Poem about tadpoles

The kids had to write a poem to recite on Thursday. Leo's poem is about the tadpole that Vicki sent him:

Tadpole

By Leo N.

Tadpoles live in water

Wiggle, wiggle

Clear body

They turn into frogs

Jump, jump

More art - "I like grapes. Grapes are good. They are juicy."

The pleasures of a root beer float

Whitehall Wildcats

Vicki, Mom and Dad - this is for you: probably the last year Leo can wear Vicki's old Whitehall Wildcats sweatshirt from Whitehall Elementary School in Bowie, Maryland.

baby praying mantises

Our praying mantis egg case hatched this week. Good thing too as Leo was sick the whole week and it gave him something to do. Boring video follows unless you are fascinated by tiny bugs. click here if you can't see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-tveu7erqM

More pix from spring break

This is hard work!

If you can't see the video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyARWYKKvfU

We didn't have the right size safety equipment so we gave him his swim goggles, ski helmet and sneakers.

The Draco Lizard

I don't know what a Draco Lizard is but Leo found it on pbs-kids.org Wild Kratts game. This is his costume version of a Draco Lizard.

After a day of destruction

what we did Sunday morning

We were getting sick of looking at houses so we all took to breaking down a wall...

Short video of spring break ski vacation

Our first family ski vacation. Leo spent most of it exploring little passageways through the trees. He skied us into the ground. His kindergarten friend Lily joined us for a few runs. If you don't see it, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzLmp_98eGg

Pizza making party

Up at Copper Mtn this week, we spent a lot of time with Leo's kindergarten friend Lily and her brother Archie and their parents. The kids made pizzas at Pizza Carlo's. It was a fancy event, with the kids decked out in their own hand-decorated chef hats and tours of the kitchen.

They each then made pizzas for their families. Quite a good idea, we thought, having the kids make our food, while we gabbed and shared pitchers of beer. First the sauce:

Then they went to town on toppings. Lily and Archie made a smiley face pizza. Leo made a yummy combo pizza.

The finished product:

Then the best part - they each got to make dessert pizzas. These were really tasty. Leo spent a really long time making his. He said each piece was exactly the same so it didn't matter which one you chose. Paul ate about half of it before I was done with my regular dinner pizza.

Video of the dessert pizza making effort:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81PGcdQau_8

Top of the turbine

I got really lucky this week - I managed to get in on a climb up the 270 foot GE 1.5 MW wind turbine that we installed at my work a couple years ago. My boss was taking our DOE client up and I managed to tag along.

If you can't see the video below, you can view it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zke3oCoaQ6k

This is the turbine that we climbed:

The three of us entering the tower. I'm the one on the left:

There is a very tall ladder that goes most of the way up, with floors separating the sections and little hatches that you close so that you don't drop stuff (or fall) on the guy below you. They had to train us on use of the protection equipment. The blue cable is a climbing assist. It takes 25, 50, 75 or 100 lbs off you so you can climb easily. Climbing up is a breeze as long as you don't look down, although my knees got bruised cause I kept hitting them on the rungs. Climbing down was a pain, because I had to hold onto the ladder all the way. The big guys could lean against the tower wall and just let themselves down the ladder pretty easily but I wasn't long enough to do that.

After you reach the top of the tower, you climb through the giant ring bearing to the nacelle where the gearbox and generator and all are. This the nacelle, looking at the generator:

Then we climbed out the top of the nacelle and stood on top. We clipped in to hooks on the top in case we fell. It was pretty windy up there. This turbine has no safety rail - the 0.4 MW turbines do. This is looking off the back:

This is looking off the front, toward the blade which is right behind me (I'm on the right):

From the blade, there is this metal pipe that you can clip into and swing yourself over the edge of the nacelle and drop yourself over the front hub of the rotor. You're dangling 270 ft in the air. You can open a hatch there and then do maintenance on the rotor. We did NOT do this.

The other turbines on the site include the 3 MW Alstom which is the big one closest to us and then the 2.3 MW Siemens which is behind and to the left. There are two little 0.4 MW in the background too. And smaller ones as well:

Leo's love

Can you be in love with someone that you only knew a few months? Even if you haven't seen them for half a year?

Leo was at the Boulder Montessori school from March to August of last year. We made a lot of friends there and continue to have playdates with some of the kids from his class. One of the kids that he spoke of at the end was a girl named Foster. Paul and I never met her and she was always on vacation according to Leo. He asked for playdates with her but we never saw her or her parents so never did anything about it. After we left that school, we figured he'd forget her. Well, he hasn't. In January, he made this school project of him "Singing With Foster". We sent emails to her mom and never heard back. He and his best friend Claudia were talking about marriage when he finally said that he was already going to marry someone else, and that was Foster. Well, finally, he and Paul went back to the school where she had already left for the day, and left a note and asked the teachers to tell her that Leo was looking for her. It took about a month, but we finally heard back from the mom that she had found the note that Foster was thrilled to hear from Leo and that we'd do a playdate when they had time in a month or so.

Such a crazy little romantic story. I can't wait to see what they think of each other now, nearly a year later.

Lego Mania!

We are very fortunate to be borrowing a gigantic set of Legos from Patricia, while those guys are in Brazil. The box is bigger than Leo. Needless to say, every waking moment is spent making new Lego creations. They are nearly all fighting vehicles of some kind. Some fly, some roll, some travel through worm holes. The bottom left hand corner is a very elaborate house, but it has attack missiles and the like and fake entrances to fool the enemy.

The one in the foreground here is a particularly big space fighter.

Here's Leo's description of it:

Kicked out tooth

Yesterday Leo fell asleep on the way to our dinner playdate with Madalena. While I was carrying him inside to finish the nap, he jerked and bonked his mouth with his knee really hard. There was a lot of blood in his mouth and we ascertained that it was his baby tooth (and there was adult tooth growing behind it - two rows of teeth, like a shark). He was miserable all night, wouldn't eat anything but soup and mushed avocado for 24 hrs. I felt so guilty and bad. He had more tylenol so he could eat dinner tonight, and with the help of some roasted zucchini, the little bugger came out!

Ski videos

It was Leo's last day of the first session of Eldora Trek Ski School. He passed with flying colors into their green level. Instructor said he progressed the most of the class, which is probably because he started as the worst skier in the class and had to work hard to keep up with the other kids. They did their first blue runs today and Leo loved going fast. Instructor said we'd better watch that love of speed. Instructor really loved hanging out with Leo, said he was very creative and fun which is what the second video is about.

First video is this funny thing that happened all the way down the mountain this morning. They play follow-the-leader, single file and make S-turns all the way down the mountain. Invariably, one kid will fall, and all the kids behind him will run right into him and fall down too. I know Leo has faster ski reflexes than that - I've yelled at him to look out for crossing skiers and had him narrowly turn to avoid someone. But somehow, in this follow-the-leader game, if the leader falls, the rest of the kids just fall too! They did this same thing all the way down the mountain (lineup moved around so it wasn't the same kids always falling). Leo is in blue at the end of this line of 5 kids.

In the next video, Leo and I are skiing by ourselves and Leo's showing me his favorite things on the mountain. We went into Fun Gully. Here he's showing me how he can ski around rocks (although he scrapes right over one to get to them).

Fun Gully

Leo and I went up to Eldora again today. It was a powder day! Which was hard because I could only ski an hour on the frontside before meeting Leo for lunch which he didn't eat. Got in a couple glorious hours on the backside before coming back to the lodge though. Leo was crying when I found him. Apparently he had fallen, lost both his skis and LOST both his skis in the deep powder. And of course, he only had two bites of a sandwich for lunch so he was hungry and tired. He wouldn't let me carry him and he wouldn't take a lollipop. He CRAWLED on his hands and knees 50 feet to the lodge. He then insisted on finding his instructor (there are 100 of them, I think, on weekends) to find out how many runs he'd done. Finally, I thought I might be making headway to carry him to the bus to get to the car and pick up our skis later, when he insisted on doing Fun Gully, which I had promised we'd do a week ago.

Eldora has all these little kids things - a teepee made of logs that you can ski through, a tunnel, and a little gully with animal sculptures in it. So we did Fun Gully, which meant me carrying our gear up a couple hills to the EZ lift. He can do the lift just fine, doesn't even need to slow it down. He seems very comfortable turning, and snow plowing and skiing with his legs parallel although with a very wide stance. I think I could probably take him on a lot of the mountain skiing like that. I followed him into the gully and we skied up and down the sides, sort of like a little half pipe. We had so much fun we did it twice then headed home into a morass of terrible ski traffic and multiple accidents and yuckiness.

Leo's first presentation

Leo gave his first presentation today. The presentation was about what he was like as a baby, as a 5 year old and what he wanted to be when he grew up. He had pictures taped to a poster and wrote sentences about each picture.

The teacher instructed him to look at the audience, not to read his paper, and to use his loud voice. He read off the paper, not looking at the audience, in a quiet voice. The teacher asked if there other things that he did as a baby and he stood there, uncomfortably, shifting around, and didn't answer.

He finished the presentation. Finally feeling more comfortable and less shy, he smiled and said that he climbed to and past Woods Quarry all by himself and that he would have climbed down too except that he face planted.

It was an interesting experience. I certainly never had this kind of practice that young. He was so reminiscent of my own very shy and quiet self as a child. I think I'm going to prep him more next time.

When you're an old lady!

I got back home Thursday night and on Friday, Paul told Leo to enjoy hanging out with me because I was going to leave in 3 days on another trip. I've got three trips this month, which is a lot for all of us to handle. Leo turned to me and said, "You're leaving again? And you're going to return when you're an old lady?"

Leo's second tooth lost!

Of course the first was when he was so small that it didn't count. This will be the first for the tooth fairy.

What I did over vacation

Another school assignment. Over the vacation Leo and Paul went roller skating at the roller skating rink.

New Leo art

I believe the project here was to draw a picture of something that you are good at and to write a sentence saying such: "I am good at putting my feet on my head"

More snow and wind

Today was Leo's second day of skiing. I have a video that I can't seem to upload. It was a horridly windy day, as well as cold, and the kids pretty much didn't want to have anything to do with skiing or being outside. I was really lucky that I was able to transfer Leo successfully to his class - our friend's Carter and Cindy were not as lucky and spent the day teaching their kid themselves even though they'd paid for lessons.

I had scouted for him at the end of the day, this time at the beginner/teaching slopes with the magic carpet and kid's chairlift. No Leo. He wasn't in the hot cocoa hut or the toddler slope either. At the end of the day, the kids arrived and Leo said he'd had a good day.

It wasn't until dinner time that we found out more of what happened today:

• He did the kid's chairlift by himself for the first time
• He spent the last run of the day on the adult beginner chairlift and couldn't get off the chairlift (the instructor wasn't on that chair to help) and started to go down the chairlift!
• On the kid's chairlift, he and another kid were hitting their skis together. He hit his so hard that a ski fell off. He had to get off the lift and ski part way down the hill on one ski.

I know, it makes you wonder if group lessons are the right thing. I guess everyone learns from their wacky moments. I think if I were to do it over, I'd do a few individual lessons and skip the group thing, which involves a lot of standing around in the wind and cold. They learn so quickly that a few lessons each year might be all they need.

Half of 8 is 3!

Paul was singing the Multiplication Rock song of 8: "Double 4 is 8. Half of 8 is 4."

Leo corrected him: "No, half of 8 is 3."

Paul gave him a piece of paper and said, "show me"

Leo wrote an 8 on the page. Then he cut it in half lengthwise with scissors and showed the half: "See? Half of 8 is 3!"

Skiing

Leo had his first of 12 ski lessons at Eldora today. As far as I could tell, the whole youth of Boulder was there, including 6 other schoolmates and a few non-school-related friends. It was a zoo. I got a half dozen runs in, searching for good snow, which was mostly nonexistent.

Anyway, he did really well, a lot better than he does leaning on me for support. The instructor said he was making S turns all the way down the public beginner slopes, which are pretty steep for beginners, by the end of the day. Exhausted, we are all heading to bed, 'cept Paul who didn't come up to the mountains and is going roller skating!

Circuits!

Poppop gave Leo a snap circuits set for Christmas. Since we had a whole week off before Christmas, I decided we should open a present early and start playing! So Leo opened the circuit set. Yesterday we built a radio. This morning instead of wanting to watch TV or play video games, Leo opted to make a circuit. He was able to make a lamp circuit and a fan circuit by himself. Its amazingly cool - easy for kids and I've been playing with it too!

Leo Video 2009-2010

This is a brief video of edited clips from the last year. I make these videos every year for my Dad and then try to edit them down to something short enough for others to sit through! It features Leo's latest antics and a bunch of travel in Hawaii and on the mainland. Older versions are viewable at http://debbielew.com. Enjoy!

Food fight

Leo drew this at school, for a story assignment. For those of you who aren't used to phonetic spelling, it says, "I like to have a food fight."

Spelling

Leo went to sleep the other night asking why is the word "a" just spelled a but the word "you" is not spelled u? I let it go, saying, "yeah that is very interesting, go to sleep". Paul however, is going through every letter of the alphabet, "well, you have bee, 'c' is see..." They are having a great time and Leo is learning the difference between pee and pea and tea and tee.

Love of ties

Leo loves ties. He wore this to school today. Thanks, Por-por for the fancy clothes!

Pictures from the Franti show

Michael Franti and Spearhead do a kids matinee show every year. This was the first time we went - and Leo's first rock concert. He had a blast with Marlee, Raya, and Kyla. He danced and jumped like a fiend for a while, and then got tired and settled down to do some artwork with Kyla.

Leo's warrior face painting and his glow sticks handcuffs (he made the handcuffs himself):

Kyla doing the hoops:

Raya:

Jason:

The Sharpes:

Marlee and Raya:

Leo and Marlee watching the puppet show:

the answer to last week's puzzler

"I know what 4D is, but I can't draw it." Leo continues to spell like crazy and it's a lot of fun for us.

We're sitting now in the airport, having missed our flight to NJ and becoming intimate with the inner workings of DIA.

How about this one?

Since you all were so good at deciphering Leo's last phonetic spelling challenge, we defy you to get this one! You'll need context for this. The first panel shows this:

The second panel shows this:

The third panel shows this (parts of the second and fourth panels are in there because I couldn't crop well enough):

Fourth panel:

OK, what does this caption say?

Leo as a mutant

Root and Rebecca brought us this awesome book that teaches kids how to do fun, smart-aleky tricks. Here's Leo showing his mutant imitation

And then, just for kicks, can anyone read the title of this book? Leo is learning phonetic spelling at school:

Old

Leo found a nickel. Paul said, "wow that nickel is from 1964. That's older than your Mommy! But not older than your Daddy". Leo replied, "Nothing's older than my Daddy."

Debbie's lecture at Stanford's Energy Seminar

Gave this lecture at Stanford last week on my big study. Was a really nice visit with the various energy institutes out there. And of course, weather was perfect and campus was beautiful.