Sushi Night

Every second Wednesday is sushi night. Sushi is one of our favorite dinners. Frost loves it and seldom manages to wait past 5.30pm for dinner. Wren enjoys it because he can 'help' and eat avocado, rice balls, chew raw carrot and generally get messy with me. I enjoy it because I get to eat lots of sushi. Joshua has been unpopular lately because Sushi Wednesday seems to be BBQ Wednesday at work and he is often too full for dinner. Still, he generally enjoys it too, prefering the smoked salmon and cream cheese sushi concoctions.

Here, you see our sushi platter laid out. Frost has the vegetarian sushi. Josh's is the one with the nori inside and mine is the big roll on the end.

Wren is pointing to the very sharp knife. "no no no" he says. "SHARP!!"

Clouds of Clematis

As the mornings break earlier and earlier and Wren continues to wake in the 5's (5.18am this morning based on the hopefully pushed-forward time of the bedside clock which is in fact 5.08am for everyone else) we have the chance to take morning walks before Frost wakes up.

Many days it is too cold or wet to enjoy the outdoors but as we head downstairs at 6am to do the laundry Wren always goes into the garage and begs to get up into the stroller.

A walk is his plan.

Here we are on one of the days that was actually sunny. I think it was Saturday 10 days ago. As you can see, the neighborhood is beautifully in bloom.

In one picture he is holding a jonquil. We are not flower thieves. It was just lying on the sidewalk and we found it. Wren also loves to hold dandelions (we propagate weeds) and dandelion flowers.

Speaking to the birds

This is a rather peculiar little movie of Wren sitting in the sandbox talking with a crow. He sits there a while until the crow caws. He replies. The crow caws. He replies. Eventually the crow is silent or flies away and Wren continues to ponder the crow "cah cah".

Many new words

Wren is speaking so much more recently. I thought it about time to update his word list. Yesterday, he said two words in a row - I think it was "more, cookie".

I will keep on adding to this list until Wren's 18 month 'birthday'.

1. no
2. more
3. cookie
4. down
5. up
6. mine
7. yummy
8. num num (food)
9. hot
10. cold
11. all gone
12. kitty
13. vroom vroom
14. ball
15. 'nana
16. sharp
17. dig
18. book
19. hello
20. bye bye
21. mama
22. dada
23. 'rost (Frost)
24. Kai Kai (kyler)
25. star
26. car
27. cah-cah (bird, esp crow from me saying "caw caw" at crows.)
28. guy
29. die-die (dice)
30. dice
31. ice
32. rice
33. aye-aye (icecream, also ice)
34. uh oh
35. Elias
36. yes
37. this
38. eye
39. ear
40. puck puck (hen)
41. kitty
42. oof oof (woof woof)
43. oo oo (owl noise)
44. truck
45. in
46. out
47. yuck yuck / eck eck (rubbish)
48. 'dow (for snow)
49. tree
50. baa baa (sheep)
51. ga-TAR (guitar)
52. did-der (digger)
53. bubble
54. block
55. pounce (pow)
56. attack
57. mammo (hammer)
58. cone
59. raining
60. dip
61. row-wa (steam roller)
62. dump
63. pour
64. fish
65.

Sleeping through the night

Wren is sleeping through the night. He goes to bed around 8pm (most days a bit earlier) and wakes at 6am ( or a bit before). I still have the clocks 10-20 minutes fast so it varies.

This is wonderful.

It means he takes one 2 hour nap every day and I can plan my life a bit better. That said, today he slept early and went to bed early so he may have trouble tomorrow morning.

In the end I had to stop going in when he woke at 4.30am. I didn't go in at 5am either. I just let him chat and cry (sorrows) until 5.45am. After two days of that he slept right through till 6am.

I am very pleased. Cautious. Very pleased.

Thank you Tamsyn for the reality check. Your comment about wishing I could sleep through the night provided just a bit of extra oomph to help motivate me to continue with my plan.

Ballsy

Joshua says, "Wren is a fierce player of soccer."

Its true. During Frost's soccer games he loves to run along kicking the ball up and down and if another child approaches he stops and picks it up protectively.

Josh and Frost are going to the Brazil vs Canada Soccer match this month.

The Animals were frisky at the Zoo

This morning Wren and I waited at the Zoo Gates at opening time. A group of elderly people in the Zoo Walkers program did exercises in a..

[aside: I am in some awful spot between English English and American English. I NEVER know when to use a Z vs an S and invariably make the wrong choice. You Americans... what is the principle? Why is it exercise surprise but organize or realize? I used to be a good speller but now I am just confuzed.]

... circle, waving their arms and raising their knees slowly in time with the zoo exercise trainer.

A group of kids and grandparents from out of town all wore matching red sweatshirts proclaiming something biblical. I could hear the siamungs hooting in the distance as we paid our $4 for parking. Wren was very excited at the display of stuffed flamingo in the shop window. The flamingo exhibit will open on the 24th of May and everyone is anticipating the birds.

I don't know whether it was the early hour, feeding time or destiny but we had the best zoo visit ever. I had meant to stop in for half an hour but so many animals were so exciting that we stayed for an hour and a half and Wren passed out asleep almost as soon as I strapped him in his carseat.

This is what we saw:

• The African Wild dogs were standing in a row at the glass viewing window with their ears wide. They were on alert. We stood right there by them before realizing they were looking past us at ..


• the new Lioness who moved into her enclosure 2 days earlier and was looking at the wild dogs through her window. The wild dogs were very anxious until she turned and..


• walked all around in her enclosure, hiding in the grass, going down to the water, peeking out behind logs. In short.. moving more than most lions move in the daytime,


• The sun bears were galloping around their enclosure with one chasing the other. They appeared to be fighting but it could have been mating behaviour. They have very fierce looking teeth and the dominant one snarled at the other, chasing it into the ditch, up a tree, down a log, over a cliff. They just went round and round, their claws slipping and scratching on the logs as they climbed and dropped after each other.


• The budgies at Willawong station sat on my arm and tried to land on Wren's shoulder


• The grizzly bear jumped into the salmon pond, splashed about, then lay there for a nap. Wren said "ish ish" about the salmon.


• The snowy owl (ookpik) was sitting right out on a log.


• All THREE tapirs were right by the glass eating. After finishing their food the single tapir (enclosed separately to the other pair) started walking around and came right within arms reach of me over the wooden rail fence. Then he startled at a crow/child screech and frisked off and then came back. The tapir is a startlingly lovely and big animal. I wish I had seen a wild and free tapir too.


• The Giraffe were waiting by the fence, hoping the gate would open to let them out into the savannah.

There was more, but those were the highlights.

I am keep to return to the zoo another morning and see whether the animals are often this active early in the opening day.

The Seattle Symphony or "Who is playing the Bassinette?"

On Saturday, Frost and I attended the Seattle Symphony Series for young people. The theme of the performance was Peter and the Wolf although there were a number of other pieces performed.

I was concerned about taking Frost to the Symphony and he started complaining as soon as I mentioned it that morning. He wanted to play video games. He wanted to stay at home. He WAS NOT GOING. He was fed up with me being "the boss of" him. "You are not the boss of me!" and I had apparently promised he would not have to leave the house on the weekend.

We arrived in time to join the convoy of minivans entering the Beneroya Hall parking garage. I felt svelte in the Subaru. Our seat was in the 8th row and Frost was interested to see the huge kettle drums and the String Family warming up.

Throughout the performance (between pieces) there was narration, encouring the kids to listen for certain moods, sounds, instruments and techniques. Frost was very attentive although he squirmed, slumped, slouched, fell to the floor and took his shoes off rather than sitting as I expected Good Kids To Do. I could not help but glance around at the other, often younger, girls sitting quiet and still in their flouncy dresses.

Despite his aerobic activity, Frost was very moved by the music. He kept asking whispered questions and thumped his body along to the tempo of the music. His head banging in time made the whole row of seats shudder so I had to ask him to stop it.

Afterwards he commented "didn't you think I behaved well?"

He was so sincere that I had to agree. He had been listening because since then he comments on violins, classical music and the different kinds of instruments in an orchestra. He is curious about who pays a musician to perform and whether they practice or just learn.

I want to play around on a violin but I don't want lessons
Frost and I had two arguments at the Symphony. The first, is a recurrent one which is that since Frost visited a music store with Josh, he has decided he wants a violin. We have said that is a possibility but that he would need to take lessons.

"No, I don't want lessons"
"Well, you need to have lessons if you are going to get a violin"
"No, I will just play it myself and learn like that"

[I am too weary of the discussion to go over it again. Perhaps I am wrong? Is it unreasonable to expect a child to take lessons if they have or rent an expensive instrument? Frost has this strong aversion to pedagogy and while I respect the self-taught thing in Joshua it is less appealing in my 6 year old. Neither do I want to get in the situation of dragging a reluctant child to lessons and bribing or threatening him to practice. Its just a setup for failure.]

We ended our argument with a "lets talk about it later".

When we came home Joshua dusted off the Cello from the basement and despite its missing g-string Frost took great pleasure in making noises on it. He kept saying "don't you think I'm doing a good job on the cello?"

He said he might even do lessons if he HAD TO DO LESSONS TO GET A VIOLIN. Or he might learn the cello.

We kept quiet.

The other argument was a short one. Frost said "Who is playing the bassinette?" I looked around the stage for a moment with my mind going tick tock. Finally, I figured it out.

"There isn't an instrument called a bassinette. There's a basoon and a clarinette"
"there IS a basinette!"
"No, there isn't"
"I heard them say BASINETTE!"
"Oh, there is a basinette that babies sleep in!"
"Oh, that's what it is. Well, who is playing the basoon?"

Little Readers

Recently, Wren has been very interested in board books about trucks. Its that whole construction obsession that strikes young (male) toddlers from time to time. As with Frost, we have started to haunt construction sites in hopes of seeing a digger at work.

Wren's favorite construction board book is this one, by Caterpillar. He reads the book by turning pages rapidly until he comes to the one of a skid-steer loading gravel. He sticks at that pages for 5 minutes saying and signing "up, up" presumably because it is lifting gravel up in the picture.



Next, he turns to the following page of a mass excavator with its shovel down. He says "up up" again for a long time. He cries if I turn the page. Again, he obsesses over this particular picture (does he remember the excavator we watched digging?) The only way to "read" this book with him is to stop on these two pages FOR AGES and talk about them.

I end up talking about excavators digging (Wren says "dig") and lifting rocks up ( he echos "up up.") I tell him about the excavator claw and make a claw with my hand (he copies the claw and makes digging with claw motions). Eventually I tire and hide the book which results in tears.



I have been explaining to Frost that he can't watch so much TV because it is bad for him and Wren and that he is a big role model for Wren. I told him that Wren would do new things if he showed him how. This worked very well when Frost was persuaded to read his chapter book on the couch. Wren brought his board book to read next to Frost. They were a very sweet picture and for once did not pose for my photograph.

The Melancholy of Grinding Cinnamon

This morning Frost asked for cinnamon sugar toast but when I checked the cinnamon it was all gone.

In the pantry I have a huge glass jar of cinnamon bark which I helped prepare from the cinnamon (kayu manis - sweet wood) tree while living in Banda, Indonesia. I took down the jar and started to grind up a piece of the bark to refill the spice jar. While grinding, the aroma of cinnamon dust gave me a flashback to the patch of grass and blue tarp where we laid out the wood. To the heat and humidity of the island, of Mamamina whom I have neglected to write to (because my bahasa is so foul after a decade of misuse) and the coral sea so rich in fish and hot springs from the volcano.

From that glimpse of melancholy I drifted to missing Africa and the trees with extravagant flowers and seed pods that hang like whole chickens from the low branches. And I miss the sun and the family and rivers that flood with red topsoil into the green-greasy ocean.

My kitchen feels so isolated by comparison with other worlds where people are anchored by need in each others lives.

Wren is now unpacking the dishwasher and poking the clean knives and forks into the heating vents. I hope they are not going down.