Hiking, Hiking, HIKING!

On a recent rare warm late-autumn day, C6 and I went HIKING...

C6, Peep, and the Big Wide World

We started a new twist on our morning routine a few weeks ago. When C6 wakes up, he'll come down to Mummio & Daddio's room and hop into bed. Okay, that part is not so new. But, for the most part, the kid hits the ground running, so he usually wouldn't stick around with us - after a quick hello, and the obligatory climbing all over us and being the exact opposite of cuddly, he'd bound down to the kitchen to "make breffix". This could be either a delightful surprise (good aim with getting the juice *in* the cup, milk AND cereal *in* the bowl) or not so delightful (making peanut butter and marmalade sandwiches and storing one of them on a shelf in the cupboard "for later!", putting the peanut butter-smeared utensils back into the drawer...)

So here's the NEW part of our morning: C6 hops into bed, we all chat a bit and then I fire up the laptop to watch Peep and The Big Wide World. Every day on the website there's a different episode. And it is about 8 or 9 minutes or so long, giving us a few more minutes of sweet, sweet, cozytime.

The show itself is really good! I like the simply drawn characters (especially the blue duck with the sailor hat named "Quack". It is pretty funny and there's a science or math twist to each episode. And! It is narrated by Joan Cusack! OH! AND! Yesterday, Megan Mullally (Karen, from "Will and Grace") showed up as the voice of a rival duck! What's not to love?

C6 also likes the games on the website - particularly the paint mixing one. Try it - 'sfun!

Of course, right AFTER our Peeptime, C6 is off and running. What'll it be for breffix this morning?

Andrew W.K. and Paul Frank!

I love Andrew W.K.! I was just thinking about him today, wondering what he's up to. Guess what? He's going to be appearing in NYC at McNally Robinson bookstore (Soho), reading from the first Paul Frank children's book "Only In Dreams". AWK & PF...what a perfect combination! Like orange & chocolate in an Orange Milano cookie. Nom.

This from A.W.K.'s website:
Storybook Sunday:
Paul Frank has chosen Andrew W.K. to present their first-ever bedtime story, ONLY IN DREAMS, with a special children's book reading in NYC.
"Andrew's dynamic and celebratory nature blends perfectly with the magical experience of the new book", says PF President Ryan Heuser.
The event will be this Sunday, May 25th, 2008.

More info here.

Hoping the book's good! It looks cute.

Andrew, you know, when it's time to party, we will always party hard. Party hard.

Boston Rock-n-Romp 2, megafun!

The 2nd ever Boston Rock-n-romp was so much fun! It wasn't as jam-packed as the first one, so there was more room for all the little rompers and their parents more room to move about. Much nicer, not having to fear treading on a tot!

We enjoyed the awesomeness that was Hallelujah The Hills. My friend Just Bill had clued me in to their deliciousness, so I was prepared for a great show. And it was SUPER!

Can't wait for the next Rock-n-Romp! Here are a few pix...

Psychedelic, man.

C6 wows the little ladies...

C6 and his pal Arlo belly up to the bar...don't they look like brothers?
(Photo from Arlo's Mum, Jen.)




The trumpet guy from Hallelujah The Hills was especially good with the kiddos. (C6 isn't in this shot - he was happy to stay off the stage and groove.)


C6 took this portrait of Arlo...


C6 drew a skull and crossbones! Arlo had drawn a nicely detailed Jolly Roger, but alas, I don't have a photo of it...


...and C6's bunch of skulls-n-crossbones...

...twins, walking to the car...

Don't Forget: Boston Rock-n-Romp this Saturday!

Just a little reminder...the second Boston Rock-n-Romp is this SATURDAY, April 12th at 3:00. Great Scott, Allston. It is great fun! This romp's lineup includes Hallelujah the Hills, You Can be a Wesley, DJ Michael Savant, and special guest author of "The Creative Family", Amanda Blake Soule.

We'll be there. And you?

We Are Scientists.

On Tuesday, C6 and I were SCIENTISTS. We mixed up water, colored sugar, and oil and SHOOK IT UP! It MIXED TOGETHER! And then...it SEPARATED! And weird little stalactites formed for awhile, then dissolved.

We also put some dried basil and parsley into a bowl of water to see if they would float or sink. Mostly, they floated!

Science, man. Yeah!

C6 in the kitchen

C6 and I are all about the cookies. Here's a shot of him assisting with the buttah for a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. (The recipe on the lid of the Quaker Oats container has always been a fave.)

I wish I had a cool apron like C6's! I got it at Beansoup a couple of months ago and he's been getting a lot of use out of it. When I ordered the apron I inquired if I could have one made in my size and, alas, they could not, as they were all out of the cool retro dot pattern fabric. The person who answered my inquiry (Leigh) wrote that since they get a lot of requests like mine, they are offering the new fabric selections in sizes for kids and bigger people too. But no more cool retro dots. *sigh*

Today's cookin' with C6:

• At breakfast time we made Strawberry/Banana/OJ smoothies (with waffles and yogurt)
  
• For lunch, we made ham & cheese croissants. (We used refrigerated crescent roll dough.)
  Also on the lunch menu were edamame beans, cucumbers and carrots.
  
• Dinner time, we prepared slices of kielbasa on teeny tiny pumpernickel bread with mustard. We served'em with mashed potatoes and peas.

We like to watch "Cooking With Luis" on Noggin. We haven't tried any of his recipes yet, but C6 gets inspired to get into the kitchen after we watch. I like how Luis says "this is the best evah" kinda deadpan. D'ya think someone told him that should be his catch phrase? Other popular Luis phrases: "it doesn't get any better than this", "it's that easy", "good food, good fwends". We luv Luis!

Rock-n-Romp Boston a SMASHING SUCCESS!

Yesterday's first ever Boston ROCK-N-ROMP was fab! Great turnout, bands, guest authors, activities, fun! Well done, Kerry & Carl!

It was so nice to hang with friends I hadn't seen in quite awhile. A lot of conversations were of the minute-and-a-half variety - (oops, gutta reel in the kiddo before he unplugs all the band's pedals and tuners...be right back...etc.) I liked seeing all the next generation rockers out there. I don't think I saw one kid who wasn't having a good time. It was cute to see the teeny tiny babies rockin' out too.

We enjoyed the music of Wonderful Spells and Bon Savants (though we ran out of steam after a few hours of rockin' and rompin' and had to leave halfway through the Bon's set). Jarrett J. Krosoczka, the author of Punk Farm, (one our fave books!) was there and gave a great, energetic reading - everyone was involved! It was extremely punkrock, if you can believe it. Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad, did some mighty fine reading as well - this was more for the adults, but since some of his subject matter was about POOP the kids dug it, too. POOP! I loved when Neal asked the kids what their favorite bands were. I wish we had been up front for that part - C6 and I would like to meet the kid whose favorite band is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs!!! If you haven't yet read Punk Farm and/or Alternadad, I implore you to do so!

I got to thinkin' that the Rock-n-Romp wasn't so different from rock-n-roll days of yesteryear, spent chasing inebriated band members around the club, wondering if they were going to break something, have a rumble or get into some other kind of trouble...or end up covered in bodily fluids! HAHRHAHR. Ah, the good old days. (I'm exaggerating. None of my former bandmates were really THAT bad...were they?)

C6 was dancing up a storm in the area to the left of the stage at Great Scott. The dance floor in front of the stage was pretty packed, and C6 requires room to roam! I had to switch the videocam to "night vision" to film this, that's why it looks a little strange. Here's C6 dancing in the darkness to the tunes of Wonderful Spells. They were wonderful!



We can't wait to go back to Rocknromp - word is, the next one's in April - see you there!

The squeaky wheel gets the rock! Hurrah!

Scurvyann,
over-n-out
xo

Scavenger Hunt and PEPPA PIG!

Lately, C6 and I have been WAY into SCAVENGER HUNTS. I will make a bunch of notes leading one to another, going all around the house, up and down, and back again. I read the notes with C6, showing him the words. Sometimes I draw pictures on them too. The first scavenger hunt we did was on his birthday and there was a present at each spot - (whoops, big mistake!) There weren't too many stops on that scavenger hunt. Nevertheless, nevermore! Now there's merely one prize at the very end of the hunt, and it is something small, like a little notepad, etc.

That being said, today's scavenger hunt's prize is kind of big. It was something I was going to give C6 anyway - so why not make it into a GAME? The prize is a DVD of PEPPA PIG! We've only seen tiny shorts of this fun little Brit cartoon on Noggin (or Nick Jr.?), between shows. It is a truly adorable cartoon about Peppa Pig and her piggy family. It cracks me up that every 3 sentences or so, whichever pig is speaking just lets out an oinky snorty pig noise. HAHRHR! It is simply drawn and we luv it. Here's a little promo for Peppa Pig!

...and here is a fun Peppa Pig game that C6 is diggin'.

SNORT!

ADDENDUM: C6 likes to make "Scabenger Hunts" for me, too. He writes down some letters on different colored papers and puts them throughout the house. We go from one to the next...I ask him to read the clues to me. C6 is getting quite good at writing his letters and some numbers! Scabenger Hunts rule, O.K.!

Rock N Romp Boston update

The Rock-n-Romp show mentioned here is now on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24th at 3:00. Same place! Seeyas!

Rock n Romp Boston is HERE!!!

This just in...Rock-n-Romp is starting up in Boston in just a couple of weeks! What's Rock-n-Romp? Basically, a daytime rockshow for parents and their kids - with music that isn't "kids music" per se, but is kid-friendly. Read here for my previous blabbin'.


I recieved this very megasuperwickedultra important missive from Kerry, Boston Rock-n-Romp host:

Hey Linda,

Kerry Lavin here. If you haven't heard RnR is officially scheduled (finally). Its on 2/23 at 3:30 at Great Scott. Founder Debbie Lee is bringing Neal Pollack (Alternadad) along for a mini tour. The bands will be Wonderful Spells and Bon Savants. It will rock (and romp)

Thought you should be the first to know. I've just started a myspace page.

Spread the word! Hope to see you guys there!

hugs

Kerry

Kerry will be co-hosting with her husband Carl Lavin, who books for Great Scott and O'Brien's.

Dudes. I'm STOKED! I haven't been able to get C6 a convincing enough fake ID to smuggle him into rock shows, so this is just what we need. Lookin' forward to sippin' a frosty one while C6 hits the pit. See you at Great Scott on Feb 23rd. At 3:30. That's PM!!! The Squeaky Wheel gets the rock.

(UPDATE: The show is now Sunday, Feb 24th at 3:00 - same place!)

(Previous gushing 'bout Neal Pollack can be found here and here. Thazzit!)

MESSY DAY(S)...the Airplane

For a while now C6 has been wicked into "awts an cwafts". One day, over a month ago, I took out a big cardboard box and we decided it was an AIRPLANE. Since then, almost every day we draw on it with crayons, paint on it, put stickers on, glue pompoms on, glue beads on, glue cotton balls on, then paint OVER the stuff we glued on...add more layers of stickers...glue on toilet paper rolls...paint them...etc. We cut out pictures of food from magazines for the "airplane food"...drew dials, on off buttons...etc...there's an ignition switch where he can put a key in. There's also a place for him to plug in his headphones.

He loOooOooves hangin' out in his airplane.

It is awesome.

Juice Pops

Homemade orange juice popsicles, with floaty blueberry suprises, YEAHHHH!!!

Here's how we made them...it's WICKED HAAAAHD! (n't):
Pour orange juice into a homemade popsicle mold. (I got ours at Target - not a hard item to find.) Drop a couple of blueberries in each. Put the handles in. Freeze'em. It is kind of hard to remove the pops from the mold - you have to run it under hot water for quite awhile and gently jiggle'em out. Otherwise, you rip the handles right out and THAT'S NO GOOD!

C6 loves these orange juice popsicles. We like to pour grapefruit juice in one mold to make one grapfruit juice popsicle for Daddio.

We are going to make star baby ba na na perishote sherbet pops soon. Mmm.

Happy summertime!

Mangia! Mangia! and - Unintentional Messy Day

C6 and I love the book "Mangia! Mangia!" by Amy Wilson Sanger. We got it around the time we got the Sushi book by the same author. These books are so much fun.

Anyhoo, one of the pages of "Mangia! Mangia!" is about antipasti, and it mentions "prosciutto wrapped melone". C6 was curious about this, so we decided to make some prosciutto wrapped melone ourselves. We picked up a nice ripe cantaloupe and a few slices of prosciutto at the market.

Here is where it became UNINTENTIONAL MESSY DAY! (Bonus!)

I cut the melon in half and let C6 scoop out all the seeds and "guts" into a bowl. We started with spoons but of course that wasn't going to last - it was full-on HANDS-ON! Wow. This was a whole lotta fun. He remembered when we made jack-o-lanterns for Hallowe'en and compared it to that. Even after we finished getting all the gunk out of the cantaloupe and into the bowl, we just squooshed around in the seeds and stuff. Y'know, just for fun. Squooshy, squooshy, fun. Instant Messy Day! (At least he didn't try to make a "cantaloupe guts angel" on the floor.)

After Squooshfest 2007, I sliced the cantaloupe and removed the rind. C6 helped wind slices of prosciutto around the melon. The kid loved the prosciutto, not so wild about the cantaloupe this time around (though he likes it). I suppose he was all cantalouped out by that point!

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Cantaloupe!
Cantaloupe who?
Cantaloupe tonight, Dad has the car!

Kids Summer Music Series at the RegattaBar, Cambridge, MA

Audra Rox and The Dirty Sock Funtime Band, among others, will be playing Summertime Sunday afternoon shows at The Regattabar in Cambridge, MA. Just thought you'd like to know!

LEMONADE!

C6 and I have made a few batches of lemonade over the past couple of weeks. YUM!!!

C6's first job is to remove all the stickers from the lemons. He really enjoys the task! I wash the lemons and cut them in half, and then we squeeze'em. We use a little plastic juicer, neither fancy nor shmancy. C6 was more interested in sampling the lemons the first batch, but he got into using the juicer on the second batch - he really put his back into it!

The recipe we used for the first batch...

combine:

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 cup of water

heat this over the stove to dissolve the sugar. Let this cool, then add:

• 1 cup lemon juice
• 4 cups of cold water

stir, then add:

• ice
• sliced lemons

We didn't use 1 cup of sugar - it was more like 2/3 cup, and it was plennnnnty sweet. The next batch we made, we used 1/2 cup of sugar and it was GREAT.

We decided to use Max and Ruby's Grandma's secret ingredient - a mint leaf! Grandma uses merely one leaf, but we put in a WHOLE LOT. The mint is a great addition - but if you keep a bunch of mint leaves steeping in the lemonade for too long, they get all soggy, translucent, and ugly. (Still tastes great though!!!).

Man, does it taste good!!!!

(Especially on the screenporch!)

!!!!PORCH FLASHBACK!!!!
!!!!PORCH FLASHBACK!!!!
!!!!PORCH FLASHBACK!!!!
!!!!PORCH FLASHBACK!!!!

S. Britt and The Sneeze

So I first came across the magnificent S. Britt while reading The Sneeze, a nutsy-kookoo and terribly addictive site indeed. Mr. S. Britt did a bit of artwork for The Sneeze and I am in luuuuv with his illustration style. 'Tis snazzy!

I dig reading The Sneeze. And you will too. I'm especially fond of the "Steve, Don't Eat It" section, where Steve eats some things he probably ought not. Also, I'm partial to Global Schoolyard Rhymes, described by Steve thusly: We all grew up reciting irritating rhymes. Some of us grew up primarily on the receiving end of them... good times. It occurred to me that these funny little bits of kid comedy must exist in every language all around the world, so I decided they must be collected. Welcome to The Global Schoolyard Rhyme Project. A gathering of international obnoxia. Check out Jokes from the Booster Seat as well, for jokes written by Steve's 4-year old son. Look at the S. Britt art on the Global Schoolyard Rhymes and Jokes From The Booster Seat pages.

Question: How psyched was I to find that S. Britt created "Coloring Can Be FUNNY!", a marvy coloring & activity book???

Answer: WICKED EXCITED! So I ordered it, and it arrived within a couple of days...with a little thank you note from the artist himself. YAY! C6 and I immediately delved into the book and had a lotta laffs! It is so fun. Highly recommended for EVERYONE.

Like Mummio, like son...

Here's a little bit of C6 singing a mashup. He starts out with "Trot Trot to Boston" then quickly morphs to "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and then does a little freestylin' - a little bit about One Little Guy On The Vitamin Box. Then he just wings it with some doo doos and dee dees. And he winds it down nicely. This is exactly how I operate when it comes to remembering the words to songs. Which is why I mostly play bass and shut me piehole.


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ADDENDUM:
It dawned on me that "Trot, Trot to Boston" is kind of a regional nursery rhyme and you might not know what the heck I'm talking about. As I learned it, you put the kiddo on your lap and chant as you bounce the kid in a gallop:

"Trot, Trot to Boston. Trot trot to Lynn. Careful when you get there - you might fall iiiiin!" and on the word "IN" you open yer knees and hold the kid down as if he were falling in. But he doesn't actually fall, cuz you are holding ON to him, y'see.

It seems there are a few versions of the words to this - I just found:
"Trot trot to Boston, Trot trot to Lynn. Trot trot to Salem. Home again." which doesn't seem as fun - I mean, does the kid get to fall iiiiiiin?

Then: "Trot, trot to Boston. Trot, trot to Lynn. Trot, trot over the water, We all fall in." That works fine!

And: "Trot trot to Boston. Trot, trot to Lynn. Watch out (kiddo's name), Or you'll fall in." Splendid.

The key part is falling IIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNN!!!! Try it at home!

Another Messy Day!

It has been awhile since I've mentioned MESSY DAY! Here's a photo of our latest venture. What's 'e doin'? Why, making a mess, of course! That's a mix of shaving cream, white glue, and food coloring. It makes a nifty fingerpaint - when it dries, it is all puffy and springy-like! C6's babysitter, "R" introduced us to the fine art of shavingcreampainting. She always has fun ideas! She and C6 made a striking painting of a goldfish, and a cheery smiley face. Today we didn't really try to make any "thing" (except a mess!) It was all about the process, I mean, prossMESS.

On another MESSY DAY, I filled a biiiiig bowl with uncooked rice and gave C6 some spoons, different sized cups and bowls, and a funnel. He loved moving the rice from container to container. He was busily working for quite awhile and then (we knew it was coming) whoooooosshhhhhhh - all the rice went onto the floor and so did C6. He started flailing his little bodkin around atop the grains. Arms and legs moving all around. He was making a "rice angel". HAHrhAHR!!!!! The next day, after our lesson on how to use a funnel, I was trying to shove some Bacos back into the jar and they were spilling all over the place. "Mummio, use funnel!" said my little smartypants.

Bento update!

Hurrah! The cute Bento items I ordered arrived and we're really enjoying them. I didn't realize how small the Bento box that I ordered is - I've been using it for C6's snacks, or appetizers/sides/bits. The Hello Kitty cartoon character on the front of the box is "Shinkansen", the Japanese Bullet Train. Maybe he's the Japanese version of Thomas the Tank Engine. (Though we don't really know about him yet, shhhh. Don't tell C6! I tried watching that show and it was painfully boooooring! PAINFULLY!)

C6 is just crazy about the bear and bunny-shaped hard boiled eggs. He likes them with black pepper. No photos yet of the eggies (intact), but here's C6 enjoying some bueno Bento. This time it was avocado, blackberries, cheddar cheeeeez, and hard boiled egg slices. He gets very excited about opening it up to see what's inside! "My Bento box! My Bento box!"