Cow Quest

A Map of Our Walk 

Daddy and I went out for a walk in one of the many open space parks near our house. We were on a quest for cows. Since the grass is currently all green from the rains, the cows like to eat in many of the open space areas. This is a fun way to get up close and personal with cows. In fact, you can lay in the pasture with them if they're in the right kind of mood. Anyway, Daddy and I set out yesterday on our cow quest. I've marked the route on the map (which is a lot easier to read if you clikc on it to make it big). We started at the "X" labeled "Car Here" and made a big loop. It was my longest walk ever---covering about 2.5 miles. We finally spotted the cows near Benham Court (which you'll find at the circled "T" on the map about halfway around the loop). Along the way, we saw a swamp (fancifully named "Bullfrog Pond", a whole bunch of birds and squirrels, some hawks, lots of flowers (I like the yellow ones), and some of our neighbors. They were impressed with my strong legs. It was a great walk. At the end of it, I didn't want to go back. I asked Daddy if we could stay outside forever. He pointed out that we lacked a tent, as well as sufficient food and water, so things would not be much fun. That was enough to convince me to come home for lunch.

The Longest Train Layout Ever

For the first time in several weeks, Daddy was home, and we were able to spend the whole day together doing guy things. We went to the tunnel park (twice), vistied the Apple store, visited Barnes and Noble, ate at McDonald's (where have a new favorite sandwich---cheeseburger, hold the burger), and picked some spinach for a salad. (By the way, this is the first time I had a really big taste of a spinach leaf from our garden mixed with salad dressing. I don't really like it.)

But best of all was that Daddy and I made up lots of Thomas adventures. As part of this, we made the longest train layout ever.


The Best Layout Ever! 

We started in the kitchen and then snaked tracks all the way through the living room. At the edge of the living room, the train divided with one line going into the hall and the other into the dining room. Daddy thought up some amusing names for all the landmarks. The station in the kitchen was Enbourne station. Then you have to travel up Gordon's hill. Next it's on to the Misty Mountains and then the foothills.


Climbing over the Misty Mountains and the Foothills 

If you proceed east (through the hall) you come to the main port of the Island of Sodor---Sodor Bay---after passing over the massive Sodor Bay Bridge.


The View from Sodor Bay 

Going west takes you onto the long curving bridge over the River Avon and down into the valley where Ffarquharr station (home of Mavis---and loosely modeled on Bath) is located. Along the way, there are, of course, many obstacles, broken track, snow, landslides, slow trains, and so on. I loved it!

Up up and Away at the Zoo

I went to the zoo with my friend Sophie on Wednesday and decided to pull the bar on the airplane ride and take it up high for the first time. Cool!

I was also happy to see the tiger and the bear briefly wake up. They sure do nap a lot! The camels were giving each other springtime "hugs." For some reason, this caused quite a bit of giggling among the grown-ups...

Thomas and His Many Adventures

Lately, I've been very interested in Thomas. My current favorite Thomas game is "Thomas and his Many Adventures." The usual format of the game is for Thomas to start out at the station with Sir Topham Hatt. Sir Topham then gives Thomas some sort of a mission such as delivering schoolchildren to the zoo, taking coal to the coaling station, or delivering some barrels. Then Thomas sets off. Sometimes these missions are uneventful, but most of the time there is some obstacle to Thomas' completing his work. One time the low lying area between two bridges was flooded. Thomas got stuck and the water doused the fire in his boiler. He needed his friend Mavis, the diesel engine to help push him out. Another time there was a rockslide from the misty mountains that blocked the track. The "rocks" consisted of Lego blocks. Since Thomas is very strong, he was able to push his way through the rocks and complete his deliveries.

Daddy seems to be able to come up with lots of adventures for Thomas but, just in case he is running out, this morning I picked up a whole bunch of adventures in my hand and gave them to him to put in his pocket so there will be plenty of Thomas adventures for the next time we play.

Cubist

Last night, Daddy and I made cubes of various sizes out of my blocks. I really like cubes in general and big cubes most of all. We starte out by making a 2 x 2 x 2 cube, which I correctly pointed out consisted of 8 blocks. Next, we made a 3 x 3 x 3 cube. While I knew there were nine blocks in each layer, the total number of blocks was elusive (and not terribly interesting to me either). Finally, we made a BIG cube: 4 x 4 x 4. Daddy says that it takes 64 blocks to make a cube this big. It is a lot of work, but well worth it to make a really nice, big cube.

Easter with Grammy

Click here for pictures from Easter weekend and then read on!

On the Saturday before Easter, I went to the Eggstravaganza at Oak Hill Park in Danville. This was a much better Easter egg hunt than the one I attended last year in Lafayette since they divided the hunt up into age groups. This was much more fun since older children were not knocking me over to get eggs, and I collected lots of eggs (more than my official allotment of 6, actually) with little prizes inside (like rings, stickers, and a pirate eye patch). Mommy walked around and made sure that the other kids also had a good number of eggs, and we “hid” 2 of mine for another boy, before going off to enjoy my stash. The Eggstravaganza also included balloons, and I got a yellow one, but it had a very slippery, iridescent ribbon that untied as soon as we tied it on my wrist and it flew away. This made me very sad, but happily I we were able to get another one with a more obedient ribbon. There were also fun crafts to make, and a big, white Easter bunny walked around meeting children. I did want to see the bunny, but I did not want to touch him, so mommy took my picture with me at a comfortable distance away from him. (Interestingly, the Easter bunnies at the local malls here were both brown bunnies, much like Peter Rabbit. Mommy tells me that the East Coast malls seem to favor white bunnies. I like them all—from a distance!)

The best part of the Eggstravaganza was that Grammy arrived from the airport in time to see the eggs I’d collected and to play with me at the park! Hooray! Then she stayed with us for a week. She gave me a big, yellow dancing Boobah toy for Easter. (Boobahs are somewhat egg-shaped furry creatures seen on PBS.) In addition to my basket from the Easter Bunny, I also found a soft, furry, talking Easter bunny basket from Nainnie on Easter morning, which I used to collect my backyard Easter eggs. (Thanks, Nainnie! Thanks for the candy too!) Grammy and I repeated Easter egg hunts together all week inside the house. I find that shoes make an excellent place for hiding plastic eggs!

Other fun things we did during Grammy’s visit were going to the park and visiting the Oakland Zoo. At the zoo, I rode lots of the kiddie rides outside the gates. It was really, really crowded that day even though it was a weekday, requiring a major hike from the car (parked on the entrance hill rather than the parking lot!) Even so, I had fun and I decided to ride the airplane ride for the first time. I rode several times, making sure to ride when I could have a plane to myself since I am not yet ready to pull the bar to take the plane up higher and I did not want my co-pilot to do this either! I do like going around and round though!

Grammy, Mommy and I also took the BART train and a cable car to San Francisco’s Pier 39 one day. We did the BART since I am always begging to ride it, and the cable car since neither I nor Grammy had ridden one before. I loved the BART, but I did not care for the wind on the cable car. I did enjoy looking at the boats and the sea lions and the double-decker carousel though. It was a clear, beautiful day. We also rode the “F,” and electric train/bus back to a different BART station.

I was sad to see Grammy go home, and have asked Mommy numerous times if she misses her mommy. I am planning her next trip in my mind as well as a trip on the plane for me. Mommy and Daddy think that it will be a while before my imagined trips actually occur, however. (Daddy returned home on the day that Grammy went back to PA. He had been at a conference in Princeton. At least it was a day of returns as well as leave-taking.)

Go fly a kite

On Saturday, the whole family went out to a nearby park (which I call the "tunnel park" since there is one sliding board in the shape of a tunnel) to fly kites. We brought with us two kites, one with Elmo's picture on it, the other with Grover. While the wind was not quite as nice as it might be, there was still enough of a breeze to get the kites flying. I had a great time running around while holding the kite string and making it fly. Kite flying is great!

How does your garden grow

I really like gardening. Yesterday, we added more plants to the garden and checked on how the ones planted earlier are doing. Here's the status report:

1. The tendrils on the pea plants have successfully curled around the lattice in the graden and are growing up nicely. The first pea blossom has appeared as well. I'm quite fascinated at the notion of tendrils and inquire about which plants have them and which do not at every opportunity.

2. Our onions (grown from seeds) are all coming up quickly. They're still pretty small. I wanted to pick a couple but Daddy suggested that we wait until they're a bit bigger.

3. Our grapvine is thriving. It's go lots of new growth. It still hasn't managed to climb its way onto the lattice set out for it yet.

4. We added a pumpkin plant to a dirt-filled area in the front yard. I'm hoping that we can grow our own Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween.

5. In the back, we added pole beans (and an interesting pole for them to climb on) as well as fancy lettuce and cucumbers. We're already doing a fine job with the spinach we planted earlier, which is producing delightful leave for salads.

6. Our broccoli is getting very big. I can't wait for it to be ready.

7. All of our tomato plants have blossoms. Tomatoes are coming!

Attack of the Clones: Post-script

Actually, I omitted an Eddie. There are six Eddies: regular, dude, Easter, Christmas, mechanic, and skateboarder. As for the personalities of the Little People, the guys with the edgiest personalities seem to be the two "Bunny guys". They are always very demanding about everything. The Daddy character is also not exactly sweetness and light either. He's constantly either talking on his cell phone, driving to and from work, or busy foreclosing on a property. He's foreclosed Farmer Jed's farm on several occasions leaving poor Jed with only his beat-up blue Ford F-150 pickup truck as an asset.

Apple cookies

Lately I've been really interested in playing with Play Doh. One of my favorite things to do with this stuff is to use my rolling pin to roll it out flat and then use my apple shaped cookie cutter to make apple cookies of various colors. I stakc my apple cookies neatly to the side of the dough rolling area so that they will stay nice. Sometimes, I cut out an apple cookie where the cookie cutter just misses the edge of the dough. This results in an apple cookie with a bit taken out of it.

"Who bitted it?" I ask.

I kind of like the idea of people biting my cookies. The other fun thing to do with these cookies is to count them. I'm getting very good at counting and even did some rudimentary addition yesterday with Daddy. I had three purple cookies and three white cookies. Daddy asked me how many cookies of all types I had. I was able to count them all out together to obtain a figure of six cookies. Yay for Aidan! Daddy was quite pleased with this feat.

First Harvest

We had out first harvest from the garden: Spinach leaves. Our spinach plants have been growing really well, so we picked some last night for salads for all of us. Yay spinach. In other news: We have baby strawberries now growing. I can't wait for them to be ready. Our basil plant, however, is not feeling well.

Little People: Attack of the Clones

It's interesting that there are many duplicates of each of the Little People characters. Often they're dressed a bit differently or are carrying something different, but it's still the same character in multiple outfits. Last night, Daddy (just back from a trip to Atlanta) and I played with the "clone" game with the Little People. This involves both counting and social pleasantries. First, the counting part: Sorting through the little people, we have to pick out all the clones of each type of Little Person.

The largest number of clones are of the Eddie character. They consist of Regular Eddie, Dude Eddie, Christmas Eddie, Easter Eddie, and Mechanic Eddie. Finishing in second is the Sonya Lee character. Her clones consist of: Money Sonya Lee, Apple Sonya Lee, and Zookeeper Sonya Lee. Tied for third is the Mommy character, which consists of two absolutely identical Mommies (Mommy 1 and Mommy 2).

On to the social pleasantries: Once the clones are gathered together, they introduce themselves to one another. A typical conversation goes like this:

Regular Eddie: Pleased to meet you. I'm Eddie
Dude Eddie: Dude! Awesome. I'm Eddie, great to meet you Eddie.
Easter Eddie: Eddie...Eddie
Christmas Eddie: Funny, I'm named Eddie too. Good to meet you Eddie.

And on and on.

Easter Egg Hunts

One of my favorite Easter traditions is the easter egg hunt. I went on a number of "official" egg hunts this season however, I like to improvide my own egg hunts. To do an egg hunt, someone (either Aidan, Mommy, Daddy, or Gammy) has to hide their eyes while another person scatters eggs around the house. Then it's time to open your eyes and go in seach of Easter eggs. When I'm the person hiding the easter eggs, I like to give hints to the person searching so it's not too hard to find the eggs. Some of my most creative hiding spots were putting eggs in Daddy's shoes and putting eggs in the faucet for my bathtub. These were extremely hard to find.

Of course, I like when things are turned around as well and I'm the person searching for the eggs that the other person has hidden. Easter egg hunts are fantastic.