A Mother of the Year Award I think I actually deserve!

I joke that when I do something stupid involving the kids, that's my latest submission as "Mother of the Year"...like turning around suddenly in a store, accidentally knocking one of the girls down...or bumping them with the grocery cart...stuff that is unintentional. I will proudly proclaim, "Another Mother of the Year Award!" and pick them up and give them a kiss and a hug. Well.........I think I might actually deserve it today.

Isabelle has been losing teeth left and right. Lorelei has been feeling left out, so the "Tooth Fairy" wrote a note and sneaked it into the mailbox today.

Dear Lorelei,

I have heard that you were upset about me visiting Isabelle, your big sister, but not you.

I’m sure you are very eager to lose your first tooth. Just remember that you will keep your baby teeth until you do not need them anymore.

I wanted to tell you that you will lose your first tooth very soon, and I will be coming to get it from under your pillow and leave you some money.

Be patient…I will see you very soon!

Love,

The Tooth Fairy

As we were heading off the dentist this afternoon, I stopped at the mailbox to "check the mail". We were all VERY surprised to find the "Tooth Fairy's" note. I read it to Lorelei, and it was as if the sun came out on her face.

She insisted on showing it to all the hygienists at the office, and also the dentist himself.

While the girls were off buying toys with the "gold coins" the dentist gives them, he pulled me aside.

"That note was perfect. It was age-appropriate and told her exactly what I would have told her. EVERY other parent, when there are two kids involved, asks ME to tell the youngest child why they haven't lost teeth yet. You saw the need for this note, and did it. I'm very, very impressed. I saw on the charts that you are an educator, and I can say that you come by it naturally. You have not only taught your child about why her teeth aren't coming out yet, but you have also boosted her self-esteem. You made her feel special...I wish I could get you to talk to 99 % of the parents who come in here. More parents need to be like YOU."

Well, you can imagine I just floated out of that office.

What lies beneath...(an impromptu anatomy lesson)

The summer is stretching in front of me like a road with no end. Lorelei's been out of school for a week, and Isabelle's last day is Friday. I have to keep two smart energetic children occupied for three months, and that takes more than just parking them in front of the TV.

Today, Lorelei and I went to RAPTOR. I had seen a neat pellet display at the CNC and wanted to investigate some of my saved pellets and see if I could replicate the display.

Our owl pellets don't hold any secrets...we feed them, so we know what's going in and what will be coming out. I chose one of Storm's pellets, since he is fed mice and swallows them whole (our larger owls seem to pick apart their food and leave leftovers, so their pellets aren't quite as interesting).
Quick pellet lesson:
All birds of prey (and some other birds, like herons) make pellets. What can't be digested is coughed (cast) up and you can pull it apart and determine their diet. Owl pellets are special in that the owls tend to swallow their food whole, or at least pull it apart and finish it all...so the entire skeleton (give or take a few tiny pieces) is wrapped in the fur or feathers of the prey.
Scientists can gather owl pellets and evaluate the food supply of an area.
Owl pellets also hold a larger amount of food residue, since their stomach acids are weaker than other birds of prey.
Barn owl pellets look a little different from other pellets...they are round, instead of oblong.


Storm's pellet:



I started to pull it open....

Arggh! A treasure trove of bony secrets!


I separated the bones into piles (ribs, tail and vertebrae, skull, legs) and Lorelei got very interested...

...so I let her do some pulling herself.
She wanted to know what every piece was, so I explained that the ribs protect the lungs and heart, and the vertebra are the back, etc. I showed her on her body where her ribs and spine were, and there came a moment when something clicked in her. I saw a light come on...



I assumed there were slightly more than one whole skeleton in this pellet. (Lorelei said it was one really BIG mouse)
Lorelei has said repeatedly over the past few years that she wants to be a veterinarian. Seeing that light come on in her eyes made me think that this is not just a dream or fancy. She really got into this. And made connections between the bones we were pulling out of the pellet and her own bones. It was so cool to witness, this awakening.

Pulling the bones out, with Daisy the stuffed Puppy looking on:

We interrupt the West Virginia Love Fest to bring you some Ohio nature joy

Yesterday, Lorelei and I got to spend the day together.

I asked her what she wanted to do: "Starbucks!" (that's my girl)
What else? "I want to go birding with you, Mommy." (heart melts into a puddle of goo)

She specifically wanted to see a Great Blue Heron, so we decided to go to Kelley's Nature Preserve.

As we left the house, Lorelei spotted a sparrow eating dandelion seeds in the yard.
"Mommy! I see a new bird!"

White-crowned sparrow? In my yard in May? That's fairly late for around here.
Lorelei thought it was a life bird for her (though I think she has seen one before), so I dutifully filmed her version of the Life Bird Wiggle...




Let's get in the car....oh, wait. We need to look at some very tiny mushrooms first:


Never interrupt a child when they are investigating nature.

No Great Blue Herons at the Preserve (The Little Miami is too high and fast for them right now), but Lorelei scared up some Prothonotary Warblers...nesting Prothonotary Warblers:


They kept popping up from a tree cavity hanging over the river....
"Mommy! Those birds are yelling and they are hurting my head!"
"We are in their territory, Short Stack. If we move on, they will stop yelling."

With my shiny-new Nature Attitude, we reveled in simple things:


We imagined how it would be to climb out onto this impossibly vertical sycamore tree and gaze out on the river.



We tried to count the number of living things on a single fence post.




We were brave and watched a bumblebee sip dew from a stem of grass.




We laughed at a firefly, hanging on for dear life, on last year's growth in the meadow.


A pair of Eastern Towhees burst from the trail side. I whispered to Lorelei that they make their nests on the ground, so we shouldn't disturb them. Lorelei whispered back, "Mommy...don't step on the nest. Let's move on so they can get back to their babies."


And we enjoyed the blue sky and popcorn clouds over the trees.

A day like SourPatch Kids, but in reverse

What a good day, with a sour end... like SourPatch Kids candy, but backwards. (They start out sour, then get sweet, if you've never had one)


Filled with birds and bugs and a project.

It started with a Phoebe near the river.

I always get phoebes and peewees mixed up visually. I didn't have my field guide with me, but I had my BirdJam. (Hi, Jay!!!)
I played the phoebe call and this sweet little bundle of bravado sang it back to me.




At the same place on the river, a pair of wood ducks were checking out the massive old sycamores for a nest site.


Wood ducks astonish me every time I see one in a tree. I should be used to it by now, being a birder for 7 years...but a duck in a tree. It's weird and wonderful to see. I mean, how do they hang on??? They have...well, DUCK FEET!

I watched the female as she went from tree to tree. She didn't walk along the branches like a raptor would, or any other bird who normally perches up there. If she wanted to move down the branch, she would think about it really hard, bouncing her neck up and down, and then do a half-hop, half-flap to another spot. I laughed out loud quite a few times. The male let her do the house-shopping, and when she got too far away, he would leisurely follow.
Reading up on them at the Cornell All About Birds website, I learned that the babies can jump from heights of 89 m (290 feet!!!) without injury. Wow. I've seen documentaries that show the wee little darlings do their version of base jumping, but 290 feet? Holy Crap!
And the nest is lined with down from the female's breast. Imagine yanking stuff off yourself to care for your baby. I guess breast-feeding comes pretty close.

Later, a towhee visited our feeders.

They are a rare treat here, smack dab in the middle of our subdivision. No one but us has the necessary cover for them to feel comfortable. It's a shame, too. Lots of our neighbors have bird feeders, but they live on these wide, vast....green carpets with no bird cover to speak of.

The visit from the towhee got me thinking of a project I wanted to do. I got the idea from a book I received from Lynne's GIVEAWAY. Click here if you want to read the book. It's right up your alley if you are thinking of becoming a rehabber.

Voila. A Bug Pit:

(If you don't know what one is, it's just another way to feed the birds.)
I removed all the grass from the area, filled it in with nice, juicy organic soil (compost) and lots and lots of earthworms, centipedes, slugs, pill bugs....


Lorelei helped.


We then covered everything with leaves, to encourage birds to forage and do their kick-scratch thing. The only leaves we could find were dry, so we watered it down.

Note the purple purse. Even if she's gardening, accessories are important.
The girls are quite fond of turning over rocks and logs to search for insects, so now whenever they find something, it can go in the Bug Pit.

But. Heavy sigh. My dumb, dumb neighbors....
I went up to the top of the street to wait for Isabelle's bus, and the lawn on the corner was being.....treated.

TruGreen? ChemLawn?
Spray-Everything-With-Poison- so nothing can live there but GRASS- people?
I truly don't understand why people pay for this service. Honestly. I grew up on 14 acres of pure, untreated land and I could still do somersaults in the grass. In the current economy, people are PAYING for POISON? Kill ALL the bugs? Even the GOOD ONES?
Let me get this off my chest. Here's how it goes. You "treat" your lawn to this cocktail of gunk, which kills all the beneficial bugs. And then you need MORE poison to kill what the beneficial bugs would eat for you...for free. Nearly everyone on our street employs at least some kind of poison-service. When our direct neighbors get visited by the Scott's guy, I stand by the window and glare at him. When he gets too close to our fence, I find a reason to go outside, to my car or something, and give him a bit of the Stinky Eye. Keep that crap on your side!

What about fertilizers? WTF? You WANT your grass to grow faster and thicker? So you have to mow it more OFTEN? So you can pay for MORE gasoline and belch out MORE fumes into a rapidly thickening atmosphere?
Well, we have all the bugs. And we are happy about it. And so are our birds.
If Geoff would let me, I would kill ALL of our grass, plant native ground-cover and just grow native shrubs and trees. And wildflowers. And seed-producing plants.
FIFTY NINE bird species and counting, on our little patch (3/4 of an acre!) of Heaven, stuck in the middle of Suburban Hell.

Okay. I went on a rant there.
To leave you with something sweet....tomorrow, GHOW chick banding!

My kids are COOL. Period.

Isabelle likes to read before bedtime, snuggled in tight with her Ugly Dolls and huge stuffed green frog. She also likes to play with her calculator, coming up with all sorts of math problems and discovering the answers.
And occasionally, the muse strikes her and she draws. It's usually things that happened that day, or a wish, or a rant about something Lorelei did.
: )
Tonight, she drew me a picture.


A Steller's Sea Eagle.
Note her notation at top left:
Live: Tundra
Diet: Fish

She told me that the fish making an "O" with its mouth is the one that is about to be eaten.
Also note the buzzing insect flying over all the fish, and the fish are jumping to try
and catch it.
She even made the eagle's eye "fierce".

MY KIDS ARE COOL.

Real things I saw today, even though it's April Fool's Day

I love being a birder. I think I've said that before.
Being plugged in to the avian world makes us privy to a whole host of interesting things. We can marvel at a new bird, ponder a behavior. I saw lots today.

It started with a new yard bird:


Yard bird #59. Brown thrasher. It was kick/scratching under the feeders, then took off for the big maple.
And it was singing. Glorious.

A yellow-rumped warbler landed right next to my car at Lake Isabella, and just looked at me.




Three red-shouldered hawks were circling the yard and calling out in their wonderfully screamy voices.

Gratuitous cute kid/dog photo:

Lorelei was singing, as usual, waving her newly-acquired dandelion. And Hooper leaned in for a sniff.

Nellie was keeping her eye on me, as usual.

"Where's Mom? Oh, there she is. Is she going to get up? I better be ready. Mom? Need me?"

She is my shadow...always near and always worried that I might disappear.

This is Roxy:

She is a Tibetan Yak-Dog.
April Fools. She belongs to Swami. (And she's a Shetland Sheepdog)

Being a long-haired breed, this dog makes lots and lots of loose hair. Lorelei and I brushed her, Hooper, Nellie and whatever cat we could grab and stuffed all that hair into a cardboard tube and hung it outside (birds will use it to line their wee sweet nests)

I wasn't back in the house 10 seconds before someone landed and started plucking:

Tufted titmouse


Bearded titmouse



It was so cool to watch. I've left hair out there before, but usually I just brush the dogs outside and let the hair float away. This was fun!

The titmouse left and a white-breasted nuthatch took its place.


Each bird would grab some with its beak, then maneuver it around, grabbing some with its feet, then rearranging and grabbing it again with the beak. All this grabbing and rearranging helped them carry as much as possible. Birds are just so efficient.

The suckiness of....oh, Hell with it.

Yesterday was a study in adventure.
My program began at 3:15. The good ol' weatherman said that we could get 1 to 3 inches of snow.
When my program ended at 4:20, that had been upgraded to 4 to 6 inches.
The program was only 12 minutes from RAPTOR. It took me a solid HOUR to get the birds back.


This particular snow was thick and fluffy like feathers. Very pretty as it fell silently. Onto the old snow and ice from last week.

Sylvester disapproved of the forecast.

Click on the photo....that dusting of snow on his big sweet head just does me in.


By the time I had redeposited all the birds in their mews (and almost ending up on my ass while holding Priscilla), the forecast had been upgraded to 6 to 8 inches.
Okaaaaayy....
My trip home usually lasts about 30 minutes. Last night, it took 3 hours.
One of the local radio stations was taking requests from people stuck out in the mess on the highways. Someone requested a good one:


I didn't get above 9 miles an hour. For 3 hours.

This morning, with my good humor restored, we were able to go out and enjoy all the annoying loveliness:


That's a foot of snow on the table behind Isabelle.



Lorelei enjoyed herself, until......

...while making a snow angel, Nellie went in for a kiss and pushed a quart of snow into her face. That was that for Lorelei.


What is it about snow that makes dogs go out of their minds?

"Let's play, Nellie! RRrrrrrrrrr!"

Hooper's a big dog. The snow was hitting his shoulders:



It did my heart good to see Nellie romp and frolic like she was a puppy, instead of a geezer 8 year old:





The pictures don't do it justice. It was a yard full of diamonds.

And now....the goofiest pic I got today:




Hooper in full "Snow Gritties" mode.

It's fun to stay at the Y M C A .......

We joined the local YMCA as a Christmas gift for the girls, and one of the perks of a Y membership is all the classes they offer.
Both the girls are in a swimming class, and Lorelei for the first time is taking a dance class....Ballet/Tap/Jazz.
There was a scheduling snafu on Tuesday, so Lorelei took a make-up class today so she isn't behind.
Since the child dances every waking hour of her life, I knew she would do well. I was surprised at just how well she did.


There's natural grace there, but also a desperate need for more balance. You'd think, with that dinky, Italian-shaped body and its low center of gravity, she would be more stable. Like a Weeble-Wobble. But she does need to practice on keeping herself righted.



After warming up, the teacher led them through a series of "Graceful" exercises, some pantomimes like putting on rings, and make up and doing up their hair.





A chorus line!


During the hour-long class, I went to get my membership card's photo taken (UGH) and wandering around the Y....


Found this:

Look, Ruthie and Trixie! A knitting group!
(Where the Heck is Trixie, by the way?)

I saw this poster and immediately thought of some of my...ahem...more mature blogger friends:

May is "Older American" Month?
Huh. Who knew?

I have two days down on my Marathon Week, tomorrow's the last day.
While bringing the birds back yesterday, I was behind this goofy vehicle:

Read the names of the kids and the dog......

You know, some people are just begging to be slapped right in their heads.