Peach Coglo

The Other Day at Dinner

I just happened to look to my left and saw this.

 
Pobrecita!  She had been very fussy a few minutes earlier.  We had stopped trying to console her and just let her be for a while.  I suppose this is what happens at dinner when a certain little person refuses to take both of her daily naps.  ;-)  Have a lovely day everyone!  We're off to our school's Annual Walk-Through to meet this year's teachers!

At the Edge of the Continent

What better way to celebrate the unofficial end of summer and the unofficial beginning of the autumn than with a trip to the beach!  There will be more trips this year and this summer of course, but yesterday felt sort of like a 'winding down'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I must admit that I am feeling a little unsettled and anxious as we get ready for our new school year.  Taking the days slowly and luxuriating in the little moments helps.  I feel a bit better now that I have been to my favorite place.  My friend Darlene put it best.   At the beach, you just see what is "bigger than yourself".  I forget my worries, my lists seem more doable, my family is happy and relaxed, and I feel connected and grounded to our Earth.  It is a precious gift and privilege to come home smelling like the sea and sand after spending a day at the edge of the continent.

Happy Monday Everyone!

A Little More Village aka Quick Trip 2.8

For some reason, we are having some technical difficulties with some of our pictures from our Shaker Village visit.  Interesting since my white balance was a little off (it was a cloudy yet bright day).  I have absolutely no idea why Typepad is angry today, but I will try to work with it.  Maybe it's a hint that I should stop taking so many pictures.  The first part of this post is entitled Quick Trip and was uploaded before this post.  So here is Part .8 of today's post.  Thanks for enduring the split and a little Blogland weirdness!

 

Hops - the Shakers used this as a sedative.  Interesting.  ;-)

It's our last weekend before school starts.  I am a little conflicted about that.  We're going to try to make the most of it.  Have an amazing weekend!

Peace, Angela

Quick Trip

The other day we took a quick trip to one of my all-time favorite places.  Hancock Shaker Village.  I find the Village to be so peaceful and inspirational.  I am working on a series of paintings inspired by the Village.  We'll see how those work out.  Unfortunately my camera battery went on strike about ten minutes after we arrived.  Consequently, I wasn't able to go hog-wild like I usually do. ;-)   It was lovely to see how the Village had changed over the season, from early Spring to late Summer.  Here's a look at a little bit of our time there. 

The Shakers worked incredibly hard, and their lives were far from romantic.  However, I do find their cloaks to be stunning and quite romantic.

 

The Shakers made these incredible structures to support their plants.  I wonder how they developed the idea for such a structure.

Fall is definitely coming.

 

I love these little tins and bottles of herbs and potions.

Have a lovely weekend!

New Crayons for Eden

 
They finally arrived!  Eden is now the proud owner of new crayons.  When I was little nothing made my day like a new waxy smelling box of Crayola crayons.  I still have a big thing for art supplies.   You would think that loving supplies the way I do Eden would already be awash in them.  Well I have been thinking about it for a while now, and decided to go slowly.  Eden has been scribbling away for months and months now.  When she was about a year old, Eden plopped herself down on her stomach, feet up in the air, to scribble on some paper.  I got a huge kick out of that; she reminded me of a teenager.

For months now, Eden has used her siblings' pens, pencils, markers, and a few crayons off and on.  I have watched her carefully since art supplies can easily end up in a toddler's mouth.  I have also tried to simply follow her lead while attempting to match her supplies to her skill level and age.  Enter the crayon blocks. I finally made the leap and bought them.  Even though I believe that children should have quality art supplies, I am not so used to buying pricier art supplies for children, especially in the crayon department.  I am used to two dollars here and maybe five dollars there when it comes to crayons and paint.  However, I have learned that they experience much more success and less frustration if they have supplies that work well.  I used to blame myself when my creative attempts would repeatedly 'crash and burn'.  It turns out that I was using supplies that were less than helpful.  After trying a few of their supplies myself, I found out why they were geting frustrated.  When children, or adults for that matter, are first discovering their creative selves, it's very important to avoid this source of frustration.  People are apt to blame themselves for a vision that didn't work out instead of the poor quality of paper, paint, crayons, and so on.  The children don't need a heaping amount of supplies (I found that could be overwhelming for me and them), just a few good ones.

I am so happy with these crayon blocks.  Eden is intrigued and has a much easier time handling the blocks than traditional crayons.  They draw with an incredible smoothness; nothing makes me crazier than scratchy, chalky crayons (lately it seems that even my beloved Crayolas are guilty of this sin; what's up Crayola people?!).  The colors are vibrant and rich.  I have also repeatedly heard some claims that they last for many years and are impossible to break.  This is a great big plus in our family.  Also they come in a cool tin box, and you know how I love myself some tin boxes!

 

First Eden drew with her crayons.

Then she stacked them.
 
 

Then she drew some more.

Is that the door?  It looks like the sibs are back. 

And here they are.  I had to remind Elijah and Helena that the crayons did in fact belong to Eden and that she was sharing with them.  Eden was patient with them for a while, but then they were on the receiving end of the "non, non, non," speech.  I think Doran will like using these from time to time.  With the difficulties he has with motor control and low muscle  tone, I think the block shape will give him some more success in making art.  He loves art, but it can be a big struggle for him.

Does the cow work like the crayons?

 

 

Then Eden decided she wanted to count the lines she had made with her new crayons.

 

Mama's so happy you love your crayons Eden Deeden!

Do you have a favorite art supply for yourself or a special little one in your life?

Telescoping

Children love to explore the natural world around them.  It energizes them, calms them, and sparks their curiosity.  In my house, everybody is better off when the children have had lots of time outside to be free and loud, run off energy, and take their sweet time being kids.  They usually spend a lot of time looking down at the ground or in trees and bushes.  Lately, though, Helena and Elijah have been focusing more on the sky.  Frequently, they ask questions about the sun, the moon, and the stars.  During one of these sessions, Elijah asked "what makes waves".  That sparked an idea; we could check out the moon.  Greg remembered the "toy" telescope he had bought some years ago at Big Lots.  Doran was probably two or three, so that gives you some idea about how long it had been in storage.

Greg got the telescope out of the basement.  The children were beside themselves.  They were going to see the moon and some stars just like they saw at the planetarium, or so we thought.  There was much wrangling, unscrewing, adjusting and shifting of equipment.  In the end they saw some roof shingles way up close, a stop sign at the end of the street and some leaves.  They got a little peek at the moon.  Elijah was not impressed.  Alas, the moon was too low, the trees were too high and the telescope's magnification too weak.  I was disappointed for all of them,  but they still talked about waves and how far away the moon is from home.  I think what they enjoyed most about the whole endeavor was hanging out with their dad and climbing all over him as he tried to keep the telescope from falling apart. 

Trying out the telescope just before dark . . . .  

See that tiny white speck?  That's what we were trying to see at nightfall.  Unfortunately, by that time, the moon was behind some trees and our poor little telescope just didn't have the magnification power we needed.  It was fun trying though.

 

So until we can get a powerful, less shaky telescope, it's back to the planetarium.  We're also starting to read this, at least the non-scary, age-appropriate parts. That should help us feel closer to the stars.  :-)

Elijah's Touch

It turns out that we have morning glories under our bird feeder!  I had no idea that morning glory seeds were put in bird feed.   I also didn't know that morning glories are sometimes considered an invasive species either.  Hmm.  Anyway, I have been waiting for this particular morning glory to bloom.  It was not like the Heavenly Blue ones we have in the back yard so I was curious to see what would happen.

Before I could the flowers had a chance to bloom, our resident Farmer had pulled the entire vine.  I asked, "Elijah didn't you want to see the flowers bloom?!"  "Yes."  "Well," I said, "I'm not sure you'll get a chance to now.  The vine might not bloom out of the soil."  Elijah replied, "Well I guess we'll have to see what happens tomorrow.  Can you put this [meaning the vine] in a jar for me please?"  So I did.

Poor little morning glory

Here's where Elijah had his dad put his flowers-on the tip top of his desk hutch.  Elijah also cut some zinnias for good measure.

Lo and behold the morning after Elijah's harvest . . .

I couldn't believe it.  Elijah is such an old soul and he has a definite way with living green things.  The next time I should have more faith.  He and his morning glory vine showed me a thing or two. ;-)

 

Finally ~The Beach!

I believe we have a consensus that it has been a very short summer indeed.  Every year Greg and I have all sorts of plans of how we are going to spend the glorious, free time ahead of us!  And of course, every year we are amazed at how time flies.  This year it was swim lessons (invaluable) for Helena and Elijah, and Doran had summer school which he enjoyed.  Greg was writing his paper, little people had appointments, and the days just disappeared.  This summer there have been far too few summertime visits to the beach. We go to the beach year round - yes even in February.  We love these times, but we cherish swimsuit weather at the beach the most.   Our children are true New Englanders and they have no problem with the most chilled of waters, but their mother takes some issue with their toes turning blue.  Here is a peek at our first visit to the beach in a long while.

 

Eden loves herself some beach.  She has so much sand in her hair still.  Later that evening as I picked her up and let her hover over my face, sand fell out of her hair and into my eyes.  There is sand in our bed, even after I had washed her hair about thirty times.

  Doran often positions himself like this-close but a little off to the side.

 

Seaweed~ of which I am incredibly afraid, yet fascinated by, I am thinking of making some seaweed botanical watercolors of the seaweed we found.

 

 
Boy that trip to the beach was just was rejuvenating.  It is one of my favorite places to be.  We'll go back soon.

Happy Monday!

Late Summer Goodness

You-know-who harvesting our very first tomato a couple of weeks ago.

I sat organizing school clothes in utter disbelief that the summer is nearly over.  The trees are starting to change here and there.  The morning air is becoming cooler and more crisp.  Already?  I remember when summer days lasted for what seemed like forever.  Now I am scrambling trying to get in the last summertime visits to the beach and hoping all of the tomatoes turn before the truly cold weather sets in for good.  Here's some late summer goodness we hope to indulge in for as long as we can before the wind changes.

 

 

We are enjoying this summer orzo salad with basil and tomatoes.  Helena's favorite part is the red onion.  Doran loves the orzo, while Eden and Elijah eat the salad as a whole.  I got the yummy recipe here.  The recipe calls for fresh corn which I think is best, but the salad is also delicious with generic frozen corn from Whole Paycheck.  So if you can't get fresh corn, find a frozen corn brand that you like and you will do well. 

Oh boy, blueberry cheesecake ice cream!  I heard it was delicious.  It was gone before I could have a taste.  Luckily we still have blueberries galore in the freezer.  It's a recipe from Cooking Light.  The recipe is a bit of a process but well worth it according to Greg.  It's a good enough recipe that you can make your own adjustments (within reason of course) and the ice cream is still delicious! 

Have a lovely weekend everyone!  

Doran and the Pogo Stick

Doran is Master of the Pogo Stick.  I am simply amazed at my boy.  I always found pogo sticks to be a special form of child torture.  When I was a kid, I would trip and fall if I even so much as looked at a pogo stick.  If I dared to climb on one, I would be laid flat on the ground - immediately.  It only took one or two tries for me to learn that I should give pogo sticks wide berth.  They don't like me and I don't like them.  Given my pogo stick turmoil, how did Doran end up mastering the Torture Machine?  Well, we can all thank Greg.  He had no trauma from his childhood dealings with pogo sticks.  He thinks they are fun.  He thought Doran should have one.  He thought they would help Doran with his balance and low muscle tone.

We bought it about three years ago.  It sat in the attic the first year.  The next year it sat in the garage.  Doran would try to play with it, but like his mother, he soon ended up on the ground.  Unlike his mother, though, he would eventually wander back to it and try again.  I was thankful for that as I watched him try to balance his thin little body on the stick.  I don't think he got one solid hop out of that stick that entire summer.

This year things changed.  As the ice melted and the air warmed, Doran went back to the pogo stick and kept trying to play with it.  For about three weeks he bounced while Greg held onto the handle to steady him.  Greg's toes caught it more than once, but they both stuck with it.  After a while, hoping to encourage a little independence, Greg didn't help Doran as much.  Surprisingly Doran tried on his own, jumping while holding onto the stick handle and stair railing.  Then all of a sudden he was jumping twenty-five jumps at a time all by himself.  He would still fall, but he kept on jumping.  We think he has great fun with it and the intense pounding helps settle him. 

 

Often people with autism have a difficult time prioritizing and sorting through all of the noise and sensory input they receive from their surroundings.  Interestingly enough, all of that hopping around grounds Doran's system and makes it easier for him to negotiate his world and for him to simply be.

 
Now Doran hops easily up and down the driveway, getting on and off the pogo stick like an acrobat.  It is amazing to watch him.  This child who had the most difficult time pedaling a tricycle at six years old is bounding around like nobody's business!  We're quite happy for him and proud.  I think he feels the same.