Pictures from today are in a separate gallery post with today’s date.
In spite of a ridiculous series of very brief power failures late last night, Madeline’s first overnight stay at our house was a complete success. She was busy and cheerful all day yesterday, took a nice nap, went for a walk around our yard, and enjoyed a hearty and substantial dinner. After all that she was ready for her evening bottle and then went to bed without a fuss at 7:45 PM.
She slept for almost 12 hours, which meant we could get up before her at our usual time and get ready for her awakening. It took her a few minutes to fully wake up, during which time she was a little groggy but not fussy. By the time Linda got her dressed she was ready for breakfast. Linda made oatmeal with raisins and cranberries and all three of us had some. Madeline also had fresh strawberries and blueberries. Blueberries are one of her current favorite foods, along with peas.
We played with toys, read books, and played (with) the organ until 9:30 AM and then got ready to go on a field trip. At 9:45 AM we left for the Howell Conference and Nature Center (HCNC). The HCNC is the largest wildlife rehabilitation and permanent care center in the State of Michigan, and is located about eight miles south and slightly west of the heart of downtown Howell.
We were there for just over two hours and spent most of that time looking at a lot of animals including the following: Coyotes; a Sandhill Crane; Whitetail Deer; owls (Screech, Saw-whet, Barn, Barred, Snowy, and Great Horned); a Wild Turkey; Bobcats; a Porcupine; Opossums; Turkey Vultures; an American Kestrel; hawks (Broad-winged and Harrier); a Peregrine Falcon; and American Bald Eagles. Although HCNC rehabilitates wildlife for release back into the wild whenever possible, all of the animals we saw today were permanent residents due to injuries and/or habituation to humans that have made it impossible for them to survive without human care and protection.
After we were done with the Nature Walk and Raptor Center we explored Alexandria’s Playscape for 20 minutes, by which time we needed to start for home in order to have time for some lunch and still get Madeline down for her nap on schedule. Linda rode home in the back seat to keep Madeline engaged so she wouldn’t fall asleep and this proved to be a very successful strategy. We all had lunch and Linda got Madeline ready for her nap without a fuss. Once Madeline was asleep Linda also laid down to rest for a bit while I started a load of laundry, booted up all of my computers, and installed updates.
Madeline had a good, long nap and was ready to tackle the last third of the day when she finally woke up. We played with her new set of Lego Duplo blocks for a long time. She enjoys taking them apart but this afternoon she figured out how to assemble the square ones. She has a very good attention span for an 18 month old, but her attention naturally shifts in response to a stimulating environment. She is always busy, and often in motion, but takes a break occasionally to enjoy one of her books. She is also very independent and usually knows what she wants at any given moment. She is, however, also open to suggestions and interacts very well with us. She verbalizes quite a bit and is developing vocabulary. We know this because she has a few words that we are able to understand and she uses them correctly and consistently. She has a lot of other sounds that are clearly an attempt to communicate using speech, but she can’t quite form the words well enough yet for us to really understand what she is trying to say. Sometimes, however, we can figure it out from the context of what is going on and what she is looking and/or pointing at. We also discovered that she knows the names of colors as she consistently picked out the correct color Lego block when we asked for it by color.
For dinner Linda made a dish with baked beans, rice, carrots, onions, and celery. I doubt that she will make it again as none of us seemed to like it that much. My opinion was that it simply contained too much cinnamon. After dinner we went for a walk around our property and saw a deer in the neighbor’s yard across the street. When we got back to the front of the house we let Madeline explore the inside of the bus for a few minutes. By 7 PM she was ready for a clean diaper, pajamas, and her evening bottle. She fussed for about 10 seconds and then let grandma carry her to her bedroom where she looked at the paintings before yielding to her porta-crib for the second night in a row.
We have been hearing fireworks occasionally for the last few days, but starting around 8 PM things got cranked up and between 9 and 11 PM I thought we had inadvertently attended a major fireworks display. I have written before about how much we like living in the country, but I have also written that the country is not always a quiet place; it just has a different kind of noise. Usually that noise is the sound of nature, and we love it. But occasionally it is an all too human sound, such as a gun being fired, or a dog barking. But tonight we had fireworks, and a lot of them. At our previous house the police would have showed up, and maybe the fire department too, if someone tried to fire the size and quantity of explosives we heard tonight. Not out here in the country; big bonfires (burn piles) and big fireworks are apparently perfectly OK. So is shooting a gun whenever you feel like it.
The house is not overly insulated, but Madeline was sleeping in the middle bedroom with the door and windows closed and the windows covered to keep out light while she naps during the day, so the fireworks did not wake her. I felt bad for the cats, who spent most of the day in the basement or hiding in our bedroom to avoid contact with Madeline. She gets very excited when she sees them and runs after them because she wants to pet them, which just reinforces their desire to be somewhere else. When they finally came upstairs after she went to bed they had to endure several hours of explosions, which they were not used to and did not like. The celebrations were mostly concluded by 11 PM and finally settled down completely by midnight.