Peter Piper

Weeeee!!!

Pedals

Stian has been doing this for a couple of weeks, but just for a couple of feet. Yesterday and today it really seemed to click and he was able to go for quite aways!

Silly

Stian had one of his worst tantrums ever tonight about taking a bath. Holy cats, that was impressive. It turns out it was because he wanted to wear his rain boots in the bath. So he got to wear them for awhile after his bath, while having a snack. It was quite the look, so we pulled out the camera.



Then he started hamming for the camera. He was dancing.



Then he started jumping.









Then coy.



Then, of course, we had to be airplanes.

Tickle Protector

I don't really know how to explain this one. But Kris had us all wearing kitchen towels around our necks and calling them "tickle protectors." Stian thought it was great.

Hurray for the sandbox!

The weather was gorgeous today - almost 70. Yay! And the sandbox had finally dried out enough for it's first play session of the season. Very exciting. Stian had lots of fun playing in the sandbox while I did some gardening (mostly cleaning up stuff from winter).

If you'll notice the sticker on Stian's shirt it says "Junior Police Officer". At school today they went for a long walk and walked to the police station where they went inside and visited! I love Stian's school. Not only does he get lots of exercise, especially when the weather is nice (he also spent a long time playing outside on the playground this afternoon), he also gets to do fun things like visiting the police station. It also says on his sheet from today that they painted with butter (I have no idea what that means) and that they decorated chef's hats (they are learning about cooking this week).

Wildlife

I like possums (okay, technically opossums I guess). I know I'm in the minority on that one. Most people think they're creepy. But I had an experience with one in Bloomington that changed my thinking. We had one crawling with difficulty across our backyard one day and I called the local wildlife rescue folks about it. They sent a woman out to take a look, and she told me a lot about possums I didn't know. First, they are very gentle. She demonstrated this by picking this possum up with her bare hands. She suspected the poor thing had a broken leg from being hit by a car. The possum was very docile, it just let her hold her and investigate. The woman had me pet her and see her prehensile tail, which was pretty neat. They also are "nature's sanitary workers" - as she called them. They will eat just about anything. She said they love compost, which is probably why that possum was so well fed, we had a nice compost pile in Bloomington. She said they are very clean, they take care of themselves like cats. So I was sold. The woman took the possum with her where she said she would get her fixed up and release her back to the wild.

Living out in the country now of course we have possums here too. But we don't see them much because they mostly come out at night. Kris had an experience with one recently when he took our kitchen scraps out to the garden and dumped them on what he thought was the remains of Stian's jack-o-lattern only to realize he had dumped them on top of a possum that was about three feet away from him.

For some reason though we have a possum that has recently started wandering into our yard in the daytime. We've seen him (her?) several times during the day now. He seems to be loving out compost pile. He'll sit and munch or grab something that appears to especially exciting and head back to the woods. Kris threw out some old hamburger buns the other day for the possum, and that was a big hit. So we've all been enjoying watching his ventures up into the yard. Stian likes to watch him too.



Admit it, he's really kind of cute, isn't he?

We also have quite the herd of deer. They tend to come up out of the woods in the evening and head across the street to the field for dinner (I once counted something like 82 deer in the field across from our house at one time). I know we've mentioned them on here before. They are very fun to watch as well. Stian especially likes keeping an eye out during dinner to see them coming out of the woods and crossing our yard. One of Stian's first words was "deer". Here's a picture Kris took the other evening of a few deer in the fog.

Beautiful Day

We finally had some beautiful weather this week, and we had the chance to enjoy it yesterday with good friends.

Big Kid

I thought Stian looked like such a big kid while he was having his snack resting his chin in his hand.

Little Fire Fighter

Stian's school takes pictures of him during the day and sends them home with us. I love getting the pictures to see what he's been up to. I thought this one was especially cute, so thought I'd share it. Fire fighting was one of the themes for February.