Japanese Garden Feeding the Koi

On Wednesday, Wren and I went to the Seattle Arboretum Japanese Garden to feed the koi. I have been meaning to go for a few weeks and am lucky I did because it was one of the last days they were selling fish food. Apparently, as the water temperature drops the fish go into a kind of hibernation (metabolism drops) and they eat little.



When we arrived sun was breaking through between huge purple mountains of cloud. Wren ran straight to the bridge and I game him small handfuls of food for the fish waiting under the bridge. He loves feeding them - there are also Koi at Swansons nursery and we get really close to them there and he tries to touch them. Here, he stood and chatted about the fish for about 20 minutes, carefully dropping pellets of fish into the water.





Eventually, I managed to persuade Wren to walk around the garden. It is a beautiful place, very tranquil and ordered. Unlike English country gardens or most of our gardens, the aesthetic is controlled and everything non-essential is removed, shaped or pruned in a way as to reveal the intrinsic form of a plant, moss, a rock or a puddle. This makes it very satisfying for a toddler - its a series of dioramas: little river, beautiful rock, hidable bush, bridge and fish. Wren did not respect the paths as much as he should and tried to hide in shrubs along the way. He hid in this one before finding it too small:



Inevitably, we returned to the bridge for more fish feeding (a second bag of food). This time, a hungry duck decided his odds were better OUT of the water. Wren did not like this. He said "Duck, go back IN. Duck IN. Duck DOWN." I waited to see how close the duck would come and the answer is VERY close. It ate from my hand for a while then I pushed it back into the water with my hand, causing wren much satisfaction. "Duck go down. Duck go down." he repeated.


We completed the circuit around the little lake (Wren calls it a "bath" - as in "fish in bath?" or "Duck go in bath!" by then, Wren was yawning and I pushed him back to the car at a jog as the rain started to fall heavily. We were lucky to catch a little sunny hour in the day.


No nap?
On they way home, Wren fell asleep in the car but woke during transfer to his bed. For the first time in his life he had no nap yesterday (well, only 10 minutes). He was quite distraught by 7pm and he went to bed early. Due to his head cold (yes Wren has a head cold) he has been waking during the night and getting up early but he did OK considering. He woke at midnight, 5am and up at 6.20am. I hope he naps today for Heather. I was a wreck by 5pm and even forgot Wren's soccer ball when we took Frost to soccer practice.

Remodel update
The flooring, Marmoleum, was delivered today. Installation will be next week.

The Games Wren Plays

I've been so focused on the heart issues that I haven't been keeping up with all the fun at home. Its still summer vacation (for those of you in Southern climes) and Wren has become very verbal recently. He speaks in sentences all the time and has a fabulous vocabulary. Just this evening before bed he said:

"Dada MOVE night-night"
"Put tain-tack in"
"Taste num num NOW"

He calls all small round things bubbles (including blueberries and grapes) and loves to order us around and claim "MINE MINE, WEN's WEN's!". He can also copy almost anything I say and makes us laugh with his funny comments. Along with the verbal explosion Wren has favorite games we must play every day. Here are the most common ones.

Make Tain Tack
Every morning when he wakes up we read books (Wren drops them on my head as I lie on the mattress on the floor) then he opens the big plastic tub with train track in it and starts to build train tracks on the carpet. He goes for all the interesting pieces, inclines, bridges, station, tunnels and tries to stick them all together. It is only a matter of minutes before he runs into trouble with a bridge and calls out "HELP, up-down" which translates as "help me make this bridge". He cannot figure out how to put the supports under the ascending track so they won't connect or stay up when he does it himself. I try and steer his meandering pieces into loops which frustrates him because then he doesn't have an end piece to build from.




The trains themselves are fun too but not the main event. We help them go up-down for a while and then they run off into the corner somewhere under the bed or cupboard and whir neglected until the battery runs down (unless I notice). Meanwhile Wren announces "tain tack away" and puts away the track piece by piece before moving on to the next thing. Frequently, I am still in the middle of the game and am a bit crestfallen by the destruction of the Gordion knot I have helped create.

HIDE! Mountain!
Wren loves to hide. He gets help to make a place out of pillows and lies there in silent glee while we pretend to look for him. When I find him he smiles and wriggles for a while and then gets indignant and says "hide, hide" again and tucks his head back in the pillow.

The other day, Frost and Wren were playing hide and Frost came running into the kitchen telling me that Wren was "hiding in a tomb." I said "what?" He explained that he had made a pillow nest for Wren that was "like a tomb, you know.. not a real tomb but like that." I was aghast and told him to not use that kind of example because he knew I was worried about about Wren going to hospital. Unfortunately, this backfired because Frost decided it was frightfully naughty/funny to joke about Wren in a tomb. A few minutes later he called me into the bedroom where he had made a sign in black texta.

The sign he placed on top of the pillow hidey hole was: HERE LIES WREN.

A teacher at our school commented that kids always play with things that worry or frighten them. Perhaps so. Frost also has always had an irreverent streak.

Here are some pictures of Wren hiding in pillow mountains.



Read Book
Likes to read books in the morning, especially books about diggers and babies doing things. He comments on the pictures and enjoys books which we have read many times before like "Go Dog Go" and "The Digger Book." He likes to hold the book himself and to turn the pages in somewhat random order often skipping pages and then looking puzzled and frustrated that his favorite images have gone.

BOUNCE! Down! BUMP!
Wren is very active and loves to rough-and-tumble with Joshua and Frost. He gets very excited if you play chase and sometimes gets excited and runs around in circles shrieking in fun. Frost and Wren feed off each other's energy and by late afternoon I feel I am herding elephants through the house. They like to jump off things (Wren jumps off the coffee table repeatedly practicing landing and saying "BUMP" before he tries. He often does bump but continues anyway. He loves to play pillow fight and wrestle with Joshua when he comes home and has a complicated series of games he likes including being swung upside down and being thrown into a soft pile of quilt. Frost has made up a game called "rock-a-dump" where he pitches Wren forward out of a rocking chair to his great delight saying "rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka DUMP!"

Here is Wren in a spontaneous display of toddler gymnastics in the living room. The pictures were taken by Frost.

Copying
Wren also likes to copy Joshua and me. This evening while I was flossing he asked for a piece of floss and carefully sucked and pulled it through his teeth saying "ew, minty!" each time. Afterwards, he threw it in the bathroom rubbish bin just as I do.

When I am cleaning he gets out the mop and starts to dry mop the kitchen while I get ready. Today he took out the wet mop and sloshed water everwhere. Doing laundry he has got the idea of putting the clothes in the washer and of pulling them out the dryer. He is very sweet and helpful when he knows what I am doing and is always watchful in case I put my shoes on or pick up keys. If I do, he rushes to get his shoes and tries to go downstairs to get in the car in case I leave him behind. Once I have mentioned going out he is agitated and waits by the door as much as he can while I emphasize "LATER" or "soon" as the case may be.

I am never going to get this posted later because its Frost's bedtime again. Josh is out tonight with his old mates and we have been watching Olympic swimming. I think I will have an early night.