Hiking Devil's Lake with Grandma

 

 

Little Kitties

...in their dog bed.

Breakfast with Beckett

Go Fish with Aunt Wendy

Princess Pirate and the Black Panther

Meet "Burning Lava," Former Pumpkin

Isabella

The Haunted Pumpkin Garden

We went to the New York Botanical Garden yesterday to check out the gardens and forest.  Our ostensible purpose was to take Sasha to the Haunted Pumpkin Garden.  An incredibly beautiful place in the heart of the Bronx, NYBG was the perfect place to spend a fall afternoon.  The Haunted Garden was cool and kid-friendly, though I think Sasha was a little disappointed that he didn't see any glowing, haunted gardens like in the ads:

The entire place is a work of art.  I took a couple of photos, but was too mesmerized to really pay attention to the camera.  I highly recommend a visit!  Even the cafe food was delicious.

Oh My Darling Clementine

I'm a terrible singer.  My singing repertoire is likewise terrible.  One of the only songs for which I know both lyrics and melody is "Oh My Darling Clementine."  So when Sasha requested a bedtime song and refused to listen to my only other song ("You Are My Sunshine") because it was "for babies," I offered up the only alternative.  Unfortunately, in the song sweet Clementine dies a horrible drowning death.  What does a concerned parent do?

Make up better lyrics, of course.

Here's my revised version, for use by any grandparents putting Sasha into bed for the night.

In a cavern, in a canyon
excavating for a mine
lived a miner, forty-niner
and his daughter Clementine.

Light she was and like a fairy
and her shoes were number nine,
herring boxes without topses,
sandals were for Clementine.

Drove she ducklings to the water
every morning just at nine,
kicked her shoes off, went a'swimming
with the ducks in foaming brine.

Ruby lips above the water
blowing bubbles sure and fine,
Alas, she was a mighty swimmer
and I lost my Clementine.

Down the river, like an arrow
Past the hills of rock and pine,
She was fated, world awaited,
adventure was for Clementine.

Little Mouse

We have a mouse problem.  Again.  Last time we ruthlessly killed the invaders and I still feel queasy about it.  Even though they pooped over every thing in sight and chewed through enough stuff that we trashed all our food.  So we rid ourselves of the whole family and the super stuffed any holes he could find.  That worked for while.  On the plus side, I finally learned why the phrase "build a better mousetrap" is apt.  Snap traps are the pinnacle of engineering.

But this time we're keeping them away with peppermint oil.  Problem is, the smell is strong but also fades fairly quickly.  So I'm getting grossed out by the stench of peppermint while also needing to keep dousing the kitchen surfaces. And I gave a bottle to our neighbors next door and now the mouse (mice?) has been driven back into our kitchen looking for food.  Everything we have is in the fridge or in glass jars, but to no avail.  Our new roommate even chewed through foil-covered vegetarian bullion cubes.  WTF?

Today Sasha and I had to clear out the nest.  Not a nest, really, more like a mouse toilet mixed with tiny wood chips.  We cleaned out underneath our kitchen sink and hunted for entry points.  Sasha was eager to find the holes and imagined an elaborate and pleasant post-apartment life for the mouse after we closed the holes.  (The mouse will see that the holes are blocked, then turn around and take the elevator down to the ground floor and then...)

Best and worst thing about a 3-and-3-quarters-year-old helping?  He can fit just about anywhere and is happy to crawl around somewhere novel.  Give him a flashlight and a sense of purpose, however, and he quickly invents other urgent tasks and purposes that get in the way of (Mom's) original task.  And then upon realizing he can't solve a single one of these terrible problems, he loses interest and asks to play with the iPad.