Bunny Update

Tweet

A looong time ago I told you our daddy bunny Ginger had mange. I'm happy to report that he is all better now. But we had to keep him in a separate cage from the babies since he kept bothering Pepper, the mommy.

He is SO lonely! He used to run away from us, but now he begs for attention. Though when Mommy picked him up for a visitation with the other bunnies, he mauled her. And the visitation didn't last long, because the babies kept trying to drink from him and he kept running on them while chasing the mommy around the cage. I'm glad human daddies aren't like bunny daddies!

Pepper had a touch of mange, too, but not very bad, and she is all better, too. Though she is tired all the time from running away from all her babies for a few moments of peace. We're not even gonna try to make the connection to human mommies with this one...

I'm a little scared to hold the babies, since they are so wiggly and jumpy! But I brought Mommy a bucket and told her to put a bunny baby inside, and I carried it around to show Ms. Cathrine. Master of innovation, that's me! And today I picked up my favorite bunny, the brown littlest one, and held it for a little while before it got too wiggly.

We did a photo shoot with the bunnies yesterday, so each of the babies has its own photo. We won't share all of those, but here is a shot of Cinnamon, Coffee, Herb, Spice, Nuts, Beans, and Chili in the bucket I carried them in:
And here I am trying to get them out, but they don't want to come out. They all ran back into the bucket as far as they could go.
Finally they all came out. This is just before they dispersed and ran wildly through the kitchen. Most of our photos show blurs running around!
I got to feed them some lettuce in an attempt to keep them still for their school photos. Except I got tired of that job and ate some of the lettuce myself.

And later on, I grabbed all the bunnies out of the bucket one at a time and handed them to Mommy to put into their cage. I am becoming very brave! Especially since I almost fell into the bucket every time I leaned into it to pull a bunny out.

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Tweet

“Five” is one of Esmé’s (18 months) latest favorite words, accompanied with a high five! This is especially fun while skateboarding!

---------------
Esmé continues to be an orderly perfectionist. She loves putting her dirty clothes into the laundry basket, and carefully makes sure all corners and appendages of each garment are well in the basket before closing the lid. And she carefully lines up shoes and dolls.

She understands so much that we just assume she's figured it all out. The dirty socks on the bedroom floor were obviously bothering her, so we directed her to put them in the “basket” in the bathroom. She went into the bathroom and came back empty-handed to our applause. Only later did we realize that the socks went into the “bathtub,” not the “basket.”

---------------
I love watching the personality emerge! Esmé is a regular cheerleader, generous with her applause when her friends are doing the stunts such as skateboarding. Here is her daddy doing wheelies while she applauds from the sidelines.
---------------
And she’s putting together phrases now. Things like “eat then ball?” after being told she can’t play with the ball because she’s eating. Or “clean hands” when they are messy.
---------------
Esmé is good at saying things in a loud, commanding voice, even if you can't make out the words. Here she is keeping Groban the dog in the corner. (No animals were harmed in the making of this photo.)
---------------
Just a quick unrelated newsflash. Mavinga has malaria but is on the road to recovery. Thanks for your prayers! Here he is hamming it up in Esmé's stroller.

And another newsflash - Ginger the bunny has mange, as we discovered after our 3rd trip to the vet yesterday. (Two times no vet was there, and the third time we used a phone translator to figure things out - always fun!) He had his first shot, so hopefully he is on his way to recovery, too.

Animal Kingdom

Tweet

Just a quick update on our animal status.

Last week Pepper, one of the bunnies, was missing when we came home from my cousin's house. Either Antonio (the gardener) had forgotten to block off the hole in the cage used for sweeping the cleaning water out, or he had put a wobbly block in front of it that allowed the bunnies to knock it over.

Daddy looked everywhere to no avail, so we surmised that Pepper either got out of the yard into someone's cooking pot or an owl got her. And we resigned ourselves to being a single-bunny household.

But then Grandpa looked outside the window and saw her trying to get back into her cage, all confused because the hole was now blocked off! So we still have two bunnies.

Later this week Ms. Cathrine helped me catch a little bird. Mommy was quite surprised when I brought it in to show her, since she is used to me bringing her grasshoppers, not birds. We put the bird into the cage with the bunnies for a little while. Here it is with Ginger bunny.

And Groban the dog thinks he's Daddy's favorite child. He insists on getting between us all the time and nudges me away whenever he can. Groban likes to hug Daddy by putting his paw on Daddy's shoulder. Here's a photo of Daddy with his two kids . . . Can't you see the resemblances?!

Wordless Wednesday

Tweet

Cabbage and carrots - are they bunny food, dog food, or baby food?

No contest on carrots - definitely bunny food.

The jury is still out on the cabbage, though. Dog thinks it's his.

Baby thinks cabbage is hers.

Fortunately the fighting between them is short-lived.

Thursday 13 - Questions???

Tweet

We are running like crazy without much time to post today. So this post isn't anything inspiring or informative - just a list of 13 questions I haven't had time to research on the internet yet!

1. How do you keep flies off a dog's ears? Groban is surrounded by flies, and they are biting his ears like crazy.
2. How do you clean washable marker marks off of tile grout? Our "art tile walls" wipe clean easily, except for the grout.
3. Is eating toilet paper dangerous? In large quantities?
4. How much food do bunnies really need? Will they overeat if you overfeed them?
5. What do bunnies eat besides lettuce, carrots, and cabbage?
6. Is breastfeeding a baby to sleep as bad for their teeth as bottlefeeding them to sleep?
7. What is marula? We've been drinking marula juice, and I have no idea what it is.
8. Is Chinese cabbage supposed to be prickly? The stuff in our garden looks like lettuce except for the prickles. You have to cook it in order to eat it, and the cooked stuff tastes like cooked lettuce.
9. What are some good books on marriage after kids?
10. How does water witching work? (We DO NOT do this in our well project, by the way!)
11. What are some good recipes for using up our 50kg bags of pinto beans?
12. Are there ANY recipes that use LARGE quantities of lemons? I've been miscounting our lemon trees - we actually have 5 overproducing trees.
13. What is this plant Esmé is looking at?

That's all, folks! Happy Thursday 13!

Update on Beans

Tweet

Esmé's Mommy here.

As promised, here is a photo of the newest members of our family, Ginger and Pepper. They are still alive and thriving on our negligible garden produce of prickly Chinese cabbage and baby overgrown carrots. Esmé loves offering them food, though sometimes she grabs it back for a bite herself. I’ve never seen her so interested in eating cabbage until this week!

Last week I posted about our gardener Antonio and the dilemma of beans. The post ended with Antonio in the hospital, so I wanted to give you an update. To start, though, I’ll backtrack a little.

Antonio came to work one day last year with the news that his wife had gone crazy. He had taken her to the hospital, where they told him there was nothing they could do, so he should try a traditional healer (aka witch doctor).

We offered to take her to another doctor, but he didn’t see the purpose in that. He took off work for a month and took her north to her family, where sadly she died. So he has been on his own since then.

Then the dilemma of beans I described last week. My husband left Antonio in the hospital on Saturday, and he did not show up for work on Monday. Later that day I learned that our landlord was picking him up from the hospital that afternoon.

Being naturally curious, I have been trying to figure out what was wrong with him and asking everyone I could think of. I can’t call Antonio directly, since he does not speak English.

Here’s how the most fruitful conversation went:

Me: “Do you know what was wrong with Antonio?”

E: “His stomach was like he was pregnant.”

Me: “No, I mean what caused his stomach to be like that?”

E: “Well, he had this dream that he was digging his wife’s grave alongside his brother-in-law. His father-in-law came to him and told him he had a younger daughter and would like Antonio to marry her. And then Antonio woke up and couldn’t move his face.”

Me: “Oh.”
I was way out of my comfort zone on this, so didn’t pursue the conversation further.

Finally on Friday I had E call the landlord, who told us Antonio had been instructed not to eat maize anymore and to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. At least I know it wasn’t the lentils!

It seems he will be okay and will be at work on Monday, but just needs to watch what he eats.

It does boggle my mind that there really are people who have no clue what a good diet consists of, and what types of foods you need to eat to get all your vitamins and fiber and everything else in. We are so bombarded with this info in the US that I have completely taken it for granted.

WFMW - "B" Crafts

Tweet

Time for another installment of what arts & crafts worked this week for this 15-month-old! Last week was Week “B”, and there is SO much you can do with “B”s!

Ball Art. The idea is to dip a ball in paint and then roll it around on a paper inside a pan. We used a ping pong ball and a golf ball; the golf ball definitely works better. Looks pretty cool, huh? We used blue paint since blue’s a “B” word.

Notice that I still have my jammies on. Mommy thought it might get messy, and sure enough, I decided to make ball art on the floor! This photo is just the start of the mess; Mommy had to put the camera away before it got blue, too! And here’s a photo of me getting clean in the bath afterwards!

Bunnies. Daddy brought home real bunnies – Ginger and Pepper! This REALLY works for me! I follow them around and offer them cabbage and water wherever they go. The jury’s still out on whether this works for Mommy, since she has to clean their cage. I’ve offered to help (i.e. had a fit when Mommy wouldn’t let me in the cage), but to no avail. We’ll get pictures up when Daddy gets the camera back to us.

Baking. We made pizza – I got to oil the pans, spread the flour, pat the dough, spread the sauce, and sample all the ingredients. Another day we made biscuits – the rolled kind instead of the drop kind Mommy usually makes. I spread flour and helped roll and cut them. We put veggie sausages in some and sprinkled the others with cinnamon sugar. This works great – as long as Mommy doesn’t mind the extra time and cleanup involved!

Bubbles. Mommy made bubbles (¼ c dish soap, ½ c water, 1 Tbs sugar) and blew them for me. I tried blowing, but it is REALLY hard. Once I get this figured out, we’ll make bubble splatter art.

Balloons. I painted with tempera paint on a big balloon while Mommy held it for me. That was fun!

Then we tried this glue/yarn/balloon thing Mommy has seen on a bunch of blogs, where you wrap the balloon with gluey yarn, wait for the glue to harden, and then pop the balloon. But when the only small balloon she could find was a water balloon, we knew the idea was doomed. But we had fun anyway, and just used glitter glue instead of trying to get a wonderful stiff effect. Here is the yarn after most of the water leaked out of the balloon.

Baby Powder. I sprinkled a black baby bottle shape with baby powder and then covered it with contact paper. I had lots of fun sprinkling powder EVERYWHERE! But the powder killed the stickiness of the contact paper (of course, silly Mommy!), so Mommy just used glue around the edges.

Butterfly. I painted a half sheet with some tempera paint that Mommy had strategically dripped on the paper. Then she folded it the other way to get the Rorschach effect. She was amazed at how realistic it turned out, but then, I am a pro!

Boat. I used tempera paint on a boat Mommy had folded. I had a hard time with the 3D thing, though. I couldn’t figure out how to hold it while I painted. So Mommy says next time she’ll let me paint the paper before she folds the boat.

Stickers. Mommy gave me stickers of “B” things to put on a piece of paper. She was amazed that I put them on the paper instead of in my mouth! Nicely spaced and everything. Well, I put one foam butterfly in my mouth, but that was all.

Binoculars. Mommy used double-sided tape and two toilet paper rolls to make binoculars. I had fun looking through them! But then she had me work on them with oil pastels (she won’t do that again for a while – I wanted to eat them) and then paint, and I had a hard time with the 3D thing again.

Beehive. When I saw this empty Gatorade container, I immediately wanted to paint it! So we made a beehive by painting it yellow, and then put glue on it. I held the yarn while Mommy turned the hive around.

Bee. And then Mommy had this bright idea to make a bee from an egg carton piece and wrap yarn around it for stripes. I did the painting, but it really looks more like a bat, don’t you think? But “bat” is a “B” word, too. Pretty sad all around.

Box. I fell in love with this little box, so Mommy let me paint inside it. Then she wrapped it with this cool wrapping paper she found, with lots of “B” words like bear, balloon, butterfly, and book.

Coloring. Mommy noticed that while I may not be coloring in the lines, I was deliberately coloring the object on the paper whenever she gave me coloring papers. Here are some examples of a backpack and a bear. Pretty cool, huh?

We're already at work on the “C”s, so check in again next week! And as always, Mommy is looking for more ideas, so bring them on!
----------------
**I know I should be giving people credit for most of these ideas, but I've picked them up all over the place so can't remember or figure out who. So if you feel you deserve the credit, let me know and I'll give it to you. Some key sites I've used:
www.everythingpreschool.com
www.softschools.com
www.first-school.ws
The Artful Parent blog

----------------
If you have a post or link related to "B" Activities for toddlers, link up here!