Snake family

Here is a playdough creation of Aidan's from last week. It is a snake family. From top to bottom, we have Orla, Isabelle, Aidan, Mummy, and Daddy.

Mummy snake is easily identifiable from the two round appendages on her chest. Aidan said "the left is smaller because it has no more milk in it!"

Puppet show

This morning Isabelle got busy and made some paper puppets. She attached them to some wooden chopsticks, and some plastic forks and spoons.

We have (from left to right on the piano stool): Orla, Aidan's friend, our house, Aidan, Mummy, Daddy, Isabelle, Isabelle's friend, Orla's friend, the cat, and the school. I've done a close up of our family: Aidan, Houdini, Orla, Mummy, Daddy, Isabelle. Puppet Isabelle is wearing a backpack - you can see the paper back of it in the photo.

I was then treated to a puppet show, acted by Isabelle and Brendon hiding behind one of the lounge chairs. In the scene depicted, puppet Isabelle plays with her friend at school.

Isabelle chose four things she wanted to do these holidays, and we managed to do them all. These were Te Papa, riding the trains, going to an art gallery and going out for dinner.

On Friday afternoon we all went to Te Papa to the Rita Angus exhibition (which sort of ticked two things off the list at once). Isabelle quite liked it, but was only interested in a quick look. I took care to explain to her some aspects of the pictures - that they used different materials and different techniques. And I explained how when adults do art, sometimes they do want something to look as lifelike as possible. But at other times, they have different goals.

Brendon and I will have to go back another time if we really want to study the art works! I was particularly struck with one of her final self-portraits, but in that section of the exhibit Isabelle was more attracted to the Bolton Street cemetery pictures (a place she is familiar with), so I went with her interest.

Isabelle's favourite thing at Te Papa was in fact the Pacifica discovery centre, which we had visited previously with her cousins. Aidan's favourite thing at Te Papa was the donations box in the foyer.

Today I overheard this conversation:
Adult to Isabelle: "And so did you get ideas for your art from the exhibition?"
Isabelle: "No. I have my own ideas. See that picture there? I have used chalk on it, even though it is paper".

Close encounters of the bird kind

This morning we completed the NZ garden bird survey for 2008.

Isabelle and I got ready with pen, paper, binoculars, timer, and bird identification chart. Aidan came out to join me later (once Isabelle's enthusiasm had waned!).

We saw 8 species of birds, 4 of them native. Admittedly, some of the identifications are probably a bit dodgy - "Oh, that's a female blackbird. Or maybe a thrush. No, a starling. Which one hops again?". But overall I'm confident that we did see everything we said we did!

Here is a female blackbird who hung around for a good portion of the hour, pulling bugs from the lawn and showing herself nicely.



Naturally we were soon joined by the family's most skillful and interested bird watcher.








By far the most dramatic moment belonged to one of our tui sightings. Soon after being spotted, the tui flew down towards us at speed, dropping a load on the way past. Naturally it landed in my hair!

Ah well, shit luck's good luck (as the family saying goes).



And the prize! One kereru.










Even Orla got in on the act, proving that age is no barrier.














Our final count:
Blackbird 3
Chaffinch 2
Fantail 2
Goldfinch 3
House Sparrow 6
Kereru 1
Silvereye 3
Tui 2

I'm surprised we didn't get any gulls flying overhead - but then how on earth would I have decided whether or not they were black-backed or red-billed?! And it would have been nice to see a kotare (kingfisher) - we frequently see them perching on the power lines down our street.

Isabelle says: "I liked it because it was fun".

Aidan says: "It was fun because I liked all the birds".

Harvest

In our pasta last night - home-grown broccoli. Delicious, bright green and fresh as can be!

The baby in the mirror

So what's happening in this photo?

Something quite cool.

Orla's hair is getting quite long. So I put the fringe and some of the hair on the top into a top knot to keep it out of her eyes.

Orla caught her reflection in the cabinet. She stopped. She looked. Then her hand reached up to touch the top knot.

She recognised that the baby in the mirror was her.

Orla is just on 18 months, which seems to be a normal age for infant mirror self-recognition to occur. The classic experiment is to put a red dot on the baby's nose. If they self recognise, they will touch their noses when they look at their mirror image ("What's that on my nose?"). If they don't - they won't ("Hey, that baby over there has a red dot on its nose!").

Also - my strong pick is that Orla will be right handed, unlike her big siblings.

Steiner supplies

In the weekend I got hold of some beeswax modeling compound and block crayons (a la Steiner). We tried them out yesterday (crayons) and today (compound and crayons).

The crayons are in several lovely colours - many are just so slightly different from each other it is hard to tell the colours apart.


The children got to work and made some creations. Isabelle said that night that it was the best thing about the day.



















And where there are blocks - there are block constructions! Here is a control tower. Later on we had a full military airport in operation, complete with jets and neighbouring houses.















Next came the modeling compound. I was quite keen to play with this myself, having never had the opportunity before (at least, not that I could remember). It smelt pleasant, but was very hard.

We chose our colours and got to work. It was an interesting creative exercise - I had no idea what I was "supposed" to do, so it was totally up to us to experiment and discover. We kneaded with our fingers, rolled, flattened and twisted. I experimentally heated some in the microwave. It was actually quite hard work for the fingers, especially when compared with playdough or clay. I imagine that it is very difficult for the very small - both Aidan and Isabelle could cope, but Orla could do nothing more than hold it (wondering perhaps if this was something to eat - and if so, why was no-one else eating it?). This contrasts with the other two media, which Orla can use. It was quite difficult to press two parts of the wax together in a way that they would stay stuck.


Our first creations: an orange penguin (Isabelle), red and black table (me), snail twisting in its shell (Aidan) and wriggling worm (Aidan, foreground).









Next, Isabelle went multi-media and created: "A house, with little babies, toddlers and kids [drawn in crayon with beeswax figures], a penguin, a moon [top right], lots of little fish [red groups in foreground], and a Daddy sea lion coming home [black and red]". This is a bi-species family.





Aidan picked up her idea of using paper and made "snakes in Antarctica" (visited by alien bug, my contribution and an extension of "table").








In an experiment on the side, initially I worked with the children (a la Playcentre), rolling sausages, pressing, but not creating adult models. They happily went about their business. They were aware of what I was doing, and certainly took my lead at some points. I drew their attention to anything I found particularly interesting (such as when I flattened the beeswax so much, it became transparent). Aidan also took inspiration from what Isabelle was doing, specifically in creating a paper back drop for his models. (It was no accident that his snakes ate penguins...). I then made alien bug - an adult creation (sort of, in that it was not exactly artistic, but used techniques that were beyond their small fingers). As if he had just read Magic Places , Aidan immediately requested that I make an alien bug for him.

Orla took the opportunity to de-lid all of Aidan's felt pens and scattered them on the floor.

Aidan has a lot of felt pens.

What I've been reading: Pennie Brownlee

I have read Pennie Brownlee's latest: Dance with me in the Heart: the adults' guide to great infant-parent partnerships, published by the New Zealand Playcentre Federation.

First, I have to say that this is a lovely book. Overall I want to stress that it is great (and a fine antidote to some of the other parenting books out there). So some of what I have to say next shouldn't detract from this overall thumbs-up.

What I like about the book is that it doesn't focus on telling us what to do with our babies (like most parenting books), or giving advice. Instead, it outlines a philosophy or approach, and gives examples of how it might work by applying it to different areas of a baby's life.

In fact, I believe the book is at its weakest when it tries to offer this advice. Baby won't sleep in his/her own cot? Simple! Think happy thoughts, reassure your baby with kind words and just wait for this new sleep habit to set in. This sort of thing made me (most ungraciously and unfairly) roll my eyes, refer to the biographical detail and think: oh! so you only had ONE child right? And it worked for them? The one child thing came to mind again when she argued that staying home with your little child was only 3-4 years out of the workforce. I've been out of the full-time workforce for almost six years - and my youngest is still just a toddler.

The stuff about feeding on your lap was slightly annoying too. Annoying because while I agree with it in principle, its practice is really hard. The solution? Well, if the nurses in Budapest can do it with eight babies at a time, then what's your problem? Hmmmm. I'm not a Hungarian nurse. I don't get to leave at the end of my shift to have a coffee by myself and a read of the newspaper. And I'm at the stage now where I just like to eat my dinner without a toddler pouring mince into my lap.

I also question on a factual basis her assumptions regarding toilet training based on my experience of, and research on elimination communication.

I also feel that she makes the mistake that we humans often make of assuming that others see the world through our eyes - ironically in an attempt to make us appreciate how a baby sees things. Pennie sometimes asks questions like "well how would you feel if x happened?" It's quite plain what we are supposed to feel. But different adults will have different emotions at that point. So why wouldn't different babies also feel differently? Why do we think that babies would perceive many things in the same way as an adult anyway? The "how would you feel" question is only relevant if it is used to attempt to get an adult to look at things from the child's perspective, rather than as a prescription of how to behave. It is for this exact reason that I never ask a child a question like "how would you feel if x told you you couldn't play with them?". That child might reply quite truthfully "I wouldn't care". And there goes the lost learning moment....

Some of the science behind the heart coherence stuff just sounds incredibly dodgy. Or maybe it's just my closed mind! I had a quick squiz on the internet at the www.heartmath.org (one of her references) and while it looked quite flash, I could tell that it would take me far more time than I had available to assess whether or not this research was soundly based, peer-reviewed and published in respected journals, or just someone's way cool ideas.

In the end, those details don't really matter as much as her core message of respect and loving partnership. There's lots to like. I like her overall rejection of baby containers - although I'm not as hard-core as she is. I like the respect she gives to our little ones. I love the simplicity of her vision. Some of her paragraphs truly resonated with me in a way that made me forgive the ones that raised my eyebrows.

Check it out for yourself....

The horror! The horror!

Days of rain.

A mounting washing pile.

A full nappy bucket.

A broken washing machine. Repair person can come on Monday.

Monday.

Monday!!!!!