Royal Tyrrell Museum (aka The Happiest Place on Earth)

We made our annual summer trip to Drumheller to visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and A loved every minute of it. We are so lucky to live so close to Drumheller considering we have a little girl who is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs.

Here she is studying the underwater exhibit. The prehistoric seas have really perked her interest recently.

Here she is next to a Camarasaurus leg bone! This is something new that wasn't there the last time we visited. Incidentally, it was very crowded around this bone as people waited to take their picture next to it, which is why A isn't smiling. I think she would have preferred to have more time to look at it carefully, but the crowd got to her.

Here she is speaking with a palaeontologist who had different specimens for people to touch. This boy next to her seems to have a love and knowledge of dinosaurs almost as much as she does!

Afterwards, it was time for the dinosaur water park in Drumheller. She LOVED it, and the weather was perfect. 29 degrees and sunny, sunny, sunny, And luckily, not at all busy at the time we went. Here she is at the spray park.

Here she is being a liopleurodon in the wading pool.

Here we are after the boys in the background got us really good with their water guns. Really, it was more like a water missile launcher. Funny how we are fleeing in different directions. Clearly it was everyone for themselves.

I love it when we don't have to prompt her to smile.

See? It is the happiest place on earth.

: )

The Ants Go Marching (all over our garden)

Our garden is thriving this year. We planted carrots, strawberries, and peas 2 weeks earlier than we have in the past, and it seems to have made a huge difference in our garden. All the rain we had at the beginning of the summer helped too. 


But.


Ants. Thousands of ants have invaded our garden. And all those ants have eaten dozens and dozens of our strawberries. Not only that, but the strawberry plants are absolutely covered in crawling ants. Not an easy task to pick the couple of strawberries the little buggers haven't gotten to yet.

So, here are the five I salvaged, plus a few raspberries that have come in from our raspberry bushes that we planted this year. So far the raspberries are safe from the ants, and hopefully we'll get a bunch more berries.

Meanwhile, we've sprinkled cornmeal around the garden in hopes of getting rid of the little pests. Such a shame - the strawberries we did eat were so delicious.

On another note, we planted basil into a pot indoors and it has grown wonderfully from little seeds! We've already enjoyed a lot of it with our dinners, and it keeps thriving. Nothing beats fresh basil. Also, A's cherry tomato plant is looking like it's going to start flowering any day now. She planted it while it was just a tiny sprout at school (the wonderful Greenstart Project) and brought it home, determined that tomatoes would grow from it. I'd say it is looking very likely.

The basil plant is on the left, and the tomato plant on the right. Can't wait to make a little salad with these two plants!

Dress a Stuffy! (it's free!)

One thing I'm learning about my daughter this summer is that she is becoming incredibly imaginative in her play. She used to spend so much time organizing and lining up toys (rather than playing with them) but is now really engaging with her toys.


As I was walking by I found this sign perched by her playroom door:

Party

get one Free!

everyone come in!

Drece a Stufy

(dress a stuffy)

It was the store sign to her version of Build-a-Bear. Of course I went in and dressed a stuffy. I mean, it was free!

On another note, no matter how hot it is outside, that is no excuse not to bake peanut butter frosted chocolate cupcakes. Of course, we did this after having the oven on at 425 degrees F to for over an hour for make your own pizza night. It was HOT in the kitchen, but so worth it.

I am having a love affair with peanut butter and chocolate this year.

Now excuse me, but I have to see if a certain store is still offering free stuffies to dress.

Catching up

Well, once again, I have let the blogging fall to the wayside, and am here again to catch up over the last few months. And then I am going to have a cup of coffee. Because it's summer now (no school!) I don't have to worry about coffee keeping me up all night. I can just sleep in. Must enjoy it while I can. Now can someone please do something about my summer allergies??

Finnegan! One and a half years old. Pretty cute. Pretty funny. Pretty hyper.

In a rare quiet moment, he is asking me to stop knitting Aidez and take him for a walk. But this pattern is so addicting and so much fun. Sorry dude.

 Daisy right after her haircut. Poor thing threw her back out and was in pain for weeks. After she recovered she got a much needed cut for summer. 11 years old and still looks great. But getting pretty grumpy in her old age.

Still a dinosaur lover. Man, I know so much more about dinosaurs than I ever imagined. I've learned that they are VERY cool.

Look what A made!! Lego T-Rex! She's been getting into legos lately and we are thrilled! She's expanding her interests a little more (even though the things she builds inevitably comes back to dinosaurs in some shape or form). How awesome is this! She's amazing at following the directions and has a lot of patience.

Look! A house for palaeontologists!

Ahhhhh, summer.

Homemade chocolate fudge cake for Father's Day. This did not last long in our house. A did the raspberries!

Me and A met the some of the Flames at the children's hospital when she was getting some testing done. Left to right: Jarome Iginla, Lee Stempniak, Scott Hannan, and Derek Smith. They were so nice and friendly, and great with A. Bright spot of our day.

Yearly visit to the dentist. She looked like this the entire hour we were there. She's is definitely her mother's daughter.

Teacher's gifts! This is the Springtime Bandit knit with Malabrigo Silky Merino. Such a great pattern, and beautiful yarn. It turned out beautiful. This was for Mrs. Bazinet, her grade one teacher who also retired this year. What a loss for children everywhere! She was amazing.

An entrelac scarf for Mrs. Thurston, A's science teacher. Thankfully, we will see her again next year for grade 2!

Bean making her own pizza. Not surprisingly, she was so organized about the whole thing. And she loved it. One of her favourite dinners.

A little photo heavy, but we're all caught up. Off for my coffee now.

Wish Lists Do Come True

On my husband's 37th birthday, I got a treat in the mail. I got everything I put on my wish list from Jimmy Beans Wool. Needles (5 sets of crystal palace double pointed neeldes to be exact!) yarn (Malabrigo Silky Merino - Madre Perla), row counters, a gorgeous knitting basket, and a half crochet hook, half knitting needle thingamajig for fixing mistakes in your knitting.


Love. It. All.


And inspired by my beautiful new Lantern Moon Rice Basket, I decided to sew up some small knitting project bags (zip lock bags are great, but not so pretty looking in my new basket)! I found some really cute fabric at Walmart and sewed up little drawstring bags.

Love the little birds.

And they really look adorable in my new basket.

Thanks to my husband and daughter for my early birthday present. Special thanks goes to my husband for sharing his birthday thunder with me. 

Meltdowns and Manicures

Today was a doozy of a day. I'm sitting here, at 12:30am, early Sunday morning, and I'm wondering how it was that this day turned out to be so difficult. I mean really, really, bleeping diffcult. My darling daughter had what felt like a million meltdowns today. The last of which ended up with her hitting herself over and over again in anger and frustration. There was lots of screaming. I mean the-neighbours-are-going-to-call-the-police kind of screaming. Thank goodness our bodies are designed to sleep, because it is the only quiet we've had all day.


Oh, how I love her, but oh, how hard it was today. 


On a brighter note, I found a colour of nail polish today that I love! Sally Hansen's "Plum's the Word" (I mean, hello, how cute is that)? I never do my nails - this is the first time in years that I have put nail polish on - but this weekend I just felt like having painted nails. I tried three different colours before I finally found "Plum's the Word". That's a helluva lot of toxic fumes wafting through the house. But, I love the colour and it was fun. Pleasure in small things, and all that.

Oh, the Inflexibility

As many parents of children with Asperger's could probably tell you, Asperger's children are very inflexible. They want things done their way, and they want things done in the same way. All the time. And this inflexibility includes planning for the day as well. If I say we are going to do something (or not going to do something) and the plans change, it throws A off, and completely ruins her day. It is so difficult for her to adapt to changes once she has things set in her mind. Which in turn, makes it difficult for us. So, we've learned to be very careful with how we word things. Instead of "we're going to the grocery store today" we might try to say "we're going to try to make it to the grocery store today." But then of course we find A following us around all day asking if we're going to make it to the grocery store. Uncertainty, too, causes her anxiety.


So, how much inflexibility do we allow? There are many days where it is impossible to stick to the original plan. There are too many factors to consider. Time. Weather. What if the car breaks down? What if someone is sick? What if the dog is sick? What if the store closes before we make it there? Once, we planned to go swimming, and the pool had to unexpectedly shut down because of a contamination issue. Nothing is certain. And that drives A crazy. And isn't it important for her to figure out a way to adapt to unexpected events?


There are days where the meltdowns are too much for us to handle, and you'll find us bending over backwards to make sure all goes as planned. Today has been one of those particularly difficult days. I've been very frustrated most of the day, and of course so has A. I felt my own meltdown coming, when suddenly I found A sitting at her work table crying. Not because something unexpected was happening, but because the dinosaur she was drawing didn't look good (to her).


Another thing many parents of Asperger's children can tell you: our children can be perfectionists. Which means they can be so hard on themselves. A was beside herself over her drawing. And I heard these heartbreaking words spilling from her mouth:


"I'm the worsest girl in the world."
"I'm the worsest drawer in the world."
"My pictures never look real. They're the worsest."
"Everyone is better than me at everything."
"Do you even still love me?"


Granted, the last question was probably because she could sense my mounting agitation with her as the day wore on, but it was all too much negative energy for a six year old girl. We chatted and talked about being proud of our work, and being proud of whatever it is that we accomplish. She eventually claimed to understand what I was saying, but I know she won't put it into practice. For this is the 1000th time that we've discussed this.


So, someone tell me that she will get better with this. That all the "stuff" that Asperger's children have to deal with in a day will get easier for them. That she'll find ways to adapt, and be more flexible. That she'll be flexible with herself and not expect perfection out of herself, all of the time. That every day won't be so hard, and won't be such a struggle.


We're forcing her to adapt to the world, but is it too much to ask the world to bend a little for her? Shouldn't we all do a little bit to make the world easier for those of us who are different?


In the meantime, A's masterpiece: a beautiful striped pterosaur that I fished out of the garbage and uncrinkled.