Nettie & Family

Mary's birthday present for Edie, a hand made rag doll, reminded me that I have never featured Mary's rag doll family here. She made her first rag doll probably a year ago, after reading that Laura made rag dolls to play with, and has slowly been adding family members. And then a few weeks ago Michael saw a discarded cardboard box and asked me to help him turn it into a set of bunk beds for Mary's dolls. [Those sisters might call him stinky and annoying sometimes, but they really are lucky to have such a sweet brother.] All the clothes and bedding were sewed by Catherine and Mary. And Catherine brought her camera skills to take some family photos for Mary...

First came Nettie (one the left) and then Cordelia (on the right).

And now there is a whole family but I have forgotten the names of the others.

I swear, I have not taken away all their toys; they just like making their own sometimes.

Happy Birthday, Edie Bug!

Today was Edie's first birthday. That means at this time last year, a wicked stomach bug was making it's way through the family. Remember that? So far this year all we've had is a quick round of hand, foot & mouth disease run through a couple kids. But we're done with that, which means it's time for birthdays and Thanksgiving!

We are going to celebrate Edie's birthday with family along with Thanksgiving later on this week, because everyone is busy and Grandma and Grandpa are still in Springfield helping to wrap up the shooting of Uncle Tommy's movie. So for today we decided we would just do something Edie likes, which means going outside. Since we got a lovely, sunny, 60-degree day today, they all voted for Rocketship Park. Have I shown you why it's called that? Here:

The kids are all about climbing as high as possible, so they love this park.

Edie just loves anything outside. (Don't worry, right after this picture I realized she had soaked her shirt with a water bottle in the van and was probably freezing, and switched her into a nice warm sweater instead.)

I spent most of my time at the park following Edie up all the stairs and ladders, or carrying her while the kids explored the creek, so no more pictures.

Edie can do so many things now! She can scale pretty much any set of stairs, and although she has figured out how to turn around on her belly and drop down from couches, chairs, and beds feet first, she has yet to try it with the stairs. So when she climbs to the top of the stairs at home and wants to come back down, she just stands there and yells. If you don't immediately jump up and dash to the top of the stairs to get her, she will add in a lot of feet stomping. If you happen to be in the middle of chopping something in the kitchen or helping a toddler in the bathroom, and it takes a whole minute or two for you to reach her, she will drag a bunch of toys from the kids' room and start throwing them down the stairs.

"All this toy carnage didn't have to happen, Mom. You could have come to get me sooner."

In addition to their toys getting thrown down the stairs a lot, Gussie and Michael spend the most time under Edie Attack because they spend the most time playing on the floor. Edie tries to "help" with their puzzle pieces and stomps their block buildings and train tracks and steals their cars. As if the toy scattering hadn't already reached insane levels in the house, there is now the added fuel of toys abandoned to Edie's whims. But she really does want to make the puzzles work!

Also, she'll steal your coffee.

Catherine and Mary both had presents ready for Edie and couldn't wait until Thursday so she got them this morning. She has spent several months practicing taking things out of things, so a gift bag was like second nature.

What could it be...

When she discovered it was a skirt made by Catherine, we had to put it on right away, over her pjs.

Then she opened Mary's present, which was a hand made rag doll. When Mary asked Edie what her name would be, she muffled something that sounded like "Dog Food", but the girls settled on "Dolly".

Edie was very pleased with Dolly.

At some point today I was in the kitchen and suddenly noticed there was no Edie-noise in the living room, so I peeked in to find her sitting on the coffee table, quite satisfied with herself.

Then she showed me she could stand on it also.

Some interesting facts about Edie at 1 year:

• She's still just shy of 20 pounds, continuing to range on her 10-15th percentile curve.
• She has nine teeth: four on top and four on the bottom in the front, and one bottom molar. The matching bottom molar on the other side seems just a few days away from poking through.
• She doesn't use any words, but babbles non-stop in mostly aspirated sounds, using full sentence structure and intonation.
• Her nickname has evolved from Edie, to Edie Bug, and now the kids pretty much just call her Buggy.
• She still pretty much only naps in a wrap. [Very important side note: I have been working with a weaver to get a custom woven wrap, and it came today, and it is amazing in every way and totally erased any feelings of resentment I might or might not have been feeling toward Edie and her exclusive wrap napping.]
• She loves to "get" people, particularly Daddy, by outstretching her arms and wiggling her fingers and chasing after you while making threatening noises.
• She does not understand why Daddy does not wave back to her from the altar when she waves to him non-stop during Mass.
• She recently discovered she enjoys coloring.
• It makes her crazy when any other kid sits on my lap.
• She really enjoys pushing people, particularly kids sitting on my lap.
• She waves to the chickens every morning.

And she's apparently very happy to be 1!

Sunny Playgrounds In November

We have been so lucky with the weather the last couple weeks; it almost seems normal to be playing outside in the sun in short sleeves in November! I'm extra thankful for the nice weather because Michael was out of town last weekend which left me with just the kids for five days. For some reason, I find it very difficult to handle them all completely by myself unless we spend at least half of the day outside, and that would have been much more difficult were it not so lovely out.

I just finished editing pictures from a family shoot for a friend, and I'm still recovering from not sleeping for five days while Michael was gone, and all of the kids are asleep which means it is utterly inexcusable for me not to go to bed as well, so all you're going to get here is a slew of so-so kid pics straight out of the camera. Enjoy. :)

Gussie likes to alternate between the big kid swings and the baby swings.

Edie is happy swinging in anything.

I love this picture - it's very "Michael".

Sorry, it kind of looks like creeping hands reaching up from the underworld. Really it's just a big sister lying on the ground playing a fun tickling game.

The "I was climbing the swingset like one would climb a coconut tree and I fell off" reaction.

Ditto.

Edie has progressed to the point of only eating about 1 in 5 handfuls of rocks.

Catherine has progressed to the point of thinking it is hilarious to pour handfuls of rocks on her head.

Before we left I tried to get them all together in a nice spot with golden sunshine and colorful leaves. Photographer fail.

Catherine has been having a lot of run taking my camera lately.

[Side note: that's another new handwoven sling that I won. I have now won about $500 worth of handwoven baby wraps, and I officially have more wraps than I really need. But every time I talk about selling something, either Catherine or Mary declare it their most favorite best ever wrap and beg and plead for me to keep it so they can have it to wrap their babies when they become moms. How am I supposed to sell something out from under them like that?]

Fall Festivities: Urban Adventures Edition

I posted a while back about a series of Urban Adventures a friend was hosting, exploring city parks/playgrounds and the green spaces around them. We have participated in several more since the first, and all these pictures have been backlogged for a while.

The second park had a couple large black walnut trees and we were there at the time black walnuts were dropping. I am not a fan of black walnuts - I think they taste like slightly rancid regular walnuts - but they are totally edible and the kids like them and went about collecting handfuls to take home and dry.

Green walnuts:

Some had already come apart to show the brown shell inside.

And our feearless leader knocked down some fresh green ones from the tree.

 Around the other side of the playground was a wall that my kids immediately started scaling, obviously.

And we found some good climbing trees.

Plus a little young forest! Trees are pretty magical.

The next week we went to a park known for it's sinkholes. The little valley in front of us filled with brush is a sinkhole.

We walked down into several of the large ones.

The floor of one in particular was very soft. Catherine took a stick about 18 inches long and easily pushed it right into the ground with her finger, and it would have kept going if it was longer. After that the kids looked a little uneasy, like they might sink right through the floor. Don't worry, no one did!

We obviously scoped out some climbing trees.

And found a small creek that flowed out of the ground and then right into another sinkhole a couple hundred feet away.

There was a nice stone bridge over part of it - very fun!

We found some interesting things to gather in this park. First Mary came across this acorn, which was the largest acorn I've ever seen and had a nice furry hat. We haven't figured out what type of oak it comes from yet.

Gussie really liked playing with the tall grass going to seed.

And we found a persimmon tree with ripe fruit! Catherine and I liked it, but none of the other kids were interested. PSA: if you come across a persimmon tree, make sure you get ripe fruit! The ripe ones were delicious, but some that were just slightly under-ripe were awful. Just taking a small bite out made your entire mouth feel like it was wrapped in spiderwebs and even a big glug of water didn't fix it. Just FYI.

Edie slept most of the time we were walking, but Mary gathered a couple flowers for her so she didn't miss out on all the fun.

We found lots of unique and amazing trees!

Then Edie woke up and she had to get down right away to make up for all the walking she missed.

[Carrie, is this outfit from you? I can't remember, but it's the cutest thing ever.]

Also cute - still clapping for herself as she walks.

Then we hit the playground for a bit before heading home. This is the kind of thing my kids do at playgrounds. It is not unusual for other kids to get in trouble from their parents for doing things like this that they see my kids doing. I'm not sorry, except for the kids who don't get to explore.

Our last adventure was Sunday; we went to Bellefontaine Cemetery. I know what you're thinking: who takes kids to a cemetery to play? This cemetary happens to be one of the oldest and largest in St. Louis, covering several hundred acres with 14 total miles of pathways. It is also an arboretum with several of the largest trees in the state, in addition to housing the graves of many historical figures of St. Louis. Plus this is the week of All Saints and All Souls days, when many visit cemeteries to pray for the dead, so it was a nice opportunity to visit a beautiful site and introduce the kids to this practice and also the etiquette required to show respect to both the living and the dead at the cemetery, without the overwhelming emotions of burying someone there or visiting the grave of someone close to us. So, yeah, it was a really enjoyable adventure!

First can we take a moment to admire Michael's budding surfer aesthetic? A big sister made that rainbow loom necklace for him and he wears it every day. That with the shaggy hair has him looking very grown up and West Coast lately.

There was a landscaped area with a couple ponds (slightly to the edge of the actual graveyard) where we let the kids run and play for a bit. Lots of rock hopping ensued.

The co-leader of the tour is named Jessie and the girls have really latched on to her. I hardly ever see them when we're walking around, but if I need to find them I know to just find Jessie. [Also, Mary is wearing my wrap around her head as a shawl to keep the gnats off.]

I think we're qualified to lead our own Urban Adventures now if anyone is interested!