You've Got Some Kettle On Your Shoe

Drove out to Delafield, about 40 minutes west of Milwaukee, yesterday morning to meet a friend for a little hike. The chosen spot was Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine Forest. We'd decided to do the 4-mile portion of the Ice Age Trail that cuts through the park -- seemed more interesting than one of the loop trails, which are designed mostly for cross-country skiing in winter.

It was a great day for a walk. A slight breeze, 70ish degrees. It's a beautiful area. There's a lot of prairie and wetlands on one end.






Then the trail rises up to the 1,233-foot "Lapham Peak" in the park's center. You even get to climb this huge, wooden observation tower get a good view of the whole area.



The second half of the journey was more wooded, and we encountered quite a bit of muddy trail. Perhaps this would have been expected if I'd read the definition of "kettle" before we left: "A depression left in a mass of glacial drift, formed by the melting of an isolated block of glacial ice. A pothole." My shoes certainly look like they've walked through a glacier's pothole. And, of course, I have no pictures of that part of the journey because I'd decided to put the camera back in my backpack and didn't feel like getting it back out. (And besides, I was with a master photo documenter.)

I saw my first ever eastern towhees -- a pair of them scratching in the leaves under a tree to look for food. Also saw either a northern flicker or a red-bellied woodpecker; it flew off before I could tell for sure.

It was a good morning. Muddy shoes and all.

Let's See What's in the Junk Drawer?

Welcome to another edition of Random Things...

1. I found yet another reason to love Target. I've been looking for some replacement spoons, since all but three of ours had mysteriously gone missing. After checking home stores, department stores, etc., I found them, by accident, at Target. They sell forks, knives, spoons, all in nice little sets of six. Target rules.

2. We were at a wedding a couple weeks back, and at the reception, before dinner, the minister asked everyone to join him in prayer. People bowed their heads and folded their hands, including Owen and Nora. And then, mid-prayer, Nora burst into a rendition of "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee," and none too quietly I might add. To her, I 'spose what else would we all be doing with our hands clasped but waiting for SOMEONE to please start this song?

3. Speaking of Nora singing...she has turned into quite the little vocalist. ABCs, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old MacDonald, the SpongeBob theme...she'll sing in the car, in her crib, at the dinner table. It's so frickin' cute.

4. One more quick Nora thing. Lately, we've started to give her timeouts when she is getting out of control -- hitting or crying and the like. I'll say, "Nora, do you need to go sit on the stairs?" to which she replies "ya" and then goes over to sit on the stairs. Soooo, it's not really having the desired effect of a punishment, but it does stop the cycle of whatever she's doing wrong, and I guess that's good enough for now.

5. My job has been crazy busy lately, yet some days, I leave work and think "Hey, I have this all under control." I wish I could bottle that feeling so I could take a swig of such hopefulness on the other kind of days...the ones where I think "There's no way I have this under control."

6. Did you know that a 50-pound 5-year-old could drink a whole bottle of children's ibuprofen and it wouldn't be a toxic amount? Neither did I until the friendly people at Poison Control informed me of this fact. Because yes, Owen discovered a bottle of said medicine and downed about half of it last Sunday morning. Sheesh.

7. I went on my first business trip this week, to our corporate office outside of New York. I was surprised how quickly New York City fades away when driving north of town. Hills and trees are all around and it's actually quite pretty. Our corporate office has this huge oak out front that's well over 200 years old. The trip went well, even the 4-hour delay getting out of Milwaukee due to storms on the East Coast was bearable. Once it gets to be that long, it's almost comical, and it helped that I was traveling with four others from my office, so at least we could chat. It did result in me getting less than 4 hours of sleep before having to make a presentation the next morning at 8 a.m. That part sucked.

8. We're raising butterflies on our porch right now. Tiger swallowtails from eggs the neighbor gave us since she found so many on her dill. It's really pretty cool. They grow amazingly fast. Two weeks ago they were eggs the size of a pen tip, and now a couple of the caterpillars are an inch long. I keep checking my milkweed for monarch eggs, but have yet to find any.

9. Owen finished his first year of kindergarten last Friday. I can't believe he has a whole year of school under his belt. He started "summer camp" at his daycare this week. Lots of field trips and such. Kids are so live-in-the-moment. A few people have asked him how he liked his first year of school, to which he has replied, "School is done, I'm at daycare now." Like school is so last week, why even ask about it?

10. Fiona Apple...surprisingly nice walking music.

Cue the Music

Since we returned from our weekend trip, Nora has been have trouble sleeping. It's surprising because, on our travels, she managed to take two naps over 2 days at different grandma's houses AND she actually fell asleep at the hotel without all of us having to go to sleep with her. So, this crying thing until 9:30 or 10 was unexpected. Then last night I had an idea, and gave it a try. She was asleep within minutes.

And what was this magic trick you might ask? I replaced the batteries in her lullaby aquarium. Yah, the one she's had in her crib since she was 2 months old. The one with the dead batteries for the past 2 days.

Talk about a "duh" moment.

I also realized last night that we definitely should have bought stock in D batteries way back when Owen was born (or at least two sets of rechargables). Both kids have been attached to those musical aquariums in their cribs. I think Owen's was there until he moved to a bed around age 3.

Go Fly A Kite!

So, I've been meaning to write about the kite festival we went to a couple weeks ago. "Festival" might be too strong of a word for this event, but "A bunch of people flying kites in the vicinity of a Caribou Coffee tent and a climbing wall" is both uninspiring and too long to fit on a poster.

Doesn't matter. It was a blast.

Being that it was on Milwaukee's lakefront, and was free, we arrived soon after it opened at 10 a.m. to assure parking, and also to leave ample time for the wee one's afternoon nap. I'll admit it, at first I was disappointed because there were no 80-foot-long kites like the one in the paper that enticed me to this event. A big rainbow wind sock, yes, but no humongous kites. We walked around for a bit, enjoying the Lake Michigan view and watching as people tried to get their kites airborne. I was thinking of just calling it a morning and then Jon suggested we head over to the kite shop and buy a kite. Sure, what the heck.

After a few unsuccessful attempts -- the kind where your kite spins around before taking a nosedive into the grass, Jon and I succeeded in getting our $7 purchase in the air...and higher and higher. There was the added challenge of keeping your kite away from the others in the air, but it was so much fun. It has been a LONG time since I've flown a kite. It required concentration, yet in a way that's relaxing. (Between that and the sandbox, it was a weekend of Zen.)

At one point, after I'd handed the string over to Jon and Owen, I looked around and it was just the coolest thing to be sitting along the lake with a couple hundred other people, many of them flying kites. And there was sort of this distant whir -- the sound of so many plastic kites flapping in the wind.