Please let me brag a little...

I am very excited. As some of you know, I've become very interested in Montessori in the last year. A lot of her educational philosophies make total sense to me, and are far from what we see in most schools today. So, we've tried to incorporate what we can from her philosophy into our own home. Unfortunately a lot of Montessori materials are quite pricey (even though they are all very simple). So, James and I do our best to make our own. I'm encouraged when I remember that Maria Montessori had to make many of her own materials too. Anyway, I have just finished making a mobile for Charlie, and I'm very proud of myself. Mobiles help aid the development of concentration. This is called the "munari mobile" and is the first in the visual series. The cheapest one I could find online was $35 with $20 shipping. I made this one for under $10 (and I have a lot of paint and invisible thread leftover).

I'm having a hard time getting a clear picture of mine, so here is what it is supposed to look like: http://www.google.com/imgres?q=munari+mobile&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1SKPH_enUS394US394&biw=1024&bih=499&tbm=isch&tbnid=7QxhVCax0kR5rM:&imgrefurl=http://bellascasa.com/%253Fpage_id%253D21&docid=EmxXEFMfMool6M&w=545&h=600&ei=YtROTp7kEtTTgQfai8mMBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=495&vpy=151&dur=4887&hovh=236&hovw=214&tx=127&ty=160&page=1&tbnh=113&tbnw=109&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0

And here is mine:

Lucy wanted me to take a picture of her.

Thanks for letting me show off a little. I'm always happy to return the favor.

Here are a couple of other pictures while I'm at it.

Charlie is ready for church.

So is Lucy (so she thinks).

I heard a lot of commotion in the other room the other day. I walked in and found that Lucy had strapped her bear into Charlie's bouncy seat and was very animatedly reading him a George book. It was very cute.

a little of everyday

And now, after all of those exciting posts, I bring you a little bit of our everyday life. Here is Charlie, chomping on my finger. It has come to my attention recently that BOTH of my children are teething. Lucy is getting her bottom molars (I noticed this when she was screaming full force at me). And Mr. Charlie's bottom two front teeth are just barely visible (not yet poking through). Here he is sucking/biting on my finger.

I know my pictures are fuzzy most of the time-- I can't help it! Basement lighting...

Lucy's book obsession continues. Recently, she woke up from a nap and found me reading a parenting book on the couch. She asked me to read it to her. I thought maybe I would read a paragraph out loud and she would get bored and demand another book, but no. We read that discipline book together for about 45 minutes. And then she wanted to read it again the next day! I wonder if what I learned will have any effect, because now she knows exactly what I'm trying to do! Anyway, here we are, reading. I think we were actually reading a book meant for children here.

Remember the shoe obsession? Here are some of my favorite pictures.

On another "daily life" note: please keep our Charlie in your thoughts and prayers. At his two month check-up, his pediatrician had some concern about his rapid breathing. She sent us to a specialist, who found several more things that concerned her. She sent us to more specialists, and since then he's had blood taken, x-rays taken, and an echo-cardiogram. We have several more appointments on the horizon, another echo, and a possible MRI. Overall, in the last month, we have spent over 13 hours in doctors' offices-- too much! Poor Lucy finally just lost it in the last one and went on a rampage, pushing computer buttons, pulling cords, and finding her way into a doctor's personal office where I found her using the telephone. Oh my. Anyway, please keep us in your prayers as we try to patiently make our way through all of this. We trust that all will be well.

the Garden

I've been meaning to post some pictures of our garden now for a while. We love our community garden. For $70 for the year, and very minimal work (we weed for about an hour once a week, we don't water at all) we have a nice little 600 ft plot all our own. Here are our gigantic sunflowers.

And the corn!

And our little helper tending to the zucchini plants. I much prefer this to her usual form of "helping" which is running away through other people's plots.

Charlie remains fairly quiet and lets me pull weeds as long as he is snuggled up in the sling.

Sometimes Lucy comes dangerously close to picking other people's produce. Here she is going after some tomatoes that do not belong to us.

Here is a look at most of our garden. Sunflowers on the left. On the bottom are a couple of yellow squash and a sweet pumpkin plant. Above that is 4 zucchini plants. Some basil is growing amongst that. The corn in on the right. You can't see it but on the bottom right are green beans, that have sadly taken a turn for the worse.

Before the beans failed though, we managed to get several good pounds of beans:

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the wheatgrass.

The enemy. Stink bugs. They are horrible. Watch out midwest because they are coming your way. They are extremely prolific and they have yet to figure out a way to get them under control. If you kill them, they let off a smell that attracts more of them. Through the garden e-mail list-serve, we learned that the only good way to at least make an effort at controlling them is to flick them in a jar of soap water. That can be tedious work though. They are everywhere!

But we like the bees. Bees are good.

We really have had a good time growing our little "lazy" garden, and are about to plant some fall crops (lettuce, kale, beets, etc).

a grand week (part 2)

Grandma and Grandpa Stanley finally came to see us, after the planned visit was delayed by a barn roof that was blown into their crops. It was lovely to see them and visit with them. Unfortunately, it was a wicked hot week. One day we tried to go to a state park in Annapolis. It was a beach plus a state park, and you can see a large bridge from all of it (I can't remember the name of the bridge).

Lucy enjoyed going down this slide, but we could only handle it for a couple of turns... the "sand" of the playground was ground up old tire, which might be very environmentally friendly, but it was miserable to stand in on this 100 degree day.

We found some picnic tables in the shade and had a PB&J picnic.

The flies were horrible and kept biting everyone. We started singing "Shoo fly don't bother me" and Lucy thought it was the most hilarious thing she'd ever heard.

Charlie emerges from the sling to get some fresh air... poor guy.

Lucy found the perfect sized tree branch to swing on.

That was about all we could handle of the state park.

I think even in the short week that they were here, Charlie changed quite a bit. It's hard to keep up with him!

Grandma and Grandpa brought us some things that we had been storing at their house, including James' keyboard. I would say I don't know who is happier to see it (James or Lucy), but I know the answer: Lucy. We're considering hiring her out as a DJ.

Sadly we did not capture this on camera, but one of my personal highlights of the week was that Mary gave me some sewing tips on my new machine. That gave me a little confidence to really get going.

Grandma and Grandpa also brought a wonderful present for Lucy: play-dough! Grandpa enjoyed many hours of play-dough fun while he was here.

It was so nice to have them here and the week went by too fast! I just realized the other day that Christmas is only 4 months away though, so we'll be seeing them again soon!

Blackberries

We've had a very busy couple of weeks. So, I'm going to be doing some catching up. These are from several weeks ago. Lucy has developed an obsession with shoes, which pretty much makes our shoe rack a toy chest.

We tried to relive our wonderful blackberry day of last year. Sadly, the blackberries were just not as wonderfully delicious as last year. We think we went just a little too early. It was still fun though, and we managed to console ourselves with a used book sale. Lucy did very well only picking the black ones, and even managed to put a few in the bucket.