School projects

In the last week of school, Paul's class had a business day.  I thought it was really clever.  They learned about buying and selling.  Then each child had to come up with a real product or service they could sell.  Paul got the idea to make little animals or miniatures out of play dough.  Whatever they sold had to cost less than $15 in real money.  Each child had start up capitol (play money) to rent a class room store front (i.e. their desks) and pay for advertising.  Children and teachers from other classrooms then came in on business day with more play money to shop.

Leftover inventory - sadly Paul's shop wasn't terribly popular.  He had fun anyway.

Play dough duck, tiny caterpillar, airplane with face, bacon

They learned a great deal about supply and demand, how businesses work - all kinds of good stuff.

One of Paul's Advertising Posters

Paul and Julia also had career week near the end of school.  I loved Julia's little diorama craft she made for her career.  (I think this is a marked improvement over her earlier declaration that she wanted to be a pop star or a waitress.) 

Julia - Veterinarian

Julia is 8!

Julia is great.

Julia is eight.

Julia ate from her plate.

Except she asked for soup for her birthday.  Our super yummy cheeseburger soup.  Steve and I gave her a hard time about asking for a soup that we make to warm up the kitchen on cold days in the middle of the summer.  But it was what she wanted for her birthday, so we conceded.  (I cooked some of it outside over our grill's side burner, so it wasn't too hot indoors.)  It was very yummy.

So what's good about being eight?

It rhymes with great.

She is old enough to sign up for the weapons class at Tae Kwon Do.  She and Steve start on Thursday.

On her birthday she had swimming lessons, and is learning the finer points of diving and breathing while doing the front crawl.

She likes to be very specific about certain things, like socks.  The are to be neon colored and mismatched.  She was also very specific about what she wanted on her birthday cake.  She asked for a brownie for a cake, decorated with a big flower in the middle with white and purple petals and little flowers on the sides and the big flower should have 2 leaves on it and the little flowers should have one leaf each.  The "frosting" on the brownie cake below is Cool Whip colored with food coloring.  The little flowers were made of colored marshmallows.  Paul requested the little bee, which is made of jelly bean slices.

Julia's flower cake.
(The little mark before her name was where I started to make her name with chocolate sprinkles and then stopped when I decided it was not going to end well.  I had some thought of covering my whoopsie up with the chocolate chips, but Julia started laying out her name with the chocolate chips and just left the botched attempt uncovered.  Funny.  At least it did not bother her.)

She got a karaoke CD player for her birthday (because apparently we were having trouble with amplification?).  She and Petra love belting out songs from Disney's "Frozen.  She got a couple popular stuffed animals with freakishly large eyes called beanie boos.  Her big gift was a real bow and arrow set.  We'll set up a target near the barn, have a long talk about safety with projectile weapons, and practice being princess Merida.  Maybe while she is practicing her aim, we'll let Paul work with the bee-bee gun, and I'll borrow my in-laws sling shot.  

Petra recovering from swimming

Kuhlman Almanac - Mid June 2014

Phototropic Children
I think the kids must be solar powered.  These long days near the summer solstice are just killing us on bedtimes.  They get to bed late, can't sleep, and then wake up early.  I'm sure the heat isn't helping matters.

The other night I went up stairs after having tucked in the girls to tell them to be quiet or else they were going to lose their screen privileges the next day.  Julia started to try to explain the thumping I heard.  With a slightly wounded tone, "Mommy!  I was THINKING about something.  And I wouldn't tell Petra what it was.  So she started throwing her stuffed animals at me."
"Stop, stop stop!  Just go to sleep."

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Steve's knee
I came in from closing up the chickens last night and told Steve that the chickens miss him.  I had been careless when I opened them in the morning and their little chicken door swung closed during the day, stranding them outside.  We still haven't found a suspected 3 missing eggs.  All this the day after I plum forgot to open them.

Maggie also misses having Steve mobile.  When I try to walk her in the evening, she lingers by the house and only reluctantly comes down to the barn at my insistence.  I think she is trying to stay close to where Steve is.  He is her alpha.

Last night Paul put a tooth under his pillow.  I went to check on him during the night, and the tooth was not under the pillow, but curled up in his hand.  I woke Paul up in the process of figuring that out.  I explained that I was in his room to open the windows up to let in the cool night air.
"But what were you doing under me?"
"Um.. I was checking to make sure your tooth was in place."
"I've got it here in my hand."
"Oh good.  Well.  Good night."
The tooth fairy misses Steve too.

Steve is getting on much better, but his knee is still pretty sore at the and of the day.  Even so, he saw that our tae kwon do school is offering a weapons class (nunchuks, sword, fan, cane).  He asked the teacher if he needed to be able to use his legs to take the class.  He and Julia are now signed up to start classes in July.

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Farm
We're taking it easy on the gardening this year. The grass and wild flowers are growing well, and we have some potted poseys making the house look cheerful.  After the cold winter, the butterfly bush and roses died back to the ground, but they are making a comeback.  The rose, in fact, looks splendid.

The weather has just turned really hot.  A week or two ago it was quite rainy, and our lawn broke out in mushrooms.  I have never seen so many at once.  The whole way between the driveway and the swing set the yard was sprinkled with little brown mushrooms no taller than the grass.

Our chicken flock this year is made up of Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, and Silver Laced Wyandottes.  We have 5 bronze turkeys this year.  We'll have to see how the new breeds do as layers.

From the mouth of Petra

We were washing off the lawn furniture using a hose, some rags, and a bucket of soapy water.  “Mommy, I’m a hoser.”

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We were playing a Memory game.  “I smell… VICTORY!”  The was repeated each time she found a match.

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“I want to be called Gracie!” Later she explained, “I don’t want to be called Petra, because Petra just means rock.”

I answered, “Sweetheart, you know a diamond is rock.”

“Ooooh!”  She smiled and has not tried to change her name again except in regular play when she is being a kitty, or a princess, or a bat.

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“I helped Nathan out because he is big enough for a pillow and toys in his bed.”  She had tossed into his crib a throw pillow, and two baby dolls.  She also placed a wobbly stool from a child size drum set beside the crib so that Nathan could stand on it to get into his crib.  Because he is big enough.  The cymbal stand from the drum set was also right next to the crib.  I didn’t get an explanation for that one.

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“Mommy, I’m going to make water soufflé.”  Here is the recipe.  Put water in a mug, stand on a chair, and microwave the water. Add a strawberry.  Strawberries float.  Add some corn.  Corn sinks.  Add some imaginary honey, because mommy won’t let you put in the real stuff.  Ditto the pepper.  Add some blue Gatorade. 

I told her, “Petra, soufflé is always made with eggs.  Maybe you should put some imaginary eggs in your water soufflé.”  So she added imaginary scrambled eggs to her mug.

She has made this recipe more than once now.  She made it yesterday and left the mug on the counter and the kitchen chair beside the counter.  Later in the day I was reading to Petra and realized that Nathan had wandered off and was being quiet.  Too quiet.  I found him on the chair, eating the strawberry and  playing in the water with a straw.  Fortunately, he had not yet noticed the chef’s knife laying on a cutting board just behind the water soufflé.

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In order to pass a tae kwon do belt test at our school, you have to know some Korean terminology.  For example Tae Kwon Do is “the Korean art of self defense,” or more literally, “The way of the hand and foot.”  In preparation for the test I asked Petra, “What does tae kwon do mean?”

She sighed deeply and answered, “Tae kwon do means a lot of work.”

I think that should count.

ACL Surgery

A couple of months ago, I was having a particularly bad day.  I looked to TKD class all day long because I knew it would be a great break.  When I am in class, my mind is totally in the class.  What a relief.

And then during sparing, Steve fell.  I was trying to spar this black belt teenager, when my attention was pulled over to my husband, laying on the floor holding his knee.  I punched Steve later for distracting me.

So this post is really supposed to be about Steve. 

While sparring he had jumped for a kick and landed badly on his support leg.  He limped home from practice that night with his senior brown belt wrapped around his left knee.  Within the week he had visited an urgent care and made an appointment with the orthopedic.

We suspected and hoped it was just a bad sprain.  I think Steve had an inkling that it was going to be something worse because he had felt a pop when he went down.  After some of the soreness from the sprain went down, his exam with the orthopedic suggested some meniscus damage.  Steve went in for an MRI.

What a blessing that MRIs are available and detailed enough to do non destructive evaluations.

Steve came home from his MRI review saying, “The good news is that the meniscus damage is too minor to warrant surgery.  The bad news is that my ACL is torn.”  The surgeon suggested that Steve was getting a little old for ACL surgery.  Steve was a little nonplused by that, but I think the surgeon is doing a good job of trying to avoid unnecessary surgeries.  However, Steve’s preferred sports are tae kwon do, tennis, and soccer, all of which require dodging side to side.  Without a functional ACL, those sports would destroy his knee.

The reason the orthopedic did not catch the ACL tear up front is that Steve’s knee strength was so good up front.  He has spent the last several weeks building up his knees so that recover will be a little smoother.

Last week he had ACL graft surgery.  He donated a section of tendon from another part of his knee.  Sounds fun no?

The doctor was very pleased with how the surgery went.  He said Steve’s knee was in good shape for the surgery.  The ACL had been 100% torn/detached/no-worky.

Steve had a bit of a rough time coming out of the anesthesia.  He had some nausea, but the main symptom was that he sweated.  He drenched through sheets, towels and his hospital cloths.

His recovery is slow and steady.  Surgery Wednesday, started flexing his knee Thursday, ached on Friday, started using only one crutch Sunday, went to work on Monday, and Monday night he came upstairs to his own bed for the first time.  He has a fair amount of soreness and a riot of bruises.  His mom, the retired PT, keeps handing him new exercises to work on.  She’s mean like that.

The night before his surgery, Steve took his latest Tae Kwon Do belt test.  He will get his red belt this Saturday.  If his recovery is good, he should be able to test for his temporary black belt at the same time as Paul and Julia.  He is just competitive enough that I think that will help keep him going.

Toddler

There are so many things I savor about Nathan’s toddlerhood. 

I love seeing him when he is asleep.  Every muscle is relaxed.  His arms are flopped in any old position, sometimes with his hands above his head.  It looks like, “I surrender!”  The other night he settled down with one foot through the bars of the crib, and his torso turned 90 degrees from his legs.  My favorite baby sleeping posture is when his tummy is down, his knees are tucked underneath him, and his fanny is sticking up in the air.  That just slays me.

Nathan wants to go outside almost all the time.  He runs to his shelf, gets his little shoes, and says, “Shoes?  Shoes!”  It sounds the same as his word for juice.  He loves to chase and pet our cat, Midnight.  He wants to go in and “interact” with the young hens.  His love is a little scary.  He swings his arm as if he is going to pet them with all his strength, and Steve has seen Nathan try to grab the young birds by their necks.  He has no sense of boundaries and no fear.

I am excited to have Nathan signed up for a week of swimming lessons this year before our vacation.  He likes splashing in water.

He is picking up more words – “kitty,” something that sounds like chickens, “tree,”

He keeps pointing to our ceiling fans and saying, “Ball?”  Ball is his favorite word.  It works for ball, balloon, bottle, block – all very important things.  So he points to anything vaguely round and says, “Ball.”  I think he likes to point to things that do not sound even remotely like ball, and say ball, because he likes making us say something else.