Dad – We went to the James Hill concert at the River Run yesterday. James is a quite amazing ukulele player, which is not a sentence I ever thought I would write.
Ethan – A Ukulele can do all kinds of music – jazz and rock-and-roll and love music.
Marlon – I was clapping and dancing.
Dad – Here are some clips of James at work:
Dad – So, we haven’t posted anything lately because we haven’t had any time with a new baby in the house, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing anything, so hopefully this post will catch us up a bit.
Ethan – For Hallowe’en I was actually Batman, but I got some tiger facepaint a little bit before.
Marlon – I was the Hulk, and I got facepaint too. I made a claw with my hand, and I said, “Roar!”
Ethan – I lost a tooth. It was a little bit wiggly, and I pulled it out with my finger. I’m getting three molars too, but not the number four.
Marlon – I have two teeth out before Ethan, because I bonked my teeth on the floor, and the dentist had to pull t hem out.
Ethan – I did swimming lessons in the fall. And I went to young naturalists in the fall. We banded birds, and we saw bats, and we caught a snake, and we tried to fish with our hands. When we were banding the birds, one flew back inside, and it was flying all over, and we had to catch it again.
Marlon – I did dance class. We did the chicken dance, and we did the hokie pokie, and we did the twist. This movie is ring around the rosie.
Marlon – We did some Christmas decorations, and we made some Christmas cookies. I put the cherries on the cookies. They were candy cherries, and some were green, and some were red.
Ethan – We bought stuff for some bags too. You buy the stuff on the list, and you put it in the bag, and you give the bag to people who don’t have enough money. I made a bag for a boy, and Marlon made one for a girl. I put in a toothbrush and some shampoo and stuff, and I put in some candy too.
This is a story that Ethan wrote under the influence of watching a show about great WWII tank battles, which in hindsight, may not have been entirely appropriate to the imagination of a six year old.
There was a Canadian tank driver named Bill. He was fighting in WWII. He was the Captain of the tanks. There was another Canadian tank driver too. He was hiding so just his gun was poking out, but Bill was out so he could get a better shot.
The enemy had two tanks, one Tiger tank and one Leopard tank. The other Canadian tank fired at the Leopard tank, and he blew it up, but the Leopard tank fired at the same time and blew up the other Canadian tank.
Captain Bill was worried because the Tiger tank was bigger than his tank, so he backed up around a building and snuck out the other side and fired six times and blew up the Tiger tank. But the Tiger tank wasn’t destroyed yet. It couldn’t drive, but it could still shoot. It shot, but it missed Captain Bill. Then Captain Bill fired six more times and defeated the Tiger tank.
The End
Ethan – We went to a concert (TorQ Percussion Quartet). They did drumming with lots of instruments.
Marlon – Sometimes it was really loud, and I was dancing, but Dad said, “Don’t climb on the railing.”
Ethan – My favourite ones were the ones with the wooden tubes (the Marimba). Lots of people can play on it at the same time.
Marlon – My favourite song was when we got to make noises too. We made noises like the forest with our hands and our mouths, like rain and animals.
Dad – Here are links to a couple of their songs:
Ethan – We grew one pumpkin in our garden. My Dad said, “Let’s make a pie,” but I said, No, I want to make a Halloween pumpkin.” But we only had one pumpkin, and I was probably going to fight about it with Marlon, so we bought some more pumpkins. We bought three pumpkins for carving: one for me, one for Mya, and one for Marlon. We bough two little pumpkins for pies. And we’re using the one we grew to make pumpkin cornbread.
Marlon – I picked my pumpkin at the store. Mine has one side flat and one side round. The round side is for the face, and the flat side is for the back. I made a picture on mine for Daddy to cut, and Daddy helped me draw mine too.
Ethan – Dad didn’t help draw mine. He just cut it.
Ethan – This is a picture of the pumpkins when they’re done, but they don’t have any lights in them. Mine is the scary one. Mya’s in the happy one. Marlon’s is the mad one.
Marlon – We put lights in them at night time. This is my pumpkin and Mya’s pumpkin.
Ethan – This is my pumpkin.
Ethan – We went on a hike to get seeds. We got only seeds that you can eat. We got grapes and milkweed and elderberries.
Marlon – I squished some berries (choke cherries), and they made my fingers red, but some of the berries (nannyberries) don’t have juice.
Dad – We also picked rose hips and highbush cranberries.
Ethan – After you pick the berries, you have to get the seeds out. Dad got the berry seeds, because they’re hard. I got the milkweed seeds, because they’re easy. You just pick off the fluffy stuff and keep the brown part. You can make a pillow with the fluffy stuff if you want.
Marlon – I threw the fluffies up in the air.
Ethan – Then you put the seeds in a bag with a little bit of dirt and a little bit of water, and you get all the air out of the bag, and you out it in the fridge for a long time, until after Christmas.
Dad – Why do we put them in the fridge?
Ethan – To trick the seeds so they think it’s winter. When you take them out they go, “Hey, it’s spring,” so they sprout.
Ethan – We have a new baby. She’s the easiest baby in the whole wide world. We can’t say her name or do pictures, because we aren’t adopting her yet (she is with us as a foster placement for the moment).
Marlon – Sometimes she throws up her whole bottle. She can go in her playpen and in her chair. The chair jiggles, and it plays music.
Ethan – She’s a cute baby, but she just sleeps a lot. I can hold her and feed her.
Marlon – I can hold her too, and she likes kisses, because I’m her big brother.
Ethan – We went for a hike at the river (the Grand River, near Fergus).
Marlon – We saw a cave. There was darkness in the cave. I didn’t go in the cave, because I snake might bite me.
Marlon – And we were throwing rocks in the water.
Ethan – We found a toad and two salamanders. I thought that the salamanders were little snakes because I couldn’t see their legs, but then I saw their legs, and I said, “Oh, it’s not a snake,” and Daddy said, “It’s a salamander.”
Marlon – Daddy put the toad in my hand. It felt like a toad-toad.
Dad – What does a toad-toad feel like?
Marlon – Bumpy.
Ethan – The salamander was a little bit wet and smooth.
Ethan – Some of the stuff in our garden is ready for picking. We picked beans a long time ago, and we picked some of the carrots, and some of the kale, but not all of it.
Marlon – I hate kale, but I have to eat some.
Ethan – The squirrels ate lots of the apples, but the raspberries are too prickly for the squirrels, so we get to eat the raspberries.
Marlon – My morning glories got really big.
Ethan – One of my sunflowers got chopped down. Then something was biting the other one. Then the top got chopped off the other one. But lots of flowers grew where it got chopped off.
Dad – We always go down to Carter Bay when we are on Manitoulin Island. My Mom’s family used to own the entire beach, along with several thousand acres around it, but we now own only a couple of hundred acres between my grandmother and my great uncle. At least this still gives us access to the beach though, because there is nothing else like it in Ontario: white sand, huge dunes, meandering rivers, and almost always completely empty.
Ethan – We went swimming, but it’s really cold.
Marlon – One time the water was wavy. We jumped in the waves, and they knocked us down.
Ethan – And we built sandcastles, and we made sand cement.
Dad – But the best part of the beach is the scenery, so here is a whole set of pictures from Carter Bay, and I will leave you with a few choice shots as well.
