LED xmas lights

Lily would love to get some LED xmas lights; strings of any length, white is her favorite color but any colors would be appreciated, I would prefer the battery powered ones for safety. I've seen some online, not in any brick & mortar stores I visit. 

Baby's favorite band, Finnish folksters, Värttinä. 

We have Oi Dai, and Ilmatar, she'd love any other albums, or DVDs. Stuff available through their own website, the North Side Records site, and Amazon. 

Or just check out their videos!

Thanks Grandpa!

We got some $$$ from Grandpa, and ordered some new toys and things for fall. The box came today, and Lily got to open the package with my utility knife, something she really loves to do.We got some really cool stuff from Nova Naturals. Wool PJs are the thing I'm most excited about, because apparently I have a pretty boring life. OK, I like to know that bebe is warm, even though my house is chilly in the winter. A wool hood will let us bike to gymnastics today, even though it's, as bebe says "biting cold" outside - it's cozy warm but thin enough to fit comfortably under her bike helmet. Also, it's great for playing "little Red Cap" which we tend to do pretty frequently. What else? Another silk, in harvest gold, because you can never have too many silks. We've got that on the seasonal table with the new Fire Stacker. We already had Air (a rainbow) and Earth (a cave). We took a few minutes to give it a nice coat of beeswax wooden toy polish, then built a few towers. Then we played "stacker store" a game where I pretend to sell bebe stackers. Pretty good so far for a rainy November day. Crows are crowing outside, and we're listening to bebe's favorite folk mix playlist - Kulgrinda, Varttina, Vasen, and her Uncle Pip's homemade recordings of his own inimitable heathen folk songs.

more WISH List

Child's pentatonic flute, 

songbooks, 

wooden stacker toys 

- especially the "water" one (we have the other elements.)

catapults - either this little indoor one

or a big outdoor one from Backyard Artillery 

a learner bike like one of these 1 2 3

gigantic blocks

a kid's bow & arrow set

a play kitchen

a good quality doll like - 

Noel, Sophie, Sea Dream, or Anita, 

wooden vehicles,

games, 

Spiral Scouts uniform:

top (color: "old ivy", size: 110)

pants (color: khaki, size: 110) 

socks (color: khaki, size: 7-9)

Cooling Weather

So, I just spent a large chuck of our household budget this month on winter clothes. 

We tend to be pretty frugal with the heat in the house - guests sometimes drop not so subtle hints about how you save money setting the thermostat at blah blah blah, higher temperature than mine is set, and how landlords are legally required to keep the heat at a minimum temperature that is higher than my apartment. Well, sorry. I don't mean to make anyone uncomfortable, and no, I'm really not trying to make a point about us being "vikings." I just don't like to run the heater; it's my personal preference to keep it chilly, and bundle up. We also like to spend a lot of time outside, and don't stop enjoying the outdoors just because the seasons change. We don't wish we lived somewhere else, we actually like it here, we live in Chicago by choice. 

So... we wear woolens all the time. All day everyday we have an under layer of wool. At night we air out the daytime woolens and snuggle under wool blankets in nighttime woolens. No, they are not hard to care for. No, they do not itch. But they are expensive in the sense that they cost more than cotton long-johns, which makes sense, they are better than cotton in every way, including longevity. (Bebe outgrows hers, I figure I need to replace her long-johns and wool union suit PJs every other year, on alternate years. I'm getting myself some new ones to replace the lovely silk ones my Grandma Madge gave me close to 15 years ago. I'm sure they would have lasted longer if I had taken better care of them too!) Over the long run I know woolens cost much less, even before you figure in the house-heating costs, and the value of being outside in the wonderful winter time. But in the short run, it's a large chunk of cash out of my pocket. 

I'm sure the Finns who raise the organic sheep and craft the garments deserve every penny, as do the little family-run eco-friendly shops that I get them from but all the same it's hard for me to enjoy spending money on myself when we are getting so close to toy buying season - boy do I love to buy my baby toys!!! I think I inherited this trait from my Dad, man did he love to go nuts on Christmas when we were kids, stacking the gifts up higher than the kids. :)

Wish Lists

The good news is, Bebe doesn't need much - she has loads of nice toys already, after the UPS guys get here with our packages we'll have all the clothes we need until after the weather gets warm next year. 

We also like to keep things simple: this is our philosophy - encouraging creativity and character by having fewer but better toys. There is also a space factor - most Americans really can't quite understand just how very, very tiny our apartment is. We have no garage, no extra room for anything, everything we have needs to be high quality because we simply do not have room for loads of mediocre stuff. We like to have room to play, and have only so much space for stuff. So please excuse the awkwardness of this, but I need to give a list of Please No's: 

PLEASE, NO Stuffed Animals, 

No Plastic, 

No Electronics,* 

No Media tie-ins - that is nothing with licensed characters

So what kinds of things would we like to get? We like old-fashioned toys - Lincoln Logs, a slinky, wooden blocks, that kind of stuff. If you have an old fashioned, Amish, or "classic" toy store you like, cool! If not, or if you are looking for specific things we want, look at the links at the to right hand side of this page. Those are "Waldorf-y" kinds of stores that we like, they all have very good customer service too. They will have wish lists for us, and if you can't decide you can always call them, they are very nice people. If you want to get bebe clothes, we prefer organics please, and you can get them at Hanna Andersson, as well as a few other places. Gift Certificates from HA are always welcome too, we get our undies and PJs, and Spiral Scouts uniforms and stuff from there. 

Since I gave that list of NOs, here is a list of ALWAYS's

WE ALWAYS WANT:

Paint** (especially from the stores above) 

Paper (same) 

Other craft materials from same stores:

Wool felt, Beeswax, Yarn

Wooden figures 

Wooden Vehicles (trucks, boats)

Blocks

Play Silks***

Baskets

Beeswax Candles

Tops, Spinner Toys

*Everything in moderation, including rules. We're not totally against all electronics, we just want to limit them in favor of other things. We have a great little DVD player f and a few great DVDs. We have other DVDs on our Amazon wishlist. Grandpa Baker had some cool remote control things in mind, and we're happy to make an exception there, Grandpa has a special knack for electronics stuff that are great choices for kids. (and weapons! hehehe) One other exception is a kid's camera, I think Lily could handle that, and would like one. Noise toys though, things that talk or light up or play musical electronic beeps when you push a button will got straight to the thrift.

**We do the Waldorf style painting, the paints for that are expensive, but they really are great and worth it. We also use the German / Waldorf style beeswax crayons and pencils. We don't need other kinds of paint and stuff, or markers. 

***Play Silks are so cool. Another thing that seems extravagant or expensive until you actually try them, then you realize they are frugal and awesome. Silk is surprisingly stain resistant, durable, and so versatile. They are great for "pretend play" being used as costume pieces, landscapes for toys, bandages and blankets for stuffed animals, AND we like to throw them around the house - they are great for dancing and playing catch with indoors. They don't hurt anything if they get a little out of control. Bebe pretends they are dragon's breath and Mothra's silk, and attacks me with them, etc. They are the one toy that gets played with pretty much every day. 

New Dog

So... I'm supposed to be saving up $$$. We need to do repairs, and basically remodel our condo: the floors are a wreck, the windows need to be replaced, the bathroom is something of a joke. We don't have a stove or a full-sized fridge. I also have student loans to pay off, we should be saving for baby's college, etc. 

But instead of being sensible with money 

I got us another dog: 

a Standard Poodle that needed to be re-homed. 

We found her on Craig's List Indianapolis and picked her up after visiting friends in Indiana. They named her Cinderella and called her Cindy. We weren't crazy about that, and I don't approve of giving animals human names anyway, so Lily named her after another Standard Poodle she liked, Briska. 

She's supposedly pure-bred, but we're still waiting to get the papers; I have my doubts about it. She definitely has a good poodle form in the body and coat, her muzzle is a little robust for a poodle though. She's mostly cream colored - her owners wanted an apricot dog, but she lightened from her apricot color to cream with pink-ish apricot markings on the head, belly and butt, which is a little weird. We're talking about maybe dying her pink all over in the summer time. Her markings are odd, which would make her less desirable but are ultimately irrelevant - to us anyway. (Her owners were a load of "gingers" and were disappointed that she didn't come out all red-haired like them.) 

More iffy is the fact that she's not yet 2 years old and has already had a litter of pups. I didn't get the whole story there - the story that was offered seemed somewhat false, so I didn't bother to dig on it, not having time or energy to decode a knot of lies. In addition to the undesirable markings and robust muzzle she has a funny shape to one eyelid; basically only an irresponsible person would breed her, and really, only an irresponsible breeder would sell her without a spay agreement. So, she may well be pure-bred, she's not particularly well-bred, if you get my meaning. Hopefully her health and temperament are sound. We'll see eh?

The important thing is that after half a week she seems to be showing better poodle character - playful, gentle, and focused on the baby. 

We definitely have training issues to deal with: basically she was not trained at all but left to wander aimlessly around the house and yard, exhibiting unchecked dominance behaviors which undermine her confidence. She seems to have no pre-existing clue what "sit", "down", "come here" or even "No" mean. Yikes.  Her owners thought she was timid, but I think she was just insecure as untrained dogs will tend to be. She doesn't seem skittish at all, which is good. For a while I thought maybe she was a bit stupid (poodles are typically intelligent) but now I think that was just training neglect showing. Today she went down for her morning frisk-about the without difficulty, walked and ran in "heel" position with Lily off-leash, was focused on her, and very responsive to verbal correction. 

So far so good!  :)

First Snow

It melted just moments after hitting the ground, but the icy tinkling sound was unmistakable. Perfect excuse to break out the hot chocolate; Lily likes to great the nutmeg. Luckily we just today got around to re-potting the butterfly plants to take them inside. Hopefully at least a few will survive the winter indoors. 

Here's our Dame Holda song:

Dame Holda shakes her bed like this - 

and the snow comes down, 

and the snow comes down. 

She fluffs up her pillows,

she shakes out her blankets, 

and the snow comes down, 

and the snow comes down.

It goes this way and that a-way

It goes this way and that a-way

It goes this way and that a-way

All through the town.

Applesauce

Stuck inside on a rainy day, so I'm posting twice.  ;)

We do a lot of cooking from scratch together, both normal cooking for meals and special cooking projects for fun. This week we baked bread from scratch 2 ways, with yeast and with baking soda. We also used up some soda bread ingredients making tasty little soup crackers. Lily likes to choose which herbs to use and grinds them herself with sea-salt in the mortar. 

We made applesauce from scratch too - Lily peeled the apples, I cored and chopped them, she chose the ratios of spice - cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, plus she grated the nutmeg herself, she helped me zest and juice the lemon. It was seriously the best applesauce ever, and a great use of plentiful and on-sale organic apples. 

For lunch we had the peels with cheese.

For normal meal cooking we frequently do stews & curries. Bebe helps me wash and peel the vegetables, this works great with our "vegetable of the week" project. 

Each week we choose a vegetable, or sometimes a grain, herb, whatever. To stretch it out we will do red beets one time, and sometime later do golden beets, and then after while do a load of different root bulb vegetables we have already done before, but as a group, or foods that also have edible greens as a group. This is often inspired by The World's Healthiest Foods, a website I really enjoy. We pick something in season, she helps me pick the item out at the store or farmer's market, we talk about it, sometimes read about it, look up tidbits on some of the cultures that favor the item. I buy enough that I can let her have some of the item to play around with. She has a garden basket that she uses to collect leaves and things in nature, and she'll add the vegetable to the basket, carry it around, pretend to pick it; it's sort of part of the seasonal table play that we do as part of our Waldorf inspired home-work. 

She enjoys exploring foods in this way, gets really interested in seeing what's inside the vegetable, talking about how it grows, and where. So... will little kids eat kale, beets, onions, spicy curry, squid? Definitely! Especially if you let them play with the food a little first, talk about it, learn about it together, let them help prepare it, and serve it on a nicely made table. Lily eats a better variety of food than most adult Americans - she'll eat bitter dandelion greens, broccoli, onions, yams, spinach, edamame, she eats pretty much everything that's growing and good. We don't allow the word "yuck", and we don't do sugary drinks, or anything at all with corn-syrup or preservatives in it. She's about the only kid I know that refuses ranch dressing for dipping vegetables, preferring olive oil, or nothing. How cool is that? 

Parks Department

Recently we've been going to classes at local parks, Dance, and Tumbling, both at beautiful Welles Park.

Miss Patty is the teacher, and bebe likes her a lot, she really gets the kids moving. Not having been exposed to much of the institutionalization that mainstream people call "socialization" (no pre-school or daycare) in the past she's been less likely than the other kids to focus on the teacher and do just what the other kids are doing. Miss Patty has such a great cheerful manner though, Lily's been following along pretty well. We already do yoga at home, but now bebe has new moves of her own, which is cool. 

We get there early and watch the squirrels putting away stores for the winter. The park has loads of grey squirrels, and even rare black ones. Locals apparently feed them quite a lot. Welles is also a good place for biking around with our trail-a-bike. When the weather is bad we take the Brown Line El train, the Western stop is just 2 blocks north of the park, and has a nicely graffiti-ed section of the Berlin Wall on display. 

Just south of the park is one of our favorite local kid-friendly restaurants, delicious & wholesome  Drew's Eatery, home of organic everything - brats, soup, and a large selection of ice cream. Lily entered a watering can in the art contest there, so go vote for her entry if you're nearby. Other Welles Park highlights include good climbers, a clean-ish sand play area, some of the best climbing trees around, and for some reason loads of big crows! Tons of crows! I know they are not technically actual ravens, but they are the biggest corvids you are likely to see in the region, and there are loads of them. I wish I was a better photographer, they're neat. 

getting cold

Spanked the baby today after trying to stick to the "no spanking program" for so long. Yelled at her when I couldn't get her co-operation. 

We were at the park, it was nice, then got cold, we were both tired. 

She was really bratty at the park, I'm not sure what she's so miserable about. What ever it is, since she is a child and I'm an adult, it's my fault, so it's hardly fair to hit her for being emotional.

Talking about the poodle with her just upset her. She wants to give an opinion but is worried she will be in trouble if the choice turns out bad. We agreed if she was open minded about color we could let the rescuers help us pick the dog that's personality would best suit her. She can pick all the dog's gear in whatever color. So that was a silly thing to let her worry about, but hopefully it's sorted.

Another thing I did wrong was let her see frightening & vulgar tv, things she shouldn't see, and left her to watch some acceptable things alone, using the tv as a sitter, a stupid, lazy thing to do, in my desperate scrambling to fill my miniscule & sad leisure time. 

So I apologize, but apologizing doesn't fix it. 

Happy Harvest-tide

We're getting ready to make applesauce, having breakfast and talking about the harvest. We decided to write our meal blessing out, and we re-wrote it a little. 

Hail Erda, green and good,

Make us Healthy with this food!

Hail Sunna, shining high,

Help us always Bravely Try!

Hail our Family, everywhere, 

May we enjoy the time we share!

Dog Manners

Little Lilly has grown up around animals. 

When she was born we had 2 big dogs. Gimli, the goblin dog. a pound hound, a crazy chow-chow border collie mix. He's a difficult dog top say the least - wild, headstrong, defiant, bratty, and gassy. That's him on the left. 

Anyone want him? He's a "fun at parties' kind of dog" engaging and funny, but a major pain in the butt on a day to day level. He's very intelligent, and uses all his wits to escape whenever possible, including by deliberately tripping me with the leash if he can, on icy steps, or if I'm sick or tired. Until recently he was a real pill at the dog park too, he'd aggressively and persistently hump the other dogs faces like getting bit on the wiener was a sport. To him, that's fun. He's finally gotten over that. On the plus side, he's insanely protective, and puts himself in between us and anything even vaguely or potentially threatening, and he's unfailingly brave. He's also really pretty. He sheds 2 futons-stuffings worth of undercoat each year, but looks good doing it. 

Sheeba D was a much better dog, a gigantic black, bear-like German Shepherd we meant to foster and ended up adopting from German Shepherd Dog Rescue. She had some biting issues, bad teeth, and reeked like rancid death when we got her, but after a bath, a few chew toys, and some loving attention she shaped up to be a great companion. She never took guff from anyone, and kept Gimli in his place. I'm so glad she got to live out her twilight years with us, guarding the door, frisking around in the grass, and just hanging out being majestic. She passed away in 2007. 

Since the Bun's last birthday we have been working extra-hard of having good dog manners. We have made a pact, that if she can manage to show good dog manners at all times, from her 4th birthday until next summer, that we will get her a dog of her own for her 5th birthday. Of course the serious responsibilities for the dog will remain mine, but we'll get a dog that will have a pet-person bond with her, something neither of the other dogs have had. Both dogs were very tolerant of her, and protective. Gimli will let her lead him if he has no other choice but will not respond to her if he can help it. 

We want a dog that will play with her. She's decided that she loves poodles, and I can't argue with that. We're looking for a white (her favorite color, eye boogers or no) Standard Poodle. All my adult life I've been firmly dedicated to rescue dogs, but we're considering looking at breeders now, because we really want a dog with a good temperament. We're also open to an older rescue poodle, if we can get a healthy one from a Poodle rescue, that isn't a shy dog rescued from a bad breeder, which so many rescue poodles (at least online) seem to be. So keep an eye out for us. We want a pure-bred this time, so no "x-doodles", please. 

Bikes

So, I recently spent all of our money on a pair of bikes. An Electra Townie for me and a trail-a-bike for the bun, which attaches to the seat post of my bike, and makes a sort of tandem. She contributes to the pedaling and has to balance, but I steer for the two of us so we can ride in not-baby-friendly areas, such as the street. We ride all over the place.  (the pic is Grosse Park)

We have always been big walkers. She was a sling baby, and with zero child care assistance she of course went everywhere I went, which basically meant the grocery store, the liquor store, the library, and loads of parks. Albany Park is great for parks. We never did the stroller thing (I'm a paleo-heathen, so I think they're decadent or something.) so as soon as she could walk we started taking long hikes through the parks. 

(If you don't use a stroller all the time, you can assume a kid can walk their age in years, without difficulty. At 3 years old, we were routinely walking 4-5 miles in a go; longer than that I'd pop her back into the sling for a bit. Don't tire the kid out by walking too fast. Hand-holding can be tiring too, so I'd switch hands, let her hold onto a long end of the sling hanging lower than my hand, and walk on her won when she felt like it, in safe areas.)

As soon as she showed an interest in looking at things on the internet we stared looking at maps of where we had been. Google is great for this, we can toggle between the map and the satellite views and street views. Our new project with the maps and bikes is visiting every park on the North Side. That's about a hundred parks. There are 38 in our zip code alone. Chicago is awesome. 

The bikes make this project a lot more do-able. We had been going to the farther away parks by bus, but biking is way better. We frequently have to bike right in the street, like "real cyclists" which can be scary, as there are a lot of idiot drivers on the roads. So far so good though. Seeing biking babies is probably good for cyclist visibility (even though we aren't quite "real cyclists") and as long as we don't get hurt I know it's good for the Bun. I've been really delighted to see how many people smile and wave and seem to get a kick out of seeing a little kid biking around. The Bun loves it when people smile at her from cars, and wave as she rides by. 

Somebody needs to tell the kids' music people that YES indeed, you ARE supposed to ride in the street: if you're a big kid, a kid on a bike with a grown up, or there is no sidewalk. It's actually illegal for people over 12 to bike on the sidewalk in the city. Drivers need to get a grip and understand that too, put that in the kids' music: 

"If your Mom talks on the phone while driving your SUV, 

it's OK to call her a stupid bitch. 

If your Dad honks his horn while people are crossing the street, 

flush his keys down the toilet." 

Catchy, eh?

If only Critical Mass didn't always happen on the same Friday as the Heathen Book club. 

Still Flooded

Our neighborhood, Albany Park was flooded last week. The weather since then has been lovely, but we're still drying out. 

Part of what makes the neighborhood so beautiful is that the North Branch of the Chicago River winds through it, and there is green-space all along the river, as well as loads of park lands. When the river crested over it's banks much of this green-space was flooded, which undoubtedly saved us from even more serious damage. Less than 2 blocks from us 40 people were evacuated by boat, and many more had to leave from points along the river, but we never even lost power, or water, which is pretty impressive. Nice job there Chicago. The bike path we normally take to the library is still partially underwater, and geese think they own the waterlogged parks this week, but such is life.  

There are loads of great pictures on Chicago Public Radio's Flickr site, but I can't find the group with all  the flood photos. 

Pam found it - Thanks, Pam!

Anyway, we've been stuck inside for a while, good thing we have some excellent new toys. I'll post about them later, with some links to where you can find more super-fun toys. For now though, we're off to the library. 

first post - Home-school stuff

Hi everyone, I've been meaning to get this site started for such a long time, it's just hard to get computer time while baby-watching.  :)

We have begun to dip our toes into Home-Schooling, with a Waldorf at home curriculum from Oak Meadow. 

http://www.oakmeadow.com/ 

We got the Pre-School package, everything but the block crayons as we l always have those around already. The paints are expensive, but they've been a big hit. I think I should shell out the dough for the Painting with Children book, as it's a wonderful but complex activity, and I'd like to get the most out of it. 

https://www.oakmeadow.com/store/orderitem.cfm?rec_no=1501  

I was pretty enthused about this particular curriculum before receiving the  books, now I'm a little luke-warm, but it's good to be finding this out in the pre-school phase. I think basically, the reading list for the upper grades looked pretty impressive, and I like the idea of a structured program. We don't have to implement all the structure provided, but I figured that taking a looser approach to a tightly structured program would be easier than making up a structure for in information myself. I don't have any difficulty finding material, it's planning how to best present it that stumps me a little. Two things about the Oak Meadow program seem like a less than perfect fit though: the Yoga book is a great idea, but the style of it is a little cloying, and I'm not seeing the traditional Viking material and such for grade 4, which is something we were already looking forward to. Now I'm taking a harder look at the more expensive Enki program, 

http://www.enkieducation.org/html/waldorf-inspired-programs.htm 

and the supposedly more true-to-Waldorf Live Education

http://www.live-education.com /

I might get both Enki and one other program for the Kindergarten year and hope that I can choose just one for First Grade. Oak Meadow is supposedly the easiest top present for standard Homeschoolers, and focuses closely on the standards  and benchmarks the state requires. That's frankly not a large concern to me, because giving as good an education as a public school frankly doesn't sound too difficult. Enki's main appeal to me at this point (having just read the site, and testimonials on a Home-School review site

http://www.homeschoolreviews.com/ 

is that it puts a heavy emphasis on arts and movement, and that's a big part of what I feel we are missing out on by not going to a brick & mortar Waldorf school, the dance, Eurethmy. This might be something we could do with a Home-School co-op or some other group, if we can find one. Or maybe form one.