bee space

The bee turned four recently. Before she woke up in the morning, I decorated the living room with streamers and a few balloons. I think she really enjoyed seeing them, unexpectedly, when she woke up and came out. Later, we went to the Swedish American Museum and played there all afternoon. She was dressed in her tiger costume all day. Some friendly people who were there gathered around and sang “Happy Birthday” to her when I mentioned it. I was going to have a late lunch with her at Anne Sather next door but I forgot they close at 2 or 3 pm. So instead we went to the pancake house near our house and Fiona had a mouse pancake with chocolate chips and a couple of slices of bacon.

Because baking powder has corn starch in it (and the bee has a sensitivity to corn) I have been trying to make my own out of baking soda. I tried to make some yellow cup cakes but they did not really rise and were quite bitter. Fortunately, I had a Namaste chocolate cake mix in the pantry and made that for her after dinner. We sang Happy Birthday and gave her her presents: a pond boat, roller skates, a Ben 10 figure of Humungousaur, and a small-sized laundry clothes drying rack. (She had been playing laundry with a pathetic pretend one I made out of some yarn strung between two chairs and I thought a sturdy toy one would be more fun.)

I have been experimenting with making things that I haven’t been able to find and I made a batch of homemade marshmallows, tinted pink. She liked them okay and they weren’t too hard to make. I also recently bought a coffee and spice grinder which I have been using to make powdered sugar (which also has corn starch in it) out of granulated sugar. That meant I could make frosting for her cake.

The next day, she tried out her roller skates up and down the sidewalk out in front of the house. Then Papa broke out the hair dye and dyed her hair pink. It really stands out because her hair is so light and we get lots of comments everywhere we go. Papa dyed his hair pink, too, but it’s so dark you can’t even tell. Oh, well. We went down to Grandma’s house and Fiona and Papa swam in the pool, pulling along the pond boat which was host to a pair of Barbie dolls.

A few days later, we had her pink birthday party. Fiona and I had been talking about it for weeks and she wanted a pink party. The streamers and balloons were pink and I found pink plates, cups and utensils. Friends came over and we played and had some lunch. Johnny grilled a batch of tiny hamburgers and some octodogs. I had made some tiny hamburger buns the night before. We also had pink watermelon lolipops, the pink marshmallows, strawberries and cream cheese sandwiches (not as popular as the octodogs I’m afraid), pink sparkling lemonade, and pink iced tea. I made another cake from scratch and this one came out very nice. Of course, it had pink frosting. I think everyone except Papa wore pink, too. It was sort of a stormy day but I ran the bubble machine out on the front porch. We had filled up two galvanized tubs of water and tried to make bubble solution. It worked okay but I think I used too much water. We gave everyone a goody bag with bubble solution and little various bubble wands. Everyone sat on the porch and blew bubbles.

Fiona received some very nice presents, too: a blue tutu, book about Picasso and a fancy bracelet from Zibby and family; a Ladybug game (which the bee is crazy for) and a Winnie the Pooh puzzle from Eli and family; oil pastels, a wand and a wonderful hand-written note from Trap and family; fairy stickers and three books–The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato (a Charlie and Lola book) by Lauren Child, and The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman–from Ruby and family.

It seemed like Fiona’s first real birthday party, with her friends and her plans, and it was really nice.

We sent away for a butterfly habitat then sent the coupon in for live caterpillars. We received five painted lady caterpillars in a plastic cup; they were pretty active. The caterpillars did a lot of crawling around. There was some goo at the bottom of the cup for them to eat and they spun some silk, too. All five made chrysalises and all five turned into butterflies.

Fiona was very interested in the whole project, from filling out the coupon to watching all the activity. More than that, she has been very articulate about the experience and has explained the project in detail to several people.

When we released them, the first butterfly flew out of the habitat and shot straight up into the sky, up two stories high, then flew away over the neighbor’s house. A few of the other butterflies stayed nearby for a few moments but they, too, left for farther destinations.

-Fiona says brefixt for breakfast.
-When she is overtired going to bed, she has a great fear of a dragon getting in the house. She says she will be outside and she will run into the house with Papa and the dragon will try to get in, too, but it is too big. And the dragon is learning how to make the house and door bigger so it can get in.
-Moths give Fiona the willies.
-Fiona is into the Teen Titans show and comics these days. She calls them the Team Titans.
-Fiona loves to work on Projects (crafts). She came up with a pin-the-tail on the giraffe project and likes to peek while she tries to pin the tail.
-I have been trying to show Fiona how to brush a bug off of her if she finds one. She doesn’t like bugs on her and we have been pretending that seeds or pebbles are bugs and we put one on ourselves. Then, Eek! we brush it off.
-She loves to help. Anytime I start something, especially in the kitchen, I hear her feet thump-thumping towards me then, “I want to help!” Last night we pressed pizza dough into flat shapes together and Papa grilled up some personal pizzas.

Fiona: Sing that song what Papa sang last morning!
Mama: ?
Mama: What song did he sing?
Fiona That song what Papa sang last morning!
Mama: Uh, do you mean T! E! E! N! T-I-T! A-N-S! Teen Titans! Let’s go!
Fiona: YEAH!

-Fiona is totally impressed by my ability to juggle. I can only juggle two things.
-When riding in the car, Fiona has taken to asking the unanswerable question, “Where are we?” Mostly I say, “In the car,” though sometimes I try to name the street. I think I preferred her brief bout of, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
-When we go to sleep at night, Fiona used to snuggle up with her head on my arm, my arm wrapped around her. Now she needs to be near me but free of me.
-She still says hangabur for hamburger.
-Fiona loves Cinderella. She loves to dress up and play Cinderella, to watch the Disney DVD and the Fairy Tale Theatre DVD, to make Cinderella puppets and to read her Cinderella book. She wakes up some mornings, wipes her eye, looks at me and says, “Do you want to play Cinderella with me?”
-I have got to learn to sit on my hands a little more. She is very sensitive to me helping too much and will give up on something if I interfere too much.
-She still loves the PBS show, Super Why.
-In her gymnastics class, she already has a much more confident sense of balance than she did the first class and insists on walking across the balance beams without help.
-She tried some roller skates and was able to skate without any help right away.
-She loves to draw and paint. Her paints and painting easel are set up so she can use them anytime she wants.
-Anytime I work on anything she pipes up, “I want to help!” It’s a challenge to work out ways she can help sometimes but it’s rewarding so I always try.
-She is so close to being able to read. She often has us read books by saying each word as she points at it.

Reading Bloesem Kids this morning, I found a link to a craft project swap for young kids. It looks like fun so I signed up.

Last November we ordered a child’s laptop for Fiona. After a prolonged journey, we finally received the XO yesterday. We bought it through the Give One Get One program which is now closed. We have only started to work with it and I need to get it connected to our wireless network but so far it is a fine machine.

In addition to the successful gymnastics class, the half-hour Arts and Crafts that I signed Fiona up for at the park district was also a big hit. The teacher was nice and didn’t mind if I stayed during the class. The kids made a paper ladybug; Fiona’s had twelve legs and as many spots as she could fit on it.

Today, we went to open gym but before and after we worked on caterpillars made from half an egg-carton. I swear I just saw the idea the other day but I can’t figure out where. It’s an old idea and googling “egg carton caterpillar” will bring up lots of instructions for it.

This week, Fiona and I went to her new gymnastics class. Last fall she had taken a gymnastics class but I ended up dropping her out about midway through; it was just too stressful for me. It was a drop-off class behind closed doors, the teacher was tense and all Fiona wanted to do was play on the equipment. She loved the equipment but she was completely uninterested in listening to the teacher’s instructions so she wouldn’t get her hand stamped at the end of the class or the coloring page. Plus the teacher seemed constantly annoyed at us.

This time, I signed up for a parent-tot class at the Peterson Park Gymnastics Center. The facilities are beautiful. We arrived a few minutes early and came into the building. The foyer is the width of the building and a bank of glass doors looks out into the gym so you can see everything that’s going on inside. When the previous class ended, we went in and filled out the release form. The ballet class went upstairs and the parent-tot class had some time to use the equipment free-form. There was an obstacle course set up in a large square around half of the gym with the usual big foam blocks, a ladder, a balance beam and a low bar for swinging. I walked around the course a few times with Fiona while she clambered over everything. Then everyone gathered in the middle of the square for circle time stretches. Fiona was so happy and exuberant. After stretches, the teacher demonstrated the obstacle course and showed everyone how to do a pike or a puck somersault down one of the foam ramps.

All the kids moved to the obstacle course and tried everything out. I was so grateful to be able to walk around with Fiona, pointing out how to wait her turn and watch for the other kids, encouraging her to try doing things that the teacher had mentioned. The teacher stayed by the foam ramp and coached the kids on the somersaults then gave hand stamps for trying. Fiona got three stamps, yay! When she was bored with the obstacle course, I chased her around the perimeter of the gym, following the white tape and she was shrieking happily. Other parents were helping their kids out on the big rings on the other side of the gym.

Then everyone went upstairs. We sat in another circle while the teacher explained the equipment. There were small sized rings for little hands, and small bars. There were more foam blocks and a dance floor where the ballerinas were. But best of all, there was a long, really really, long trampoline. We learned that all the other park districts have had to remove their trampolines and we were given instructions on how to use it safely. Everyone queued up for the trampoline. When Fiona’s turn came, she ran down it like a frilled dragon lizard. I tried to explain how she might like to bunny hop and she was interested in the idea. Her next couple turns she just ran, though. She seemed so happy.

There was another circle-time with a good-bye song. Of course, the bee did not want to leave. We talked about the other kids coming for the next class. Then she had the idea of making a gym at home and she left happy. When we got home, we set up a two-by-four across her chairs, laid out a fluffy blanket under her step stool an put out her balance board. She wanted more but I was pretty tired. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be taking a gymnastics class, too.

We have had our first major Fish Incident of Great Alarm. It seems the filter I was using has an output vent that is just the same size as a fish body. I was using my laptop (to play a special April Fool’s Day treat of Game Neverending!). Fiona asked me something so I went into her room to look for whatever it was and I noticed the fish.

I noticed two of the fish. They were sitting quietly at the bottom of the tank under a plant, looking as alarmed and unhappy as goldfish can look. Which means, very still and very close together. I looked around the tank and didn’t see the third fish. Where was it? And there, I finally saw, was a flurry of tail fins sticking obscenely out of the filter and waving about wildly. Stumbling to put down my laptop, I went over to the tank and tried to think. Pulling it out by the tail didn’t seem manageable; they are just dainty little things, these fish. So I turned off the filter but the fish was still stuck. My mechanical mind told me, well, if it couldn’t get itself out when the water flow was pushing it out, it won’t be able to get itself out without the water flow helping it. I asked my mechanical mind what I should do next but it just shrugged. So I took the filter, poised it fish-downward and gave it a little shake. The fish popped with a flurry. It didn’t look so good. It had a few bald spots where it’s scales had scraped off and it was swimming around drunken monkey style. The other fish had come over to investigate and one of them was helpfully pushing the hurt fish from underneath.

I called Fiona over and told her what had happened, that one of the fish was stuck and I helped free it but now it was hurt. I explained that it might die. She took the news with grim calm and declared something like, “Poor fish.” Then we played a waiting game. Every time I passed the fish tank I took a look: one, two… where’s three? Ah, three. It has been three days and the fish seems like it will make it. It spends its time floating above the wispy fern plant. This morning Johnny summed it up, “I don’t think the fish is going to die, I think it just got stupid.” And it does seem a little dimmer than its tank mates; sometimes it will be floating aimlessly and then it suddenly seems to remember how to swim.