Dissection Party!

Nothing says a good time like formaldehyde, dead frogs and young children wielding scalpels. We ordered some double-injected frogs and invited over Larkin's new friend (Christopher, who introduced himself as a scientist when they met at the library park) and Hunter. Everyone was very excited as we set up.

Okay, honestly, regardless of how the picture looks, they were very excited. Larkin and Christopher were at a perfect age for this. They wanted to identify all the organs (with the help of the handy-dandy dissection guide) and see all the different layers of skin, fat, muscle and bone. They cut open stomachs to look for bugs and were pretty thrilled when Larkin's frog turned out to be quite full of what must have been eggs. They spent a very focused hour exploring their frogs.

Finn and Hunter spent about half an hour with their shared frog, and it was a bit more of a slice and dice operation.

They enjoyed some organ identification, too, but were mostly studying how to take a frog apart. This is what happens when a frog spends half an hour with two three year olds with scalpels:

Was that too much information?

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and I would just like anyone who is considering a similar experiment to know that it smells a whole lot better when you don't have 35 kids in one enclosed room working on dissections.

A New Camera!

We finally got a new camera, so we can now prove that our children have not gone the way of our houseplants.

See? Not even a little brown and shriveled.

We fixed up a kid's bike with training wheels! I think Larkin would actually be fine without the training wheels at this point except that she can't quite reach the ground with her feet so she relies on them to keep her balance as she stops. Finn would be a little more secure if he had any inclination whatsoever to watch where he's going. They've had some tumbles, but so far the bike riding has been deemed totally worth the danger.

We have been repeatedly asking Finn if we could cut his hair because it looked so annoying (to us!) and he recently agreed to a summer shearing. I wish I had a before picture, but suffice it to say that the above photo is after about 6 inches of hair were clipped off. I have enjoyed seeing his eyes again, and he has enjoyed hearing everyone tell him how handsome he is with his new haircut.

In other hair news, Larkin's hair is almost down to her waist and she recently decided to grow out her bangs. They're almost long enough to tuck behind her ears, but she may tire of them before they get all the way there.

There are lots more pictures at the Picasaweb site... we'll probably be a little trigger-happy with the new camera for a little while.

You may also notice that we started a Food Album for Larkin. She has always been a cautious eater, and we've been feeling like it's easy to get stuck in ruts of what food we offer her. So we've been taking pictures of the foods she enjoys eating as we make them so she can browse through the album and choose what looks good. This album is only for foods that can be made using supplies we usually have in stock so gratification can be relatively instantaneous. The specialty trip-to-the-store-required items album can come later. It's amazingly difficult to make food look tasty in pictures.

Larkin has been sewing! I cut up some soft old clothes and she finished the edges so we have new nose wipers:

Not-So-Dire Straits

The kids are bopping around the house singing "Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free." They think they are singing about some utopian world where Emile doesn't have to work and everyone has chickens.

Reality Check

Recently, Finn has been very interested in understanding which parts of books, games and movies are fantasy and which are reality. Sometimes the distinction is complicated: "Are there dinosaurs in the real world?" Well, no, but there used to be. "Are unicorns extinct, too?" Well, no, they never were real. Sometimes it's more straightforward: "Are there really ferris wheels?" What, he thinks the fair we went to (less than a month ago!) might just be a really good dream? Distinguishing fantasy creatures from real animals definitely seems to be a recurring theme.

The kids have decided that, after we pay for the house addition (I'm so glad they're on board with the idea of a bigger house or saving would be much more difficult), they'd like to save money to go on a family vacation via airplane. Next stop, Mars. I told them that one might be a little out of our league, savings-wise, but they were fairly adamant. Larkin thought I was quite the killjoy: "I mean, all we need is a ship that can keep us alive during the trip and some kind of collapsible structure we can set up to keep air in when we get there!" Well, when you put it that way...

Other interesting conversations today: Why dark colors absorb heat and light colors reflect it, why sometimes it's better to draw people without noses, what an owl pellet is, why casseroles aren't very good before they've been baked even if you're really really hungry, why i might prefer to have washable marker washed off of the bottoms of hands and feet before said hands and feet scale the furniture, whether or not we'll adapt well to city living for a few months, why goggles don't work very well when some hair is trapped under them.