15 months

Allie is 15 months and just as cute as ever.  She's kind of a ragamuffin always getting into things and making messes.  She is learning new words every day.  Recently she started saying "Seenuh" for Selena.  When she can't find her she'll start yelling "Seenuh, Seenuh" and then ask us, "ud seenuh go" (where'd Selena go).  She has also added "thank you", "belly button", "super why" and "one, two, three" to her repertoire.  She really likes belly buttons and noses.  She is always showing us hers and finding ours.  Shoes are also very cool, and we have lots of conversations about shoes, and where'd they go.  She is always taking her shoes on and off and losing them so we have to find them about 3 times every time we go somewhere.

She likes to take her diaper off and run around the house.  She likes to run away and be chased.  She's become adept at moving the furniture around so she can climb up and get things.

She is still abusive.  Selena's started calling her Abusive Allie.  She doesn't seem to be mad, most of the time.  She just smacks you and gouges out your face.  She thinks it is funny.  It is getting old.

She is still a great berry picker.  She homes in on the huckleberries and she enthusiastically went after the blackberries even though they scratched up her belly.

We've gone swimming a couple times and she enjoys that.  Just as long as she can do what Selena is doing she is happy.

We went out and got Allie her own baby doll since she and Selena were fighting over Selena's.  They still fight over Selena's.  Allie just gathers up hers, Selena's and another baby doll we had and tries to carry them all around.  She brought them all over to me and said, "uuh, two, tee."  :)  She likes to undress and attempt to dress the babies with their dresses and diapers.

She enjoys dancing, especially to the Super Why songs.  One night her and Selena were dancing out on the deck in the dark to their own singing.  It was incredibly cute.

She's gone back to going to bed fairly easy.  We moved her to a mattress on the floor next to our bed so now I at least start the night with no kids in the bed.  However 99% of the time by the morning they are both snuggled up to me.

Wild Berries in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon Grape and Indian Mock Strawberry)

This is a continuation on my posts of wild berries.

Indian Mock Strawberry

Edited:  Due to a comment from a wonderful reader I have re-identified this from wild strawberry to Indian Mock Strawberry. 

I was so excited when I found these at my uncle's cabin on the Washougal River.  The berry books rave about the taste of wild strawberry.  Unfortunately I was sorely disappointed.   These had no taste whatsoever.  Completely bland.  So far it seems that overall berries that get a lot of sun and heat are sweeter than those in the shade and these were completely in the shade.  I did also find a small patch along one of the nature trails near my house.  Those too were tasteless.  The strawberries are tiny.  About the size of a small raspberry or blackberry.

Oregon Grape

Oregon grape is found all over the place.  I mostly see it as native landscaping along the sides of the road. The leaves are prickly and look like holly but Oregon Grape has blue berries instead of red.  (Holly has red berries that are poisonous so do not eat the berries from holly.)  The berries are really easy to pick and there are a lot of them.  However they taste really, really, sour.  Not palatable at all really.  But if you squeeze the juice from the berries and add a lot of sugar you can make jam, or wine if you are so inclined.  I did attempt to make some jam by squeezing the juice out of the berries through a mesh bag (I recommend wearing gloves as my hands are still stained a couple days later) adding sugar (3/4 cup of sugar to 1 cup of juice) and boiling.  My "jelly" ended up more like syrup.  I added some chia seeds to get some more gelling but that didn't really help either.  Selena did eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with it, but  I'll probably pour it over some pancakes or ice cream.  The jelly did taste pretty good though, but how can it not when its almost all sugar?

Next up are blackberries.  They are just starting to get ripe.  I am so excited!

Things I've been reading

Here are some interesting posts I've read in the last couple weeks:

Using Computers to Teach Children With No Teachers - I read lots of stuff on educational theory, early childhood development, etc. and I've been drawn to self directed learning, multi-age peer learning, and unschooling as a more ideal way to teach kids.  This article is an example of these methods working really well.  Amazing.

Irrigationless Irrigation - Really cool invention that would allow massive amounts of trees to be planted in the desert.  Can we reclaim the Sahara?

Breast milk Kills Cancer - Breast milk is magic and the answer to world peace and all civilizations problems.  Maybe, maybe not, but I've finally found some update on the research being done on breast milk killing cancer cells.  I think the Susan G Komen institute should start funding some more research on this.  Wouldn't it be cool if the answer to breast cancer could be made from the breast?  I am curious to know if inducing lactation could curb/stop or kill the growth of some breast cancers.  I need to read the whole article sometime and attempt to understand it.

Kermit Alphabet Song - I love this youtube video.  It is my favorite version of the ABC's.

Down with HFCS - Cancer apparently feeds on it.  Love how they need to create a drug to make it not feed on fructose.  Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just stop eating it?  It's all about the money.

Seahawks got screwed in the Super Bowl in 2006 - I'm still very upset about this, but I love that the ref admits he made mistakes.  Makes me feel a bit better.

History of Science - This is a neat site that has articles on the history of technology and information on various artifacts.  The database goes from 2,500,000 BCE to 2010.

3 years and 5 months old

We've been having a fun summer so far.  Selena has been begging to go camping for a couple months now so when we went on our annual trip to my uncle's cabin on the Washougal River we brought our tent and decided to sleep in there instead of in the bunk house.  It was good.  Both girls fell asleep sitting around the campfire, so I didn't have to miss any socializing putting them to bed.  They even managed to sleep in a bit.  We'll try a real camping trip (cooking our own food) in two weeks.

In addition to that excitement we made a few trips to the "beach" at Silver Lake.  Selena loved swimming in the lake and made us go two days in a row to get all her swimming in.  The beach is nice because she can adjust the deepness.  We did go in the pool at my brother's condo earlier this summer, but it started out at 3 feet deep so she had to be held the whole time.

We've still been doing a lot of berry picking.  One day Selena commented, "I didn't know we were going to turn into berry pickers when we moved to our new house."  We've gone and picked strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries at various local farms and we often go out among the nature trails around our house to pick wild berries.  I'm looking forward to the blackberries getting ripe.  My parents do an annual trip to Whidbey Island to pick blackberries, but we haven't gone in a long time because we lived so far away, but we will get to do it this year.

In theory I am against television for young children for a few reasons, but I have succumbed to the convenience of it giving me a few short breaks during the day and by the fact that Selena asks for it.  The habit started when I was pregnant, still working part time from home and needed a nap and Sesame Street could give me it.  So she watches a few shows a day, but no more than one at a time and we use the DVR so there aren't many commercials.  But in the last couple weeks Selena seems to have entered a new level of comprehension when it comes to watching television.  She used to watch the same episode about 5 or 6 times on our DVR before getting bored with it, and sometimes you would ask her about the show and she couldn't tell you what happened (research has shown that young children's learning is very inefficient through the television ie they have to watch something on the TV 4-6 times before they learn it, but if they are taught it in person it only takes 1 or 2 times of repetition).  She did learn a lot of things from the shows, but she did have to watch them over and over.  Now she only wants to watch a show once, and she participates in the interactive portions of the show.  So it is kind of an interesting developmental milestone.

She has been writing a lot lately.  She can now write most of her letters without me creating dots for her to trace.  It is neat because we don't work on writing or reading.  We just include it with things she does.  Like we write letters to family members or make cards for people's birthdays.  It is fun to see her progress.  It also answers my question if she knows her letters, because I'll tell her how a word is spelled and she writes it only occasionally asking me how the letter is made.

She has also been drawing a lot.  My favorite has been her series of pictures of her cousin Issac.  She's drawn Baby Issac playing golf, wearing a tutu, with an afro, in a blanket.

We still are struggling with frequent accidents, both at night and during the day.  She was dry at night for a while, but then she started having a lot of accidents so I put her back in diapers.  She kept them dry, so I put her in underwear and she wet the bed.  I really think she doesn't like peeing in a disposable diaper, but it doesn't bother her when she does it in her underwear.  She also will have accidents often when she is playing in the backyard.  I think then it is mostly laziness because she figures she is outside and it doesn't matter.  Other times she'll have them in the bathroom or on her way to the bathroom because she gets distracted and doesn't get there in time.  It is really annoying.

She is definitely in a climbing stage.  Everything is a jungle gym, and when we are in a store, and she's using the shopping cart to climb on.  It is pretty annoying.  However when we are at the playground it is pretty impressive.  She's small for her age so I'm sure other parents think she is younger than she is and thus I've gotten many parents hovering around her at the park when she is fine.  In general I don't like to hover because I've noticed that if I hover she is more likely to give up and have me do it for her, than if I am not nearby.  If she asks for help I will help her, but I try to let her assess her own abilities to figure out what she can do and what she can't.  There is a big rope spider web at Willis Tucker Park and she is determined to climb to the top.  She's gotten almost there, but she is a little too short to get up the last two rungs.

She is also in a question phase.  Of course the inevitable "Why?" to anything and everything.  But also some more thoughtful ones.  Today we got into a discussion on how the dinosaurs died and where humans came from.  When she doesn't understand she keeps asking, "What did you say?"  Obviously my explanations were confusing and she eventually said, "Mom, I am so confused."

She still has her invisible friends Do, Re, Mi, Fa and So and the other night we were out, in the dark, with our flashlights looking for their house so she could go over there for a slumber party.  When we couldn't find their house she was very upset.  I kind of pointed out that Do, Re, Mi were pretend so they didn't really have a house, and she got very upset about that.  So I quickly covered and said I didn't mean it, and I was confused, and that they must have gotten confused and really wanted to have a slumber party at our house.

Minimally Sweetened, Fresh Mint, Strawberry Ice Cream Recipe

I've been trying to cut back on sweeteners.  It is recommended that you get no more than 25g of extra sugar (so not counting fruit) a day.  25g is pretty much one bowl of ice cream.  I have been doing pretty good overall.  There is a little bit of sugar (about 3-4g) in the piece of toast I have each morning (Dave's Killer Bread) and then my bowl of ice cream in the evening.  However I'd like to do better.  So I decided to make a minimally sweetened ice cream.  I figured strawberries would be good for it because you can macerate the strawberries in a bit of sugar to bring out their natural sweetness.  I also thought some fresh mint would be yummy.  I like to mix strawberry ice cream and mint ice cream in the same bowl so I figured making an ice cream with them together would be good too.  The ice cream turned out yummy. It probably would have been even better with more sugar, but overall it was a success.  Here is the recipe:

Minimally Sweetened Fresh Mint Strawberry Ice Cream
* Start this in the morning if you want the ice cream in the evening
* This makes about 5-6 generous servings which is about 12-14.5 grams of sugar per serving

1 lb of strawberries
1/2 cup of evaporated cane juice (3/4 cup if you want fully sweetened)
fist full of mint leaves
1 cup whole milk
2 cups of cream

• Warm the milk and 1 cup of cream on the stove.  Remove from heat, put the mint leaves in and cover. Let them seep for a couple hours
• Hull and chop the strawberries and put them in a bowl.  Mix the evaporated cane juice in and let them sit for a couple hours.
• Pull out the mint leaves and press them through a strainer back into the milk to squeeze out all their mintiness.
• Put the strawberries, minty milk, and cream in a blender and blend.  It is up to you how much you want to chop up the strawberries.
• Put the mixture in the fridge for a few hours. 
• Pour it into your ice cream maker following your machine's directions.
• Eat it!  

For more ice cream making tips see my previous post.

Refashion - Men's Shirt to Girls Dress

I've been really anxious to sew.  My stuff was all packed in the garage, but I finally got it out/organized.  However my free time is very limited so I wanted a project to do that was quick and didn't take too much thought.  I saw the shirt dress in blog land a while back and Google turned up this shirt dress tutorial for me which worked perfectly.

The shirt was a gift from a student to Floyd.  Not exactly his style, but it is silk and pretty.  I thought it would be very nice for Selena.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Now the only problem is laundering a silk play dress. ;)  The project was very easy.  My only comment is a reminder to pay attention to where the buttons lie when placing the pattern.  I put the edge too close to a button so when I went to fold it over to make the casing the button was in the way.  So I had to pick off the button and move it down.  

Wild Berries in the Puget Sound (Thimbleberry, Blackberry, and Blackcap Raspberry)

This is a continuation on my posts on wild berries.

First Post (Red Huckleberry, Salmonberry, and Salal) 

Red Huckleberries and Salmonberries - Mostly redundant of first post, but some additional info.

to come Oregon Grape, Indian Plum, Salal, more blackberries, wild rose and poisonous berries.

Thimbleberries

These are my new favorite berry.  They are kind of tart, but I think they taste so good.  If I am out running and spot some I will stop to gobble them up.  These red berries are kind of fuzzy and are very squishy.  Sometimes they fall apart when you pick them.  They start off as white and get red when they are ripe.  The plant has big kind of furry maple looking leaves.  There are no thorns and most of the plants I've seen are about 4' to 5' tall.   Each plant doesn't have a lot of berries and they are kind of hard to put in a bucket because they mush each other so I think this is one you pretty much just eat right off the bush.

Blackcap Raspberry

So far I've only come across one of these bushes.  In the top picture the raspberries aren't ripe yet.  (I ate all the ripe ones earlier in the day when I was out running.)  In the second picture the one on bottom right is ripe.  The bush has small prickles on it.  The berries go from green to plum (like in the picture) to black when ripe.  The couple berries I ate were pretty sweet.  These ripen from July to August.  You can tell they aren't blackberries because the globules are smaller and not as fragile and when you pick the berry the center receptacle stays on the stem. 

Blackberries

In Western Washington blackberries are everywhere.  What you may not know is that most of the blackberries you see are an invasive species and are not native.  But the trailing blackberry, seen above, is native.  It grows low to the ground (not in a gigantic bush) or climbs over fallen logs.  Some say that this is the best tasting of the three types of wild blackberries.  This blackberry isn't quite as prickly and the berries start ripening in mid July.  I'll do the other two species of blackberry in a few weeks when they get ripe.

Wild Berries in the Pacific Northwest (Huckleberry and Salmonberry)

This is a series about wild berries in the Pacific Northwest.  I decided to separate the berries in their own posts.  Here is my first post that has mostly duplicate information as this one.  Here is info on Thimbleberry, Blackcap Raspberry, and Blackberry.

Red Huckleberries

Sorry the picture isn't that great.  I'll try to get a better one.  Red huckleberries like to grow out of nurse logs.  So sometimes the bushes can be way up high.  The bushes I have seen range from about 2 feet to 10 feet tall.  They have small red berries that progress in ripeness from white to green to pink to red.  They are supposed to be ripe from late July - October but there were some ripe ones near my home in late June early July.  The early ripened berries were pretty sour, but I have tasted some sweeter ones that ripened in mid July.  Both my girls have loved them. They tasted delicious in muffins and this scone recipe.  You have to do a lot of picking to get a decent amount.

Salmonberries

I'm a little confused on the salmonberries.  There are supposedly yellow ones and red ones.  But around here I've been seeing both on the same bush.  So I'm not sure if they are both growing on the same bush or if the berries turn from yellow to red and the yellow ones aren't really ripe yet. (It seems to me that the red ones and yellow ones were growing on the same bush and they were both ripe.)  The ones that ripened in late June were pretty sour.  When I tried them a few weeks later they taste pretty plain and didn't have a whole lot of flavor.  This article said to avoid red ones, but I have no idea why.  The berry book just said there were two different kinds.  The bushes can be really tall.  Lots of the berries have been way over my head.  The bushes don't produce a whole lot of berries.  They supposedly ripen mid July to mid August, but there were ripe ones at my house in late June early July.  The ones I managed to hide from Allie ended up in ice cream and tasted good.

The Babe

Selena's given Allie a new nickname.  She calls her babe.  It's cute.

Allie's been learning new words.  Some new words are shoes, and banana.  Usually when I ask her a question if she agrees she makes happy noises, and if she disagrees she makes whiny noises, but the other day I asked her if she wanted something and she simply replied, "No", very clearly.  When she does something she's proud of she says, "da" in the tone of "tada".  She pretty much understands everything I say.  I can ask her to get things, or go find someone.

She continues to amaze me at her mobility.  She's been following her sister climbing everywhere.  At the playground I'll turn around and she'll be on the second or third rung of a ladder.  Eek.  If the playground has even half way manageable steps she can get to the top and go down the slide (feet first on her tummy) by herself.  She can easily run/walk down a hill and stop at the bottom without falling.  She thinks its hilarious to run away mid diaper change.  She takes off giggling with glee.  (Sound familiar?  Dyna and Selena both love/loved to run away from me).

Sleep.  The constant challenge.  Maybe partly to blame on my philosophical thoughts about it.  She has now become hard to put down for a nap.  I used to turn on the TV for Selena while I put Allie down, but now Allie likes to watch TV, or at least the intro music for Super Why.  She gets all excited and dances.  Stomping her feet and twirling in circles.  Night time has also become hard.  She does not want to be left out.  She wants to be involved when Floyd reads books to Selena.  Unfortunately most of the time that is by sitting on the books.  If I say the word sleep she starts screaming.  Some nights it is fine, she'll come to me, crawl in my lap and nurse to sleep.  But other nights if I try to take her into the bedroom, she freaks out.  Some nights she has cried for an hour.  Nothing consoles her.  If I try to hold her she'll jump out of my arms.  If I let her leave the bedroom she goes to the corner and cries.  We've seemed to have adopted a long summer night schedule and have been staying up late and sleeping in.  I guess that's ok.

She's been potty training herself.  (Well not really)  Every time I or Selena uses the toilet.  She wants to as well.  Sometimes I take off her diaper, other times I just set her up there with it on.  Then she gets off and gets some toilet paper.  Pretends to wipe and then drops it in the toilet and flushes.  Granted she has never actually gone in the potty, but its cute just the same.  Except when she uses it as an excuse to not go to bed.  One night I tried to put her to bed and she got mad.  When I let her out of the room she went to the bathroom and asked to sit on the toilet.  Well I have to admit it was kind of cute.  After she went potty then she wanted a drink of water.

She can use a fork and spoon pretty easily now.  She doesn't seem to have a real favorite food at the moment.  Except maybe berries.  We've been doing a lot of berry picking and she devours the berries as quickly as she can.  She is very good at spotting berries and picking them herself.  She also keeps on picking the unripe blueberries in our back yard.  She still eats dog food on occasion.  She likes sitting in my lap and eating the beans and berries off my salad.  She also likes feeding you.  She tries to stuff food in my mouth faster than I can chew.

She likes animals.  She always points out dogs and crows when she sees them.  She loves our trips to the zoo and pays more attention to the animals than Selena does.  She's been playing with Legos a lot lately and she can fit them together and pull them apart by herself.

I'm a Cat

Selena has been doing great.  I'm not sure if its coincidence or not, but I've been using some gentle discipline techniques and since I've started Selena's behavior in general has been great.  She has been patient with her sister.  She has been saying sorry when she makes a mistake, and overall has been fairly helpful.   It is wonderful.  It wasn't that long ago that she would run off in the blink of an eye.  But she doesn't do that any more (well almost) and even more she attempts to keep Allie from doing it.  

Lately she's been into climbing.  We have tons of playgrounds near our new house and we've been exploring all of them.  She has also learned how to slide down poles.  Which she loves.  She has also been practicing the monkey bars and if they aren't too far apart and have a slight decline she can do them 95% on her own.  

We got a membership to the Everett Children's Museum and her favorite part was the construction room.  They have these really cool toys that you can build child size cars and houses out of.  They have special screws, bolts and wrenches to put them together.  So she strapped on her tool belt and grabs her wrench and shouts, "Righty tighty, Lefty Loosey" and starts building.  We spent at least an hour in that room the first day, and we had to go back the next day and she spent another 45 minutes.  When we left the first day I told her we needed to take apart her creation and she got excited and said, "Now I can do lefty loosey!"  

We've visited my new nephew a few times and she absolutely loves him.  She always wants to hold him and she carries on about how cute he is, and how much she loves him.  

Her and Allie have been getting along pretty well.  She carries on about how cute Allie is as well.  When Allie is upset she tries to make her happy.  Selena loves to snuggle and Allie has started snuggling with her more often and Selena likes that.  She does not like the baby slobber kisses Allie likes to plant on her however.  

I think Halloween is one of her favorite holidays because she seems to remember it well, even when she was only one.  Floyd asked her if she was going to be a cat this year and she looked at him with a puzzled expression and as if he was crazy and said, "I'm already a cat."  The fourth of July was fun.  Last year the smoke bombs were her favorite, this year she could care less about them.  This year she liked the pop-its, the sparklers, and the parachute guy.  

She got a book at the library about Arthur losing a tooth, and there was an episode in her new favorite show, Super Why, on the tooth fairy so she is very excited about her and Allie losing their teeth.  

She likes doing the "make a word" games on starfall.com and she is getting pretty good at them.   She knew all her letters at a pretty young age, before she was two, but I'm not sure if she still knows them all.  When she has to pick the letter that fills in the blank sometimes she says the letter name, but sometimes she doesn't.