L.I.F.E. is good

We spent Memorial Day weekend at the LIFE is good conference in Vancouver, WA. This was our second year and it was much more satisfying than last time. Last year we were very interested in some of the presentations and discussion groups and ended up frustrated to realize that attending those really didn't mix with keeping up with a 1.5 year old and a 3.5 year old while they navigate what is essentially a 4 day party with hundreds of kids and tons of fun shops. This year we were just there to party.

Within minutes of our arrival, Larkin had her face painted like a rainbow cat. The kids played with elaborate dress-up costumes, a huge game of tag, made corn husk and clothespin dolls, pipe cleaner madness, henna tattoos, two different storytelling circles, a playdough extravaganza, bottle cap art, and probably lots of other organized activities I've forgotten. Plus all the free play that inevitably happens when you have hundreds of kids gathered together in one big space.

In case anyone is planning to attend one of these with small children, I have three pieces of advice:

1. Get sticker name tags for young children with their name, room number and your cell phone number. The official conference identification was on a rather flimsy and large necklace. Both kids took advantage of this on several occasions: "Please read my back and help me find my parents!"
2. If you don't both have cell phones, invest in walkie talkies so you can find each other in the madness (we'll do this before our next conference).
3. Get a hot plate for the hotel room so you don't have to rely on microwave dining and overpriced, mediocre hotel restaurant food.

In reference to 1... no, we are not totally negligent parents. ;) But if, for instance, one of us was out with both kids and they suddenly bolted in different directions down identical hotel hallways, the contact info was good to have.

One of the biggest hits of the weekend? The elevator. Both kids learned which buttons to press and several times left the room announcing they were going to play on the elevator. Usually they found their way back. Someday we'll have to take them to a building with more than three floors.

During almost every trip out into the world, Larkin makes a special friend. Even if we're making a quick trip to the library or park, she will seek out some particular individual to play with-- usually an older girl. Okay, pretty much always an older girl. This trip's subject of much (mutual) admiration was one Owen, probably 8-10 years old (I'm terrible at guessing ages). I admit that his long hair caused some initial gender confusion on Larkin's part which may explain her willingness to accept him as playmate, but there was no turning back once the issue was cleared up. They spent a solid three hours one night imagining threats to their kingdom and creating elaborate defense plans to protect each other. Owen had a sword. Larkin had a crown. Those are the only props I remember. Their game was continued with great enthusiasm every time they re-met over the weekend.

One of the interesting things about the trip this time around was that the kids actually occasionally wanted some quiet time in our room. Even Larkin, party girl extraordinaire, was ready to lay down and watch a movie or read a book to escape from the stimulation. Last year, we'd get back to our room and as soon as they heard a kid in the hall they'd be out the door like a shot. This year, the first night there, Larkin was laying in her sleeping bag going to sleep when a couple of kids ran down the hall laughing and declared in (mock?) outrage: "I can't believe some kids are still awake!"

One of Finn's weekend favorites was "The Egg Man" (Yes, I did a lot of singing "I Am the Walrus"). This was a vendor who was there selling the Egg Game, a pretty cool game where the object is to cooperatively keep a stone egg spinning on a round, flat surface. Finn (who has recently been declaring everything even remotely egg-shaped to be a dinosaur egg) spent a great deal of time with this man, including sitting on his shoulders for part of one of the evening concerts. He has mentioned several times that he loves and misses the Egg Man. For the record, we did buy an egg game. It's actually quite fun.

Robots vs. Allies

Larkin and her friend Eli have very different world views and this comes through loud and clear in their imaginary play. Larkin likes to overcome obstacles. Eli likes to *create* obstacles. Really, it's a match made in heaven. I clearly remember one of their exchanges several months ago after a good couple of hours of battling robots and monsters that just wouldn't succumb no matter what potential solutions Larkin came up with:

L: I'm getting in my spaceship and going to a planet where everyone is my friend. Do you want to come and be King?
E: No! I'm getting in my own spaceship and going to a planet where Giant Robots will try to kill me!
L: Okay. Good luck.

Eli and his brother Micah are staying with us this week. Overheard today (after more prolonged battling of robots and monsters):

E: Look! That robot has a button on its foot!
L: Oh good! I'll push that button and it will become our friend!
E: Nonono! That button will make it DIE!
L: Oh no! I didn't push it! I didn't push it!
E: But don't you want it to die?
L: No, I want to make friends with it so it will go back to the other robots and convince them we're nice. Then we'll have a potluck all together.
E: I'm going to play computer games.

I'm not usually one for exclamation points, but sometimes there's no other punctuation to do the trick.

100 leaves

Just in case any of you were wondering, this is what a pile of 100 leaves looks like:

Larkin asked Janey (our favorite local 12 year old who comes over three hours every Wednesday morning to play with the kids and give me a break) to pick 100 leaves for her yesterday. This is the latest in a whole string of interesting numbers/math questions that make it clear she's trying to conceptualize bigger numbers. In the car she will often put a finger up every time she sees a particular item (horses are a favorite) between our house and town. Then when we reach our destination she asks the total. In the beginning, she would hold up her hands and ask. Soon, she started describing her hands to us: "How many is it if I have all the fingers on one hand and two on the other?" Then she started counting them herself. Today I heard her skip the counting step: "I have all the fingers on one hand and three on the other... eight!" Sometimes she has to recruit someone else's hands before it's time to total them up. All this to say, I guess she has progressed beyond base 5. ;)

On a related note, she wanted to know how many people there are "on our planet" (I love that the question left the possibility for life on *other* planets... or, perhaps, that other people own the other planets). I told her I thought there were about 6 billion (subsequent googling revealed that we're actually closer to 7 billion these days). "Does everyone have the same number of fingers and toes?" Well, a few people have a couple extra, some people have lost a few... but on average, yeah, most people have 20. "So how many finger and toes are there in the whole wide world?" Well, I guess that would make it about 120 billion. "Wow, that's a lot." Yup.

Apparently, soon after this conversation, Larkin made Emile attempt to describe for her exactly how many cupcakes 100 billion would be. Logical next step? "How about 100 billion and 30?"

A couple weeks ago we went through a period of intensively reading the "How much is a million" book illustrated by Stephen Kellogg. It has been a while since we have read the book, but the interest in numbers is still going strong.

Okay, if you made it this far, you deserve gratuitous cuteness:
Contemporaneous naps are almost unheard of, but quite the photo-op when they happen.

Bubbles!

Finn has only recently decided that cow's milk is an interesting thing to drink. This decision is, naturally, concurrent with the discovery that milk bubbles are a lot of fun. I'm not a big fan of dried, sour milk all over the tablecloth, floor, etc., so hooray for Spring! With the weather warming up they are much more likely to take me up on the offer to take their milk outside. The winter option (the bathtub) seems to be much less attractive for some reason that I don't entirely understand. Maybe they don't want milk all over themselves, either.



But wait, there's more bubble news! I felt particularly self-congratulatory when I figured out this amazing, spill-free easy-access bubble blowing solution:


These pictures, by the way, were taken on the same day, mere minutes apart. Finn likes to wear nothing but pajamas, and he likes to change them frequently.

Dear Birth Parents...

While playing with friends this weekend, Larkin asked Taylor (her "big girl friend") to take down a letter for her:

"Dear Birth Parents,

I live in an orphanage and I hope I find you. It was Baltor, the monster, that took my birth parents. I hope you meet all my big girl friends some day. Watch out for the spit weed! It spits spit balls at you! Watch out for the screaming monkeys! If you go too close they will throw coconuts at you!

Love,

Larkin"

Park Sand

One of the parks we frequent has a rarely-used volleyball court. Translation: HUGE sandbox! One of today's favorite games was "Bedtime":

And then there was this one:

I admit that I had to ask what, exactly, this game was. "Beached Dolphin!" Well, duh.

There was also some elaborate pizza cooking game where (I'm pretty sure) their feet were buried in the oven and they took turns naming an ingredient and flinging handfuls of it over their feet.

Carnival!

One of those rinky-dink-held-together-with-chewing-gum-and-duct-tape-type carnivals set up camp at the local mall this month. I noticed it on my way to the book exchange one day and realized it would be criminal not to take the kids. Larkin has been excited about the idea of County Fairs and carnivals for some time... thanks in part, I think, to Charlotte's Web.

When we got there, it was *totally* dead. We were almost always the only people on the rides and there was no waiting in lines. With one big exception, it was a blast.

Bad news first: Larkin and I went on the "Spider" and it was deemed Totally Not Fun. It's one of those big whirly fast moving contraptions that I really didn't think she would like. We watched it go a few times, talked about how fast it was going, how sometimes spinning that way made people sick to their stomach (okay, I said "oogy"), that it was like a merry-go-round only much much more so, etc. I mean, I used every experience she had under her belt that I could think of to describe it to her. Driving fast on windy roads almost convinced her, but she hasn't really been car sick since she was 18 months old so it just wasn't enough to dissuade her. In the end, either we were getting on it or I was going to pull a power play and Larkin would forever feel like I was making her miss out on something fabulous. Luckily, we were the only ones on the ride and the kind operator stopped as soon as he saw Larkin screaming bloody murder and me waving at him rather expressively. I actually like that kind of ride, but I think the whole experience was worse for me than for Larkin... she was fine after a few minutes of cuddling on a stationary bench, but I still feel some pretty heart-wrenching guilt. I asked her the next day if she thought I shouldn't have taken her on the ride and she said she was glad I let her decide. She also said that the next time I told her she might not enjoy something, she'd try really hard to remember the Spider. Hallelujah.

They had a carousel, so Finn was happy. I think he rode every horse there by the end of our trip. They both loved the little airplanes, too. That was another one that I had to ride with them because they were under the height limit for independent riding.

There was also a mini dragon swing, bumper cars (Finn was Enraged when he discovered that he couldn't reach the pedal and would have to ride with an adult), the obligatory ferris wheel, and a climbing structure with rope ladders and plank bridges that led up to a 3 story slide onto an inflated landing. They did that last one about 5 times in a row.

Larkin was ready to play *a lot* of those skill games that cost five dollars and get you a stuffed duck... if you're lucky. After trying one for the experience (darts and balloons) she was open to the idea that a trip to a thrift store and five dollars to spend on stuffed animals would be a lot more fun. We definitely have a home-made darts and balloons set-up in our near future. We just might need to have a carnival game party. I mean, small children and darts sounds like fun, yes?