Sitting in a Tree...

It's so nice that fall is around the corner. Lovely days where it's cool enough to go outside for more than two minutes, the crisp flavor in the air...time for trips to the Botanical Gardens! we had a wonderful one today. It was A-chan's first time hiking the forest trail under her own power. She'd been down it before with the help of super-carrying powers from myself and Ketu as well as her Godparents S&L. It was very neat to overlay previous trips with her much smaller and less interactive with today's trip where she noticed so much! It amazed us both that she walked the whole trail and only asked to be picked up twice. There were a few times where she tripped and she scraped one knee a little. Overall, though, it was a perfect afternoon.

(S and L, we miss you guys so much. Yes, even though we got to see you on Saturday...when we went walking today we remembered going on the trail with you two and really wished that you could have joined us!)

Here are some pics of her in the Gardens on a less wild path. Her first time sitting up in a tree was so much fun that she keeps asking to sit in any tree she sees. Unfortunatley most of them are saplings and are way too small!

Fun Fun Anime List for Toddlers

In anticipation of Anime Weekend Atlanta in 7 days, here is A-chan's favorite anime! Listed in order of preferrence (hers not ours). Mostly suitable for 2-5 year olds though some bits are questionable, particularly Strawberry Marshamallow's most memorable character, Miu, who has inspired some bratiness in A-chan now and then.

Ghibli Films:

My Neighbor Totoro

Kiki's Delivery Service

Whisper of the Heart

The Cat Returns

Castle in the Sky

Series:

Azumanga Daioh

Kamichu!

Kodocha

A Little Snow Fairy Sugar

Fruits Basket

Mao-Chan

Magical Meow-Meow Taruto

Strawberry Marshmallow

Bottle Fairy

Lucky Star

The Responsibility of No

Have you ever gotten tired of being the adult? I never quite realized before how many things the word no can be applied to in a single dinner. And I feel guilty for saying it so many times. And I don't want to anymore!

So down with the 'No, you can't run in a restaurant' and the 'no matter how dull that butter knife may be, you still can't poke your friend with it' and the 'no, you can't play hide and seek under the table'!

Okay, so the only way to teach our children the rules of society is to keep reminding them over and over with negative statements. But I feel like an ogre after spending an entire two hour dinner saying no every few minutes. Luckily I don't have to say it so much when it's just A-chan, this dinner also included a friend of hers who is the same age and they desperately wanted to get down and play. Who can blame them, really? Except the other patrons in the restaurant, the wait staff, etc.

The obvious solution would be to take the little ones to a place like Chucky Cheese where they can do as they like. One problem with this is that such restaurants cater to mainstream american life - ie, no vegetarian food. Not going to happen with our family. Another problem is that they are so incredibly merchandising oriented that it is sickening. I don't want to expose my child to places like that. On the other hand, most vegetarian restaurants are not kid friendly. We have two pure veg places in town and neither offer a kid's menu, kid's size drink cups or seem even to want to treat kids as humans. I don't like either option. What I really want is a vegetarian & meatatarian restaurant that likes kids and has a play area with a good kids menu and vegetarian kids' choices. Why is that such a difficult thing to find? And when did this post turn into a rant? lol. oh well. I guess I didn't realize how much this upset me til I started writing about it.

One more bit of ranting...have you ever noticed that at most restaurants here in the US, the kids' menu have absolutely no vegetarian choices? So if I want a vegetarian meal for my child I have to order it off the adult menu at adult prices even though she won't eat but a fourth of it since she's just (almost) 3 years old. It's ridiculous! And I hate it. End rant. :)

Soy Sauce Dogs

Being vegetarians we try to make the distinction between meat and the meat substitutes that we eat for A-chan so that hopefully she will understand a little bit when at a friend's grill out and I won't let her have a hot dog.

We try to remember to say 'soy dog' or 'soy burger', something that gets the idea across and indicates that it's not the same thing as a 'hot dog' or 'hamburger'. When A-chan plays with her wooden food toys we also make the same distinctions. She has in her little basket a 'soy sausage' and a 'soy dog'. Yesterday she dropped the 'soy dog' and it rolled under the couch. "What happened to the soy sauce dog?" she asked. It was so cute.

To further explain, though...we love soy sauce. It is hard to describe the amounts of soy sauce that we typically go through every week. A-chan won't eat any meal that comes with rice without her beloved soy sauce. We adults, having everything nicely compartmentalized in our heads already, never made the connection between 'soy sauce' and 'soy meat substitute' since obviously the twain have nothing to do with each other in normal daily life. I think it's so very neat how children make those leaps that adults minds automatically reject in most cases!

After DragonCon 2007

We are finally done with the mad dash and chaos-filled readiness for DragonCon marathon. The con is over and we had a really fun time, but wow are we tired. As always we packed way too much and didn't use all of it.

Purple jawa princess was a huge hit and we lost count of how many people took a-chan's picture. She had a blast dressing up and was quite a ham for the cameras. Saturday night she pleaded not to go to bed but to have more people take her picture instead. In fact, she started recognizing when people wanted to take her picture and began to pose - pulling up her hood and everything!

The 5 cookies went well. Here's the final decision on what they were: a thin sugar cookie base, vanilla icing, sugar sprinkles, a moravian spice cookie in the shape of a 5. They were very tasty but somewhat difficult for A-chan to eat. she enjoyed licking the icing off though. I really like them a whole lot. They do sound...interesting...but they are a nice exotic change. But they are reserved for Dragoncon and we'll have to wait for next year to have more.

But the absolute biggest hit were the Squeaky Shoes! It was amazing how many people commented on them, said they were awesome, and claimed to want some for themselves. So we thought, "wow, we could make adult squeakies and sell them next year and make a fortune!" and then we realized, "200 people at Dragoncon all squeaking as they walk from one hotel to the next....we'll be lynched. Bad idea." Wow, so many people asked about them and commented on them, though!