The Apple Orchard

We made it to the apple orchard! It turns out there is one right in Brookings (the Moriarty orchard) with some 16 kinds of apples. It was a beautiful crisp, cool day for picking apples, and Misha was so excited. We ran around from tree to tree, collecting a sample of lots of different kinds of apples, including Honeycrisp, Sweet 16, and I'm not sure what else.

Rows and rows of apple trees: a kid's paradise.

Pulling hard!

Those high ones are hard to get!

How could I resist putting him in a tree?

Now he can reach some higher apples ...


Here he is excitedly talking about the big apples he's getting:



And another video ("Can you shake the tree for a second, please?")




Hooked on iPod: Misha assuming the plop-and-play posture.


Sebastian, just hanging out.

This toy puppy talks incessantly, so even Sebastian can elicit a song or rhyme by just bumping it.


Ready for school!


Painting Party in Misha's art corner. :)


Kid Talk: some more funny things Misha says ...

“I don't know if that's a spiderweb or a cobweb, because I don't know if a spider made it or a cob made it.”

“Thistles weren't supposed to be in the world, Mom.”
“Why not?”
“Because sometimes they poke people.”

“He's drooling a lot. He's drooling like 150 miles of drool.” - Misha about Sebastian.

Looking at a picture of himself with hair spiked with hair gel: “That's the picture where I'm jealous.”

Even though I have explained many a time why girls can't pee standing up, Misha still asks about it. Most recently, he said: “Why do girls sit down to pee? Because they're too tired?”

Recently, Misha was dedicatedly drawing a picture. “Look, Mommy!” he said.
I looked at his pageful of little circles and designs, and like any encouraging parent, praised him: “Wow, cool!”
“See?” Misha explained, pointing to his picture. “He’s pooping!”

Last weekend, I asked him what he had for breakfast at Grandma's and he looked at me like it should be obvious and said, “Waffles. I always have waffles at Grandma's. You should remember that.”
He then wanted me to make waffles and I said only Grandma and Grandpa can make waffles. He said, “Yes you can. I know the recipe.”
“You do? What is it?”
“Well … Do you have waffle powder?”

(It hasn't changed since I lived there - Grandma makes waffles from a mix, while Grandpa makes them from scratch - folding in the egg whites separately!)

Criss Cross Applesauce

Portrait: Mish & Sebash

Misha and I decided to make applesauce in honor of fall. I would like to take him to an orchard, but this time we just bought some apples from the store! Here is the photo story of the applesauce:

I quartered and peeled them ...

while Misha diligently cut them into small pieces ...

to boil on the stove.

Then we used our nifty immersion blender (from Grandma Kate, present in this photo via the telephone) to create real applesauce consistency, ...

added cinnamon and plenty of sugar, ...

and ate it up!



Bath time fun: I usually bathe the boys together as it seems to save time. I can wash both kids' hair one after the other, then finish washing Sebastian and pull him out and dress him while Misha plays. Works great, and they like it too.


Here is Misha in his tent, along with Sebastian. He likes it when the baby can go inside, too. I think my days of crouching in that little tent may be coming to an end! (However, yesterday he informed me "Mom! We have a meeting downstairs in my tent! You're going to be late!") Sebastian likes the tent as well - sometimes if he's fussy, I'll put him inside and he will forget his problems while gazing at the way the sun lights up the red fabric ceiling.




A big smile for Grandma!

Both Misha and Sebastian are growing and changing so quickly. Sebastian is so alert and interactive now that he's just over three months old. He is less content to lay on the floor, preferring to be held upright in a lap or, better yet, held in a standing position. He loves to brace his legs and experiment with his own strength. He is so much more aware of other people now that it's great fun to play with him and make him laugh. He also tries so hard to communicate, from loud, complaining yowls (usually from being left out) to the cutest appreciative, throaty gurgles. In Josh's words, "Yep! We made another cute one!"





Misha is loving preschool and he comes home with cute stories about what they do there. Apparently they sit on colored "polyspots" for grouptime and they all have special jobs to do every week. This week Misha got to put away dishes. Last week, he got to turn off the lights. I love it when he tells me how they pay attention: "Head Start style! Criss cross applesauce, hands in your lap, eyes on the teacher!" He sings me the songs they learned and tells me what he ate for lunch and snack. He's very excited about an upcoming field trip to the pumpkin patch.


He has also reached a turning point in being ready to listen to chapter books! This is great for me, who is getting a bit sick of reading books like "The Berenstain Bears and the Truth" every single night of the week. We read Charlotte's Web throughout a week and Misha hung onto every second. Every day he wanted to know what would happen to Wilbur. When, towards the end of the book, I read a sentence in the middle of a long non-dialogue, narrative paragraph about the coming of fall and Charlotte "not having much time left," I didn't expect Misha to pick up on it. But sure enough, as soon as I paused to begin a new paragraph, Misha piped up with concern: "But why doesn't Charlotte have much time left??" We were both sad at the end, but I tried to emphasize the fact that Charlotte's children were still there, as much for myself as for Misha!

We have also been reading the Junie B. Jones series and the Magic Tree House books, which are great. Junie B. is a classic, exasperating kindergartner and the kids in the Magic Tree House books travel on journeys to other countries, cultures, and times. (They visit the African savana and the the Amazon, to name a few.) These books take about an hour to read start to finish, and we finish one every time we sit down to read one. He even tells me he wants to read five of those books in one night before bed. He also tries writing words on his papers, sounding out his friends' names. He has one friend named Mercy, and he methodically wrote her name MRSE all by himself by sounding it out. I was very impressed.


Sebastian watches his big brother play at the park.


Misha, Sebby, and friends from our apartment complex.

So big!

Looking around.


Misha providing a "menu" of bib options for Sebastian. :)

We have recently acquired an iPod Touch, which is so extremely cool that it can only be described in the words of my sister as "the pinnacle of civilization." Like a true child of the second millennium, Misha has already mastered it and I constantly find him watching little videos, playing the race-car game, learning Mandarin from text and interactive graphics, or playing with Google Earth. Josh has been teaching him all of the countries, and now Misha can locate more nations than the average adult - without the benefit of being able to read anything written on the globe. So when he found Google Earth, he was hooked, especially after he figured out how to zoom in. Today he brought the iPod to Josh, asking, "Daddy, is this Russia? Is this Russia??" Josh glanced at the map, which was zoomed in to such an extent that it could have been anywhere. He zoomed out, and out, and out, until - you guessed it - Russia filled the screen.

Nature's Wonders

Our butterflies hatched out this week! Both times (one Monday, one today), they were in their pupas when we went to bed and out of them by the time we woke up, but we got to watch as their wings dried. After they started flapping with some confidence, we let put them on our potted flowers until they were ready to take off. Misha was sad to see them go ... but that's how it is with living things.


A boy and a butterfly:




We've also been back on the bike trail quite a bit. We found two toads, which we invited to our house for one night. They were so cute that I just couldn't resist catching them, and I have fond memories of catching toads with Tanya to keep for a few days at a time. Grandma Thomas used to let us put them in her bathtub to swim!

Misha and one of his toads. "Just like Toad and Frog!" he exclaimed, thinking of the book. "I didn't know toads were real!"

The next day we got Daddy to join us on the trail (to take the toads home) while Sebastian stayed at home with Grandma.

Misha eagerly peering into the water to see fish and frogs.


Daddy joined in the frog-catching fun!


Misha even caught some frogs all by himself.

This video captures the excitement of frog catching:




We rode around the beautiful youth fishing park behind the bike trail, admiring the fall colors.


A few pictures of the little one:


I love those pudgy arms!

Misha laughing with Sebastian. :)