The Many Faces of Charlotte

Charlotte is a climber.  The problem is, she's like a cat.  She has no problem climbing up, the getting down is not as easy.  This chair is one of her favorite places to climb.  She loves to sit like a big girl.  We've been trying to teach her how to get down by herself, but she hasn't quite mastered it yet.  This morning I heard a thump and then wails.  When I got to her, the lower half of her body was still in the chair, her head was resting on the floor and her arms were flailing.  She falls with flair.

 Also in Charlotte news, she is dangerously close to walking.  She took her first independent steps a couple of weeks ago.  She still prefers the stability of crawling, but her bipedalism is coming soon.

 

 The following pictures I did not take.  They are from camp day at Eleanor's school.  A mom by the name of Mykle Parker took them.  She did a great job.  Among the many activities involved in camp day, Eleanor got to paint in the garden, drink hot cocoa, make trail mix, fish, go on a bear hunt and use her flashlight to read in a tent.  Eleanor absolutely loves her school.

School for Eleanor

Eleanor started school this week.  For the past three mornings, I've walked Eleanor into a classroom, helped her with an activity, read to her and then left her with people I hardly know.  Eleanor has done surprisingly well.  She did not have to be pealed off of me.  She didn't even cry.  Her school encourages parents to read to their children for the first 15 minutes of every day as a transition time (K-2).  This is a commuter school--no buses, most students live too far to walk.  The first day, we went as a family to mark this milestone in Eleanor and our family's life.  We took a couple of pictures, but they didn't turn out so great. 

On the way to school.  It's about a 10-15 minute drive.  Eleanor was excited, but a little nervous.

Each day of the first week, Eleanor's teacher has an activity planned.  On Tuesday, the students were decorating the name tags for their cubbies.  Eleanor made each of her letters into flowers.  Then we went and hung it in her cubby.

Eleanor is pointing at her cubby, on the bottom.  This is where she stores her lunch box, blanket for rest time, extra clothes and back pack.  During the first week, the kids are allowed to bring a comfort item (stuffed animal or toy).  That goes in the cubby too.  Eleanor is very attached to her cubby and wants one at home too.  We're working on that.

We read a couple of books.  Eleanor loves the classroom library and the organization of it.  There is another baby close to Charlotte's age.  The past two mornings she and Charlotte have played together.  I love how parents and families are welcomed and encouraged to be in the classroom (at certain times).  When the Good Morning song begins to play, the parents are to leave. 

So far, Eleanor has loved everything about school.  She seems to thrive in the structure and the routine.  She has made friends and says that no one gets in trouble.  I'm sure she will have some struggles at some point, but she is off to a great start.  We are so thankful that she got into such a good school.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

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Eleanor is Five: Ramblings and Pictures

Somehow, five years have passed since little Eleanor was born.  Today we celebrated Eleanor's birthday by doing whatever Eleanor wanted to do (dangerous, I know).  Her requests were not too outlandish.  We ate cantaloupe for breakfast.  We did a craft while Charlotte took her morning nap.  We had lunch at the mall, followed by a carousel ride and ice cream.  Eleanor wore her new birthday dress.  We watched a princess movie during rest time and then made cookies.  When Matt got home from work, we gave Eleanor her gift: a bicycle.  Then she went riding.  We had tacos for dinner at her request.  Then a bubble bath, opening some smaller presents, reading a new book and bed.

I love the simplicity of her requests and the delight that she found in our activities.  I love that Ben and Jerry's has colorful sorbets and frozen yogurts that catch Eleanor's eye.  Today's ice cream was pomegranate sorbet.  I'm pretty sure Eleanor shared with Charlotte on the way home.

Our apartment is still a wreck.  There are dishes to be washed, laundry to be done, floors to be swept.  My bags are still packed from our recent travels.  I am exhausted, but Eleanor is happy.  This year has not been an easy one for her.  The adjustment to having a sister was more difficult that we expected (and we didn't expect it to be easy). 

Every time I have to explain all of my medical history to a new doctor they almost always respond, "You are lucky to have two healthy children."  I am lucky, or blessed.  My pregnancy with Eleanor was not easy.  There were insurance issues, hospitalizations, stress, anxiety.  She was born purple with her cord tightly wrapped twice around her neck.  She had a heart murmur.  She didn't latch on well.  She lost half a pound in the hospital, weighing only 5 and a half pounds.  She was tiny.  Now she's a child.  She sings arias in the courtyard and helps scared children at the park.  She loves to paint and thinks Perpunzel is the name of the girl with the really long hair in the fairy tale.  She's scared of starting school and can give you detailed reasons why.  She can do simple math, understands prime numbers and asks the most profound questions.  She makes us laugh, cry and scream all in the same minute.  I am lucky.  We are happy.  Life is better than I could have imagined it.

And We're Back

Sorry for the hiatus.  Matt commandeered my computer for media usage.  I was given a new (old) macbook for my computing needs, but I'm slow to relearn mac. 

I know you really came here for the pictures, so I'll get to those in a minute (I'm also relearning iphoto as this machine is a little older and can't run Picasa).  First I wanted to say how much I enjoy watching sisters relate.  Eleanor and Charlotte are a lot of fun these days.  Charlotte is quite mobile--crawling in her unique tripod crawl and cruising on all sorts of furniture.  This is distressing to Eleanor, as I'm sure you can imagine.  The most interesting things to Charlotte are whatever Eleanor has.  We are working on this.  Eleanor loves to be in charge.  She wants to decide which toy Charlotte plays with, what she eats, where she is and who can touch her. 

Some friends gifted Eleanor with some dress up clothes that their girls have outgrown.  She was more than a little thrilled with the parasol.  This morning, I overheard her singing, "My parasol, my parasol, my parasol..."

Charlotte, meanwhile, was making her own entertainment.  Literally.  Here she is playing in a puddle of her spit-up.

Charlotte and Eleanor like to play a game that I like to call the ah game.  Observe:

The Ah Game from m lumpkin on Vimeo.

On Trying to be a Responsible Consumer

If you give Eleanor a piece of chocolate, she's likely to ask you, "Is it fair trade?"  I didn't set out to indoctrinate her in social justice.  In fact, when I decided to stop buying non-fairly traded chocolate about two years ago, I didn't think of how it would affect Eleanor.  Today at breakfast as we were eating our chocolate chip pancakes (someone had given us a bag of chocolate chips), Eleanor asked me if they were fair trade.  She looked at the bag for the symbol and couldn't find it.  This began a long conversation on what fair trade is and why we don't buy chocolate that isn't.  Have you ever tried to explain slavery to a child?  How about child slavery?  She asked why the children didn't just go home.

Over a third of the cocoa that makes the world's chocolate comes from Ivory Coast, Africa. It's highly likely that the beans that made your favourite chocolate bar come from there.  Thousands of children - from within the Cote D'Ivoire and neighbouring countries – who pick and harvest these beans have been trafficked. They have had their freedom taken away from them and are forced to work long hours on the cocoa plantations without receiving any money for their work.

-from Stop the Traffik

There are several great chocolates that are traded fairly.  I've found where I can get good, fairly traded chocolate and when I happen in one of those stores, I stock up.  I can make brownies and chocolate milk with cocoa from Ten Thousand Villages.  I like Sundrops better than m&m's (especially the dark chocolate ones).  Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia is AMAZING.  The Fuller coffee shop has various chocolate candies that are good (they even had some Easter chocolates).  The one thing that I haven't been able to find was good semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Tonight in Whole Foods, I found them.  I was giddy.  I just wanted to share my elation with you.

Yes, the fairly traded chocolate is more expensive.  I paid five dollars for a package of chocolate chips.  The way I see it, if I can afford to buy chocolate, then I can afford to make sure that my indulgence doesn't come at the cost of a child's freedom.

 In related news, I have been looking for something similar to the ubiquitous Gerber Puffs for Charlotte.  Besides being full of sugar and preservatives, the puffs are made by Gerber which is now owned by Nestle.  In the past, Nestle engaged in some extremely disturbing practices that resulted in millions of infant deaths (according to UNICEF and the World Health Organization).  In short, they marketed their infant formula to mothers in developing countries who didn't have access to clean water or enough money to pay for enough formula to adequately feed their baby.  Babies died from waterborne illness or malnutrition when the formula was watered down to make the expensive formula last longer.

In the 1950's, Nestle actually had women dress as nurses to promote formula to women in developing countries.  Pressure from a boycott stopped this practice. (Picture from Baby Milk Action)

After learning this I didn't want to support Nestle, so I did a little research and found an alternative to the Puffs: Arrowhead Mills Puffed Rice.  I went to Whole Foods tonight to get it and in this case, the price difference worked in my favor: $1.69 for six ounces (compared to $2.69 for 1.48 ounces of Gerber Puffs).  These puffs have one ingredient: organic brown rice.  I also got the puffed wheat and the puffed kumut.  Tomorrow Charlotte will try them.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

I realize that my not buying chocolate or Nestle products is not going to change huge corporations, but it makes me feel better to not give them any of my money.  I hope that I can soon do more to help the oppressed, but for now I'll just eat my Sundrops.

Also, if you live in the Pasadena area and would like to learn more about fair trade and help raise money to end human trafficking, you might consider the upcoming Spring Chocolate Fondue Party, hosted by Oasis USA.

Piano Playing

Eleanor relishes her role as older sister.  Here's an example of how the girls typically interact.


Forced Piano Playing from m lumpkin on Vimeo.

Tedious Baby Video

A few weeks ago, Charlotte started to act as if she might be wanting to think about starting to crawl.  I told her she had to wait until we were in our new apartment.  She obliged.  We moved in on Saturday.  On Sunday she started propelling herself forward, not quite crawling, but traveling none the less.  She's still slow, thankfully.  I'm hoping to get more boxes unpacked and the apartment a bit more baby safe before she is fully mobile.

The fun part about her mobility is how much she loves it.  She is so proud of herself and just thinks it is hilarious when she is able to move from where she is to her desired object (usually something of Eleanor's).  I had to take a video today.  I realize that very few people will want to watch a minute and a half of Charlotte stumbling forward.


Charlotte "Crawling" from m lumpkin on Vimeo.

Seven

Next month, Matt and I will celebrate seven years of being married.  This weekend, we will move to our seventh address. We don't really enjoy moving, but somehow we keep doing it.  Here's our history of houses:

First, our fun little yellow house in Malvern.  We lived here for almost a year.  That wasn't our cat, but it kept getting trapped under the house, so I named it.  My favorite part of this house was the lovely front window...and the hammock in the back yard. 

From Malvern, we moved to Manado, Indonesia.  This was by far our most colorful residence.

We lived here for eight months.  The house was big.  We had kittens in the attic, but they were never tame enough for me to catch or name.

From there, we moved back to Little Rock.  I don't have any pictures from our first address there.  A church let us stay in their mission house for six weeks.  We were grateful for their benevolence as it gave us a chance to find suitable housing without feeling too rushed.  I was in the throws of morning sickness and have fond memories of the comfort of the little mint green house.

We found a little apartment in Little Rock where we lived for about 18 months.

And I do mean little.  We joke that it took Eleanor so long to learn to crawl because she had no where to go in this place.  Our entire living room:

When Eleanor was 10 months old, we moved in to a much bigger apartment.

 

Within a week, she had learned to crawl.  This apartment was great.  We called it our treehouse because it was the second floor and surrounded by trees.  It had built in bookshelves and walk in closets. 

Eleanor loved the deck.

And so did we.

We were sad to leave our treehouse, but it was time to pack up to go to Pasadena. 

For the past two and a half years, we have lived in this house:

We have been blessed with wonderful neighbors who have become great friends.  This is the only house Eleanor really remembers and it is Charlotte's first home.

But it's small and hard for four people to live without constantly stepping on each other.  Tomorrow we move into number 7.  It's just across the street, so it won't be a big move.  I'm sad to leave our big brown house.

Luckily, Eleanor has always loved packing.

Books, Books and More Books: Authors

There are some authors that we like almost all of their books.  When we go to the library, I always skim certain letters to see if there are any new (or new to us) books by these authors because I know that we will enjoy them.  A lot of these are fairly well known, but I'm going to make the list anyway.  Most of these were introduced to me by my mom, who has contributed greatly to Eleanor's personal library.

Rosemary Wells is wonderful.  I have yet to read any book by her that we don't just love.  This is one of Eleanor's favorite Rosemary Well's book, because the little girl (badger?) in the book has a doll named Elinor.  Of course, Wells is also the creator of the bunny siblings Max and Ruby (I think they have a tv show?), but they are not my favorites of her books.  Some of Eleanor's favorite books by Wells is a series that centers around a group of animal children who attend Hilltop School.  Yoko, a cat from Japan, is one of Eleanor's favorites.  We check a lot of these books out of the library and have found them helpful in helping Eleanor prepare for school.  There is also a series of DVDs (maybe a show on TV?) called Timothy Goes to School.  For a while they were on youtube.com and Eleanor LOVED them.  They were fun little episodes with characters from the books.



James Marshall is another favorite in our house.  He is witty and subtle in a way that makes reading the same old stories refreshing.  He does a great job of having some things in his stories or illustrations that are entertaining to the adult reader, which is quite fun.  Most of the stories of his I've seen are retellings of fairy tales: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel.  He also has some original stories that I think are hilarious.  One of my favorites is Wings: A Tale of Two Chickens.







Andrea Beck's Elliot Moose books are still a favorite around here.  These books are about a group of stuffed animals.  I like these books because they model good problem solving and teamwork skills.  The illustrations are nice too.










Eleanor loves the Ella books by Carmela and Steven D'Amico.  I like them too.  Ella is a little elephant on the Elephant Isles in the Indian Ocean.  She is timid, but kind.  In the first book (the one on the left), she is struggling to fit into a new school.  Despite being taunted she remains kind and considerate. In Ella Takes the Cake, another of Eleanor's favorites, Ella tries to find a way to be helpful to her mom.  That's behavior we encourage around here:)  In the end, Ella and her mom make a Zanzibar cake.   I searched and searched for a recipe for a Zanzibar cake, finally finding one here (under "Fun Stuff").





Eric Carle is a prolific children's author and illustrator.  Thanks to my mom, Eleanor and Charlotte have many of his books.  For his illustrations, he uses an interesting technique of painting tissue paper then cutting it to make collages.  This gives his books a unique look.  Not all of his writing is quality, but much of it is.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar shows the life cycle of a butterfly.  Pancakes, Pancakes! catalogs the ingredients in pancakes and where they come from.  In her early toddlerhood, Eleanor insisted on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? being read to her nightly, usually twice.