Hannah goes to Amish country

Autumn was back in the country briefly in the beginning of July and one of her requirements for visiting was that we make a day trip to one of the many area tourist attractions that locals don't take advantage of. We threw around a few ideas (Philadelphia, Harper's Ferry, Gettysburg) and settled on Amish country outside of Lancaster. We thought we'd tool around downtown Lancaster too while we were in the area but time did not end up permitting that.

We drove to Kitchen Kettle Village located in Intercourse, Pennsylvania and made a beeline for the ice cream place. I promised Hannah an ice cream cone first thing, and she wasn't about to let me forget. She chose strawberry, as usual, and dripped it all over herself in the process of thoroughly enjoying it. Also, you don't have to look too closely at the pic below to see that she is wearing one pink sock. I don't know why she woke up that day and put on one pink sock, but I was unable to change her mind. I did manage to strip it off her sweaty foot much later in the day.

Kitchen Kettle Village is mostly a bunch of country craft shops, stuff that doesn't interest any of us, but there was a jewelry store Autumn browsed and we all liked the store that the village is named for.  It's full of thousands of jars of everything you could think to jar or pickle in every flavor you could imagine and there are samples of everything so you just walk around the store tasting everything. The pic below is just a random bench and is not in front of that store...There's also a little petting zoo on the other side of the parking lot where we hung out for a bit.

We bought tickets for a buggy ride next and opted for the hour long tour that stops for a half an hour to tour an Amish farm. We figured that was our best bet with Hannah and we were all interested in seeing an actual farm up close anyway. The driver let Hannah sit in the front with her. I snapped some pics before we took off.

 

 And another one while riding.

Our driver was an Amish woman (obviously) who took a liking to Hannah. After helping her out of the buggy, the two held hands and toured us around the farm.

The buggy below costs around $8,000 (without the horse) and is designed for a family (there's a little backseat). I think she said that unmarried Amish people usually ride in a buggy without a roof....

There were lots of baby animals on this farm to pet, especially cows because most Amish people have dairy farms. They have fields and fields of crops that go to feeding their animals because dairy is their livelihood which makes me think they should get rid of the animals and just eat veggies that they grow for themselves (they do have a garden for themselves) and then they wouldn't have to work so hard, but I guess then they wouldn't have money for $8,000 buggies and other stuff they need.

I love the sight of laundry hanging to dry. I can't wait until we have a place where I can string up a clothes line and line dry some stuff! At the very least I'd like to line dry diapers when the time comes again.... Probably not clothes because I remember them just getting crisp in the sun, but definitely diapers.

After we toured the dairy farm and learned about the average Amish person's day and habits, we cooled off with the most delicious lemonade I have ever tasted. I'm not a big lemonade fan and find that it usually does the opposite of quenching my thirst but this was perfect and refreshing and not too sweet. I didn't get much of this awesomeness though because I opted to share with Hannah and she kept the straw in her mouth until it was empty.

One of my favorite things that I learned (that I did not get a picture of) is that Amish people use phone booths to make phone calls. They do not have phones in the home. As we rode to the farm, we passed by this tiny little booth on the side of the road where they go to make their calls. They think it's rude to be interrupted at home. Interesting, huh?

When we returned to the village, our awesome driver/tour guide took a group photo.

Then we headed down the road to a place called The Amish Village. it's this authentic Amish house that's supposed to be set up the way the Amish live (though I obviously can't speak to its authenticity since I have not been in an Amish house where Amish people live). We had a tour guide take us from room to room explaining all the stuff and their lives. Since they don't have electricity, they put their lamps on little wooden cabinets on wheels and hook them up to a propane tank they keep in the cabinet, then they wheel it around to wherever they need light. Since they are okay with using gas, they'll buy a lot of electrical appliances that we might have (like KitchenAid mixers and washing machines) and then they'll rework the guts of the machines to make them run on gas. Pretty genius!

Another interesting fact, they only paint their interior walls in shades of blue and green, and I think white too. I forget why though...I think because they are the colors of the sky and earth and....hmmm...We also got to see their outfits. They don't wear any big buttons or brass buckles or anything because it reminds them of the soldiers who were mean to them in Europe before moving to America. And what the women go through every morning to get dressed is crazy. They pin on their aprons with straight pins. I don't know why they wouldn't just make the aprons tie in the back or sew them directly to their skirts, but this is coming from someone who lives in yoga pants, someone the Amish would probably regard as incredibly lazy. Apparently they can put in all the straight pins in a matter of seconds with their eyes closed. It's crazy what you can do if you just make up your mind to do it regularly. Habits are amazing things.

Outside of the house is a yard area with a barn and various Amish buildings like a general store, tool shed, school house, etc. Speaking of schools, did you know that they have a super old-school style school with all the grades in one classroom? The teacher is a young unmarried woman who accepts the role. She has no training, just teaches them what she learned. When she gets married, they have to find another woman to teach. Once Amish women get married, they quit their jobs to raise families.

Alright, some random pics from the backyard area of the house. First, Mr. Ed.

We were all in love with these baby pigs. Amy, being Amy, kept saying that she wanted to snuggle them so then Hannah got really serious about snuggling them, tried to climb over the fence, and was upset when we said no.  Whoops! Kids really can't take a joke.

I got pics of the school house and stuff too, but they're not all that interesting, so I'll close with some pics of us posing in the buggy.

I had a great day hanging with some of my most favorite ladies and learning about a totally different way of life.  The Amish are fascinating!  Hannah was probably a little young to really understand or retain much, but who knows, maybe she's capable of more than I give her credit for. Either way, it was a good experience, and good experiences are good for shaping open-minded and educated children!

Cooling off at Cunningham Falls

This is it: the last post from June! I think I only have two from July so that shouldn't be as daunting, and then I'll be caught up, and that will be beyond amazing.

You know that crazy storm we had at the end of June, the derecho that knocked out power for days and made Baltimore look slightly post-apocalyptic with all the felled trees and the giant sinkhole that opened up at the intersection of 37th and Keswick? That sucked. Well, this is that weekend that I'm flashing back to.

So the storm hit before midnight and woke us all up. Hannah came into our bed because holy cow, that was some seriously scary shit, and we all laid there wide awake but wishing we weren't while the lightning lit up our bedroom like a non-stop strobe light and the thunder rumbled without rest for at least an hour, or maybe it wasn't, but it sure felt like it. 

The power went out in the midst of it, and an eerie stillness enveloped the house. The air grew more and more stifling as the air conditioning succumbed to the near 100 temperatures raging outside (maybe it was slightly cooler at night?? It didn't feel like it). I didn't sleep well as a result, and when I woke up the next morning, I was exhausted and freaking out about what to do with all the food in the fridge. Eric got up super early and went for a run (which he said was awesome because he got to check out all the crazy damage the storm did), and then I sent him out for bags of ice to load up the fridge. We packed up a cooler then with as much of the portable food as possible and drove to Cunningham Falls to meet my dad and brother and his family, AND, as a bonus, we also met my friend Brian and his family who I hadn't seen in years. Unfortunately, I didn't end up with any good pics of them since the main time we all hung out was during lunch, and I wasn't so snap happy then.

A day at the lake in the mountains was a good call.

After swimming for a bit we headed back to our little picnic table nook in the woods and Hannah curled up on a sunny rock like a snake.

And then ate a blueberry bagel.

I don't take a lot of pics of Eric all by his lonesome, but he looked so nice sitting on this rock...

Hannah has decided that she often doesn't want her picture taken, at least not as often as I try to take it, which is probably understandable, but to emphasize this point, she covers her face. Clay must have thought it a good idea because he followed suit.

The kiddos wanted to hike upstream for a bit so we all clambered in climbed around.

We made it all the way to the tunnel and then posed for a few silly pics before heading back to the beach.

On the way back we found a many-legged insect (I don't know the difference between a millipede and centipede). Hannah put it on a stick and carried it around for observation.

And then we made it back to the beach and snuggled in the inner tube for a while before leaving the mountains and heading back to the insane heat of the inner city.

We returned to an increasingly sweltering house and after bathing Hannah and putting her to bed, Laura and I went out to see a show leaving Eric in the dark to watch a movie on the portable DVD player until the battery died. I felt bad, but we'd made those plans a few weeks earlier, and honestly, even though I was exhausted, it was awesome to hang out in some air conditioning for a few hours.

I came home late that night and after sweating through another sticky night, started calling hotels in the morning. We'd kept the windows and blinds shut in an effort to keep out the heat, but 100-degree heat can't be bothered by blinds and curtains, and it forced its way in regardless and was taking over. It was more than the heat though and the dark (which I am, admittedly, a little afraid of), it was the claustrophobia of it all. With the windows and blinds blocking the sun all day and the lack of lights and the sweltering heat, I felt like the city was closing in on us.

A Facebook post revealed the generosity of the few friends who had power, and one such offer was unbeatable. We moved into Erin's and Ryan's immediately since they were out of town, and Hannah loved playing with Brody's and Addison's toys so much that she didn't even ask to watch TV even though that was the one thing she wanted most during the power outage. I was worried that she wouldn't sleep well in a new place but I guess knowing that it was Brody's bed was soothing because she slept soundly through the whole night.

Our power came on the following afternoon (Monday afternoon), so we moved home. We made it through the derecho and massive power outage unscathed and all the more grateful for the awesomeness of electricity and good friends (and family days at Cunningham Falls).

Ladybug Girl

On one of the mornings that Hannah didn't want to go to camp/school, I bribed her by telling her that if she went to school without crying and had as much fun as possible, then I would take her to the bookstore after picking her up and let her pick out any book she wanted. I had a hard time coming up with a bribe I could feel good about--typical suggestions/ideas have to do with TV time and sweets. I'm not into portraying either of those as rewards or special things to be coveted, but books, books we can covet. So after picking her up that day we went to the The Children's Bookstore and took our time exploring all options.

We looked at a lot of books, some of which I was not a fan of and managed to steer Hannah away from. Eventually she spied Ladybug Girl and loved the sparkly wings on the cover. I scanned the rave reviews on the back cover and, with the bookshop employees promising it to be a good one, headed for the register. Usually I read a book prior to buying it, but we'd been in there for a looooong time and read a lot of books by the time we found this one so I did something I don't normally do and put my trust in others. Lucky for us it worked out--Ladybug Girl is awesome. I love her, and I love this book!! I couldn't have picked a more perfect book for the occasion. I have plans to write a nice inscription about her growing up and being brave and going to school on the inside cover, but so far that hasn't happened. Oh, and she loves the book too; it's not just me.

Since Hannah loves dress up, wanting the costume was the next logical step. She's a little young for these delayed gratification bribes, but I tried another one anyway and told her that if she went to school every day and did her best to have fun then she could have the costume on the last day. We sat down together and ordered the wings and antenna and also a red tutu and since that brought my Amazon total to $18, I splurged on Ladybug Girl at the Beach to nudge my total up into the free shipping zone. (I wasn't about to drop $30 on a pair of boots.)

Hannah eagerly tore open the box when it arrived and then raced upstairs to put on the ladybug dress that Grammy bought her at the beginning of the summer, then back downstairs to slide the tutu beneath that. I helped her with the wings and antenna, and she posed proudly for pictures (wielding a bamboo stick that her and Eric pulled from a hiking adventure the previous day).

The next day she put on her costume immediately upon waking (this time with a random t-shirt instead of the dress), and we drove up to Loch Raven Reservoir for a hike. She walked around the reservoir collecting duck feathers and eating the tuna wrap I packed for her lunch.

Then we headed for a trail. An inchworm was dangling in front of us from an invisible thread, and Hannah was mesmerized. She ended up carrying around that inchworm for the next 45 minutes. We didn't get very far on our hike since she just stared at her hand the whole time, and when she finally dropped it and we couldn't find it, holy crap, all hell broke loose.

You can't see it very well in the above pic because my overall photography skills are slim to none in spite of that being one of my college majors, but it's there if you look really, really closely.

A couple of days later Hannah wrangled one of the antennae free from the headband, and that was pretty much the end of the costume. Eric doesn't have any black electrical tape in his arsenal of fix-it gear...We'll locate some eventually and be back in business.

In the meantime, she is still loving the books and now has four thanks to Grannah and Granpah who bought her Ladybug Girl and Bingo and Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy (this one is her favorite). She also has the Ladybug Girl doll thanks to Grammy, and I believe the coveted boots will a birthday present from Grammy.

Yay for grandparents who love to fully indulge their only granddaughter on her whims! Especially when those whims happen to actually be pretty cool. If you've got a little girl and haven't yet discovered the Ladybug Girl books, I highly recommend checking them out.

Hannah's off to Montessori in the fall!

The exhaustion has quadrupled since Thursday and is making it so that functioning function on any kind of a normal level is downright unbearable. I've also started in with that annoying eating thing that happened the first time around where I get dizzy if I don't keep eat constantly, but most foods are super unappealing to me, thus making it impossible to ingest enough calories to keep from getting dizzy. Fun!

I'm pushing through it tonight anyway and will attempt to finally cross "blog about Montessori" off my to do list. It's the one blog post I keep procrastinating on, probably because I know it's going to be a big one. Maybe it wouldn't be so unwieldy if I'd broken it into little pieces like I meant to, starting back in the spring when Eric and I went to the open house and fell in love and applied on the spot, or maybe starting when I got Hannah's acceptance letter in the mail and sent back the signed contract, or maybe even starting when when I found out that we'd gotten financial aid (yay!!), but all those moments when un-blogged. Then we signed up Hannah for one of the 2-week summer camp sessions with the goal of making her adjustment easier in the fall. The camp meet-and-greet was back in the beginning of June, and since there weren't a ton of parents there, I whippped out my cell phone and went a little mamarazzi in anticipation of this very belated post.

On the day of the meet-and-greet, Hannah walked right into the classroom, headed straight for the shelves, and immediately engaged herself in an activity. For those of you who aren't familiar with Montessori, one of their philosophies is that all activities/toys should be placed on height-appropriate open shelves and in a progressive order so that the child can see the activities (since seeing them makes them interesting as opposed to putting them in bins or boxes where they go ignored) and move down the line from one activity to the next. Hannah picked up a little metal paint pallet first and placed the accompanying rainbow-colored puff balls in the circular spots where the paint goes. Then she moved on to the empty shaker (like the kind you'd find at a pizza joint full of either garlic, red pepper, or Parmesan) and began filling the holes with the accompanying plastic green sword toothpicks which dangled nicely once all were in. A lot of the activities at the toddler age emphasize the pincher grip to ready them for holding a pencil.

On the next book shelf over she found various bowls full of various trinkets, and she got a kick out of mixing them all into one bowl. Ms. Beth showed then showed her how to sort them, an activity she indulged in for a bit but quickly lost interest in.

On the other side of the shelves Hannah found a 5-gallon water jug and a basket of ping-pong balls and got to work filling the jug.

Dot painting ended up being a favorite activity of Hannah's during camp, and she came home with a ton of really great paintings made with these little bingo markers.

Cooking is another of her favorite activities so when she found the fruit and little glasses she began baking a "vegetable pie" using the shelves as an oven. I attempted to cut out this little boy from the photo in case his mama didn't appreciate him being on the internet, but I probably should have just left him in the shot since his half-face is probably worse than just posting an anonymous photo of someone else's child.

Here she is doing some more sorting, this time according to her own set of Hannah principles.

I scoped out this old-school vanity with its super old-school phone before Hannah did and wondered how she'd react to the Victorian phone and if she'd have any idea what it was.

She did. I guess its intuitive or some sort of cosmic knowledge available to all people. She didn't play with it much though preferring instead to look at herself in the mirror.

After the meet-and-greet we headed outside to explore the playground. There are two of those little plastic play houses and a plethora of plastic cars and trikes that captivated her so much so that she hardly even played with the playground part of it.

I love that this place is an old restored farm house and took a few outdoor shots so you could see how idyllic the setting is. This was one of our big selling points and one of the reasons I'm glad we didn't get into the public charter Montessori. Sure, free would have been incredibly awesome, and the school itself seemed great from the open house I attended, but it is in a really blighted neighborhood so the view from the playground (through the chain link fence) is of row upon row of boarded up row homes. Since we live in the city, I was pretty desperate to find Hannah a school located outside the concrete jungle. This private Montessori isn't fair from us at all, but it's far enough to smell and sound and look like the country.

This is another view from the playground, this time of the breezeway that leads to the individual classrooms.

This is the front of the school taken from the parking lot.

And finally, Hannah running around the little grassy knoll in the parking lot swinging around the sticks she found.

 

We had a really fun morning, and she had a fun 2 weeks at a camp at the end of June. I had to send Grammy with her on her first day because I had to teach, but Hannah adjusted quickly so Grammy was able to hang out in her car with a book. I tried to go in on day two in case Hannah still needed some adjustment time and also because I wanted to meet the teacher, but her teacher's aid met us at the door and after a nice greeting, she quickly swept Hannah away while I walked back to the car feeling a little forlorn. Their philosophy is that it is easier for the kids if they leave the parents rather than the parent leaving them. I get that, but I was still a little bummed.

Camp was for 2 hours every morning for 2 weeks. This is a lot for Hannah considering she has never in her life had to wake up and do the same thing every day of the week in her entire almost 3 years of existence. It was also a lot more time away from me than she's used to, and as a result, there were some mornings when she didn't want to go. On a few days, I bribed her (this is how we ended up with  a Ladybug Girl obsession but that's another blog post). I used the car pool option the rest of the days and let her assistant teacher help her out of her car seat and then help her back in at the end of the morning.  At the end of the day, the teaching assistant always raved about how engaged Hannah was all the time and how well she did. After a few days she asked if Hannah was enrolled in the fall and was relieved when I said yes commenting that Hannah is definitely ready. That was nice to hear! Hopefully she'll be ready for the primary program in the fall and will adjust to being gone every morning quickly.

Some things I love about this style of teaching/this school:

• Classes consist of three ages. When Hannah starts in September, she'll be one of the youngest kids in the classroom having just turned 3 and will be in that class until she is 6. The 6-year-olds will have the opportunity to develop leadership skills and help with younger children in the classroom, and the younger children will benefit from being able to learn from other children rather than from adults, which often increases learning. There is a big emphasis on working with a variety of age groups so that even in middle school, they will do projects that involve the primary school children, though obviously the activities that each grade does will differ according to age/skill.
• A French teacher comes around to the classroom for French lessons. It is very important to me that Hannah be exposed to other languages early on in life so this is a big plus.
• There is no emphasis on sharing. It has always seemed unnatural to me when at playdates another mom would make their child share something with Hannah just because Hannah wanted it. I mean, I don't advocate for being selfish, but I don't think a child should have to give up something just because another child wants it.  Learning patience and turn taking is important to me. At Montessori, a child who is engaged with an activity does not have to share that activity. When the first child is finished with it, another child may pick it up and play.
• I think the biggest appeal to me is the self-paced learning style. Prior to finding this school I was contemplating home schooling Hannah in a curriculum-free/life-learning environment. I didn't really want to home school, but I wanted to make sure she had the learning experience that I believe in, and if that was the only way to make that happen, so be it. Thankfully, there's Montessori. Here, children engage in a variety of age-appropriate activities at their own pace and spend as much or as little time on each activity as they want. The idea is that children learn better and remember more when they choose to learn it. I read one story of a home-schooled life-learning child who got really into chemistry as an adolescent and stuck with it until learning everything in a college textbook. He never picked it up again, but swears he remembers all of it as an adult. Rather than follow a strict curriculum in which you sit at a desk and learn what you are told to learn in just the amount that you are allowed to learn it, these kids move freely about the room and engage in whatever activities interest them. The teachers, or guides as they're called at Montessori, are trained to help facilitate deeper learning with each activity.
• Finally, the whole no-desk thing is incredibly appealing to me. As someone who finds it unbearably difficult to sit still for long periods of time chained to a desk (thank goodness I don't have to!!), I didn't want to force Hannah into that sedentary lifestyle. She's as active as her parents, and I think she'd have a hard time sitting on her butt all day long while teachers lecture from a chalkboard and try to cram as much rote memorizing into her little head as possible. 

 Hannah isn't even a student yet, and I have a lot more reading up to do on the subject so I'm sure I'm missing a ton, but these are the initial things that attracted me to this style of learning. Now, if you'll excuse me, it is way past this pregnant lady's bedtime.

Hannah gets a fish

Many, many moons ago, on the evening of HonFest while Hannah was camping with her dad and the neighbors, a little girl who lives around the corner and absolutely loves Hannah called on the phone and asked me if she could bring over a fish for Hannah because she had already won three that day at HonFest. I said no as gently as possible explaining that fish are a pain to clean up after and they smell terrible if you don't clean up after them. She then launched into a detailed explanation of how to clean out the fish bowl beginning with removing the the fish and placing it in a separate container. It was a super detailed, step-by-step explanation and quite exhausting to sit through. I protested a few more times and wondered where her mother was while her daughter was pushing an unwanted fish on us. I was trying to do school work, taking full advantage of having the night off from parenting and here I was sitting on the phone listening to a 10-year-old prattle on incessantly about how easy it is to take care of a fish. Eventually I gave up and told her to bring over the fish. I filled a vase with water and dumped in the fish along with some flakes of food.

When Hannah home a found a fish on the table she was thrilled, as I expected. We carried the fish around in that vase for a few days, moving it from room to room depending on where she was. She talked to it and even tried to pet it.

The following Monday I stopped off at Shannon's to pick up her fish bowl since Atticus' fish had just croaked. It was shorter than the vase, but rounded and seemed like a great place for a fish to spend what I hoped would be a short life.  Eric totally rejected the bowl and insisted that we give the fish a fighting chance. He came home from the pet store with this 2.5 gallon tank with a filter. This miniature getup was $50.  Insane!

(Sorry about the picture quality--I suck at taking pics in the dining room--my camera hates that lighting unless I change the white balance and I always forget to do that.)

In less than a week, Eric had determined that 2.5 gallons was not enough space for this goldfish and decided to act on a long-term dream of his to have a big fish tank. (This is not a dream he had ever made me aware of.) He got on Craig's List that night (what we should have done the first time) and found this 38 gallon tank for $75.  He left the house at 9:30 at night and drove to Anne Arundel county to pick it up. Excited much??

Of course, once we got a bigger tank, we needed to fill it...We now have four goldfish: OG (the original and first fish), Pig (who is either OG's best friend or arch nemesis--I am having a hard time interpreting fish behavior but the two are always together), Hercules (a little round fish with tiger-colored splotches and bulging eyes), and Midnight (also round with bulging eyes but black in color).  We also have an algae eater who is unnamed so far--he just moved in yesterday.

The reason I didn't want the OG fish is because I once owned a beta fish and found that cleaning its vase every week was annoying, and then it died and that was super gross. I'm not good with dead things. I also fish-sat for Shannon once while she was in Greece for 3 weeks (we were roommates then) and all of her fish ate each other while she was gone. I'd come home and find a headless one or a stomachless one floating at the top and then I'd have to find someone to scoop it out because there was no way I was going near that gnarliness. It was seriously gross.

Those experiences convinced me that fish ownership is not my thing. Sure they're nice to watch and I love the atmosphere of having them, but I don't want any part in taking care of them. Fortunately, I don't have to! I get to sit back and study the relationship between OG and Piggy and enjoy the atmosphere and do none of the work, and when one dies, I will be avoiding that room until it is properly disposed of. This is totally Eric's thing, and he's excited about it and loving have full responsibility.

So we're a fish family now. A goldfish family.