We Spent the Night at the Zoo

And we had so much fun!

Willow rocked the scavenger hunt that began our overnight adventure:

I gather that scavenger hunts are a big part of school field trips, and I can see why: not only did Willow love this scavenger hunt, but it was great for research skills and reading comprehension, and she was so engaged that she did all that writing without a fuss.

Sydney, on the other hand, wasn't at all interested in the scavenger hunt, but that actually worked out perfectly, too, since Willow didn't have to share. Instead, she saw all there was to see in the Oceans exhibit while Willow and I worked:

Do you see the baby cownose ray?

Well, okay--we did a fair bit of sightseeing, too:

The zookeepers put up this fence around the shark touch tank at night so that the sharks don't jump out.

There were lots of group activities for the kids--

--lots of games, stories inside the underwater dolphin dome (where the dolphins, made curious by the unusual after-hours activity in their space, gave us LOTS of attention), a night-time tour of the Deserts exhibit, and then, hours after the girls' usual bedtime, crafts--

Popsicle stick picture frames, of course!

--and games:

I took my planner and pencil over to the zoo's games cupboard and wrote down the names of unfamiliar games. Nerd much?

Onto The Desert--this is now on my official wish list, along with Into the Forest

There was a late-night snack time listed on the schedule, but I didn't really think that my kids needed a snack an hour and a half past their bedtime, so I reluctantly brought along a couple of granola bars, just in case. My poor kids looked at their granola bars, then at the other families' packed snacks of chips, or whipped cream and strawberries, or, in one case, pulled pork sandwiches, and then back at their granola bars balefully. They ate their granola bars, but it was pretty clear that they'd rather be eating pulled pork sandwiches, chips, and whipped cream and strawberries.

Such is the nature of compromise: nobody was happy!

Our sleeping spot was in the special events room in the Dolphin Gallery, with one giant window looking into the dolphins' underwater habitat. The security guards came in to give us a run-down of the overnight rules, and this one security guard, who meant, I believe, to make a joke by describing the next shift of guards as "grumpy old men," instead misspoke and, I swear to gawd, said, "The radio, remember, is for emergency use only. We're nice, but you don't want to disturb the next shift of guards. They're a bunch of gropey old men." 

I guess that's one way to keep people from making frivolous use of the radio.

We all slept on the floor in the one big room, so we brought gym mats and blankets for the girls--

--and we borrowed two air mattresses from a very generous friend for us, with sleeping bags on top. Matt and the girls fell asleep immediately and slept like little lambs all night, but I shamefully admit that I am a fussy sleeper, and I did not do well. People kept rolling over and adjusting their covers, and one kid coughed every minute on the minute, and someone's cell phone rang, and someone else went to the bathroom, and some kid way to old to wake up and fuss woke up and fussed, and one kid, thankfully all the way across the room from us, PUKED, and so that family ran to the bathroom, and then they packed up their stuff, making ample use of the flashlights that they'd brought, and then they used the radio to call the gropey old men, and then the gropey old men came to escort them out of the zoo, and then when they were finally gone someone else started to snore.

It was a LONG night.

So worth it, though. Early in the morning, just after our 7:00 am wake-up call, the zookeeper told the children that as soon as they were fully dressed, they were welcome to come to the big window and say good morning to the dolphins (brilliant method, by the way, to get the kids up and clothed and out of the parents' way while we packed). So the children all got dressed at the speed of light, and then lined up at the giant window. They whispered to each other and waited, and after just a minute or two a couple of the dolphins swam over to see them. It wasn't the way that dolphins swim around and back and forth in their habitat during opening hours--these dolphins swam over to the kids, then rested there in the water, completely stationary, and just stared at them, and the kids stared back. It was beautiful.

Socialization is a tiresome question to bring up to homeschooled families, but every now and then, I am struck by something that my kids don't know that every schoolkid on the planet knows. Case in point:

The bemused look on Willow's face is happening because she's never drunk out of a milk carton before. The triangular opening of the carton doesn't match the shape of a child's mouth, and she was pretty sure it wouldn't work.

So there: The kid can stand in a line, she can raise her hand when she wants to talk, and now she can drink out of a milk carton.

The whole trip up to this point, Matt kept saying that he knew one of the kids at the overnight with us. I was all, "You don't know some random kid!"

But Matt kept saying that he swore that he knew him from somewhere, and finally, during breakfast, he said, "Toddlers and Tiaras! That kid was on Toddlers and Tiaras!"

I told him that there was no way that kid was on Toddlers and Tiaras, and even if he was, there was no way we were going to find out, because you can't just go up to somebody and ask that--that's admitting that you watch Toddlers and Tiaras! Also, admitting that you RECOGNIZE a kid from a baby beauty pageant? Creepy.

Matt kept insisting, however, so finally I called his bluff. I went up to the kid and said, "I have a silly question for you," and asked him if he'd ever been on TV. Wouldn't you know it, he said yes!

But of course, kids get on the afternoon news, and the local children's variety show, easier than they get on Toddlers and Tiaras, so I jumped in with both feet and asked, "Were you on Toddlers and Tiaras?"

"NO!!!" the kid said, and then I felt like a creeper. But then he said, "I was on Cake Boss." A-ha! It's not creepy to mix up TLC shows!

I asked the kid what happened on his episode, so we could watch it later, but all he said was, "I built a cake with Buddy." Yeah, I'll let Matt figure that one out on his own.

After our breakfast buffet, we had a before-hours visit back to the Deserts exhibit to watch the meerkats eat breakfast--

--and meet with their zookeeper, and then we went backstage to tour the zoo behind the scenes, particularly the animal commissary. I LOVED the animal commissary. It cracked me up to see all the food, lots of which were variations of "Giraffe Chow":

I also love behind-the-scenes tours, because I always like to see what's on those employee bulletin boards that businesses always have. Check this out!

GASP, right?!?

After the zoo opened to day visitors our official adventure was over, but morning hours in a deserted zoo are always a great time to really experience the animals, so, of course, we stayed for a few more hours, visiting the snakes (although we toured Deserts the night before, we couldn't see the snakes, because they require complete silence and darkness overnight or some of them won't eat), and the tigers, and watching the dolphin show, and saying hi to Ray, the loud-mouthed sea lion (one of the great things that the zookeepers did during our overnight was teach us how to recognize several of the animals by name).

We don't always have a zoo membership (we trade years between a children's museum membership and a zoo membership, to save money), and we've really been treasuring it. We've discovered that the animals are so much more engaged when the zoo is deserted, so we've been taking advantage of the freezing weather to visit often and make some special memories. It's snowing again today, of course (sigh), but we're already dreaming of the seasonal butterfly exhibit that will come to the zoo in just a couple of months and signal the true warm weather.

And then maybe another zoo overnight? I think the girls would really like to go with just their Daddy the next time, don't you?

Put-in-Place

With two girls at different grade levels, it's a treat (for everyone!) when they get to do math together. Math is usually a solo affair, with just a kid, her work, and a Momma to keep her on task, but when I tell them that they'll be doing math together that day, they know what that means:

A big project, something edible, a field trip, a movie, or a game!!!

A few weeks ago, Hand2Mind gave us some school materials, including The Super Source Base Ten Blocks, Grades 3-4 that Willow and I have been playing with. It occurred to me, though, that many of the fun activities that Will and I are doing from the book are actually quite suitable for Sydney, too. There is grade-level computation involved, but a lot of the especially earlier activities in the book are primarily geared towards hands-on investigation of a mathematical concept, internalizing certain rules that will make mastering that skill easier later.

Such it was with Put-in-Place, the game from the book that Sydney, Willow, and I have been playing for math on odd days. It requires counting by tens and ones, but it also requires estimation, prediction, and exchanging units for tens:

This game is really great for Sydney right now, since she's actually working on ten exchanges and multi-digit addition right this minute, but Willow is such an inherent pattern-reader that it turned out to be a good brain-stretching activity for her, too. But the very best part of this game for me, though, is that it requires nothing but Base Ten blocks, a die, and a place value mat photocopied or downloaded from another source. I've regularly used our homeschool budget to build a large set of Base Ten blocks, and I'm always pleased to find new ways to use them.

And I'm also giving my kids a head start at becoming really good at Blackjack, of course.

In other news, we can finally use our shower and toilet inside our own house again! Our lousy sewer pipes may well win the war, but at least we finally broke this particular siege against us.

Sisters

Let me try to brush either child's hair, and she will respond as if I am attempting to rip it out by the roots. Let a sister take brush in hand, however...

May their hands always be gentle towards each other.

Cactus Fruit

Sixth day of sewer blockage!!! Just so you know.

In the further interest of sharing our passion for exotic fruit, I present to you--

the cactus fruit

If you're wondering why my photos of our exotic fruit are always junk, it's because we have them in the late afternoon for dinner, when Matt's home to perform the honor of cutting the fruit in half--

and to help research what on earth he just cut in half, and to taste with us:

We weren't sure about this one. It was bright red inside but didn't have a lot of flavor. It also had tons of prickles on the outside that we were mostly able to avoid (not me, of course...). It takes a little of the fun out of it to realize that the reason why our cactus fruit was not delicious, probably, is that it's been shipped from who knows where who knows how long ago. Flavor peak of freshness, this is not.

So exotic produce is probably not going to be a regular purchase for our little Indiana family. But I tell you, whenever we do happen to visit some region that actually has cacti as part of its native flora, we WILL try cactus fruit again.

And, mental note, we will rub all of the prickles off first. Ouch!

A Lack of Sewers and a Lot of Home Videos

So, we're now looking at our fifth day of sewer blockage at our house.

Nice, right?

Barring a city inspection this afternoon in which the city discovers that it's actually THEIR problem (awesome, but unlikely), or another plumbing company coming out for an estimate and discovering that they can fix the problem in ten minutes for a hundred bucks (even awesomer, and even more unlikely), we are yet again in the Slough of Home Repair Despond, where all weary homeowners whose sewer pipes have collapsed at the edge of the yard, entailing a permit to dig up the street, and then DIGGING UP THE STREET, and then putting the street back together, using up a tidy chunk of their retirement funds in the process, slog without succor for a really, really long time. The wheels of progress (and crucial infrastructure repair) grind slowly, my friends.

Okay, that's about all I want to say right now about my life of driving to Wal-mart to use the toilet.

Instead, look at these home videos that my kids made!



It's been a whole new winter activity that they've recently discovered, this acting out skits and videotaping each other. Last week, Syd even brought her camera to our homeschool group's Gym Day to see if her friends like videotaping each other, too. Turns out that they do!

I've been burning the girls' videos to DVD for them, because they cannot get enough of watching themselves being silly. When I was a kid, we had a huge camcorder, but it wasn't used for this kind of silliness; it was reserved for Christmas Day, or our summer road trip, or the school spelling bee. I have some memories of playing with my friends at this age, sure, and the silly, oh-so-serious-at-the-time stuff that we got up to. I wonder, though, how different it will be for my own kiddos, who, when they're my age, can just pop a DVD in to the player (if they still have DVDs then...maybe they'll use a holoplayer?) and see themselves all teeny, dressed all goofy, playing with their toys, hamming it up with their friends.

I would LOVE to be able to see myself like that. Of course, I'd also love to be able to use the toilet inside my own house, though, so what do I know?

The Wind at Work, Paper Airplanes, and Remote Controlled Helicopters

Guess who's 46" tall, plays with toy ponies all day, and will be walking the runway in the 2013 Trashion/Refashion Show?

It's Sydney!!!

Syd is super-stoked, already working on her runway routine, and will absolutely throw a fit when I tell her that I will NOT permit her to wear the clear acrylic stripper heels that I wouldn't let her wear last year, either. I tell you, what's wrong with a nice pair of cherry red Converse high tops?

The down-side of the big news is that one of the dress rehearsals overlaps our homeschool Science Fair, so Syd chose to withdraw her entry, and Matt and I will be playing man-on-man this month--him at the Science Fair with Willow, me at the fashion show dress rehearsal with Sydney.

It turns out, though, that Willow is REALLY interested in her topic, flight, and without another kid's project to focus on, we've been able to double-down on a pretty epic unit study with her. Wind and air temperature, as you may know, are integral to flight, so along with paper airplanes, the remote-controlled helicopter, lots of science encyclopedias, and attempting to figure out what on earth to use to sculpt a kid-sized set of wings,  Willow and I have been working through some applicable experiments in our copy of The Wind at Work, given to Will by the publisher. 

The first experiment in the book is great science on a lot of levels, and Willow picked up a surprising number of new skills doing it. The experiment basically asks you to compare the temperatures of three different elements several times a day over a period of days. This required Willow to learn how to create a chart to record these temperatures--

--to think through how to set up an experiment properly--

--to be responsible for collecting data at specific times, no matter the weather--

--to learn how to read thermometers--

--to record information in a consistent manner (with legible handwriting!)--

--to read that chart for its information--

--and to create a line graph, using a ruler and different colored pencils to record the information on it:

Surprisingly, this last task was the one that Willow balked at. I don't know--perhaps the amount of information to record looked daunting, or she didn't quite understand the purpose of copying it in a different way, or the temperatures all looked similar enough that she didn't see the value in the extra work?

After I persuaded her to actually begin, however, she was immersed in the graph-building almost immediately, and when she finished, it was clear that the line graph presented the temperatures in a much more readable manner, with patterns and trends easily evident: 

And then Willow, who is at heart a reader, couldn't get enough of it. She noticed where temperatures dropped and where they rose, she noticed what elements held a steadier temperature and what elements frequently fluctuated, what element stayed closer to air temperature and what element held the previous day's warmth.

This particular experiment is a build-up to studying global wind patterns, but it also makes just a really cool stand-alone experiment. I've already promised Willow that we can repeat it again in the summer (as opposed to the snow, sigh), and that we can add more elements to compare--gravel, I believe she suggested, and our compost heap, which will lead to an entirely new series of science inquiries, I'm guessing.

As I told Willow, this is real science that she's doing, the stuff of real scientists. "Probably nobody but you," I said, "compared the temperatures of different elements on these exact days in our exact town this week. If anybody ever wants to know that specific information, they're going to have to ask you."

At that, my scientist beamed.

Barbies and Building Blocks

It's snowing again. I knew that there was a 30% chance of snow last night, but when I woke up and saw the white demon littering the ground, and more despicable little fluffy-fluffs spitting down, I barked out a VERY attractive something like "GLAAHGH!".

Fortunately, the day has been well spent. We had baked oatmeal for breakfast, I may have had cheesecake for lunch, which I blame entirely on the white demon, and I have cleverly concealed yesterday's pasta leftovers into tonight's "Pasta Bake," which I think will go over well, and which contains flaxseeds (Shh! Don't tell!). The house is as clean as it's gonna get with two kids in residence--I have a groove for this now, and I feel really good about myself every time I think about it. I forced myself a total of twice to look out the window at the snow and think, "Pretty!". Then I kicked the kids out into it, and they're out there now, chasing each other, their startlingly shrill pony neighs disturbing the neighbors. I have let the power of being an admin this month for CAGW (my boss had a baby! Insert squee here) go to my head. Speaking of my boss, and my friend, AND my half-sister, I cut out WAY too many baby bibs to sew for their new babies, humming happily to myself as I worked in a way that would bring a cold sweat to Matt's forehead if only he'd been home to witness it. I did a mile on the treadmill while watching Call the Midwife; I *almost* want to hop back on just so I can watch some more. I set up the computer for Willow's Magic Tree House Club meeting, then dug out my wedding scrapbook so that she could see our photos of standing next to flowing lava--it was Vacation under the Volcano this month, you know. I made a note in my planner to do some planning/price checking for a future Hawaii family vacation. 2015? Definitely not 2014, because in 2014 Sydney will finally be old enough for the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Family Dino Dig program in South Dakota. I have been waiting for her to be old enough for us to all go to that program since...she was born, I guess? Miss Sydney has also had a great day, listening to Magic Tree House audiobooks, drawing a cheetah, other assorted animals, and a personalized badge for every member of the family, complete with our age and a personal message from the artist, and playing and playing and playing and playing with her sister.

I've mentioned before how clearly the girls' indoor play has been continually evolving this winter; for the past week, rather than the indoor sandbox or the Wikki stix or the Xbox Kinect or the Legos, it's been nothing but Barbies and building blocks, working together in happy concert:

Both girls love to mine my (overflowing) scrap bin--

--both for costume choices--

--and for crucial dramatic components of the scene in progress:

I have to say that I love watching my reluctant writer muscle those molded plastic arms into those teensy clothes. Yay, finger strengthening!

And yes, that is the Waldorf doll that I spent most of last summer making for her being ground into the floor:

At least it's well-loved.