Sounds Like Fun: The Iowa State Fair

Sounds like fun, eh? Sure. When it's 105 degrees out and sunny, it sounds like fun to gather with 7,378+ people and eat deep fried whatever you can think of and walk around lost looking at animals in barns, people in barns, through the left overs of both and emerge into the gloriously, glaring, and overbearing Iowa sunshine only to think of all the other deep fried food you can ingest before you die of heatstroke on the Midway........


Oh, but we had fun! We did. The new Animal Learning Center is awesome (read: air conditioned), HARRY POTTER WAS IN BUTTER (I'm not kidding!), and I whole heartedly agree that next time we go we are doing so to view our own 1st place ribbons on our own food entries. My raspberry jam could so beat out this year's entry.



Also, I'm entering the Ugliest Cake contest; I have ideas bubbling right now, most of which are titled, "Muck and Goo For You".......
If they had a muddy hippos contest, I'd enter Lil'Bug. She went straight for the water fountains when we sat down to eat round 1 of greasy fair food. :) She says she liked the piglets best.....

One Buggy Night

The Creepy Crawly Cookout.....it occurred to both Dear Husband and I at the same time how interesting it was that they chose to serve hot dogs. Yummmmmy.

Lil'Bug had a great time, mostly because she loves bugs and dear husband caught and jarred six specimens to be identified by the "expert" etymologists, and quite a bit because Mama B and her boys were there too.

I was not impressed by the undergraduate students (who were likely failing Bug 101 and needed extra credit) who identified 3 of our mystery spiders as.....spiders. Seriously. Our fly that looked like a bee....."I'm pretty sure that's a fly that looks like a bee," said the "expert" and our squash beetles, "Yes, that's definitely a bug." ???? Very disappointing. I am considering emailing their supervising TA (I asked and they provided me his contact information), on the other hand they were there, which is likely all they needed to be.

Parent is a VERB.......

Nothing like a good trip out into the world after work hours to get a good example of families with the noun kind of parents. There was a kid, looked to be about 18 months, playing with an exterior outlet box, not one adult with in 15 ft, and he played for way longer than I felt comfortable with. Moms with strollers were pushing through people and not saying please or thank you, like bumper cars. Moms and Dads who were acting as if just being there was an imposition and that their children annoyed them to the point that they were martyrs.

Yuck. My kid annoys me sometimes, usually in public, but these people were so disconnected from their children. It was sad.

This got me thinking about all the things I do with Lil'Bug. When she tires me out, do I behave that way? I hope not. She was extra cranky this week, but we still ventured out. It was a challenge but I think it benefited us both to get back to our activities.

Things we did this week (Friday-Thursday): Pond Study, IMAX Amazing Caves (my first ever IMAX movie), Sci Center IA, swimming "lessons", library, shopping, 4 art sessions, a park explore hike, baked cookies/treats 4 times, took dog to groomer, ISU bug zoo (2nd trip to Sci Center), and a lot of reading time. We didn't do as much because we had a mother's helper and I was grading finals so we were at home more than is usual. Are other people this busy?

Parent is a verb in our home, as in we parent our child. Normally the verbing of nouns annoys me to no end, but in this and several other related cases, it fits. We school at home, we parent, and we learn. Our learning comes from everything and so do our opportunities to parent. We don't just show up at things, we are present.

August Storms

Tonight the sky is thundering, violent, the winds are warm and everything feels unsettled. I finished laundry, baked some failures, and worked on final grading.

Every year August brings some big change for us. In 2005, I quit my 40 hours a week job at a museum and became an adjunct professor; 2006 brought the end of my MA journey (ok, that was May but the tension didn't settle out of my neck until August); 2007: this year we are preparing to move while I have made a transition to even less teaching and even that is night and online. We are saying goodbye to the big Victorian house and greeting a simpler life.

This year Lil'Bug is experiencing the pain and growth of change too. While the storms are rolling in, she is working on a growth spurt (and a brain spurt), understanding the changes, and meeting new friends. She has her own room, new chores, and official lessons.

All of this is hard. Once school starts many of our friends go back to "school" and are less available during the week, but our days and our learning keep its course since we don't break for the seasons or the calendar. Everyone is talking about curriculum and plans, but I am looking forward to the less crowded museums and parks and the like. Lil'Bug has asked to learn more about many things and listed the things she would like to see and do: ride a real train, go back to the buffalo park and explore the grass maze, berry picking, more farm helping, and the apple orchard. She also wants to go camping, which we would do on a whim right now but it is so unbearably humid and hot right now. I also want to take her to the Children's museum, the Missisippi River Museum, and possibly to the Maytag cheese factory.

Yay fall!