Farewell Internet

Well, I may have it at my motel stops the next couple days, but not when I get to my Dad's. Between two sick kids and getting ready for this trip, there has been no time to post, but I thought I would do a quick catch up before I leave.

I bought this chair on Craigslist, and Orion is quite taken with it. He picked out this very specific shirt and asked for sunglasses to stage this photo. Funny boy!
Akasha checking out a drum at Tessi's new place.
With cousin Amma.
And deciding plastic dishes and a basket are more interesting!
Ron and I both think she is beyond cute in this blue sleeper. I tossed this hat on her thinking it would make the perfect outfit, but she was apparently not about to be modelized. She is still cute in her annoyance!
One of Akasha's favorite places lately. I liked this shot as the look on Kona's face about sums up what Kona thinks of this arrangement. Akasha often gets the "rawrrawr" sound from her if she catches her fur against the ground.
She was laughing at me blowing raspberries in this one!
Akasha and The Rawrer. Notice how Kona has her paw possessively over the lovey!
In a quick recap of the boy child's exploding mind, some recent topics....

Math, math and more math.

He asked Ron the other day, "When the world first began, who took care of the babies?" !!! This started a discussion about evolution vs creationism. Orion has declared he is a believer in deities. When Ron was telling me about it and said "gods", Orion piped up and said, "And the Goddess!" That's my boy!

The other day as we were driving someplace on the Eastside, I mentioned something about King street, and somehow we got to talking about MLK and civil rights. That is a hard subject for a 5 year old, who thankfully has NO concept of people being told they can't do something based on the way they look. I found myself somewhat sugar coating history, but not totally. I mean, I wasn't going to jump into lynchings at his age! But deciding what to tell him was surprisingly tough. I think I didn't want to tell him about the buses and drinking fountains, etc. because I didn't even want him to have it in his head that a world like existed. I kindof settled on voting as my example, so I could include the issue that at one point women couldn't vote either. He was pretty cute about it and said something about how he was going to tell everybody you can do whatever you want no matter how you look. :)

If there are any unschoolers with older children out there that happen to read this post, I would love to hear about how you discussed the more "unsavory" bits of history with your kids, and at what ages.

OK, now off to bed. Three days of driving ahead of me!

The Face of Sick :(

Akasha is sick. Not sure if it is the start of the flu, but we shall see. This picture does not do her weepy eyes justice, but you get the idea.

Minibooks!

Orion asked to make some books the other day! I think this was inspired by my friend Rachele on our Seattle trip. They made a couple books together, and Orion really enjoyed it.

He tells me what to write, and then he draws the pictures. I love how the octopi all have only 4 or 6 arms lol. Does that make them quadropi or hexapi?





Looks like a full and happy life for this armless boy. :)

16 month comp

Hey, at least I got it up before she was 17 months.

Leafy Happenings

Somebody discovered the water table full of leaves.

And looks like possibly some dirt on her chin?
Meanwhile, Orion prefers the comforts of the couch.
Modeling the split lip he got at Papa's last night (lower right).
I love the way our tree makes gradients from green leaves to the colors on the ends of the branches.
Later that night, Akasha in her favorite new spot while mama is "cooking". In quotes since I was actually making raw dishes. :)

Practicing

Orion really wanted me to take this picture for some reason. Akasha loves her potties and often sits on them with or without clothes, so not sure why he took special notice of this occasion, but here ya go.

In Praise of Nursing Cats

So this post idea started because Orion and I are working on an alphabet book and have been finding pictures of various nursing animals to include in it. I have never had a cat or a dog that had puppies, so I never really thought about how long various animals might nurse if left to their own choice. I always pictured them being done when they were still small as I guess that is what human intervention does in their hurry to send the babies off to new homes. :( So I was quite surprised when this was one of the first pictures I stumbled on:
My goodness, that nursling looks almost full grown! Turns out the internet is full of pictures of big kitties nursing! How does this mama do it?!
But the caption on it was the best part!
"This was taken several years ago when Mini Harina forgot to use birth control, got pregnant, and had about a billion black kittens. They all found good homes and were weaned and eating food by this point but she was such a good mother that she always let them nurse no matter how big they were and how much it inconvenienced her. Now that's a good mother cat." Hmmm, that's a good mother period in my book. :)

Would ya look at all these beautiful colors!

This brood is not quite as big, but that mama belly looks pretty crowded!
Nursing while grooming as only a cat could.
And this one had to be included for the sheer abandon!
There were lots more, but you get the idea. :)

Alternate Worlds

Orion was talking about some trippy stuff in the car the other day, and I want to make a quick note of it before I forget it. I don't remember how he got to talking about "other worlds", but that was the base of the whole conversation. He was describing several different alternate worlds, but there were two that stood out to me the most.

The first was the all white world. Simply put by Orion, everything is white, so you can't see anything because it all looks the same!

But even more interesting was the invisible world. Everything there is invisible of course. But if you are part of the invisible world, you can see the other invisible things. Hmm, well that would be useful. Seriously though, can you say parallel universes? The kid has got it down. Scary.

Leaf Walk!

Finally been clear for a couple days! Been waiting for a day like this so we could get some semidry leaves to press for crafts.

Orion loves to play in leaves!


I love this one. Not sure if you can see at this size, but he has his tongue sticking out.
Akasha is not so sure what all the fuss is about.

OK, maybe there is something to this leaf thing.
Sneaking up to dump leaves on sister's head....

I couldn't believe this one flower hanging on in the midst of all the bare branches around it!
Awwww!
Wow, this leaf was crazy! Not only did nature design it with two lovely holes, but the wind then placed it nicely on the end of this branch. This was up quite high by the way. I just cropped it way in to see it better. Yay for high res LOL.
This is the house in our neighborhood Orion loves. When he first saw it just before Halloween, he said he wanted to join their family!
Just after getting some more leaves dumped on her head in yet a different yard! Glad she liked it. :)
That's a kitty in there my kids are lovin' on.
This was one patient and affectionate cat. It must live with kids!
Some of our haul back at home.

Orion's New Thang

Every once in awhile, Orion asks to get the Duplos out and has a good time playing with them for a bit. His latest inspiration was to draw faces on them! It works well with kids' markers because they just wipe off. You can see this guy has had several. On one guy, he drew 4! One on each side - happy, sad, mad and surprised. Made me think of the Mayor from NBC. The guy above is wearing headphones. There was quite an elaborate description of how they can play any song in the world, or something like that. But now he is sick. Guess that is why he is sad. Notice the doctor tools lying about. He had no reflexes. Funny how that works when your legs are made of plastic.

Sarah's Poetry Book

I found this with some of Sarah's stuff and thought it was worth taking pictures of a few of the pages. She loves scrapbooking stuff and always went all out on school projects she could decorate.
Her theme was Love. What a sweet little poem this is:
This is one she wrote:
Yeah, I guess I did things a little differently with Sarah. Honestly, she had ALOT of freedom. And she didn't even have a credit card LOL! Or mall privileges? She could go to the mall whenever she wanted! I guess she was just tying to be funny.