A Trip to the Birmingham Zoo

For those of you who know us, you may be wondering, "Why did they go to the Birmingham Zoo? Don't they live in Georgia, closer to Zoo Atlanta??" Chris was going to Birmingham for the day on Saturday to shoot some videos for apologist John Martignoni (Catholics may recognize his name). So we tagged along on the two hour trip to visit the zoo while they worked.

Our first stop was the petting zoo area. Goats and sheep for petting and brushing.

Cecilia loved the goats...

...very much. She does this to our chickens, too.

Inside a barn by the petting zoo were more animals, including these baby turkeys.

Rats! When telling Daddy about the zoo, the girls told him, "There were some rats in a wall." That is exactly what they were... a panel on one of the barn's stall walls opened, and one of the zoo workers dumped the rats into it! The other side was covered in some plexiglass type material so we could see the rats.

Two bald eagles! I don't think I have been this close to an eagle before... they are HUGE birds!

Being nocturnal, this owl was sleeping - right there in the open - and the girls are banging on the fencepost and yelling to try to wake him up. He must be a pretty laid-back fellow - he blinked once and continued to sleep...

Random old truck next to a vulture enclosure...

The otters were very cool... I loved getting some silhouette photos!

There were chickens near the petting zoo, and we noticed one rooster was outside of the coop... not sure if that was intentional or not. Later, we noticed a rooster and a hen wandering around in the "food court" area... very random. People were feeding them french fries, sadly.

This tiger came to the inside viewing area just as we approached the window. Perfect timing! Then it went back to the outside part of the enclosure. Now, maybe I'm spoiled because of being used to Zoo Atlanta, but this zoo has a "predator house." They have a bunch of wild cats... in indoor cages. Some have absolutely no outdoor access, like the bobcats. I thought that was really sad. There was also a primate house, where the smaller monkeys - and even the orangutans - lived in indoor rooms. There is construction being done on a large part of the land there, though, where they are making some kind of African exhibit... and there is plenty of land there for them to make bigger outdoor habitats. Hopefully that is what they will be doing. They are getting some elephants once that is completed, too.

Giraffes...

And rhinos. last time I took Caroline to a zoo, she said, "Rhino-nosserus picked me out!" She was a bit younger than Cecilia is now when she said that... we never figured out what exactly she meant by saying that it "picked her out." Maybe it looked at her? These ones didn't pick her out - they were sleeping. Caroline asked, "Are they real?"

This might have been the coolest exhibit in the place... the lorikeets. These bright-colored birds were hopping and flying all over the place, with no fear at all of humans! You could feed them a little cup of nectar, and they would come right up and eat it as you held it out to them, and we even saw some of them sitting on people's arms to eat! One landed on Caroline's head briefly, ha ha!

Caroline feeds one...

...and Cecilia takes her turn.

Cecilia, of course, reached out to pet them. They moved away from her slightly and pecked at her, but she didn't mind!

I'd never seen anything like this, where you can just walk in among the birds and they will come right up to you. Very neat!

We watched a sea lion training show. The sea lions would hop up on ramps, jump in the water, lay down, and leap out of the water to touch a ball on a stick (and were rewarded with fish each time, of course!). They did all this by watching the zookeepers motion with their hands!

Caroline spotted a peacock and was excited that we had seen this animal on our Garden of the Good Shepherd Easter calendar earlier that week! Also on our calendar, we'd seen...

... a pelican! Pelicans are much bigger up close than you would think! And they are kind of mean, too, so I am not sure why we were allowed to get this close to them! O course, I told the girls the story of Uncle Stephen catching a pelican with his fishing pole...

We rode the little train that goes around the zoo... just $2 each, so I figured, why not? The admission to this zoo is so much cheaper than I am used to from Zoo Atlanta!

Last stop was this kids' area, where they had fountains to splash in and a big inflatable thing filled with bubbles (foam, they called it in the brochure).

Caroline stayed in the foam the whole time until I told her to come out and splash in the fountains a few minutes to rinse off, since Daddy had arrived to meet us in the parking lot!

Caroline said that the kids in the foam asked her where her bathing suit was... we had a change of clothes in the car instead!

As much as Caroline wanted Cecilia to come in the bubbles with her, I wasn't about to let her go in where she would be completely engulfed and possibly trampled by bigger kids who couldn't see her! She didn't want to go in either, and so she enjoyed the fountains.

Here's Caroline being surprised by a fountain as it starts spraying. She rinsed all the foam away quickly!

A fun little daytrip! And of course, on the two hour ride back home, neither child fell asleep... Cecilia had almost fallen asleep on my back in the zoo, but apparently the monkeys were just a bit too interesting for her to let go completely! After such a full day in the sun, most kids would crash on the car ride home... ahh, am I destined to only have children who don't fall asleep in the car?? They were in a great mood though, so I am not complaining... only wondering!

Summer time has officially started when the outdoor water-related trips begin - yay!! We'll have to do the lake and our own local fountains downtown sometime soon now!

Kids Say the Darndest Things Friday

So, my brother got his cats shaved. Yes, his CATS. Apparently there is a company that will actually come to your house, take your cats into a van, and shave most of their fur off from their necks all the way down their tails. I think they look like rats now... big rats. These cats do really shed a lot (one practically shoots fur at you as a defense mechanism), and this is supposed to prevent them from leaving their fur all over everything they touch. So Cecilia saw this photo, and her immediate response was, "Those silly cats are wearing different tails!" Caroline just got upset and said she was mad at Uncle Tim. Poor things... Mason, the one on the right, will likely have a relapse of her kitty-PTSD now.

Caroline told me a few nights ago, as I was tucking her in, that "When the first light comes into my room in the morning, I'm going to turn back into a gerbil."

Okay, then...

Celebrating the Ascension

Well, I am getting around to putting these pictures up now... we celebrated the Ascension on Thursday of last week and continued on into Friday! Then we heard the readings for the Ascension on Sunday at Mass.

On Thursday, the girls made pictures much like Caroline did last year. They painted "clouds" with white poster paint on blue construction paper.

As with any art project, Cecilia really got into it for a two year old!

Caroline made her clouds a bit more cloud-like. She is also getting into making her own artistic creations lately, drawing and cutting and taping things together... most recently, she made a pinata out of paper and yarn for her little barn animals, and she taped chicken feathers to a pen so that she could be like "Fancy Nancy," a book character.

Then we glued an image of the Ascension in the middle of each painting. We hung them in the dining room.

On Friday, we planned to go to the park to meet friends and play before having an Ascension picnic for lunch. However, one family was sick, and the others had things come up, so we went on our own. On the menu for our easy Ascension picnic:

Cloud-shaped sandwiches. I just cut out the clouds freehand as shown above. A cookie cutter would be even easier (and might look better, too! ;).

Fluffy, white (er, light brown) clouds, since Jesus appeared to be rising up into the clouds

Then we had some cheese shaped like birds - it is traditional in some countries to eat some sort of bird on the Feast of the Ascension because Jesus "flew" to Heaven. I did use a cookie cutter for these (and you may see this shape reappear as a dove-shaped cookie at Pentecost this Sunday!).

We stopped at Kroger on the way to get some milk since we were out, so I thought we'd also see how much a couple helium balloons would cost. It turns out that they will give you helium balloons with the Kroger logo on them for free, so we got two of them! Then, the milk safely in one of those special "stays cold for three hours" bags, we headed to the park!

I think I may have mentioned before in another post that my Catholic elementary school used to celebrate Ascension Thursday each year by having a balloon release. All the kids would release balloons all together to symbolize Jesus rising up toward Heaven. We wrote prayers and notes on notecards and attached them to the balloon strings. I think we even wrote our addresses in the hopes that somebody would find our balloon and write to let us know! It was always lots of fun, I thought. A few weeks ago, I told Caroline the story of how we used to do this, and she wanted to do it as well. We hadn't planned to originally, because of having lots of little ones there (balloons are really unsafe around toddlers who might put a popped piece into their mouths... and I thought that some of them might get really upset at having to let their balloons go!).

This Ascension Thursday balloon release sponsored by Kroger

Watching the balloons drift higher and higher... you should have heard the giggles of excitement!

Cecilia looks worried in this picture, but she really wasn't. She is relatively laid back about this kind of thing... she actually had a balloon at a local event the weekend before this, and when it bumped against something and popped, Caroline was more distressed than she was! She kept saying that we could get an airplane and fly up to the balloons, though! I was surprised that caroline wanted to do this in the first place... she is usually very sensitive (once she cried and complained for a half hour after a balloon broke, insisting that I could just make another on magically reappear... and that was only a month ago!). I guess she was okay with it because she knew what the plan was for the balloons from the beginning.

And I thought I would share this photo of Cecilia's dirt-covered face while we ate lunch. The kids played hard!! We did end up running into two families there who we knew, and we all had lunch together.

We had a fun time celebrating the Ascension, and now I hope no environmentalists blast me for letting two balloons go on purpose! ;)

Kids Say the Darndest Things

These are all from Cecilia, almost 28 months old:

On Sunday, Chris whispered to her to tell me Happy Mother's Day. She ran up to me and exuberantly exclaimed, "Happy Saint Mother's Day!!!"

Today, she was outside hanging on the glider swing (grabbing the bars and lifting her legs up, dangling in midair), and she was announcing to herself, "I'm very up in the sky!"

Then she saw a spotted bird outside... it looked like a tan-colored dove with spots near its tail. She said, "They have freckles on them!"

Daybook for Monday, May 10

Outside my window... It was a rainy day, overcast and cool today. Figures, since I just put away all the long sleeves and pants a week ago!

I am thinking... about buying some things for homeschooling next fall. I am hashing out plans in my mind. One thing I came up with is that I want to read a bit of a chapter book each evening with Caroline before bed. Stuff that is classic and good for age 5 and 6 year olds. I have come up with Charlotte's Web, Ramona the Pest (since she is in Kindergarten herself in that one, although I remember its reading level being higher than Ramona the Brave, where she is in 1st grade... hmmm). Any suggestions?

I am also thinking of printing off a bunch of stuff in advance, once I nail down exactly what I want to do!

I am wondering... still wondering when my prize will arrive in the mail. And wondering what craft idea to do this week with the girls. Something for Our Lady of Fatima, perhaps... or something spring-y and flowery.

I am thankful... for my mother and my mother-in-law, on this day after Mother's Day.

I am also thankful for this incredibly done video on co-sleeping. I was surprised to see a mainstream media outlet cover this topic with this much depth and accuracy. I really cannot say enough how much I loved watching it... and if you know me on Facebook, you may have seen that I posted it there as well. Very good information, and maybe a good one to show to that nagging relative who genuinely thinks you are going to kill your baby by co-sleeping with him but would trust something put out by a mainstream news outlet (I am also thankful to not have any of those relatives!).

I am hearing... Chris is working on importing old family videos... I was hearing 18 month old Caroline at the beach on the balcony, yelling, "Beeeeee!" (big) as a tractor drove by grading the sand on the beach. I am also streaming this on my computer. You know, until that prize comes. ;) Nice of them to put it online like that, though.

Learning at home... mental math with Caroline. She comes up with these things on her own. One of the readings at Mass this weekend included the part from Revelation about the city walls with 12 gates, three facing each compass direction... and on our Garden of the Good Shepherd, it happened to be the day that we put up the city gate sticker. The sticker shows five gates along what appears to be the front of a wall. So Caroline tells us that there must be five other gates on the back side, and a gate on each end, for 12 gates in all. When asked how she figured that out, she said, "I just thought about it."

From the kitchen... I made a big pot of homemade enchilada sauce today. It makes the equivalent of five cans, and into the deep freeze they go for all our Mexican meals. We had fajitas tonight, but not with enchilada sauce. ;) Last night was veggie lasagna. Later in the week: tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwiches.

I am reading... just blogs and homeschooling stuff, craft ideas, etc. I just ordered the Flat Belly Diet book - my mom has been doing it with good success! I want to read this book, but as you can see, it costs a pretty penny since it is out of print. I want to read it over the summer though...

To live the liturgical year... we did our May Crowning yesterday, and we are hoping to do something for the Ascension this Thursday. We are seeing if our friends are available for a park day with an Ascension-themed lunch.

One of my favorite things... hot chocolate. Since it was in the 50s and rainy today, the craving popped back into my head!

And this photo below is one of my favorites ever of Cecilia, I think... the expression, the position, the band-aid on the knee, the outfit from whenever it was that Gymboree's tag looked like one of these from 1998 or earlier...

I am creating... I actually did something crafty recently besides the Mary crowns, and now I can't remember what it was... does that ever happen to other people?

Around the house... didn't get to that desk organizing. Of course not, right? ;) I should stop procrastinating and do it.

A few plans for the rest of the week... we had La Leche League today. Wednesday is Mother's Morning Out. Thursday might be our park day with friends. On Sunday, we have a birthday party to attend for a little girl who will be five years old!

A picture thought I am sharing... you may have noticed I was sharing them throughout. ;) We had some nice weather and outside time, strawberry-picking and such, last week. Here is one last picture of some watercolor painting that Caroline did last week. She gave it to Chris to hang on the wall in his office:

Our May Crowning

When I was a child in Catholic elementary school, we always had a May Crowning each year. There was a large Mary statue in our school's courtyard, and we would place a crown made of flowers on her head. So, I found the rough instructions for making a floral wreath using wire and silk flowers - the plan was for Caroline to help make it. But it was much more complicated, so I ended up doing it myself. It was difficult for me, and I had to play with it to make it work. If anyone ever wants to make one, ask me and I will share how I did it so that the flowers would stay in place!

So, while I worked on figuring out the crowns, the girls ended up coloring their own Mary statues.

We cut them out and made them stand, and Cecilia tried to crown hers!

We made two crowns. We took the larger one out to our Mary Garden. Our roses are in bloom, so I pulled two of them off. We sung a verse of Immaculate Mary, and then Caroline crowned the outdoor statue.

Cecilia laid a rose at Mary's feet. This is the new statue I mentioned in a previous post.

Then we moved inside...

On our indoor Mary statue, Cecilia got to place the crown on Mary while Caroline laid the rose at her feet. Then we sang the rest of Immaculate Mary.

This was so simple to do, and Caroline really enjoyed it - she had a big smile on her face the whole time!

For dinner, we had a blue theme, blue being Mary's traditional color... we had blueberry pancakes, blueberry punch, and a fruit salad. I also picked up the blue tablecloth for $6 at Big Lots! The blue candle has an image of Our Lady of Fatima on it, whose feast day falls later this month.

This was a fun way to start our month! Hope everyone has a very blessed May!

Kids Say the Darndest (a day late)

The other day, there was a non-full moon visible in the sky in the afternoon. Cecilia saw it and said, "The moon is broken off."

Caroline was telling Cecilia that when she was older, they could both spend the night at Gramma's house. Cecilia knows that Uncle Tim lives at Gramma's house too (in the summers anyway; he's a college student), so she said something about him, followed by, "He'll sing Hush Little Baby and that will feel me better."

Cecilia's current cute pronunciations:

• "puh-rending" = pretending
• "garolla" = granola
• "bee-rowdoe" = burrito
• "Bee-rawna" = Brianna (the name of a friend)

Caroline and I were coloring pictures of acorns for a project, and she was coloring the round part while I was coloring the caps. She said, "You color the 'a' part, and I'll color the 'corn' part." This was followed by, "Maybe they should be called 'o-corns,' because they are shaped like Os."

Today, Caroline ran after Daddy, who was headed out the back door, calling, "Did you tell Mommy about going to the car wash? Don't tell her!" Then, turning to me because daddy was already outside and hadn't heard, "Mommy, did Daddy tell you about going to the car wash?" No, but you just did, Caroline! Apparently my Mother's Day gift is a clean car!

Daybook for Monday, May 3

Outside my window... we were supposed to be having a rainy day, but it has been bright sunny and 80something degrees. We did get a brief hard rain overnight, so the ground is damp.. but we sure have missed out on the massive storms that nailed Nashville. Chris's relatives there all fared well, but we are praying for all those who were flooded!

I am thinking... that I am going to start swimming again for exercise along with dieting in some form... I will be cutting back on portion sizes and limiting starches. My mom has been doing the Flat Belly Diet with good success, so I may read the book myself. She says a lot of the foods in the diet are things I eat, anyway. I would really like to get back down to what I weighed when I got pregnant with Caroline!

I am wondering... what I won. I know it is something autographed by Tonic... on their Facebook page, they offered autographed prizes to whoever came up with a clever line regarding their new album that will be released tomorrow. So I came up with one, just for fun, and was surprised when mine was one that was selected! I usually only win things that require no intellect at all, like raffle drawings. Okay, so once I did guess close to how many candies were in a jar in 1st grade and won a stuffed dolphin. ;)

I am praying... for my sister and brother-in-law today, on the first anniversary of the death of their tiny preemie baby, Elizabeth. I am also praying for their sweet baby John, now three weeks old, that he will continue to grow well and thrive... and prayers of thanksgiving for his birth and that he is doing so well!

I am thankful... for my children getting along pretty well overall today and yesterday. A small thing, really, but it is certainly something that I appreciate! :)

I am hearing... my current favorite CD still. I tend to get stuck on one type of music for long periods... like 80s songs a few months ago, remember? Apparently it confuses my children... Caroline insists that Emerson Hart is Rick Astley. She thinks it is a funny joke, actually. I have been playing the CD in the kitchen while washing dishes and in the van some, and she keeps saying it is Rick Astley any time she hears it. When she asked me who it really was and I told her, she wouldn't believe me. But today in the van she told me, "This is Emerson Astley." I said, "Hmm, that sounds like a nice name for somebody." She said if she got married and had children, she would name one of them Emerson Astley Whatever-her-husband's-last-name-is. Apparently Astley can be used as a middle name. But of course, she also told me a couple evenings ago that she wanted to be a nun, but only in a convent where her family could still come to visit her. I told her that would be very nice, that we'd like that. ;)

Learning at home... I was recently informed by Caroline that we have two red strawberries - yum! Our strawberries have taken over a whole garden box this year and look like they will give us a nice crop! Caroline was also experimenting with mixing colors earlier as she painted with watercolors.

From the kitchen... I finally updated my menu on the sidebar - sorry for being so terrible at doing that. There's split pea soup simmering on the stove now and dough for summer squash rolls rising. I made a big batch of granola last night, yummy!

I am reading... the May section in A Treasure Chest of Traditions for Catholic Families. And the Alphabet Path lesson plans as carried out at Pinewood Castle.

To live the liturgical year... We are still counting the fifty days of Easter using the Garden of the Good Shepherd sticker calendar, and on Saturday we did a "Garden Party" for week four - that was fun! We will be having a May Crowning this weekend after we make a couple little floral wreaths for our Marian statues... we found a Mary garden statue, made out of concrete, at Home Depot yesterday - I was so excited!! These usually cost close to $100, but this one was only $18! I guess it isn't of a very detailed quality, but that doesn't matter - it looks sturdy enough and will make a great addition to our Mary Garden this year, and perfect timing!

One of my favorite things... I can't believe I am admitting to this since it was created by Apple... we are PC people around here... but the Top 100 Songs app is pretty awesome. Chris has an iTouch - not me - and he has a preview of this application that plays the Top 100 songs for each year from 1947-2009. We have been playing "Name that Tune/Artist" with it. I have done 1994-1997, and I did best with 1994 (I did 1995-97 first and then went back to '94). My theory is that there just got to be too many genres and musicians by the mid-90s. Chris is working his way through the 60s. I suspect that 1985 will be my strongest year. I was five then, but the songs from that year are classic and there weren't 93 million of them the way there were in, say, 1999. I do take issue with how they selected the top songs... they apparently used "lasting popularity" and other factors to decide rather than using the Billboard charts or something along those lines. When the song that received the most radio airplay in 1998 gets ranked #94 for that year, then something is a bit off. ;) Chris has noticed some strangeness with some of the songs chosen in the 60s too, but overall, it has been a neat little program, and most of the songs are accurate, even if their numbering is a little questionable.

I am creating... plans for our May Crowning and a rough outlining of homeschooling plans.

Around the house... A few nights ago, I cleaned off the top of the fridge and a shelf in the kitchen. They were really cluttered and gross, and hubby vacuumed all the dust off (after I made a lame attempt at wiping it up with damp paper towels!). It looks much nicer now! This week... shall I dare attempt to organize my desk?

A few plans for the rest of the week... Caroline's 5 year old portraits at Sears today; an OT evaluation appointment for Caroline tomorrow; Mother's Morning Out for Caroline on Wednesday while I meet with my co-Leader and go over our LLL financial forms which are due next week; Join our local college athletic center so I can start swimming there; May Crowning and Dinner on Saturday

A picture thought I am sharing... I am too lazy to get the memory card and upload today's photos from the strawberry patch in our garden, so here is a photo from last week:

What is Biologically Normal?

Why does our culture try to cache what was meant to be carried? This article on the "species-normal experience" for babies discusses what is biologically normal for an infant. It is a bit lengthy, but I would highly recommend reading it if you have a baby or may have a baby one day. It discusses what human infants expect, biologically... and that's not to be left in a room alone for 12 hours a day and fed artificial baby milk! ;)

What do I mean by "cache" and "carry?" Well, looking at animals (humans being animals as well), there are "cache" animals, which hide their babies somewhere and go off for hours at a time to hunt or graze or whatnot. Deer would be an example. The milk of these mammals is high in fat and protein and is designed so that the babies will stay fuller longer and thus stay safely hidden while their mothers go out for extended periods. The "carry" species are those animals whose young are carried all the time - the mothers do not leave their babies at all, and their milk is of a lower fat and protein content. Human beings are among this group. Our babies cannot follow behind us as do fawns. They are helpless when it comes to being able to move about freely. Our milk is digested rapidly so that our babies will require frequent feedings.

I am not going to rehash the whole article, but just get the thoughts moving here... Many might say that, sure, biology dictates that human babies stay with their mothers, but now we have technology that allows us to change this: bottles, formula, breast pumps, sleep training books and cribs, baby monitors, pacifiers... in other words, mother substitutes, or tools for otherwise distancing mothers from their babies.

But can an increase in technology actually change basic biological norms? Do human infants understand that technology has made for these allowances? Can technology really change the expected biological experience, the norm, the standard, for a baby? Do human babies somehow know that, "Yes, if I was left alone from my mother for a half hour 5,000 years ago, then a wolf might eat me, but now that it is the year 2010 and we have technology, I am safe here in this crib in my own room... so I don't need to cry." Human babies were designed to be with their mothers because they are totally helpless and defenseless - they cannot run away from wolves! Just because the wolves are no longer a threat in our culture, does this mean that the hard-wiring in the infant's brain has changed? That he will feel less of an urgent need to be with his mother?

Garden of the Good Shepherd

Last year, we counted the fifty days of Easter using this sticker calendar called the Garden of the Good Shepherd. There is a short passage that goes along with each sticker as well as a relevant Bible verse. It has been a fun way to remember that we are still celebrating Easter!

This year, I found some fun plans for extending this celebration from some other Catholic mom bloggers, Jessica and Charlotte. They have come up with "Good Shepherd Garden Parties" that go along with the symbols for every week! We used some of their ideas for our dinner to finish up week 4 tonight! Week Four was all about the water... the symbols on the stickers are a boat, a mast, a sail, a fishing net, fish, and a grill (or a barbecue, as they refer to it... clearly it was not made in the South, ha ha!).

So, here is our bowl of nets and fish: pretzels and Goldfish crackers.

Here is our boat (made of a banana and mandarin oranges floating in a sea of blueberries!), which also contains the mast and sail (a little vanilla ice cream at the end holds up the pretzel and fruit leather). These were a big hit! Caroline said, "We're having ICE CREAM for DINNER???" Ha ha... it was maybe two tablespoons of ice cream. It made a yummy twist on fruit salad! Cecilia tried to eat the ice cream by picking up the mast and sail part and eating it off the end, hee hee.

Below are Caroline and Cecilia enjoying their meal. The main course was barbecue pork sandwiches (for the grill... maybe hamburgers would have worked well here too, especially considering that I didn't really grill the pork - we happened to have some left in the deep freeze from Cecilia's birthday party!).

We had this dinner today, May 1st, and so our dining room decor had been changed to reflect the new month: Saint Joseph holy cards on display since today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and our Mary statue, since May is the month dedicated especially to Mary. We will make a little crown of flowers for her and have a May Crowning next weekend! Our paschal candle is also still on the table along with some wildflowers that Caroline picked for a vase on the table!

I hope to add something little by little as the years go by to celebrate the Easter season. These garden parties are one fun way to do this! I am thankful for the other moms out there who share their good ideas with others! :)