A boy and his horse

Walked into Dominic's room and saw this. It's times like this I wish the boy could talk!

For the birds

Chickadee nest in the bluebird box.

My Grandpa Harold used to claim that written instructions -- like for programming the VCR -- were "for the birds." He might have been right; I think the birds around here need some written instructions. We've got chickadees nesting in the bluebird box, and our cardinals, who have the perfect place to nest in these tall, private bushes on the side of our house, decided to build a nest in the triple jogging stroller.

They are now homeless. 

On our quest to attract a variety of birds to our yard, we visited Wild Birds Unlimited, which is a very dangerous place to visit with kids. Not because there are real wild birds flying around, but because they have lots of breakable bird baths and ceramic thingies in the shape of bluebirds. They also have bluebird houses for $39.99, and if I had paid that instead of $8, then I'd really be mad at the chickadee squatters. 

This is NOT the place for a cardinal nest.

Anyway, the lady at WBU was very helpful (and proved to me how very little I actually know about birds!) and explained how some birds won't be attracted to feeders full of nuts because their bills can't crack them. Others won't eat millet, since it's only for ground-feeding birds like juncos. Goldfinches like thistle, blue jays like peanuts and cracked corn, and bluebirds prefer mealworms, the freeze-dried variety of which can be plumped up by soaking in water. Sounds like the perfect job for a three-year-old.

We now have five feeders around our yard, including one just for hummingbirds. So far we've seen all the usual suspects (that's you, sparrows), but also a mourning dove, and Catherine swears she saw a red-winged blackbird. I think I will believe her out of hope.

Stay tuned to see what actually shows up at our feeders. For now, I'm going to check the mailbox for chimney swifts.

A rainbow for Ms. Jean

The kids have been generating a lot of drawings lately -- at the end of every day they have amassed an army of princesses in castles, fairies at tea parties, ballerinas in wedding dresses, and submarines and rocketships (gender stereotypes are alive and well in the Lorelle household). And I don't know what to do with them -- I feel bad throwing them away, but boy, that's a lot of paper to save! So I have taken to mailing them to out-of-town relatives (Hi Nonnie!) or giving them away as thank-yous (like to the clerks at Trader Joe's for putting up with the kids' antics in the store).

Lately Catherine has been sending her tea party pictures to a neighbor across the street who invited her over for tea. I like it; I save a stamp. 

A few days ago Vincent drew a rainbow (a change from his usual rocketship/pirateship/submarine theme) and announced he wanted to give the drawing to Ms. Jean. I almost asked if Ms. Jean was related to the skeleton who lives under his bed and makes periodic appearances in the middle of the night, but then I remembered that we have a homebound neighbor down the street by that name. We had raked leaves for her a few times and talked to her at the mailboxes, but that was it. So I was surprised that Vincent remembered her. 

He happily raced his rainbow down to her mailbox, and that was that. 

This morning, I noticed something taped to our mailbox. It was a note from the reclusive Ms. Jean, and it was a hearty thank-you for the rainbow.

"I have hung it up," she wrote in her unsteady hand, "and touch it every time I go by it. You are a very sweet little boy. My love and thanks again for it, Ms. Jean."

It was Vincent's first piece of mail, and I think he was every bit as thrilled that someone thought about him as Ms. Jean was to receive the rainbow.

Sometimes, like the disciples, I wonder just how I'm supposed to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the sick when I really don't know any. But then I look at how a little boy saw a simple need -- loneliness -- and met it with a rainbow, and I think I understand.

Down on the (NCSU) Farm

The Iowa genes were alive and well this morning thanks to the NC State Farm Days. In cowboy hats and bandannas, we started by setting a few ground rules, namely: 1) No rifles, as there are no redcoats at Farm Days. 2) No strangling hugging the baby chicks. 3) Mommy will NOT carry your cowboy hat when you get sick of it.

By the barn doors I was wearing a cowboy hat.

Still has a few feet to grow before he's as big as that wheel.

Staring down a cow

Baby chicks, a few hours old

Tickling the rabbit. Sure he enjoyed that.

The real reason we went -- free farm-fresh ice cream!

New pet?

Sometimes I just like to say "Yes"

Because you get moments like this.

Bluebird, bluebird

A few weeks ago on a beautiful Sunday afternoon the family headed out to Yates Mill Park in Raleigh to build a bluebird nesting box. Bluebirds are cavity nesters, and with the rapid development of land and the disappearance of their natural habitat, their numbers have been declining. These special boxes give them a safe, dry place to build their nests.

So we built the box, and we took it home and mounted it on a stake just like the directions instructed. We even bought a piece of PVC pipe to put around the bottom to keep snakes and other predators away.


Then we waited. That same week we saw two sets of bluebirds cavorting around the yard. We bought a book of bird calls and learned to identify bluebirds by their song. The kids did a lapbook on bluebirds.We participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count at Crowder Park. One afternoon Vincent and I sat in a neighbor's driveway and watched the bluebirds fly in and out of the nesting box, and Catherine made a trail of grapes from the trees to the nesting house for the bluebirds to find their way. Soon, we thought, we'd have little baby bluebirds.

Fast-forward to this morning. The box is constructed so that one side flips open for you to keep an eye on nest-building. We tiptoed up to the box, knocked softly on the side to warn away any birds inside, and flipped open the side. And guess what? We have -----

CHICKADEES. 

Apparently bluebirds use pine straw for their nests, and chickadees use moss. Oh well. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a bird is a bird is a bird.

Off to study chickadees.

Le Salon des Refusés

"Starry Night," by Vincent van Gogh, 1889

I love art. I really do. Most of it. But modern art I just don't get. To me, it's an Emperor's New Clothes type-of-thing; a critic deems it worthy and the rest of the art world jumps on the bandwagon. Oh yeah! Me too! I see that now! So much of it is subjective and relies on you accepting the artist's interpretation of reality - but what's wrong with "real" reality? Like Keats said,

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Roger and a bundle of  twigs... I mean, modern art.

A few weeks ago Roger and I had dinner at the art museum restaurant. Along the wall behind him was a massive canvas of what appeared to be twigs curled into swirls. Like my husband described it after a few glasses of wine, it looked like crows would fly out if you fired a shotgun into it.



According to our server, this is a famous piece by some famous guy and is an interpretation of Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night." What, you didn't get that? And it's not just bundles of dry twigs -- it's carefully arranged dried maple saplings (that look ready to ignite at the slightest spark).

At which point Roger asked the server if he could smoke.

In honor of this piece, I asked mes artistes en residence to create their own interpretations of "Starry Night." After ascertaining they had no idea what "interpretation" meant, here's what I got:

By Catherine, age 5. Memorable because this is her first work that does not contain a princess and/or a ballerina.

By Vincent, age 3. "Starry Rocketship." Most of what Vincent "interprets" involves rocketships. 

The baby was banned from participating in this interpretative experiment because all he did was chew on crayons and spit the wax slivers onto his high chair tray. Which looked, now that I think about it, kind of like modern art.

Educational tidbit for the day: Le Salon des Refusés
Back in 1863, a bunch of revolutionary artists in Paris shrugged off the classically-accepted ideas of art. They were the laughingstock of the art critic bunch, who unanimously said nothing would ever come of these guys. They were right, of course; we know nothing today of Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro or James Whistler. When the Paris Salon, a juried art exhibition, refused to show anything but pieces that adhered to the classic forms, the emperor ruled that rejected artists could show their work next door. That exhibition became known as "le Salon des Refusés" - literally, the Salon of Rejects. 

Favorite art books:
The Private Lives of the Impressionists, by Sue Roe
Lust for Life, by Irving Stone. An eye-opening view of a tormented genius. You'll never look at van Gogh's Sunflowers the same way.
The Annotated Mona Lisa, by Carol Strickland
For fiction, Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland is an interesting account of Auguste Renoir as he creates one of his masterpieces

For the wee ones:
Any of the board book artist series by Julie Merberg and Susanne Bober, like this one
The Laurence Anholt series. He has books on van Gogh, Degas, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, da Vinci, and Cezanne
The "Come Look with Me" series by Gladys Blizzard

Of Redcoats and butterflies

Marching in the militia

We figured we had wreaked enough havoc around our usual stomping grounds, so we departed for an educational field trip to Colonial Williamsburg (CW Homeschool Days = Really Cheap Tickets). We'd been studying the founding of our country, so the kids knew all about George Washington, candle-making and the fact that the colonists used chamber pots. CW, then, was the perfect cap to this unit. Plus, it was cheaper than Disney (where Pocahontas has dual citizenship... very confusing to a five-year-old. "If Pocahontas is dead, how is she in Disney?").

The four-hour drive was easy (thanks to copious amounts of unhealthy snacks and a portable DVD player). Once we arrived, Duke of Gloucester Street was full of moms and dads with approximately 7.2 children each, all in colonial costume. So, wanting our children to fit in with the other nerds, one of our first stops was to buy a colonial bonnet for Catherine. She wore it to bed that night, too, and wore it so much that we stopped noticing she had it on... until several strange glances at rest stops on the way home ("She's Amish! Stop staring!").

Modern discipline was no longer working

Then, since every good little colonial boy needs a gun, we bought one for Vincent. Not just a wimpy little pistol, either. A rifle (or musket, I still don't know the difference) as big as he is. He promptly picked off a family of Japanese tourists (Welcome to America, folks!), at which point Daddy had a little talk with him about only shooting redcoats. And who should walk by right then but a preschool teacher herding a militia of three-year-olds... and wearing a bright red coat. "Bang! You dead, redcoat lady."

We'll be getting him an NRA membership for his birthday.

We had dinner at the Kings Arms tavern both nights, where none of the kids would try the "game pye" -- venison, rabbit and a few other small furry creatures. In fact, later on at Jamestown, the little boy who had no trouble aimng at anything that moved grew gravely concerned at the Indian campsite where there was an overload of hanging animal skins, asking every Indian he could find, "Do you hurt butterflies?"

At Jamestown where it all began

Indians definitely do not wear butterfly skins, by the way.

Also at Jamestown was the rebuilt ship Susan Constant, which the first colonists arrived on from England. I do feel the need to point out, after a day of indoctrination, that the Jamestown settlers beat the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims by some thirty years. And their life was ROUGH. They arrived during the worst drought in 700 years, and even the Indians were hurting on the food front, so they were hardly interested in trading food with the settlers. Of the 100-some original settlers, only 38 were left by spring, most having died from starvation. They even ate their horses and dogs (but not any butterflies).

Someday this photo will embarrass him.

We also -- this is one of those actions that will quickly inspire us to ask ourselves, "What we were thinking?" -- bought the kids a drum and a tin whistle. One of the trip's highlights was the Friday night drum & fife parade through Colonial Williamsburg, where all the redcoat soldiers marched in formation to the armory and then fired muskets and a cannon. Our little soldier was right there with them, tapping his drumsticks and asking, "Are they redcoats? Should I shoot them?" And Catherine, terrified though she was of the cannon, stayed right up front and watched. Bravery on all fronts.


Ask Catherine, though, and she'll tell you her favorite part was the horse-drawn carriage ride through town. That was very cool; we were transformed from part of the plebian masses into the landed gentry elite. Perhaps that was our fifteen minutes of fame.  

We're home now, and everyone is back in their own beds (I refuse to ever share a bed with Dominic again), and Vincent has his gun and tri-corner hat in a very special place but takes them out every few minutes to hunt for redcoats (Note to son: The dog is NOT a redcoat). I woke up around 5 a.m. to his tinny little voice calling out in his sleep, "Mommy? I have a question. Do I need to shoot the redcoats?"

Yes, son, you do. But not the butterflies.