Riley and Avery

Just a quick one, I hope. Pictures will come soon. Maybe.

Anyway, when I was picking up Riley from school on Friday I was talking to the director of her school, who was telling me how impressed she was with Riley's interpretation of a story that they read in circle time. The book was Ming Lo Moves the Mountain. It's about a husband and wife who life in the shadow of a mountain. Rocks keep falling off the mountain and putting holes in their roof. It is always raining in the shadow of the mountain and the sun never shines on their garden. So Ming Lo goes to a wise man to see if he can move the mountain. Long story short, the wise man tells Ming Lo and his wife to take the house apart stick by stick and close their eyes and put there left foot behind their right foot, and their right foot behind their left foot, and so on for a very long time. When Ming Lo and his wife open their eyes, they find that the mountain has moved. When Miss Rae asked the children what had really happened, Riley was the only one who raised her hand (thus participating in circle for the first time) and carefully and eloquently stated that it was the people who had moved and not the mountain. None of the other children "got it." Miss Rae said that Riley has excellent reasoning skills and can really figure things out beyond her age. Which is so nice to hear since we are pretty much consumed right now with what is wrong with Riley, that it's nice to focus on the positive for once.

Also, Miss Rae asked if Riley was left-eared, which is a concept that I have never heard. Apparently, people who are left-eared take a bit longer to process information and some of it gets lost in the process. Miss Rae said that she herself was left-eared and did auditory therapy to switch to being right eared. She said that sometimes when Riley is asked to do something, she eerily does something else. I have noticed that sometimes when you ask her to do something, she does something so entirely different that the only explanation would be "what, is she retarded?" Sometimes it's so baffling...

Anyway, gotta go...we're going to the zoo again. The Rocky Mountain Wild exhibit is opening in May (and or memberships conveniently expire this month) but they're having a members-only preview of it. Rudi's been waiting for this exhibit for years...

We went to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo recently. We went on a weekday morning and we had nearly the entire zoo to ourselves. That was really cool. And it was earlier than we usually go, so all the animals were relaxed and active. We saw so many animals that we rarely get to see well up close right up against the glass. Like the Amur Tiger and the Amur Leopard. The girls really got a kick out of it. Riley got to feed the baby giraffe. Avery wanted to, but was nervous about the adult giraffes standing over the baby with their black tongues hanging out begging for crackers. I tried to tell her that if she crouches down she can go under the big giraffes and get to the baby, but that was a no-go. The highlight, as always, was watching the baby gorilla. We'd been watching her every time we go and it's cool to see how they develop so much like humans. She was climbing around and falling a bit and chasing after her mom and climbing on her all the time (hmmm...just like Avery).

And some random stuff:

Avery says "yeah" like "yay-yuh" now like she's from the south or something. It's funny. She also is working on her "l"s and says them better than Riley. For instance she now says "blue" instead of "bwoo". And I think that she may finally be outgrowing her size 5 1/2 shoes. Finally, at 2 1/2.

Riley is nuts. There's no way around it. She's just crazy. And I'm too exhausted to go over it right now.

The lady at the grocery store story (that I've already told to some): We were grocery shopping and Riley was just absolutely horrible, just terrible. I can't spare the emotion now to describe it, but I was in bad shape by the time I got to the parking lot. I put the groceries in the car and then put the kids in and closed the doors. I go to return the shopping cart to the return thing which is two parking spaces away from where I was parked and this over-the-hill bottle-blond woman (you know the kind with big hair and too much makeup, who's about 57 and tries to look 17?) in a convertible pulls up and says "Don't you think it's too hot to leave your kids in the car? Are the windows cracked?" and I'm like "They've been in there for 10 seconds, and now that I'm talking to you, they've been in there for 20 seconds" and she says in a really snarky and condescending way "Just remember, you love your children." I seriously could have killed her. Besides, it's April, not August. It was 55 degrees tops. Yes, a little warm in the car, but not enough for us to even roll down the windows or put the AC in when we're driving. So, whatever. And them Riley continues her antics all the way home. I thought that someone was going to die that day.

Hmmm...I thought there was something else I was going to blog about, and now it escapes me.

We finally made it to Cheyenne Mountain State Park last week (yes, I'm behind on blogging. Nothing new there!) We headed right over after picking Riley up from school, since it's closer to her school then our house. We got in free due to the disabled veterans tags on our car (score!). We started off with a picnic, which Avery was REALLY excited about. She kept yelling "nicnic!" Since it was pretty windy and there was still blowing dirt from the on-going construction, we took shelter in the pavilion with the park information signs. Avery and Riley downed half a watermelon and chowed on a huge sub sandwich.


Unfortunately, the signs boldly illustrated that we were in black bear/mountain lion/rattlesnake country and Avery became rather frightened. Eventually she would shriek and scream whenever her feet touched the ground, so she had to be carried the whole hike. Riley seriously did not stop talking, uphill and downhill she talked, up and over rocks she talked. At one point, Rudi had to turn back to use the restroom, and he was able to follow the sound of Riley's voice to find us again on the trail. Avery eventually fell asleep, and we all got a little pink from the sun. All in all, it was a great day outdoors and I'm happy to report that I'm not as out-of-shape as I thought I was. Not that we walked all that far, perhaps about two miles, and Riley walked the whole way with only one brief complaint on a prolonged incline. I don't know how she managed to walk two miles while talking the whole way. Apparently she needs less oxygen than the rest of us.

Practical Life: I made Avery several practical life activities, but this one is her favorite so far. I bought some of those summer ice cube shape thingies and put them in a big bowl of water. She fishes them out with tongs. She'll work on this work for about an hour.

Other activities I made her are a bean-pouting activity, a bead-sorting activity, and a poof-ball transfering activity.


Golden Beads: Riley is getting the concept of 1, 10, 100, and 1000 pretty fast. We've only done it once so far and she successfully counted 2,345 "beads." Making the wooden numbers was a pain in the butt, and if I were to do it again, I would have just used the templates available online and laminated them. But as usual, I had to do it the hard way.

So here's the huge cage I made Mya and Rosie. Cost a total of $35 in materials. Not too shabby. They're getting along fine, no blood or flying hair. I totally thought that Rosie would put Mya in her place, but it hasn't really been that way. Rosie pretty much delegated herself to the upper level, until Mya constantly came up to bother her. Mya is finally able to run around a cage (her last one was way too small) and she has been knocking over her food dish in the process. So she appropriated Rosie's dish on the upper level. Today Rosie has decide to go downstairs and join Mya (and steal her house). They were engaging in what looked like play today, to that's good.

I've been making Montessori materials like mad lately. I made the third color box for Avery. Not that I expect her to differentiate between the gradations (I can't differentiate between a lot of them), but I hope to get her to separate the colors and such. I made Riley sandpaper numerals, nine sets of bead stairs, and the snake game. I am so on the hunt for very small plastic pitchers so that Avery can do pouring work. No luck. They're nearly all glass and too big. I was figuring to have her pour beans and then work her way to water. And who would have thunk that finding white or cream place mats would be so hard? I'm sure they're impractical for their intended purpose, but they sell white carpet for heaven's sake, how impractical is that? I needed white ones for the birdie table when Riley is doing her bead work and Avery her color cards. The table is too busy to really see the materials. Anyway, I finally found some at Bed Bath and Beyond for 99 cents. Woohoo.

Oh, Riley said something funny yesterday. Rudi was watching an entirely inappropriate show while I was at school, which prompted Riley to ask what zombies were. Rudi said that they are dead people that come back to life. He told me about he conversation today to illustrate how Riley asks so many questions. Rudi then asked Riley if she even knew what a dead person is. Riley said "Yes I do! It's like that boy that had his penis cut off and died!" Rudi looks at me and says "What have you been teaching her?" and Riley says "Mommy was talking about it with you Dad! He didn't have his whole penis cut off, just a part!" And I realize that she was talking about the newborn who died from an infection after a circumcision. That was like a year ago. This kid has an amazing memory.

So, we had the girls' well-child checks today. Our appointment was at 2:30, which was exactly when we got there. We waited in the waiting room for 45 minutes before being called back to the room. Avery had to have her toe pricked to check her iron. She said "ow" but that was it. She freaked out when the nurse tried to put a band-aid on her, so I had to hold gauze on it, which she hated as well. Riley was 41 1/4 inches tall (75th percentile) and was 38.5 pounds (25th percentile) with her clothes minus her shoes. And I thought she was getting chunky. Guess not. Avery was 23 lbs. 10 oz (5th percentile) and 34 inches tall (20th). I was desperately hoping that she had hit the 25lb. mark, but no such luck. We waited another 20-ish minutes for the doctor. The doc wasn't concerned about Avery's weight, just said she was petite and that at least she's on the charts. He also didn't give us too much flack for not immunizing anymore. Of course, I was so tired (stayed up too late last night) and exhausted from waiting so long to see the doctor, so when he asked me why I was choosing not to immunize, all I could say was that "immunizations are creepy." Had I had enough mental clarity to come up with a semi-intelligent response, he probably would have backed off quicker. Oh, well. I need to start a new paragraph, just because...

So, here's the kicker. The doctor said that Avery has a very faint heart murmur. He said that he had every reason to believe that it was an "innocent heart murmur" and that it mean absolutely nothing. What astounded me was that he said that many doctors choose not to tell patients about these heart murmurs because they really are nothing, but he thinks the parents need to know everything. Well, duh! I was shocked that a doctor would withhold information for convenience.

He also did not ask parenting questions, which I was so very happy about. He did not ask where they sleep and so forth. The breastfeeding question (if there was going to be one) was negated by the fact that Avery was in my lap nursing almost the entire time. He never batted an eye. In fact the office has a VERY NICE breastfeeding room. He didn't ask about weaning or anything like that. When I told him of Riley's developmental evaluation, he asked why I hadn't stuck with that office and what I didn't like about their practice. I told him that it was "creepy" (apparently a very common word for me to use when I'm tired) because they had whole bookcases stocked with full-sized cans of formula, and formula and drug-company posters everywhere. He very visibly recoiled. His office does not have any mention of formula anywhere, no mater how subtle. And there is not a single drug-manufacturer logo anywhere. Not on poster, not on pens, not on notepads. No where. I likey. And he interacted so well with the girls, I couldn't be happier. WE'VE FOUND A DOCTOR THAT WE LIKE!! And not that we didn't put him up to high standards. As time went by in the waiting room, Rudi and I are like "this guy better be worth it" tick tick tick tick "This guy better be a really good doctor" tick tick tick tick "This guy better be the best doctor in the world" tick tick tick tick "This doctor better be a GOD!!!" I have to say, he was worth the wait.

One more thing, the doctor also pulled out a map and asked us where we lived. Turns out we live in a part of town with very little fluoride in the water. So he prescribed fluoride tablets for the girls. Could this be why Riley moved here with absolutely no cavities, not even an inkling of a cavity, and six months later she has five cavities? Coincidence? Me thinks not.

Oh, yeah, when the doctor was talking to Riley he asked her if she eats lots of healthy foods. He asked her if she ate a lot of fruit, and she said yes, so he asked her if she liked apples, bananas, strawberries, oranges, and blueberries. I told him that she's had all of those fruits TODAY plus blackberries. Go me!

Which brings me to my next topic. We bought three berry bushes, but are not entirely sure when we'll get the first crop, this year or next. We also planted tomatoes and peas as well as chamomile, lavender, and catnip to dry for Riley's tea. We're growing these all in enormous containers since we can't plant in-ground here. I'm cautiously optimistic. If we get only one tomato I'll be happy. All but the berry bushes are being started from seeds, so you never can tell.

This post is long enough...