Yesterday we had a fun playdate with Carrie and her kids. I feel like I was neglecting an assignment and now I’ve finally gotten a good start on it! See, Brenda and Carrie are blog friends from way back. When Brenda and Bug were here helping us unpack last spring, Carrie and her son Erik came over for lunch one day, and we had a blast, kids and moms alike. Brenda ordered me and Carrie to become good friends and have lots of playdates so she could live vicariously through us. I had every intention of following her orders, because Carrie is smart and funny and interesting and I liked her very much, and also I don’t have very many local friends!

But you know how life goes. First, we were busy unpacking and settling in. Then, Carrie and her husband Mike had a baby girl, Elsa, and were deep in the newborn stage of just trying to keep their heads above water with no extra time for playdates. Then Annalie and I went to Omaha for a visit. Then it was Annalie’s birthday, and my mom was in town for a few weeks. And of course by then I was dealing with first-trimester exhaustion all the time, and then we went on another trip to Omaha.

But finally, all the stars aligned and we had simultaneous free afternoons! So Annalie and I went over to their house to play and eat Carrie’s yummy version of my spicy veggie stir-fry with peanut sauce, which I just realized I’ve never blogged despite it being one of those recipes that everyone always asks for when I make it. Then Annalie and Erik wandered downstairs to the playroom while Carrie and I gabbed away for more than an hour. We were so busy talking (mostly about cloth diapers—more on that in a bit) that we neglected to check on our kids even once. But it was okay, because they got along great! They prepared a delicious pretend vegetable soup garnished with maple syrup for us.

Then we changed into our swimsuits and went to the splash park! There is an awesome park in their town that is full of fun things to do, among them this excellent splash park next door to a miniature golf course. Annalie has been to a half-dozen different spraygrounds in her life, so they’re no big deal to her, but when we walked into this place her eyes widened and she exclaimed, “Oh, wow! This is so cool!” She barely stood in one place long enough for me to spray sunblock on her, she was so excited to go play. (Incidentally, I’d like to kiss whoever invented spray sunblock. I love that stuff.)

Annalie and Erik both took off as soon as they were sunblocked. I grabbed my camera and followed them, persuading them to pose for a quick photo before they ditched me to play. I followed Annalie around as she checked out the “big mushrooms” and the waterfall cave and took a moment to spin the wheel on a spray fountain. I grabbed her for a quick arm’s-length self-portrait by the water maze, forgetting that I’d zoomed in for the previous photo and the result was a surprisingly good close-up shot.

Annalie fell in love with this blue whale, whom she said was named Daisy. There was a bit of drama over the fact that other kids kept climbing onto the whale with her, which would make Annalie hop off and pout till they’d left. Then she would race back over and climb on the whale’s back again. I think we are providing her with a sibling (and hopefully some perspective) not a moment too soon. Erik, meanwhile, spent a few minutes perched on the frog’s back, encouraging it to hop. “C’mon, Frog, HOP!” He didn’t seem to mind that the frog ignored him.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I pointed my camera at Erik, who tried to thwart me by sticking his hands in front of his face. So I just raised the camera and pointed it down at his head. Ha! At least to a 4-year-old, I’m still tall.

Most of the time we were there, both kids were in the water maze. I spent some time in there myself, since Annalie wanted me to go in with her a couple of times—purely for fun, not because she was afraid. I actually spent a few minutes contemplating how great it was that she wasn’t the least bit afraid of the noisy jets of water; that she just charged right into their midst, laughing. I bet last summer she would have had to spend a while working up her courage, and then she would have only gone in if someone had been there holding her hand. I love watching my kid grow up. No crying on my baby’s first day of kindergarten for me, thank you!

Well, she’s home-schooled, so her first day of kindergarten was at home with me. But that’s beside the point. My point is that I genuinely delight in her growing confidence, knowledge, and skills. Did you know she can totally make her own microwave popcorn now, starting with getting the package out of the pantry and all the way to dumping it in a bowl and adding a sprinkle of salt? She can also get her own bowl of cereal, pour herself a glass of lemonade without spilling, and get herself out of the shower, dried off, and into her pajamas. I love age six!

I admit that when I think ahead to her being a college student I might sigh a little, but then Annalie tells me that she doesn’t want to live in a dorm when she is in college because she would be too sad to leave me and Troy and her little sister. I take that with a grain of salt of course, because she probably will change her tune over the next 12 years. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she doesn’t. She is just that kind of person. Hey, my younger brother lived with my parents for six or seven years in his late 20s, just because he liked living with them, and I am forever telling Annalie how much she reminds me of her Unky Ben! So we’ll see….

…but I digress! I was telling you about how the big water maze was the main attraction for both Annalie and Erik. Even Carrie (with Elsa asleep on her chest) and I enjoyed standing near it. The shallow water cooled our feet and the mist from the fountain sprayed our faces and arms and kept us from overheating while we chatted about how we wished we had waterproof cameras and kept an eye on the kids. Though it was actually perfect splash park weather yesterday, not horrifically hot like it was last week.

Eventually, we noticed that the kids were getting tired, and were just sort of hanging out near us. It was almost time for us to head home anyway, to give us a chance to beat the afternoon rush. So we casually mentioned the magic words “ice cream” and Annalie and Erik immediately announced that they were ready to leave and rushed over to dry themselves off and put their shoes on so they could go pick out their ice cream treats. Not a bad way to end an afternoon at the splash park and a summer playdate!

Thanks again for the fun afternoon, Carrie, Erik & Elsa! We’re already looking forward to next time.

Oh, remember how I mentioned up there that Carrie and I were talking about cloth diapers while our kids played? Yep, I think we’re gonna cloth diaper this time.

I’ve been really intrigued by cloth-diapering since right around the time Annalie was potty-trained. I’d been watching my friend Lynn use cloth on her daughters for a couple of years by then, and I’d had several conversations about the whole thing with OMSH, who is a staunch advocate of cloth diapers.

Then I moved to San Diego and became friends with Sonja in real life. She’s a cloth-diaperer who also works at a shop that sells natural, organic and earth-friendly products for parents and kids, including a wide range of cloth diapering, breastfeeding, and babywearing products. So she’s kind of an expert. My friend Madge also used cloth diapers on her kids. And now Carrie, too. Much like with homeschooling, the more I considered using cloth diapers on a theoretical second child, the more people I discovered around me who had been cloth diaperers. Troy and I talked it over, and we decided we’d give it a shot.

Which leads me to the above photo. Carrie’s daughter Elsa, at 3.5 months old, is ahead of the growth curve and has already outgrown a lot of her size small diapers. Carrie had mentioned that she was trying to sell them online, but that she was running into a lot of people who weren’t willing to pay her (more than fair) asking price. I offered to buy a few from her, thus getting me started on my stash, and preventing her from having to deal with crazy bargain-hunters and shipping hassles.

Which is why I left the playdate yesterday with ten size small cloth diapers (and a sample of Rockin’ Green detergent and a couple of little cubes used for making wipes solution that Carrie generously shared with me). When we arrived back home and I opened Annalie’s door so I could grab the shopping bag of diapers, Annalie hopped out with a grin on her face and her doll Greta clutched in one arm—and Greta was now wearing the blue and purple diaper that had been at the top of the bag. Even Annalie thinks cloth diapering is a good idea, apparently.

We’ve been writing a lot of thank-you notes lately around here. I’ve always been a big believer in thank-you notes, especially for gifts that were mailed to me. If nothing else they let the giver know that the gift was received. I like handwritten notes best, but I think emailed thank-yous are just as thoughtful and polite.

In previous years, I would just have Annalie dictate her thank-you notes to me, and she would sign her name and maybe draw a little picture. This year, it was a whole different ballgame. Annalie is reading and writing more and more on her own. That means that now, thank-you notes are a chance for her to practice handwriting, spelling, sentence structure, and letter-writing.

I’ve often remarked on how much Annalie is like my younger brother. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a stronger resemblance between Annalie and her Unky Ben than in their similar approach to thank-you notes, which can be summed up succinctly in three words: DO NOT WANT.

When I was a kid, I loved writing thank-you notes. I still do, though I might occasionally lack the time-management to get them done in a timely manner. My brother, on the other hand, fought writing thank-you notes tooth and nail. He just didn’t like to write, or sit still. I loved doing both.

It’s all in the approach, though. If you’d taken my brother to the house of each person who’d given him a present, I’m sure he would have gladly run to the door, rung the doorbell, and effusively thanked each friend or relative in person, complete with hugs and kisses and detailed descriptions of how he planned to play with each new toy. If you’d tried to make me go door-to-door and thank everyone in person, I probably would have slouched down under my seatbelt, crossed my arms, scowled, and refused to get out of the car. Have I mentioned that my brother and I are very different in some ways?

Here’s the thing about Annalie: when it’s her idea, she loves to write and draw and make lists. She does it almost compulsively on her own, while she’s watching TV, while someone is reading to her, while we’re driving, while she’s waiting for her food in a restaurant. If I try to make her write when she doesn’t want to, it often turns into a long, drawn-out battle of wills (see the updates at the end of that post) that just exhausts us both and makes me question my fitness for motherhood.

Mostly, writing thank-you notes this time around has been a pleasant surprise. I’ve been trying to catch her in the mood to write, which has helped a lot. And I guess she is six years old, after all! It’s amazing what a difference a year can make.

When we started I wrote out a sample note for her that said, “Dear ________, Thank you for the ________. Love, Annalie.” That way she could see she didn’t have to write very much, and that at least half of the words she had to write were words she already knew.

At first she groaned and complained a bit. We talked several times about how kind it was of her friends and relatives to take the time to think about her, pick a present she would like, wrap it prettily and send it to her; and about how taking five minutes to write a thank-you note was a small gesture of gratitude in return for that thoughtfulness. I made the mistake of joking to her once that I could tell everyone she didn’t want gifts next year because thank-you notes were too much trouble to write, and she got genuinely upset. Oops. Reminder to self: six-year-olds might be more mature than five-year-olds, but they don’t always get sarcastic humor.

After she got a few notes done, the complaints were fewer and farther between. Yesterday, writing what was probably her 12th or 13th thank-you note in recent weeks, she pretty much wrote the whole thing on her own. She only needed help with one or two words that she didn’t know!

I told her I was proud of her, and pointed out that she seemed to have learned how to spell “dear” and “thank.” She replied in a rather annoyed tone, “No, I was just guessing! I don’t know how to spell them!” She reacts the same way when we point out a word she read on her own, telling us she didn’t really know what it said, that she just saw the letters and guessed. It’s no use telling her that that is reading. She’s so funny.

But hey, she’s writing thank-you notes, and learning while she’s doing it. Even if she isn’t ready to admit it.

(Thanks, Mom, for taking both the photos in this post!)

A few days ago, Annalie asked if she could watch TV. It was a beautiful day, and in a burst of inspiration I told her to take her sketchbook outside and draw five things that start with T. When she had done that, then she could come inside and watch a show.

For some reason, this caught her imagination immediately. This confirmed my suspicion that 9 times out of 10 when she wants to watch TV, she just can’t think of anything better to do. She bustled around the house, gathering her box of crayons, her Skittles-wrapper sketchbook (best impulse buy I ever made at Toys ‘R Us), Fluffy the kitten, a rug and a blanket to sit on, and an apple.

The violets were covering the slopes of our backyard still, so I followed her outside to take a few photos. We discussed things she could draw that started with T. She decided she wanted to draw other things first, before she drew the T things, and I said that was fine, she could do the list whenever she was ready.

I went back up to the house, and Annalie stayed outside. She soon abandoned the sketching completely and got lost in some make-believe game involving her kitten. The box of crayons turned into Fluffy’s bed. Once when I looked out there they were both “asleep.”

Another time I checked on her she was running around the yard, grabbing handfuls of wild onions and sniffing deeply before carrying them back to the blanket and adding them to her pile, which she later picked up and scattered all over the yard.

I expected her to come in after a few minutes. Though it was sunny it wasn’t that warm. But she must have been enjoying the fresh air because she stayed outside for a good hour. I hollered down at her from the deck occasionally to ask if she needed anything or how she was doing, and her standard response was, “I’m OK!”

Eventually she came back inside and asked to watch TV again. I asked if she’d finished her list. She had drawn a tree, but nothing else. I told her that she could watch TV when she finished the list. She asked, “Can I just write five things that start with T instead of drawing them?” And that’s what she did. I helped a little, but mostly she sounded them out on her own, as you can see from her spelling of telephone.

I could try this experiment again today and it might fail miserably. Annalie would likely grouse and complain about having to list five things before she actually did it. I don’t know why it worked out so well that day, but it did. So I told Annalie how proud I was of her that she’d played outside for an hour, using her imagination and enjoying the fresh air; I praised her spelling and writing and her attempt at a long, tricky word; and I patted myself on the back and enjoyed one of those lovely moments where I feel like I know what I’m doing at this mom thing.

Update: I talked to Annalie about it, and said that I’d like her to write five words each time she wants to watch a show from now on. She was agreeable till she wanted to watch TV. Since then we’ve had two crying tantrums and three epic battles of will about it. She did write a list of P words earlier (plant, popcorn, pork, pet, polish, and papa), and got as far as writing apple for an A list before she decided she’d rather just draw. That was before she nearly destroyed a dry-erase pen and ran sobbing to her room. *Sigh.*

Update 2: She decided she wanted to watch Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, and wrote ant and Aang in about 15 seconds flat, no tears. Sheesh. Parenthood is not for the weak or easily confused!

When Joe was here earlier this week, he only had one full day here. He’d only been to D.C. once before and had not really done many touristy things when he was here, so we decided to try to make the most of that one day by walking around the Tidal Basin and hitting some of the major monuments and memorials around it. We took about 500 photos between us, so I’m just gonna throw a bunch of ‘em at you in this post. Consider yourself warned.

Finding a parking space was an adventure. There are a couple of areas where we can usually find parking when we go downtown, but that day all the usual spots were full, probably because it was such a gorgeous day. I knew there were parking lots somewhere by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, so we headed that way. We managed to make a couple of wrong turns and unintentionally drove across the Arlington Memorial Bridge twice. Eventually we got to the free parking lot and felt quite victorious.

As we headed out, we came across the George Mason memorial, which included a garden and a pond with a fountain. Apparently Mason was a good friend of George Washington’s, a source of inspiration for Thomas Jefferson, and is considered the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” I suppose I must’ve learned about him at some point, but when we first saw the monument I had no idea who he was. Living in D.C. is going to be educational for us all, I suspect.

Joe took this photo of me. I always laugh when I see photos of myself with a camera, my pinky sticking up like that. How fancy am I?

We wandered through the FDR Memorial, with its many fountains, in the wrong direction. It was still pretty neat, though. It’s more of a memorial to FDR’s presidency and the various world-changing events that happened during his four terms as President, with statues commemorating Eleanor Roosevelt, the Works Progress Administration, Fireside Chats, the Great Depression, and World War II. My favorite part was a modest, life-size statue of FDR sitting in the wheelchair he designed out of a kitchen chair and some bicycle and wheelbarrow wheels. Annalie thought it was pretty interesting that a guy in a wheelchair was President.

We pretended not to see the signs asking us to keep off the grass and jumped a low fence to get to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. It has a fountain, and fountains are to Annalie as catnip is to cats. The wall with FREEDOM IS NOT FREE engraved on it is my favorite part.

By the time we walked from the Korean Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial, Annalie was in full-on hungry mode. Our plan for lunch was to grab a hot dog from one of the carts, but we didn’t see any of those.

What we did see was an ice-cream cart. Annalie got frozen lemonade, and Joe and I split an ice cream sandwich. My theory is, if you want to keep the 5-year-old happy on your 3-hour, 3-mile sightseeing hike, you feed her when she gets hungry. Even if the only food around is ice cream.

Annalie, running up to see “the big guy in the chair,” as she called him.

Waiting for Joe to finish taking photos so we could continue walking.

There is a carving marking the spot where Martin Luther King, Jr., stood to give his famous “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington. I pointed it out to Annalie, and in briefly explaining about MLK’s speech and the civil rights movement, I said that a long time ago people used to not be allowed to have certain jobs or eat at certain restaurants or even use certain bathrooms because of the color of their skin or where they were from. Annalie’s reply to that was, “Well, that’s silly! Good thing they changed that, huh?”

We walked by the Vietnam Wall, where we saw a couple of people making rubbings of names, and Annalie gathered dandelions by the armful from the field next to the pathway.

More walking, from the Vietnam Wall across the street to eat a lunch of hot dogs and chips, which tasted delicious after all that walking. And then…more walking! Back across the street, down the pathways, through Constitution Gardens, to the World War II Memorial.

A teachable moment, grasped by Joe. He was explaining parts of the memorial to Annalie, specifically the Pacific and Atlantic pavilions.

At this point in the walk, Annalie was seriously fading, and I couldn’t really blame her. I was fading too. Joe commented that we probably wouldn’t be able to do this same walk a month from now, when it’s hotter and more humid.

Luckily, we kept managing to find fun things to distract us from our tiredness. Like the Tulip Library! I guess this is just a small garden, planted with samples of all the varieties of tulips you’ll find all over D.C. in the spring. It definitely raised our spirits a bit, walking around and picking out our favorite varieties.

The rest of the long walk around the Tidal Basin, we saw fish under a bridge, paddleboats, a huge uprooted tree trunk that had a sign on it explaining the tree was damaged in the blizzard of February 2010, but they couldn’t remove the trunk completely till they got all the power lines and such sorted out.

And finally we made it to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. I’d never been there before, though I’ve driven past it dozens of times. It was lovely and cool inside, and provided a brief rest before we had to hike the remaining half-mile back to the car.

We counted later, and realized we’d seen something like nine or ten memorials, monuments, and gardens in the span of three hours. It was fun, but no wonder we were tired when we were done!

I should note that a few of the photos in this post were taken by Joe Sands. Check out his Flickr set DC Tidal Basin Photowalk! for more photos.

After a week of rain and being cooped up in the house, we celebrated yesterday’s sunshine by going on a two-hour photowalk. We set out from our gate, cameras at the ready. In the back of my mind I was thinking that this would probably be the last photowalk we’d take in this town.

Brace yourself. There are a lot of photos in this post.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Annalie was stopping every three feet to take pictures of the grass, of a flower, of a “pretty white car.” She loves taking pictures, this kid. To combat my urge to hurry her along, I tried to find an interesting picture to take each time she stopped, right where we were standing.

It was fun to challenge myself, and it led to a few cool shots that I probably would never have taken otherwise—looking up at power lines, of the scrollwork on the gate of an apartment complex, a hummingbird in flight.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

We walked much farther than on our last photowalk. Then, it was almost bedtime and we just took a quick walk around the block. Yesterday when we set out it was early afternoon and we had all the time in the world, so we walked all the way downtown.

Now when I say “downtown” I am not talking about downtown San Diego. I’m talking about our little town center, which is basically one long main road lined with restaurants, antique stores, coffee shops, and other small businesses. It’s not terribly exciting but it’s homey and friendly and there are always people walking around. There’s a small farmer’s market there every Friday afternoon, and an antique car show every Thursday evening. Our downtown is one of the reasons we’re going to miss living here when we move.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

This jewelry display outside a secondhand-clothing store caught Annalie’s eye, especially the sparkly star rings.

I aimed my camera at her as she took another photo. It’s kind of fun taking her picture when she’s distracted and I’m not trying to get her to pose.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

We stopped at a coffee shop that Brenda has been urging me to try for a while now. Kinda sad that she’s been there several times while housesitting for us, and I’d never been there till yesterday.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

It’s a very cool shop. Each table is colorfully painted with a different design bearing the shop’s name; long, narrow paintings of girls who look like they live in hip graphic novels line the walls; a giant lazy Susan full of jars of loose-leaf tea sits on a high shelf next to the cash register; and at least one employee has an English accent.

We took our latte and hot cocoa to a table outside, so we could watch the dogs that were tied to the fence around the small seating area. Annalie thought it was really cool that there was a double dish outside with a water bowl in one half and dog treats in the other. While we were sitting there, Annalie suddenly started pretending she was a robot, complete with beeping and booping noises. I asked her if that meant she was bored and ready to walk, and she said, “Yes. It. Does. Ready. To. Walk.”

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Then she pointed across the street and asked in her normal voice, “Can we cross over there so we can look at the beautiful gowns?” I love the photo she took, especially how you can see the sky and clouds reflected in the window.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

We varied our route on the way home, so we could pass by some different sights. Annalie said that this church (which is more than 100 years old, by the way) looked like a palace. She said she especially loved the “beautiful golden windows.” I swear, she really does talk like that.

I have no idea why “Food is good” is painted on the window of this community-association thrift shop. It’s been there for ages, and it makes me laugh every time I see it. Yesterday I asked Annalie if she could read it for me, and she sounded it out without any trouble at all.

Homeschooling aside: I feel like she should know all those words on sight without having to sound them out, because I know she’s read them many times before. She is able to read a lot of words now, but she still thinks she has to sound them out every time, except for a small list that she knows immediately (Annalie, mom, dad, cat, dog, love, book, stop, go, yes, no, exit, red, blue, yellow, green, pink). I keep telling her that she can remember what a word looks like and then she won’t have to sound it out the next time, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to be clicking in her head yet.

However, if I spell words out loud for her, she can usually figure them out much more quickly than by looking at them, which is totally foreign to me. I have always been such a visual learner that it’s challenging for me to remember that Annalie doesn’t learn best the same way I do.

Anyway. I’m not worried about her reading skills. They’re on track for her age, if not a little ahead of where she “should” be in kindergarten. And her verbal skills are definitely above average. I know she’ll read soon enough. Really at this point I feel like homeschooling is more about educating me than it is about educating her. She’s just having fun figuring the world out and I’m along for the ride.

I’ve always rather liked this building. It’s been abandoned for a while now, which makes me kinda sad.

I didn’t stay sad for long, though, because we came to the house with the animal statues in the yard. There’s a big metal rhinoceros on the corner, and a tortoise is tucked up under some bushes on the other side.

After I took the picture of Annalie with the rhino, we spotted a black-and-white cat on the sidewalk. She came right up to us when I said, “Hi, pretty kitty!” and rubbed against our legs and let us pet her for a few minutes. Then she trotted up some nearby stairs and disappeared.

We walked on, moving a bit more quickly since the sun was getting lower in the sky, the air was getting cooler, and neither of us had jackets. We were glad we had our hot drinks to warm us up.

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

Photo by Annalie, age 5y8m

We took more photos: a sunlit gumball on a sweetgum tree; my coffee cup sitting on a wall as I stopped to tie my shoe; stones in the sidewalk where a corner had been smoothed down; street signs on a curve in the road. Then we discovered that one of our neighbors is an urban chicken farmer.

Well, urban poultry farmer would probably be a more accurate description, since we saw at least one duck and several other birds running around the yard, and a few more in a large, airy aviary on the side of the house.

When Annalie saw the duck, she laughed and exclaimed, “That duck is having a bad hair day!” His odd feather tufts brought to mind a strange Elizabethan wig. Maybe he was just in costume for a play.

While Annalie stood on a low wall and admired the fowl, I looked up and noticed we were standing beneath some really tall palms. There are a lot of tall old palm trees like this in my town. They’ve probably been there for at least 50 years, possibly closer to 100.

Once the chicken and the duck lost interest in us, we moved on and crossed the street to check out the sidewalk stairs. I’ve always kind of loved them. They’re on the corner right by the first house we lived in here, and I used to walk on them all the time. We don’t live close enough to them now that I ever walk on them, but I figured they would make a good spot for our daily photo for Troy.

First I had to wait for Annalie to take these photos. I actually asked her, “Why do you want to take photos of a van?” and she just shrugged. But once we got home and downloaded the photos, I saw that she was apparently taking a picture of the clouds and light and trees as reflected in the van’s windows. She never fails to surprise me, this kid of mine.

Um…yeah, that photo probably won’t work for Troy.

Ah, that’s better. I picked this spot for our photo, wondering if Troy would recognize it. Of course, if he’s reading my blog post now he knows where we took it. Oh well.

Annalie’s camera started flashing a low-battery warning at this point, so I told her if she wanted me to take a photo of something to just ask. That was a mistake, because she started pointing things out for me to take photos of every third step. So I distracted her by asking her to read signs as we passed by. She was quite proud of herself for figuring out the word “elementary” on a school’s sign, as well as the name of our street, and that “Av” stands for “Avenue.”

Then she distracted me from the reading lessons by pointing out a clump of blooming rosemary, which was really quite lovely. I wish our landlord’s gardeners weren’t so consistent in cutting back the rosemary growing in our front yard. I’d have loved for it to bloom. Maybe I’ll have some blooming rosemary wherever we live next. And wherever we live, I look forward to more photowalks with my girl. They’re crazy fun.

For some reason, my blog comments haven’t been getting emailed to me as usual, so forgive me if I’m slow in responding to a question in your comment. I’m trying to figure out how to get the comments emailed to me again and am having no luck, since none of my settings are any different than they used to be. Anyone out there know how to fix this on a WordPress blog?

After our morning’s adventure at Sunny Jim Cave and La Jolla Cove, we still had a few hours to kill before they would turn the water back on at our house. So we headed to Balboa Park.

Balboa Park is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a beautiful park, right in the middle of the city. Our world-famous zoo is there, along with a bunch of museums, gardens, and performing arts centers. It’s a really fun place to explore, and easy to spend a day there.

Tuesdays are especially cool at Balboa Park, because some of the museums are free to county residents and military. There’s a rotating schedule—different ones are free each week—so before we left the house we checked to see which ones were free that week. We almost decided on the Museum of Man, an anthropology museum which is one of my favorites, but since Brenda doesn’t live in the county she couldn’t get in free, and the admission to that one is steepish. We decided the Mingei International Museum would do very nicely instead. It’s a museum of art from cultures all over the world and looked really interesting.

Plus the Nikigator is outside the Mingei. Whee, art that kids are encouraged to climb all over! Even the moms got in on the fun.

That’s a tiny little me, reflected in each one of those shiny marbles. Too bad I’ll be in Omaha during all of the next 7 Days run.

Inside the Mingei (which is well worth the price of admission) the best thing we saw saw this project called Fisch Out of Water. It was a display of wire jellyfish, hung from the ceiling. I especially got a kick out of the fact that some of the jellyfish were crocheted.

There were tons of cool, interesting, unique pieces of art in this little museum. Unfortunately, most of it is tempting to small children’s hands. It didn’t help that some of the art looked a heck of a lot like benches and tables. There were security guards hovering everywhere, reminding us anxiously not to touch the art. It’s not like Brenda and I were ignoring our kids, either, we were right on top of them reminding them to keep their hands behind their backs so they wouldn’t forget and touch anything.

Brenda and Bug and I could have stayed much longer than we did, drifting from room to room and leisurely examining our favorite pieces. Annalie was champing at the bit to get back outside, though. And we didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of town at rush hour.

On the way back to the car we stopped by the organ pavilion, thinking the kids might like to run across the stage. Annalie decided she needed to climb over each and every row of benches on her way to the stage. Okay then.

Bug made a beeline for the stage and sat on the edge, dangling her feet while she watched Annalie climb the benches. Once Annalie got there, the real fun began.

Annalie and Bug danced and ran and chased each other around that stage for a good twenty minutes or more. Brenda and I sat in the front row and enjoyed a break. We stayed until we noticed that the girls had apparently worn themselves out and were having a quiet chat on the stage, then herded the girls toward the parking lot, making vague plans to go back one Sunday for the free organ concert. Not only did we make it home before traffic got too gnarly, but when we got there the water was back on two hours ahead of schedule.

Go see the cave we’d been meaning to see for years? Check. Climb all over festively-tiled giant alligator statue? Check. Crocheted wire jellyfish? Check. Let kids burn off excess energy before going home? Check. Expose children to local geography, wildlife, and culture? Check, check and check. Tourist Tuesday? Win!

Last Saturday was Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day 2009. A bunch of different museums throughout the country were offering free admission to anyone who brought in a printed form from the Smithsonian Magazine website. I wasn’t really planning to go to any of the free museums, because I’m allergic to crowds and figured that it would be a busy day. But somehow I found myself on the website perusing the list of museums and one jumped out at me: the Whaley House Museum.

I’ve been walking by the Whaley House, a 19th-century home and general store that’s been turned into a museum, for years but had never gone inside. There are so many free things to do in Old Town that the $10 admission never seemed worth it. I figured I should take advantage of the free admission if I ever wanted to see the inside of the place.

I bribed Annalie with the promise of running around the park and maybe a piece or two of saltwater taffy, and off we went to Whaley House. We handed our get-in-free pass to the docent who greeted us at the door, and in return we got laminated cards printed with information about the history of the house and the Whaley family, and a cheery, “Feel free to take lots of photos!”

We wandered around downstairs first, peering into the gated front parlor. I pointed out an embroidery hoop sitting on a sofa and a basket of crocheting by a rocking chair to Annalie, and we talked about how women used to do lots of needlework and sewing and knitting, in the days before TV. “Like in the books we’ve been reading, how Laura and Mary make clothes for their dolls and Ma knits in the evening while Pa plays his fiddle,” I said, suddenly realizing that the Little House books were set in almost exactly the same era that the museum memorializes.

Upstairs we saw a child’s bedroom, with a puzzle spread on the floor that was a map of the United States, just like one Annalie has. There was an alcove at the end of the upstairs hall with a window wide open to catch the breeze, and three chairs arranged around it. It was such a pleasant spot that Annalie and I sat in the chairs and looked out the window for a minute. We took our our Day 58 photo for Troy there.

We could actually go into the upstairs front bedroom that the Whaley family leased to the Tanner Troupe to use as a theater for various plays. We sat on the benches and looked at the stage (a recently-restored replica of the original) and imagined what it must have been like to have theater-goers trooping in and out of the house, and theatricals going on down the hall from your bedroom.

Although I suppose that’s not any stranger than the courtroom that was housed on the ground floor for a couple of years, in what was originally supposed to be a granary. The County of San Diego leased the one-story room from the Whaleys.

And of course, the General Store was on the ground floor of the main house as well. That was actually the primary purpose of the building, to house Whaley’s store. Annalie looked around with interest at the various items displayed, spending several minutes paging through a binder filled with old photos. I made the Little House connection again, telling Annalie that when Laura and Mary went to town with Ma and Pa, the store they went to was a lot like the one we were standing in. She thought that was pretty neat.

Blue willow ware, just like the set that originally belonged to my great-grandparents. Annalie spotted this and immediately said, “Hey, those are just like Aunt Julie’s dishes!” I have a blue willow tea set packed away somewhere, too. It belonged to my mom and Aunt Julie when they were kids. Once Annalie’s a little older we’ll get it out and have tea parties.

And that was it for our tour of the Whaley House. Annalie was done and ready to leave in less than 15 minutes. Granted, it’s a small house. Still, I was very glad we’d gone on a day when we could get in for free. I did talk Annalie into stopping at the museum gift shop for a quick look around, and I’m glad I did. They sell some cool stuff there! I’ll be going back there to buy a few Christmas presents.

We headed over to the section of Old Town that’s a State Historical Park to wander around for a bit. We walked through the Estudillo House, as we usually do, and admired the grapes on the arbor over the old well. It was all I could do not to reach out and pick a few, they looked so good!

I found myself explaining condensation to Annalie at one point. I don’t know exactly how we got there, but there we were. When I finished my as-simple-as-I-could-make-it explanation, I said to Annalie, “You probably won’t really remember this, but that’s okay. Someday when you’re older you’ll be learning about condensation and you’ll think, ‘Hey, I remember walking through Old Town with my mom when I was five years old and her telling me about condensation. How weird.’” I know this for a fact, because I can remember sitting in the backseat of our 1975 Dodge Colt when I was about Annalie’s age, eating an apple and asking my dad why apples turn brown. He gave me a long explanation about oxidation that involved cars rusting. I definitely didn’t take it all in that day, but I learned the word “oxidation” and I still remember that conversation.

Maybe that’s really why I’m homeschooling Annalie this year. Maybe it’s because I selfishly want her to learn as much from me as I can teach her, before she learns it from other sources. I don’t feel like I’m doing all that great with the homeschooling so far. Most days, it’s extremely informal and heavy on the art (drawing) and physical education (running around the park) and reading, with occasional forays into math and writing.

Annalie keeps telling me she loves being homeschooled because it means she can go to museums and learn to bake cupcakes as part of school, and I’m glad she feels that way. I know I love having her at home and being the one to teach her those things. And when I can put two and two together for her, connecting events from a book with items in a museum, or using her water bottle to explain condensation, I love it too. I don’t know if we’ll homeschool forever. I think Annalie probably would like more social peer interaction than she’s getting right now, and I’m working on that. It’s all a work in progress, much like life.

We ended our afternoon with an early dinner at Annalie’s favorite Mexican place. Chips and salsa, rice and beans, handmade tortillas, and saltwater taffy for dessert. It was a good day.

So I guess this is really happening: I’m homeschooling Annalie this year.

I don’t feel quite right calling myself a homeschooler because to me that implies curricula and lesson plans and schedules. I guess I might be considered an unschooler since I’m not using any of those things right now, but I’m not ruling out using them in the future. I just don’t think they’re necessary for kindergarten, at least not for us.

Annalie spends all day making up and acting out stories, and lately she’s been carrying a sketch pad and pen around the house, drawing and writing whenever she’s sitting still. We read lots of books, we cook, we play math games with coins while we’re waiting at restaurants, we go on photo walks, we do laundry and unload the dishwasher. She might not be using lined paper to practice her ABC’s, but she’s learning about dilution when we add food coloring to the swimming pool. I think for now we’re doing just fine.

Yesterday afternoon we sat at the kitchen table and did about 30 minutes’ worth of math and writing worksheets. I was prepared to stop after 15 minutes, but Annalie wanted to keep going. I think the stickers I was giving her probably had something to do with her attention span. Hey, whatever works. When Annalie was done with the worksheets, I suggested that we could write Troy a letter. Annalie said, “Yeah! And I can tell him all about my first day of home kindergarten! But first, I hafta make him a book about ships. Where’s the paper cutter?”

Please don’t get the impression that I’m a supermom who looks down on all lesser beings. That is so far from the truth it’s funny. I might make home-cooked meals and do crafts and worksheets with my kid, but we also eat fast-food and watch more TV than we should. We put laundry in the washer, but it often sits there for three days, getting all smelly and requiring a re-wash before I get around to putting it in the dryer. Yes, we had a container garden, but it wilted and died in the heat a couple of weeks ago, and before that the grasshoppers and hornworms were eating all the tomatoes because I’m not willing to kill them.

The main reason I’m homeschooling Annalie for kindergarten is because we’re moving before the next school year starts. I could just imagine her learning to love her school and teacher and classmates here, only to have to move and get used to a whole new school for first grade. Moving last time, when she was only four years old, was heartbreaking enough. If I can make it easier on her by teaching her at home for a year, I’ll do it.

Another reason I decided to teach Annalie at home this year is that the schools around here have all-day kindergarten. I’m not sure Annalie or I are ready for that. Next school year when we’re living in a new place, we might keep homeschooling, or Annalie might head to school for first grade. We’ll figure that out when we get there. For now, we’ll just enjoy our home kindergarten.

One of the presents Annalie got for her birthday was a cool hangman game from my Aunt Gayle and Uncle Frank. Annalie got it out today and asked me how to play. I explained the basics of the game to her, then drew three lines on the dry-erase board at the bottom. She happened to guess the letters c and a right away, so she quickly figured out that the word was cat. Next I had her guess the words dog and Troy, both of which she got.

Annalie wanted a turn at being the hangman, and asked what she had to do. I explained she needed to think of a word she knew how to spell, count up the number of letters in it, and draw that many blank lines on the board. I suggested that she could even write the word, draw the lines underneath, and then erase the letters. She nodded, then shooed me out of the room so she could write.

When she called me back in, I could see that she’d drawn seven lines, and laughed to myself. I was certain her word was Annalie. I drew it out, deliberately guessing incorrect letters and exaggerating my dismay. She ate it up, giggling at each wrong letter. To my amazement, when I guessed a correct letter she easily wrote it in the right blank without saying a single letter out loud. When eventually I had gotten all the letters and her name was revealed as the answer, she gleefully asked, “Boy, you didn’t know how good I was gonna be at this game, did you Mom?”

Annalie wanted another turn at being the hangman, but her name is pretty much the only word she can consistently spell without help. I suggested we play another game. Lately I’ve been trying to work with her on certain words that she should probably know by sight without having to sound out, so I wrote a few of those on the board for her to try. She didn’t recognize any of them (and, is, it, on, off) without sounding them out—but she DID sound them all out correctly. I wrote a few pairs of opposites for her to read (on/off, up/down, tall/short, left/right) and she was able to read all of those as well with only a little bit of help on right.

After that Annalie was done with the game and just wanted to write and draw on the dry-erase board. We moved from the bed to the desk in the office, which is an arrangement I wish she would agree to more often. I love sitting in that sunny room with a cup of coffee and my laptop, facing the open window with a breeze coming in, listening to music and hanging out with my kid.

We hadn’t been sitting there very long today when Annalie piped up, “Look, Mom! P-O-P, pop! I sounded it out!” I looked over to see that she had indeed written the word pop on the dry-erase board.

“Wow, Annalie, that’s exactly right!” She beamed at my praise, and rightfully so. That’s the first time she’s sounded out and written a word completely on her own, and to my knowledge it’s not a word anyone has ever spelled out for her before. Since the camera was handy, I grabbed it and documented the moment. Please excuse the vacuum cleaner and inflated air mattress in the background.

Annalie wasn’t done yet. “I know another word to sound out! Watch.” She carefully wrote APL then used the pen to point at each letter as she recited it. “A-P-L spells apple!”

“Annalie, that’s almost exactly right! That’s great!” I showed her where to add the extra P and the E, but she airily waved me off. She erased the board and wrote TAI, then looked expectantly at me. “Tie?” I ventured.

“Yes! That’s exactly right, Mama!” Annalie grinned at me. Close enough, babe. Close enough.

I think our days of being able to spell words out to keep secrets from her are severely numbered. She’s going to be reading in earnest any minute. I can hardly wait!

If you have kids ages 13 and under, they have until Monday April 27th to enter Brenda’s fun coloring contest! Just go to this post for instructions! There are cool prizes (buckets of art supplies!) for two age groups. You can actually still enter if you’re over age 13, you just won’t win a prize. And if you don’t want to enter the contest, well, you can still go download the free PDF for a fun coloring sheet.

Or you can even sneak in a little edumacation with it. Heather and Sue mentioned to me when they were here last week that one big thing in kindergarten is the kids have to learn the names of colors. Then the other day we walked over to the playground at our neighborhood elementary school and I noticed the rainbow art projects on the kindergarten bulletin board, with each color’s name printed out three times and circled with the matching color.

I don’t consider myself an “official” homeschooler yet since Annalie won’t be in kindergarten till this fall. But I thought this coloring sheet was perfect for a color-by-numbers. So I just made a quick chart on another piece of paper and wrote corresponding numbers on the coloring sheet. Annalie sounded out the color names with a tiny bit of help and circled each one with a marker before finding that number on the sheet and coloring those areas in.

She got a little tired of coloring after a couple of colors, so we set the sheet aside and came back to it the next day. Even then, she got bored with coloring in large areas so I suggested she could just use stripes and dots. I even talked to her a little bit about pointilism and showed her how that worked on another piece of paper. She thought that was pretty cool. I also suggested she could add more flowers or a sunshine, so she added her trademark smiley sun (yellow for the face and rays, red for the features).

At one point Annalie even threw in some math without any prompting from me, counting how many colors she’d already done, and how many more she had left, and adding them up (”Four colors done, three left to do…that makes seven! Four plus three is seven!”) to figure out how many colors she was using altogether. She has been surprising us more and more lately by adding numbers up in her head, so I’ve been doing my best to encourage it. I keep telling her that since her daddy is really good at math, and I’m pretty good at math too, she will probably be a math whiz. Take THAT, Barbie!

p.s. I have so many photos from the past few days I need to edit and upload, but I’ve been busy lately working on the 2009-2010 edition of the calendar we give our moms and Annalie’s godparents for Mother’s Day every year. You can see the 2008-2009 version on Flickr, if you’re curious. I hope to catch up on my photos soon, now that the calendar is done and ordered, using my new MacBook Pro (on which I’m typing right now) for most of that editing! That sound you heard was all my Mac-loving friends cheering.