Carnivores

I was rocking Elena to sleep last week. We were watching Planet Earth. We hadn't seen Planet Earth for several months, so it's a bit fresh for us.

Well, we were watching this wolf chasing down this caribou calf.

ER: What it doing?
me: The wolf is chasing the caribou. He wants to eat it.
(the wolf got the caribou and bit in)
ER: (distressed) What it doing?
me: The wolf is eating the caribou.
ER: Nooo....

Sounding out words

Elena's not quite to the point yet of sounding out words by herself, but she is starting to join me in sounding out words, and she is now starting to find the sounds made by certain letters interesting.

Counting to 10... and beyond!

Yesterday, we were having fun counting her crayons. I discovered that she has now learned how to count to 10 all by herself. She's got 11 and 12 down too, but then forgets 13 and proceeds right on to 14. 15 is right out. After dabbling with 16 and 18, she bounces around the higher double digit numbers and then on into imaginary ones, for I either no longer hear them at that point, or they are a different breed of number than my reality holds.

I'm of no use to her anymore

I was laying on the floor in Elena's room. She comes over with a (empty) paintbrush and starts to doodle on my face. She had about the gentleness of a blender.

She gentled up after telling her. After a minute or so, she was done.

"I'm all done"

"Painting?" I ask.

"With you"

Veloci-raptor attack!

Or speedy raptor anyway.

I've been feeling a bit homesick lately for the Midwest, so I decided to make something for supper last night that was a staple for me growing up: tuna casserole. This has no relevance to the story, but in blogs you're allowed to be irrelevant.

We were outside, peaceably eating our dinner, watching the hummingbirds over the workshop and the other birds by the feeder. Then all the sudden we saw this big hawk (pretty sure it was a hawk of some sort) come in real low around the side of the workshop. After trying to snatch one of the birds off the perch of the birdfeeder and failing, the hawk and its quarry race off... right toward us! They flew right over our table!

I have an account!

I finally went and registered myself with blogspot.

This is news enough around here. Serena's been pushing me to do this for a while.

Overheard today...

"I'm not an elephant, I'm Elena!"

poor worms...

So, without thinking, I left the worm house where you see it in the picture instead of putting it in the shade. A number of worms tried desperately to escape from the heat, only to dehydrate and die on the pavement (Out of the frying pan into the fire?). But there's still plenty in the house. You can also tell it's hot in there for them because the worms were all concentrated along the edges. Apparently, when it's cold out, they'll move toward the middle because it's warmer there. That is, if it ever gets cooler here.

But it may happen! Today was the first day where the high was below 90F since we moved here! If we can get below 30C, I'll be a happy camper.

Worms!

Pictured is Elena with our new vermicomposting tray system. It is now set up and filled with worms! For those of you who are interested, here's a description of the process:

The worm house came with a block of coconut coir about five inches on a side. This is fibres from coconut all pressed together into a brick. We soaked this and it ballooned out to fill a large kitchen bowl. This is part of the worm "bedding." In the future, we'll be using shredded paper for bedding. We had also saved a small kitchen trash can full of kitchen scraps (vegetable peelings, etc). We mixed the scraps with the coir (squeezed out), plus a few handfulls of dirt (supposedly to seed our system with the bacteria that aid in decomposition). Then we added the worms, who swiftly climbed away from the light and into the scraps and bedding.

In the picture are only two trays of the five we have. Hopefully, the worms will process the food in the lowest tray for a while, then move up to the tray above where we will have added more food for them. The idea is that by the time we have put scraps on the top tray, the material in the bottom tray will be ready to harvest and relatively free of worms.

In with the scraps were some white larvae (of flies, I think). Most of them were in a little colony under the scraps bucket (there was a crack on the bottom where things leaked out), but I'm sure some of them got into the worm system. Does anyone know whether these are problematic?

Elena enjoyed the whole process, but she really doesn't like being dirty. She helped me squeeze some of the coir, but every time she immediately wanted her hands washed ("Mama, wash my hands!". She tolerated holding a worm for about three seconds before she wanted it out of her hand. These must be Erich's genes. With her interpersonal sensitivity, her ability to "behave" as the only child at an adult dinner party, her dislike for touching bugs and dirt, never mind the blond hair and taller-than-average stature... If I hadn't seen her emerge from my body, I'd wonder if she were related to me!

Our morning conversation

ER: "Mama?"
me: "Yes, Elena?"
ER: "Don't eat my poopie."
me: "Okay. I won't."

ER: "Papa?"
me: "What about Papa?"
ER: "Papa don't eat my poopie."
me: "I'll let him know."