Last Saturday, Evenstar got her first baby tooth. (lower right central incisor)

This morning, Sunshine Girl lost her first baby tooth. (lower left central incisor)

I took five steps holding on to the LEGO walker!


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Note from Mom: No, there are no pictures. I was too busy hovering over her, hands inches away from her waist, just in case she started to fall. And I helped her stand up by the walker, because she can't do 'pull up against thing that moves' yet.

Evenstar has been expanding her menu of food. Tonight for the first time she had an almost identical meal to the family--ham (hers was ground), sweet potatoes, and green beans.



And she got to feed herself part of it. I think that some of the sweet potato actually made it to her tummy...

I was playing around in my flikr account, showing Sunshine Girl some pictures, and I ended up in my family pictures directory.

Compare these two photos:

Sunshine Girl -- April 10, 2008



Sunshine Girl -- April 12, 2009



Sometime during the last year, my little girl has become a big girl!

You can sit up anywhere in the room, not just the corners.

There are many more things to learn--the baby here can do lots of cool stuff, like standing up and walking.

Crawling forward is very hard work, but worth it.

Even when you crawl forward, you can still get stuck under things.

Riding in the shopping cart is fun except that Mommy won't let you chew on the cart like you do on your stroller.

It is neat to take baths in the big tub with a friend.

If another baby takes away your paci, screaming at the top of your lungs will make Mommy come and she will give it back. If the baby tries again, punch him in the face. Mommy will pick you up and tell you "No! We don't hit our friends!" but the baby won't get your paci again.

Chickens and alpacas are very soft to pet. Goats like to nibble on your feet.

Mommy does not always pull over to feed you if you start screaming in the car. Sometimes it just makes her drive faster.

Edited to add:

It is much more fun to feed yourself bits of food with your fingers than to have Mommy feed you food with the spoon. But spoon food is still good.

Question: Marco wants to find information about travel agents in his area, which reference should he use:

A. picture of a set of books labeled encyclopedia
B. pcture of a book labeled dictionary
C. picture of a book labeled world atlas
D. picture of a book with the 'fingers walking' icon and 'yellow pages'

Junior Jedi's questions:

What's a travel agent?

What's that thing in picture D?

My questions:

How is a child who has never traveled outside his or her home state supposed to know what a travel agent is? (We travel, but drive everywhere and make our own hotel reservations, but I'm thinking of children living in poverty, mostly.) You have to know what a travel agent is to know to look for one in the phone directory.

How many modern children have seen their parents use a phone directory, rather than the internet, to look up this kind of information? (I haven't in over a year. I do so about once a year. I look up similar information using Google about once a week.)

Why the cutsieness with the pictures? Why not just use the words for the options?

I learned that if you crawl backwards into a corner, you can sit yourself up.

I learned that once you are sitting up, if you wiggle your bottom and legs around and sway the top part of your body, you can move forward. (But don't sway too hard, 'cause then you fall over.)

I learned that you can get up on the palms of your hands and the bottoms of your feet if you have your head pressed against something like a comfy chair, or Mommy, or the Fisher Price piano. I learned that it is a very bad idea to try to do this if you don't have your head pressed against something like a comfy chair, or Mommy, or the Fisher Price piano, because the floor is not your friend.

I learned that if you scoot yourself to the edge of the crib and reach up and grab the crib rail you can p-u-u-u-l-l-l-l yourself up and stand.

I learned that if you are standing in your crib holding on to the rail after pulling yourself up, and you lean your head way back to look at the pretty ceiling fan, and you forget and let go, you fall over backwards. This is not fun.

I learned that whenever you find something new, interesting, and different while exploring the room, Mommy will take it away from you as soon as she notices you have it.

It's getting easier for breastfeeding moms, but there are still hurdles...

Breast is Best (as long as we don't see it)

an excerpt:

As a culture with a breastfeeding deficit, perhaps the majority does not understand that when a baby latches onto a breast, some fraction of the areola is almost certainly going to show. This could be why publishers unknowingly hinder the normalization of breastfeeding with rules specifying how much of a nursing breast can appear in an image, excluding, “any part of the nipple.” Yet, rules like this effectively prevent people from passing on the healthy knowledge of what a normal latched infant looks like. In addition, they keep breastfeeding on the periphery of acceptable social behaviors: “Breast is best, BUT don’t let me see your nipples!”

Go read it!

I read 10 books out loud to Mommy and wrote my whole name, so I got to go to the library and get my very own library card!

And then I checked out 8 books all by myself!

I ate noodles!

Mommy made me some GFCF alphabet noodles to go with my dinner and I gummed them all up!

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I can also play LEGOs now with the Quattro bricks that the Kirkwoods gave me!

I 'crawled' 2 feet. Backwards.

Okay, so I didn't get to where I was trying to go, but where I ended up was pretty interesting, too. Watch out, Mommy--time to start keeping all the small stuff too high for me to reach.

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In other news, at my six month appointment I weighed 18 lb 9 oz and was 27.5 inches long. That's as long as Junior Jedi and Sunshine Girl were at 9 months! And WAY heavier!

As part of their 100 Hours of Astronomy activities, NASA Goddard hosted a NARHAMS rocket launch today. d_84 and I took the kids to participate--their first rocket launch!



NARHAMS had a few dozen rockets available as loaners to children who did not bring their own. Junior Jedi and Sunshine Girl have received their rockets and are ready to go stand in line for their turn at the launch pad. While they waited in line, Evenstar and I went to watch from the observation area.



To see the whole story, ( click here )

After our launch, we went and hung out in the Goddard Visitor's Center for a while, Junior Jedi and Sunshine Girl decided they were glad not to have been Gemini astronauts, and Evenstar demonstrated the plasma sphere.

Jr. Jedi (staring at one of his math books over his soup bowl): This equation on the front of my pre-algebra workbook can't be solved, because it has two unknowns but only one equation.

Mom (looks at equation on book x=y² + 1): Let's plug in some numbers. If y = 1, what would x be?

JJ: two

Mom: If y = 2, what would x be?

JJ: five

Mom: What about if y = 0?

JJ: one

Mom: Okay, how about if y = 1/2?

JJ: one and one-quarter

Mom: Let's make a graph--go get a piece of scratch paper.

*boy gets scrap paper, mom sketches axis*

Mom: Okay, now, which line is y = 0?

JJ: This one. *indicates y-axis*

Mom: No, that's x = 0. See, y = 1 is up here, so y = 0 is the x-axis. Now, let's put on those points we just figured out.

*points are graphed*

Mom: Okay, how about y = 3?

JJ: x = 10. *stares intently at points* Wait! That's not a linear equation!

Mom: Exactly--it's a quadratic, it has a square term in it. *sketches top half of curve* Now, what if we do negative y terms? How about y = -1?

JJ: x = 2 Hey! It's the same!

Mom: Right! The curve mirrors itself around the x-axis.

JJ: That curve looks just like the one in the picture on my text book. But that has a line, too. *studies the picture some more* It intersects with the curve in two places--does that meant that the system has two solutions?

Mom: Yes! Equations with squared terms can have two solutions.

JJ: And two parallel lines will either have no solutions or all the solutions! Depending on whether they are the same line or not.

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And to think I was impressed when he spelled "innocuous" correctly on the first try on his spelling pre-test. When I expressed surprise he told me, "Oh I just use other words that are pronounced similarly to spell new words."

Shamelessly stolen from dmmaus, who does Irregular Webcomic and included this in the comic's notes today:

Next time you're standing next to a large tree, think about the fact that the brown wrinkly cylinder next to you is pumping vast amounts of water from the ground, up to the tips of every single branch and twig and leaf, right to the very top of its height. And is doing so in utter silence, with no moving parts, non-stop, every day of the year, for what might be several hundred years, while standing exposed to everything the elements can throw at it, without breaking down or requiring maintenance of any sort.

Trees--marvels of natural engineering.

I rolled over from my back to my front when no one was looking!

Once in a while there'll be a "What do you call your homeschool?" discussion on one or the other of my homeschool forums, but this one just came up in the course of another discussion:

Nihil Nomen Academy

What this book is:

A beautifully photographed and laid-out cookbook, chock-full of recipes that kids will love to eat.
A wonderful cookbook for a parent with moderate cooking skills to use with their child/children to introduce them to the joys of cooking.

What this book is not:

A child's first cookbook.
A cookbook for a novice young cook to use alone.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading through the recipes in this cookbook, and am looking forward to trying them with my team of young sous-chefs (5 and 10 years old). This book includes recipes for things I've been making for years, only in slightly simpler variations, which will save time and steps. Aside from a few oddly-named recipes (a recipe entitled 'pumpkin soup' which contains no pumpkin, a leek and cheese tart with zucchini as the primary ingredient, and a decidedly non-traditional 'bubble and squeak') I thought all the recipes were well thought through and presented. The photography is amazing.

The only thing this book is missing is a brief introductory section where cooking terms are defined and presented and cooking tools are depicted.

This cookbook is definitely a good addition to my shelf.

For more reviews, see:

Amazon product link
LibraryThing link

Monday: Tortilla-crusted Pork, Sweet Potatoes, Corn, Pepper Strips
Tuesday: 'Irish' Potato Pancakes, O'Garlic Sausages*, Peas, Pears in Lime Jello**
Wednesday: Turkey Stew over Pie Crust Pieces
Thursday: Tacos/Burritos
Friday: Pink-fish Noodle Casserole with Peas, Fruit
Saturday: Hot Turkey Sandwiches, Carrots, Salad


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*That's what the store calls them, besides, no corned beef this year due to allergies.
**What? It's green!

1 carrot per person
1 12-oz can ginger ale per four people (or Vernors, if you have it)

Cut the carrots into 3 inch lengths and then quarter the lengths. Put the carrots in a pan and pour the ginger ale over them. Bring to a boil and cook, uncovered, until the ginger ale is almost boiled away. The carrots will be super tender and coated with a gingery glaze.

If you're trying to pretend that your customer service call center is not in India by having all the thickly-accented employees adopt American-sounding names, you might want to have the muzak play something other than sitar music and/or other obviously ethnic instruments. It was quite pleasant to listen to, but you're not fooling anyone.