6 squared on Father's Day

Ready to blow out the candle

Esme helped

We baked and frosted a cake together yesterday.  Esme wanted to ensure I had a 'birthday party' with presents and a cake and ice cream.  Somehow it all came together.  Mark and Irene gave me some lovely thoughtful presents -and Esme drew me some pictures and made a puppet, and helped Mark pick out yarn.  Mark insisted I buy a copy of Banished, a town building survival game he had found that is like the kind of games I like to play.  Irene gave me a lovely purple shirt (shown in the picture) and some sweet things.  Mark got his steak the other day, and a paper blue caterpillar from Esme in a tube.  His Mom sent him some oven gloves to counteract his love of flaming hot things ;)

I woke up and wandered the world for a few minutes just as the sun was coming up. It is my yearly tradition.  I saw the flowers that were blooming and was invited by our dogs to chase rabbits in the long wet grass.  I felt a little like a Highland lady walking along the road next to the misty valley with my blanket thrown over my shoulder and a long skirt skimming the wet leaves.  Then I had a bit of a nap until Esme came bounding upstairs wanting to have all the presents opened immediately.  She didn't understand (couldn't fathom at all)why anyone would want to wait a single minute.

We cut the cake about noon, and brought a piece up to Grandma about two.  We had planned to spend a nice day at home and try not to get really hot.  Some sad news happened while we were there talking to Grandma - our sweet dog Loula was hit by a truck on the road.  They probably would have all been home if we hadn't been out visiting ourselves.  Mark did the necessaries for her - he said we didn't want to see.... I will miss her.  Esme will miss her, too....she is more worried that I am sad about it.  A sad thing in such a nice day.

My dad gave me a call and Gale also left me a message on Facebook.

My sillies having a puppy dog eye staring cntest 

Soon after this I ushered her off to a bath, bed, and finished telling her the fairy tale of the Snow Queen.

Comments to remember : 

Watching 'Idiocracy' : Esme says: "I need to see their inventor person. Maybe he isn't living anymore. That would be bad - they need one, because they don't have good ideas. And they need to learn how to spell hospital, and get non-green water. Their machines don't even work." How many times have we watched this and she hasn't commented on it at all?

Talking abut numbers while she washed her hair in the bathtub...it's millions, then billions, then zillions, then gazillions. 

(me: and then a googleplex- that is where the word google comes from, because there are that many things to search through to find things) 

and a googleplex plus one? 

(yes, and then there is another number, infinity, which is the biggest number you could ever have, and it is always getting bigger, because it is the largest number there ever can be) 

and infinity plus one? 

(Yes.)

 It's just like the Earth.

(What?)

The Earth is always getting bigger,all the time.

(No, the Earth stays pretty much the same size - the Universe is getting bigger around it, all the way to the edges and growing all the time.) 

Oh, yea, that - and it is growing because time is passing, and going out further and further

(me: That could be.  Scientists are working on that).  

And the smallest number is zero, then, because it is nothing at all.  

(me: No, - zero is zero. Nothing added, nothing taken away - balanced.

Oh, yea.

( Remember infinity?  Think about that the other way- negative infinity)

 nods - I know that one.  And you go the other way (from zero) one two three four --...and it is less all the time 

(Yes, and then the smallest number then would be (negative) infinity minus one.  )

OK...do you want a frog?  I have a frog.

 And ...that was that.

I'll leave this with the very first picture we had of Loula, from Christmas Eve, 2011, and one from when she grew up into one of the best dogs we have had-- a 'classic all-around' dog.  Poor girl.

June 21st

My father and stepmother stopped by yesterday for several hours to catch up and spend time with Esme.  We had a good time and they saw chickens, garden, puppies, kittens... a very much grown little girl :)

This morning I did my usual birthday thing - and it was very pretty in the sunrise up at the top of the road - the sunflowers were just beginning to bloom.. the bats and birds and bees and other insects were all around, and the world was full of life and waking up.  I took a few hours in the garden - then a nap... as sleeping was not so good last night.

Esme, Mark and I went out and took some photos a little while ago.  She is using the older camera we have in some of the pictures down below.

The following pictures are taken by Esme (or with that camera in a few obvious examples)

She was very proud of the bugs on this one. 

silly :)



And a picture from the visit that Mark caught when I was opening a present.  We really need to catch some more photos next time!

When your Puppy Eats your Swing, you Improvise

Loula the puppy ate the seat off of our tree swing. Actually, she just chewed it from the super-strong woven straps it was on and carried it away. But, Esme has not let that stop her from making use of the leftover straps. She was proud to show me what she has been doing with those arm muscles...







I think she might have a career in gymnastics ;) just kidding. I was in it as a kid and was quite impressive at the uneven bars.



What actually impressed me the most was not her setting this all up herself in front of me to show me her trick - but the way she grasped both straps in her hands and 'walked' her fingers up until she had a good foot of each strap below her hands - she took a long and deliberate time doing this and looking at the ground before she actually made her jump. She was calculating her distance and arc by experience - if I grab this much strap I won't hit the ground when I swing. Now that's some thought process kid!



note: also, I find balloon strings wrapped around everything lately. I blow them up for her (helium tank left over from a birthday two years ago!) and give her one every once in a while. While she has not learned to tie knots she has figured out that if you wrap the string around something about fifteen times it tends to stay put - and our porch, the swing straps, even the refrigerator door have been 'hit' by balloon wrappings lately. I found one balloon with the string stuck in the kitchen cupboard door the other day - because she didn't want it getting away from her while she played with something else for a while.


purple silks on the field corn


the west field

The drought has taken a big bite out of both of my experimental corn fields this year. This field has only gotten about three feet tall but there are some very small ears still happening in there. I guess it would be important to keep seed from this just for drought tolerance. The purple silks on a few of them interest me - is it the genetics, or the 'hot' acidity of the soil? I planted mostly black and blue kernel corn here to see what would happen. Now that I'm on vacation I am making sure it is getting some extra water to do what it can. Read up on it - purple silks means a phosphate deficiency. I can solve that with a little epsom salts - already have some from the cucumbers last year.


sad little main garden

This is the 'main garden' after the drought and all of the clearing out of things that had died. I have replanted some things but it will be hard going with the hot dry weather we are still having (although there were rains a week or so ago). Still, there are bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and goldfinches enjoying the sunflowers, zinnias and bean flowers. And at that, it is still worthwhile even if the new plantings do not do much. Planted experimental field corn plot #2 yesterday in front of the sunflowers. Beans coming up everywhere from last week - corn coming up.... pulling in sunflower heads to dry every few days and getting nearly an entire quart jar of dried black seed already. The lemon sunflowers have a strange blue-gray tinge to them which keeps them separate from the other - there is maybe a small relish jar half full of those seeds.


lemon sunflower head

preschool shots and a walk in the woods

Esme and Loula come for a walk...
It was a little like wild kingdom with Esme carrying sticks and
the puppy 'helping' along.


Esme went for her preschool shots this morning - she did very well. We told her she would be 'strong' after this - so she could go to school. She likes that idea very much. She got them early this morning and is just a little cranky - but has eaten well and run around like crazy all day - just like usual.



We went for a walk out in the woods and around the garden. It is so different with most of the tree cover gone in the valley. We looked at the burn piles from last year and cleaned up debris and a can the loggers had left behind. We went down to the lake and played a bit at the edge of the water. Loula puppy was very happy to run alongside with us and bounce and play with Esme.



Mark took hold of the camera and got some pretty abstract shots.


A pretty plant
and the monkey sticker the nurse gave her

Some ash mixed with baked clay

// She played outside for a good while, and got Grandma to come down and fly a kite with us. There was lots of sun and wind. Then she came inside and calmed down playing Minecraft on my computer. At about 5:30 she fell asleep in my desk chair, before supper! She is still asleep over there - no fever, seems good.

I am going to have to put more pants on the sewing agenda - she has ripped two pairs in as many days... but both of them were actually made last fall. Loula has been being rougher with her and likewise.

Beautiful January day

It was a beautiful day outside - and we played in it for a while today. Then we went to visit some new friends, and Esme had a good time playing with them. She was very happy playing with the 1 year old little boy and then warmed up to the girl (who is a little younger than her and was feeling worried about her toys so Esme sensed to back off for a while...) as well and was running all over the house with them within a few hours. She didn't want to leave, though - she said it made her 'not feeling any good' to have to leave them there and that her green house was not home anymore when she was not feeling good. Well, at least that is communication! She didn't mean it, though... we took the purple shovel into the bathtub with her and she made 'soap soup' in the shovel and chicken pie. We are going to go out to Jackson tomorrow with Grandma and Grandpa.

Also - she fell asleep before 9 o clock pm. That, is amazing.

She also said she was a 'Futurama lady' but I couldn't understand the name she was saying. I asked if it was Leela or Amy ... and then said it couldn't be Fry because he was a man. Esme said, no kidding: 'The rocks turn Fry to a lady, once', and held up her finger to me with her little 'aha' look. We watched that episode once a few weeks ago, and then she suddenly remembers that... Yes, the rock aliens did change everyone's gender in that episode, and then they changed them back.

What a day. Let's see what we do tomorrow.

The Update on the language testing I spoke with the language tester briefly the other day. She could not tell me much, as she wants an official meeting to see what we can do for Esme through the school district. The next time our schedules meshed is not until the 17th of February. That is a long time. I did ask her to tell me 'something', and she said she actually had 'good' vocab, 'decent' speech sounds (just a few off, that are normal to be off at this age), no major hearing problem, but she 'did qualify for services' because of a vast difference between her receptive and expressive language abilities. She scored 'very high, nearly all of them' on her receptive language. She is getting the message loud and clear. But, she scored 'a bit lower than expected/average' on expressive language. I'll know more specifics when that meeting happens.

In short: she is understanding a LOT, unable to express much of what she wants to, and it is frustrating her. She tries to express what she can with the words she knows - and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't... The lady did not say this but we know she is highly creative, because she uses words in combinations that approximate what she means - but often in 'Engrish' sounding ways because she does not remember/know the 'usual' form of saying what she means ie: today 'My friends no come with us, they stay there, in the door (their house). I am no feeling any good now.' It takes a second longer to process that type of sentence - but the meaning is clear. Not all of her approximations are this clear, that was a really good one.

Add this with the wide range of things she remembers - but may not be able to express what she is trying to 'connect' to the present at any given time... yes, I can see where all the angst and argument is coming from lately. Her expressions of displeasure and disagreement make it much harder to work through the day, but at least they are expressions - we try to work through them, and help her understand. It is better than her bottling it up and/or throwing frustration fits we have no idea what they are about at all. I will go to the meeting to see what the lady offers, and what kind of activities she thinks would benefit Esme the most. If she wants her to come back once a week for exercises (like I did for speech when I was little) I'm not sure if we could do that with my schedule, and I'm not sure if they'd let us do it when the schedule did meet up. But - knowing where to 'put my finger on the issue' will help a lot in itself... knowing it is not a different issue, not trying to treat a broken leg when there is just a cold etc...

Brown gingham pinafore Simplicity 3603

homemade pinafore over storebought shirt

The shirt came from her aunt Gail the Christmas before this one - and it is one of the few items I can stretch the neck on wide enough to get Esme to cooperate with it. I'll try to make her some of the blouses out of this pattern or another later - because she will outgrow it.


Simplicity 3603, undated

The only pattern I could find quickly was Simplicity 3603 in size 5 (pictured). I am at the point where I believe Simplicity patterns are sized just a tad bit bigger than McCalls... the 8001 size 5 was a very good fit, this is a bit big even witha shirt underneath it. The split square necked front was a bit of a challenge, as well as the skirt was actually VERY full... I tend to pleat instead of gather, just because. I'd never get anything done if I had to fuss with gathers instead of neat pleats. Esme doesn't seem to mind, so I keep on.




A single snap holds it right now...

The back opening also overlaps a little on a reinforced buttonband...
buttonholes to come next, as I usually do those by hand. Esme requested pink buttons. I'll probably put a few down the front, as well? And the brown rick rack would look really nice if I could get my hands on some. The white rick rack... I'm not sure what the point would be?


Loula and Esme are like two peas in a pod now


Esme actually has the puppy thinking: 'Will you slow down?'
Mama and Daddy feel that way most days, too!