Building the Biosphere

Biosphere coming together!

Willa's class is studying life systems. As part of the study, Willa was tasked with building a biosphere to study and document for the next few weeks. Via Pinterest, we found some great directions (HERE, then follow the links).

Our first task was collecting three empty 2 liter bottles. Willa and Cam canvassed the neighborhood - thanks to our neighbors Larry & Jeannette for the mini-ecosystem home!

I was deep into mulching and taking care of baby hostas, so this project was really a Jamey-Willa-Cam project. They made a trip to PetCo for guppies, snails and crickets. Willa harvested earth worms from my hosta-transplanting locations and Cam collected brown leaves and rocks.

The biosphere has been at school now for almost a week. Within the first day, two guppies died. But we put in four guppies with the assumption that there might be a tragic beginning to life. Willa reported on Friday that the snails were eating the fish carcasses and she'd found the leftover bones floating in the pond. Circle of life in action!

The class is also monitoring a small pool of tadpoles and their most exciting recent addition was crayfish. Willa is quite excited to be in the group hosting only one of two crayfish in the class! I've heard there are plans to try to get the crayfish to mate. I haven't asked her how they're going to go about this task yet.

Snails moving in.

Closing it the biosphere.

Documenting a Good Day

I just started reading through a book (I was actually giving to my friend) called "The Happiness Project". I realize I've got a lot to be happy about, so I'm documenting my day (which just happened to be Easter).

7:00ish AM... with plans to attend 8am church, it seems a bit impossible that I was still lounging in bed at this time. There were a few cranky words between Jamey and me when he came up at 7:15 and asked if we were still going. But somehow we managed to pull it off. Arrived to find a seat inside, walking in just before the processional went down the aisle.

8-9:30ish... kids were relatively good in church (Cam loudly asked where the Easter Bunny was) and we stayed for donuts and coffee afterward.

Between 9 and noon, the kids found their Easter baskets, ate the heads off the bunnies, played with the sidewalk chalk and bubbles, we all ate delicious Maple Syrup french toast (recipe courtesy of my mom) and were ready for play. Jamey commented how going to 8am church really opened up our whole day for more things!

12:45-2:45PM - biking. Despite a really windy day, the sun was shining and we decided to head out on bikes. Had a great ride, stopped at the park by Bender Pool and had some play time before coming back.

Other afternoon activities: playing at St. Matt's playground, mowing the yard, baking up lasagna, spending an hour browsing through Barnes & Noble.

Finally, the kids got to use their new bubble bath and shower gels for clean up (never were they so excited to take their baths/showers!) and everyone was in bed. Jamey and I watched a DVD I'd rented on Saturday; "50/50" supposedly a bittersweet comedy with Seth Rogan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I did laugh, but I also cried.

Around the World

Willa and I are starting a new adventure: ePals. First, we're hooking up with a couple of families to exchange postcards. Our goals is to get postcards from all over the world (from all of the developed countries) and perhaps a later goal will be to exchange postcards with someone in all 50 states.

Today we mailed Iowa postcards to a family in Australia, a 10-year old named Jordan in the U.K. and a girl named Susana in Italy. The Lonsdale family in Australia indicated they'd mailed out a postcard to us already. Willa is anxiously waiting and predicting how long it would take a post card to travel around the world. I read Willa's postcards before she sent them out; her note to Jordan said "You know, I'm the artistic tipe, I like art. What tipe are you? From Willa". There's not enough room to go into too many other types.

Our second ePals endeavor is an online penpal. Last night Willa sent her first email to Julia, an eight-year-old in Wooster, OH.  Through the ePals system, I set Willa's account up under my own (so I can monitor her emails and forum postings).

Our intention is to put up a big bulletin board in the basement; with a map of the world where we can track our correspondences, and a place to post our postcards.

If anyone wants to join our postcard exchange, post a comment!

Enjoying the Moment

Last week we walked out of Willa's piano lesson at 5pm, and stepped out into the most spectacular, fiery sunset. Willa said "Oh, it's so beautiful! We should sit down and enjoy it for a while."

Looking around at the view...the Linn County DMV across the street, the dirty parking lot, power lines all over, I suggested perhaps we should go home and enjoy it from our own front porch.

"It might be over by then." She's so logical. She's so right. We sat down on the curb in an empty parking space and stared at the sky. I'm not sure it could have been more beautiful if we'd been on the edge of the world.

Posers.

Halloween 2010: Cam the Viking and Willa the Mad Scientist.
While I hate to carry on the stereo type, Willa made an awesome mad scientist!

2nd Grade

Willa started 2nd grade last week. Ms. Deb, her Kindergarten teacher, is now the teacher for 1st & 2nd Grade at Summit. Willa loved Ms. Deb in Kindergarten (everybody loves Ms. Deb). However, when I told Willa Ms. Deb was going to be her teacher, earlier this summer, she seemed less than thrilled. When I pressed her on the issue, she said "I love Ms. Deb, but I've already learned all the Kindergarten stuff and now I want to do 2nd grade stuff!"

I forget how literal her mind is. She associates Ms. Deb with Kindergarten. I explained that Ms. Deb has taught lots of other grades, and she would, indeed, be teaching Willa 2nd grade things, but I know this thought is still in Willa's head. The first night of homework, she casually commented that the homework is "kindergarten homework" (it was sequencing story problems), and she referred to her journal writing as "how we did journals in kindergarten". I suppose it does not help that Ms. Deb kept her classroom, so the kids are back in the room they had as Kindergartners.

In the combined 1st & 2nd grade, our second graders look so mature now, compared to the first graders. I do not remember thinking they looked young last year (when they were on the low end of the combined totem pole). It could be that we have some small statured first graders, or that our second graders had exceptional growth spurts over the summer (or they are just giants in nature!). Hopefully those little first graders will catch up!

Run & Ride

I meant to get to the pool yesterday, but time got away from me (at least the time that the pool is staffed) so I had to change my plans. Instead, I decided to run to Summit to pick up Willa, and then make an attempt to take public transit back home. We tried this once last fall after running club, but we missed this bus.

This time, we made it work. I find the bus schedules and maps difficult to decipher, but we now know the Route 3 bus hits Old Marion Road/Regent Street stop around 4:40PM. Unfortunately, this is an outgoing bus, so we ride the route all the way up around Target before heading back downtown. It was about a 20+ minute ride to get back to the stop at Franklin/27th, about four blocks from our house. Willa loved it!

A friend recently sent me a link to Velo Routes. This is a great site! Plot your bike or your run; or like me, plot it afterward to see exactly how far you ran (now I know that it was a 2.6 mile run from my house to Summit). You can save your routes, or you can download them and import them into your GPS unit if you're lucky enough to have a toy like that.

Now that Willa and I feel like city bus experts, we're excited to do it again. I'll plan at least one more run there before the end of the school year.

Having Our Cake

Things don't always turn out like I plan. Actually, things rarely turn out just as I plan them, but almost always things seem to turn out OK or better.

Cam and Willa both have January birthdays. Considering we live in the midwest, I should count it lucky that this is the first time we've had weather-related issues surrounding a birthday.

Our original plans involved meeting up with Gramma and Grampa, Uncle Steve and Aunt Kelly and the boys, at a water park near Minneapolis for a weekend. We'd celebrate three birthdays: Mom, Willa and Cam are all within seven days.

Instead, Mother Nature intervened. SD had warnings for freezing rain and ice. We had rain, rain, rain. Despite my disappointment, I couldn't blame them for not wanting to drive in those conditions.

I think I was more disappointed than Willa. She was awesome. Cam didn't seem to mind one way or another. We went to "Plan B" & met some friends at a new local aquatic center, went out for pizza, then back to their house for cake. I'd ordered this cake from Jules Bakery last week, and was so looking forward to her delicious cake. Even though I knew we'd be eating it all week, I couldn't bring myself to cancel the order. It continues to be DELICIOUS!

Of course the birthday celebrations continue...Willa has a party with school friends at a local gymnastics center on Saturday. And we'll have to let Cam smash cake into his face on Thursday. Mmmmm....more cake.

Riding WITH my Girl

Last week was "Bike to Work" week. Willa and I had been talking about trying a bike commute with the tag-along to Summit, and Bike to Work week seemed like the week to do it. Unfortunately Bike to Work week turned out to be a pretty bad week, weather-wise. The only sunny day was Thursday. On Wednesday night we got the tag-along hitch transferred from Jamey's bike to mine, and Willa and I prepared for our adventure the next day. When we woke up on Thursday morning, we did have sunshine, but we also had very strong gusting winds, and it was only 46 degrees! So, we chickened out. Instead we loaded up the tag-along and locked it into the bike rack at Summit. Then after work, I dropped off the 4runner at home, hopped on my bike and headed to school. We made it home in one piece! This was our first time together on the bike this season.

Today, we went out for a ride and decided to time ourselves on the ride to Summit. We didn't take the most direct route, but this route avoided some of the heavier-trafficked streets. It took us 17 minutes. That's not that much longer than it would take us to drive. Of course, I'll still have the ride to Coe from Summit, but that shouldn't take long at all.

While this isn't putting a lot of miles in my RAGBRAI training log, it's certainly building up my leg muscles! Willa doesn't have the best balance, and she is easily distracted from peddling (today's distraction "Mommy, did you know these pedals pedal backwards and forwards?" - my response "Only pedal forward!!!"), so I'm counting these commutes as mini-workouts!

The Second Time

One bit of wisdom that stuck with me from one of the numerous parenting books I read when pregnant with Willa went something like this: your new baby should join and/or fit into the life you already live, your life should not stop and revolve around your new baby. I think Jamey and I did a decent job of taking this to heart, but of course things change drastically when a new person enters your family. While I wouldn't say we redirected the sun to rise and set on the face of Willa, I would say she has become our true north.

There's nothing like a baby to shake things up. With #2, there seems to be very little choice but to fit him into the already established order of our universe. Teeth need to be brushed, bedtime stories read, lunches packed and stories created. Cam graciously fits into the spaces between.

I often wonder what he's missing. I remember the bedtime routine we had with Willa, even as a newborn. One of us would rock her with the last bottle, and the other would read long stories from a story book or Dr. Suess picture book. Does "second-hand" reading count when Cam sits in on Willa's bedtime chapter books?

There was so much thought and preparing for Willa's arrival. I read countless books on pregnancy, parenting, feeding and sleeping. I researched diapers and formula and car seats and strollers. We had seven different baby name books. I wrote an entire journal full of thoughts and letters to my unborn child. I made none of these preparations for Cam. It's like there was an open space in the puzzle and we didn't have to look twice to know he was the part that fit.

I took a picture of Willa in the same spot every day for the first 30 days of her life, just so I could see how much she changed and grew every day. I take pictures of Cam when Willa says "take a picture of me holding my brother like this."

Then I have to think about the yin to this yang. What has Cam gained by being second? First, he's gained a much calmer and more confident set of parents. We called our pediatrician, Dr. Judy, every day the first week we had Willa home. We brought the finger nail clippers to our two-week appointment with her because we were afraid to clip her nails. We've already trimmed Cam's nails several times. We know we can't "break" Cam or permanently wreck him if we let him cry a little. We know he's OK even if he spits up a little. We don't panic if he fails to poop every day.

Cam gets the benefit of Willa. He's so lucky to be the recipient of her special songs and stories and affections. She reads to him and it melts my heart. She makes plans for him and predicts their future and wishes it would be OK for her to marry him some day, but if they can't get married, at least they'll live together forever.

Cam gets our lessons learned from the first round - although I often wonder if we've learned anything that would make us change the way we do things. For now, I've decided not to worry about it.