Grandma: Here is where Esme first drank from a cup, back in July, 2010.. so it has been longer than I thought. She just recently has started asking for that kind of cup more and more often. She also asked Grandma to 'put cold' in her soup the other day, which meant cold water from the faucet because she thought the soup was too hot.

Souper

She was eating her chicken noodle soup and drinking her milk. This is how she eats her soup. She also, at one point, informed me that the noodles in the broth reminded her of tadpoles at the lake 'babies at the lake, right here.' Today, she told Grandma the same thing when they had soup at her house.



We're about to go out in the mud now... we all walked to the lake earlier and then she came in to eat strawberries.

Mothers Day and blurb

I was woken this morning by 'Happy Mumum's birthday' by Esme, age three and a half. Well, that is pretty close ;) She has the right idea. I was met last night with a big present when I came home from work that said 'Happy Mom's Day' on it - and had a bunch of stripey towels in it and candy buried between the layers. Mark was very sweet :) I've been looking for stripey towels for a few months now, but haven't brought myself to get anything because of one thing or another. I love them and washed them and put them on the shelves immediately :)

Last night Daddy blew up two balloons, both of which popped soon after - one VERY loudly enough to make all of our ears ring. She said her ears ... (couldn't find a word for it) kept putting her hand to her ear and back off of it. I said mine hurt and she said yea, hurt. 'My ears HURT.' Then once she got a balloon that didn't blow up immediately, we asked her to find all the pieces of the old balloons and throw them away. She did - saying 'I did it. Ears saved! Now ears all saved!' Apparently she thought she was rescuing us all from the terrible balloons that hurt our ears. Also, yesterday, I was brushing out her hair and asked her to tip back her chin so I could brush it better from the position she was in. She said loudly 'Mom, I am NOT a frog!' and tapped her throat and put her chin back to level. She looked very upset about the idea that tipping her chin up and showing more throat would make her look like a frog?

I always say she is my 'physics child' because of the 'experiments' she does constantly with water, sand, rocks.. anything that can be picked up, thrown, manipulated, built with, dropped on something else, organized and reorganized, and/or combined with the elements of mud and/or wind. I saw her do some impressive instinct things with bubbles while she had her bubble wand in a full bathtub of water today. She wet her hands, caught bubbles in midair, transferred them to another hand, put them back in the water, put a wet finger through the bubble to the water below etc etc.. She told me it was 'amazing' and that the bubbles were bouncing and 'swimming' in the water. She kept trying to split a bubble she caught over both of her hands by putting it back down to the water level and trying to break it in half. It almost worked once.. but every time it broke. The poor kid! If she keeps this experimentation mindset, she will have a very interesting science career, perhaps ;)

LATER : I am suitably and entirely impressed. That is saying a lot, because she has impressed us constantly over her 3.5 years and I'm REALLY impressed at this one. Esme can get up into the bed of our truck with the tailgate up. HOW? She uses a two step process, the first of which includes grabbing the wheel well and pulling herself up to stand on the hubcap, and then she switches from an underhand grip to an overhand grab of the two tie-down points on the edge of the truck bed and hauls herself the rest of the way up. Who would have guessed she could figure that out? And she has also shown us she can open the back window, get in the truck, roll up and down the windows and open and close the wing windows.

Mark told me she could do this sometime last week, maybe? But I had misunderstood exactly what he meant. It was even more impressive to actually see what he was talking about. Today was the first time I witnessed all of it. After Grandma and Grandpa left she did it four more times unprompted and complete, while I sat and knit on my blanket.

AND!: This is where she has been getting the loose change we had no idea where it was from, to operate her jellybean machine in the house. She always seems to have change in her pocket that we didn't give her that much... We have an unused ashtray in the truck full of change Daddy watched her stow some inside the truck into her pockets.

42month language

Esme's turned up a notch again this morning, these are some quotes.

'Daddy: Go kiss and hug a mom' Esme: 'No, she's busy. She's on the computer'
I hand her a paper towel while she is holding a ball in one hand. 'This is mine, this is yours. This is mine, you gotta take that.' "Someone dropped that. Someone dropped that on the floor." A q-tip from when I was cleaning my sewing machine last night and the bag split. I had a cereal bar and she thought it was for her. 'Thank you' (reach out for it, doesn't get it) 'THANK YOU.' (still no cereal bar) 'Is that for me?' Yes, thanks for asking. (gets offered it, takes it) 'THANK YOU!' PANTS! I putta my leg in that hole. Look at that! A choo-choo train. It got doors. YEA. (a truck from the loggers went by carrying a trailer that had doors on the side of it.) Two puppies. Why are you a two puppies? I said, why are you a two puppies!? (expects them to answer). I'm also hearing 'WOW' every few minutes, which started some time last night.

A conversation
'Bread Mom, yea, bread, it downstairs.'
Bread?
'Yea BREAD'
You like bread?
'Yea, I like bread. I gotta chew that bread. (gets a thoughtful 'oh yea' look on her face as she remembers something) gotta chew an orange. CANDY? (orange slice candy).'
No, go eat your apple jack bowl first.
'OK (does)'

Daddy not here. (No, Daddy is at work (grocery store and bank)) 'Daddy *pout lip*', No, Daddy is at work, he'll be back soon. 'No, he back. Look. He back with truck' (he isn't) 'No, he isn't but I'm here.' (sigh). 'Shoes! Shoes. I get a shovel, we go look at trucks.'

We bought her a tiny broom at Rural King the other week - she was playing 'baby broom' and 'mama broom' with the regular size one - and they were hunting dirt and meeting puppies and having adventures all over the house.

note: A lady at work that sees Esme every few months said this: 'Wow - she went from barely saying anything at all to having a full conversation with me!'. Esme had been talking to her about a shirt she was wearing while standing in the breakroom of my work. The lady asked her if I made the shirt she was wearing and she said 'YEA... my mumum. I like. It a PRETTY shirt. It has buttons, one, two, three.'

3.5 or 42 months

Pulling a weed and falling on her tail

She was out all day today with Daddy working in the yard, playing in the dirt and getting all topsy-turvy in the hair department.


showing her conquered weed to Daddy

Esme is 3.5 today. She has changed SO much even over the last 6 months. First off, because I have so many pictures, I notice how much her face has lengthened out in the bridge of the nose, and how her arms and legs have lengthened out, as well. Her language has jumped to a much more understandable level and she is making 'grown up' sounding sentences sometimes - 'I like-a that hair, that hair's nice.', 'Come Daddy, we go in, we make-a dinner, eat food.' For her, those are a real step up. She can open some doors in the house now, which she could never do before. She also can get entirely out of the truck without having someone to catch her, which she was close to doing a few months ago when she learned to climb UP without help, but she would still often fall down on her face unless I had at least one hand there to help her slowly slide out. She can take off her own shoes without ANY help and put them away, get them and nearly put them on for herself. She can take down and get off her pants entirely for taking a bath or trying to use the potty.

She continues to be interested sporadically in letters and numbers, and in knowing her name, her parent's and grandparents' names, and where she lives. She asks me once in a while about the time on the tick-tock, still. She can count to five on her fingers and sometimes to ten in words, but not using her fingers. She still 'approximates' counting things instead of slowing down and counting one-by-one, unless I stress it to her. She can recognize some words when she concentrates but other times says that all words are whatever she wants them to be. She sings more songs with the accurate words. Her imagination is quite deep and varied, yet she will very firmly tell you (just after pretending to be a puppy) that she is NOT a doggie, but a little girl, and an Esme, and scowl as if we should have known and told her that when she was pretending. She 'gets' a lot of what goes on in movies and cartoons now and tries to make it relate to the world around her in a way deeper and more intense than ever. For example - she saw a Ren and Stimpy cartoon where the one character tells the other he STINKS and needs a bath before he goes to bed. 1.) Esme has tried to tell Mom and Dad that we need to go have a bath before we go to bed. and 2.) When she is in the bath she has tried to do the same soap-underarm and washcloth routine the character does, which she would never do on her own before and would make me do it while whining. Now she grabs the soap and hums and pretends it is all part of a game she wants to play. That, is kind of nice. And it shows she is trying to organize her world according to all of the examples she sees -- well, at least the ones she thinks are good ideas ;)

This past month we passed a milestone that I know other parents get sometime within the first year - Esme has started telling us that she LOVES us. It is not that she didn't mean it before, but she just wasn't interested in telling us with those words. She has always said 'give hug' or 'give kiss' as her way of saying she loves us. Now I may get as I come in the door - 'Mom, I am SO glad to see you, I love you Mom *hug*' or she will come to me with a flower or bubble wand and say 'I got a PRESENT for you Mom, I LOVE you, here, take it, PRESENT.' It makes me beam from ear to ear.

One thing she did the other day that surprised me was matching an old toy we had forgotten she had (a Duplo character buried in her toys) with a new Duplo truck Daddy had bought for her. We pulled out the character in the truck that had been tied down with twist-ties, and she looked at the shape of the bottom and ran off immediately -- coming back with the other character which then introduced itself to the new one and they have been 'fast friends', 'little girl and little buddy' (he is a knight figure) ever since. They go walkies, and they play and jump and share food. It is so VERY cute it is hard to keep a straight face.

Mark notes that today Esme was watching the Halloween episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes 3D, and at the end he pops out on to a Los Angeles street as a 3D cartoon against a live-action background. Mark said Esme sat up and pointed at the screen and said 'movie! Simpsons... but in a movie, that's neat!' She noticed that those two types of things aren't usually together and got really excited about it. She has seen that clip probably at least a dozen times in her life... and never been that interested.


42 months