Esme bits

Yesterday she had this idea she was going to glue her plastic farm animals into a box and take it to school.  I vetoed the plastic animals, and told her she could draw animals and I would help her cut them out and glue them onto the box.  She refused, at first, to draw anything - saying it was too hard.  Finally, after much sulking and staring at the tv, she tried several times to draw a cow.  She was messing up almost on purpose it seemed - frustrated about this head being too big, or that neck being too long, or that smudge between those legs meaning it was all ruined etc...  She fussed and fraggled about it for a while.. and then we had dinner and I insisted she come back to it and try again.  She did, and completed with a nice job.  We glued it on to the box and put it in her bag for the morning.

At the beginning of this week she had told me the dentist at school said to brush morning and night, so you do not stink in the morning and the 'sugar bugs' don't eat your teeth at night.  So, Monday and Tuesday were not trouble - she brushed her teeth, and was fairly happy about doing so... but she didn't get to make the farm drawing before school because of all the time she took brushing her teeth... so the glamour wore off.  Today it was a sulky fight to get her to hold to her word she would brush all week.  But, she did it.  We'll see how this goes.  It would be great if she could get in the habit of doing both - it was so hard to get her into the habit of brushing at night but that finally sunk in.

She has been taking on a lot more responsibility these past few months -- bringing her lunchbox home and putting it where it goes, homework then play, taking her bath and washing her hair almost every single night (which it is down to her waist so it is a task), packing her own lunch with minimal help, brushing her teeth night (and morning, now, we hope), putting her lunch in her backpack in the morning when it is time to go... it is a lot for her, but it is good to see her capabilities develop.  She even has been trying, without success, to tie her own shoes.

Last night we introduced her to Algodoo, a physics/mechanics free program.  She picked up on things right away - here and there, drawing circles and gears and bars and chains, liquifying to play with water, adding motors to make things turn, cutting items with the knife and making lasers that cut things in motion.  She made a 'stomach' with a chain and water and used a laser to make it 'throw everything up'.  Ha.  She said cutting the piece of ice that floated in the water was just like ice cubes in the lemonade.  The really cool thing is once we showed her something she remembered how to do it almost perfectly, would restart the scene from scratch and do it herself to have it all done her way, and was having such a good time she didn't want to stop.

remember

Yesterday morning in the kitchen - Esme wakes up and has another one of her theories.. children should not eat things that make them throw up, like broccoli, no, we should not feed them those things because then they will not grow up... it continued to what she DID want for breakfast, since broccoli was not on the menu - and then she said she did not want to grow up, she wanted to stay like a kid, and play - and she should not have a breakfast that makes her grow up (she is still obsessed with this idea from the Sims game that at some unknown moment you will just 'swirl around' in a poof of flower dust and grow up.. she wants it immediately some days, and wants to hold back from it forever other days.. typical 'human philosopher' feelings but they are brand new for her and I am glad she is telling me about them now - I can see her brain work so much more.)  I assured her a breakfast of an orange and some animal crackers, along with some juice sounded like a good breakfast and it would take a LONG time for her to grow up - definitely another school year... she said 'ok'... the pink rash on her face is going away - might have been sunburn or poison ivy, I'm just glad it is gone.  I react so strongly to poison ivy (or have in the past) that when I see any signs of 'might be' I get on guard.. Mark told me it didn't look like anything serious, and he was right - but I still needed to check her face every time she got up or I came back from work just to make sure.  She still had a face, Mark said - with mud on it.. ha.

Lazy Sunday and sewing Saturday

I think this is the first day I have not went to town in a long time... just wandered around the property and the house. It feels good, lazy almost. There have been a few whole hours I have not pried myself out of the chair while playing Minecraft.

Esme has played outside in the sand, watched a movie and rebuilt her Smurf kingdom in her bedroom. We made paper crowns and flags and she had a 'horse race' that involved many imaginary characters including 'Johnny Test' and his dad, so someone else could win a prize besides her. I did medical attention on her stuffed horse and a stuffed kitty that both had tears in them. I wandered and harvested in the garden. The Tennessee Greasy Bean has finally begun to put on small purple beans.

Esme's good ideas: The other night I was binding on Esme's quilt some more and she asked me why I was making my 'rar' noise. Honestly, sometimes I do that as an audible sigh and she perked her ears up at this one, as it was loud. I told her it was taking a long time to do the project, and my needle kept hitting a cut I had gotten on my finger earlier in the day. She came over and looked at the cut and watched me sewing for a moment. She dove into my sewing box and I tried to stop her - but she said she was looking for my thumb - to put it on my thumb so the needle would not hurt it. Yes, she remembered I had a thimble that was supposed to protect against hitting your finger with the needle.. and I found it after her surprising suggestion. She waited until I put it on, then satisfied she had fixed the problem, she went back to giving Daddy backseat driver directions on his Minecraft game. She wanted him to put up a sign to tell the Zombies to go away - so they would read the sign and go back to their Zombie houses with their mom and dad Zombies and not bite us in our house. **he did put up a sign that said 'keep out', just because it was a good idea**

Turned around the sewing tables while Esme napped and we watched 'Hunger Games.' Later, when Esme was outside I pushed myself to rethread the machine and made a red six gore skirt for myself out of some remnant fabric in the bags Sharon gave me. It is high waisted and still mid-calf length and has a deep pocket on one side and a zipper up the other side. It will be better than the yellow one for winter warmth. I started a sleeveless shirt as well. It needs buttonholes and armhole binding and then a bottom hem and it will be done.

Winter To Do:
Replace the insulation on the windows through the house.
Plant vetch in the west field
Finish Esme's quilt
Make slippers
Esme's hanger rod for her clothes

Note: As I am walking back from the mailbox, my nearly five year old daughter running to her grandmother's house up the hill... and the wide open September sky surrounding me... I feel one of those moments. I feel I am very far away from the nine year old girl sitting on top of her swingset in 1980s Minnesota. Yet I feel her - and at the same time that wide sky, approaching winter as those thoughts are on my mind today, reminds me of that same feeling. I would climb up into the 'rafters' of that swingset and sit there as a child and stare at the sky and the trees around me, 'talk to the wind' and feel this 'vastness' of time - imagining an older me from the future looking back at myself like a time travelling adventure - I imagined I saw them and spoke to them and asked what they had done. I could almost swear one of them had dark brown hair and said I would have a daughter and her name would start with E, but I couldn't think of any good 'E' names at the time... so it couldn't have been true, plus my hair would never get brown - it was blonde, so that couldn't be true, either. I was a bored and imaginative child...not able to leave the yard and nowhere else to go. I daydreamed a lot and maybe got 'something right.' At times now, as I age, I 'feel' that daydreaming time back then - and almsot step back to it, think about what I have done since then, and think forward to other times that will be looking back on --right now--. Just now, I could feel the little girl asking and almost feel some older me remembering, like something tracing a finger in sand within your mind... As I stared at the open sky towards the lake and thought about putting the vetch on the field for winter - about how hard and cold this winter might be - of the years ahead that I will think the same things, perhaps on that same walk. And tomorrow it will be all bustle again and before I know it, that time will have passed and I will be thinking about now.