Hide and Seek

One of Elena's fun games lately is Hide and Seek. But she doesn't have Theory of Mind, yet. So, she still goes and hides by:

• scrunching down into a rock-ish shape
• standing in another part of the room, looking away from you
• hiding in the same place you just hid

We were in the car on the highway a couple days ago, and she wanted to play hide and seek. Hm... well, ok.

ER: I'll count and you go hide.
Me: (scrunching down in my seat to try and get out of view -- Serena's driving)
ER: 1, 2, 3, 10! I found you! Ok, now I hide and you count.
Me: (I count all the way to 10). Ready or not, here I come!

I look back and... well... what can you do really when you're strapped into a car seat with nothing in reach to throw over yourself. She's hiding her eyes behind her hands. She would have kept going and had a blast. I just couldn't maintain the farce of it.

Social Protocol

Lately, Elena has been fascinated by rules of politeness and social interchange. An example:

ER: Papa?
Me: Hm?
ER: No. I say, "Papa" and you say, "Yes"
Me: Yes?
ER: No, not now. First, I say, "Papa" and then you say, "Yes"
Me: OK.
ER: Papa?
Me: Yes?
ER: (smiling with gratification, she has to think of something to continue the discussion past this point) What are you doing?

Another example: We received a nice book which teaches many internal lessons in terms of cookies. Today, walking around the lawn, she says, "I say, 'May I have a cookie please?' and then I say, 'Thank you.' I am polite."

Stats

I've been spending more time recently working on my dissertation, which means less of my usual evening time with Elena. Tonight, as I'm cranking through data cleanup and stats, Elena volunteered to go to sleep lying next to me on the couch instead of rocking or going to bed with me. She told me, "While I'm sleeping, you do your stats, okay Mama?"
Okay, sweetheart. I will.

A video on farming

I came across this video. It introduces well many of the principles of farming, gardening, caring for our Earth, and living in general that I have been slowly adopting. I aspire to do what's in this video. Check it out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4152340418943461860&hl=en

Playdough recipe

This is a big recipe that makes about three cups of playdough.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups warm water
2 tsp oil
Food colouring

1. Mix together the dry ingredients (I mixed them straight in the pot they would be cooked in).
2. Slowly add 2 cups of warm water while stirring to avoid clumps.
3. Mix in 2 tsp oil (We used lime oil. I've also heard great things about mint oil. Or you can use a more neutral oil)
4. Stir in your food colouring. I found ten drops to be a good starting place. Keep in mind that the playdough will darken up a bit as it cooks.
5. Cook over medium-low heat while stirring. Make sure you're scraping away the stuff that clumps up at the bottom of the pan. The playdough will thicken and you will see less and less of the whiter liquid that you started with. You can take the playdough out of the pan before all of the white is gone, but I would wait until you get a large glob that all holds together.
6. Use a spoon or spatula to get it out of the pot and onto a surface (we used the granite countertops).
7. Knead until smooth and uniform. It will be hot, but I found that I was able to knead it pretty much straight out of the pot, and my daughter was able to knead it soon after.
8. Put it into an airtight container. You may want to let it cool first a bit; otherwise you'll get condensation in the container.
   

Elena writes her name!

Previously, Elena has gotten stuck after "ELE," but when decorating her birthday hat, she was able to write her whole name by herself.

Birthday pictures

1. Making playdough
2. Our first finished products!
3. Our lenten birthday cake
4. Everyone enjoyed playing with the playdough. On the table, if you look closely, you can see a pascal's triangle that Erich made of playdough.

A commercial-free birthday party?

For Elena's birthday, we had a very low-key event which was only mildly birthday-themed. Erich's parents are out visiting for the entire week, which is already quite a treat. Today we had another family over to play. They have three children (ages 7, 5, and 2.5), all of whom Elena enjoys playing with. We served bagels and fruit salad. We made colour-your-own hats. We played with playdough that my mother, Elena and I made the day before (we made 18 cups of playdough in six colours, so we were able to send our friends home with some). We had whacky cake (thanks, Olsons!) frosted with maple frosting and decorated with Elena's name spelled out in almonds and dried cranberries. Our friends brought the most wonderful non-toy gifts: 1. a beautiful pot with dirt and seeds for Elena to plant 2. a small vase with some hand cut flowers that smell like honey (Elena loved this and carried it around, finding various decorative locations for it) 3. the eldest girl brought two books that she likes to read and sat down with Elena and read to her (always a cherished activity for Elena). All this in addition to coming over and playing with Elena! I will add pictures soon, but I wanted to jot down the basics of the party, which, was a big hit for all involved. (It would have made Mothering Magazine proud!)

Searching for plants to grow

It seems that, in most areas of my life, I tend to like things that not many other people do. I play go. There are chess players like mad in the US, but hardly any go players. I like plant keys. You can't buy them at Barnes & Noble. I like permaculture. You can't find any permaculture books at Barnes & Noble.

Now I'm looking for loganberry bushes or seeds, which were supposedly developed in California, but I can find no online suppliers other than the UK. Same goes for the actual variety I want -- LY654, the thornless loganberry -- only in UK and Australia, it would seem. I'm also considering a kaya tree for the nuts (and maybe the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-etc---grandkids could make an EXTREMELY valuable go board out of it). But the ones good for the nuts are the shibunashigayas ("gaya = kaya"), which I would guess are only available in Japan, from the looks of it.

My moringa seeds are here though! The seedlings died en route, so I'm planting seeds. I put them in the ground a couple days ago and waiting with eager anticipation for any sign of life.

And then there's licorish mint (anise hyssop)... I wonder if that is sold somewhere in this hemisphere. Oh, yeah, there it is. Fairly common. localharvest.org

And the banana yucca seedlings were easy enough. Weird. You hit or miss, I guess.

Is she even related to me??

Erich's trying to occupy Elena to allow me to work on my dissertation. He's also trying to clean up a bit for my inlaws' arrival. He called to Elena from her room, "Do you want to clean your room with me?" Her face lit up with glee. "I clean it?"
"Yes."
"We can get it all clean?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like a GREAT IDEA!!"
She was so excited. She loves having a clean room, and she's perfectly content to contribute to that end.