Little Friends

Jasmine's favorite thing when hanging around outside is to hold little living creatures. Cicadas seem to be the best, next earthworms -- they both move slowly and have some real tactile characteristics. Sometimes we find a mellow grasshopper that doesn't mind close inspection.

Miss Jasmine

First off, apologies, I'm massively behind on my blogging and reading everyone's blogs. I'm more than two weeks behind. We definitely need to resupply on hours in the day.

These two pictures clearly indicate what children will do to your furniture and the focus of your living room decor.

Anyhow, Jasmine got a new steel string guitar and wouldn't let go of it the first few days. Yes, she even slept with it. Thus far we've only broken two strings and I can actually restring the thing unlike the nylon stringed ukulele-sized one I got before. I couldn't find replacement strings for the old guitar, but Toys R Us carries the strings for our current model.

Jasmine also wanted a "bra". While her attempts at wearing mine were quite amusing, I thought we should get something more her size. The scary thing: THEY CARRY BRAS FOR HER SIZE! I opted for something that looked more like a summer halter or swim top. She was happy. I was darned if I was going to buy her a padded one. THEY SELL PADDED BRAS INTENDED FOUR YEAR-OLDS!

In this second picture she's completed her ensemble with my old black flats. Note that she does not detract from the beauty of her bra by anything as gauche as a blouse, but nicely accessorizes with a green hat.

A side note, this is Jasmine's favorite way to watch a DVD. She can get very close comfortably, see the whole screen without having to move her eyes around (her peripheral vision doesn't work up-to-down, though seems to be okay right-to-left), and no one tells her to get out of the way. I think she's watching the Sesame Street Alphabet Show that features Stephen Colbert in the role of humble and eager-to-please "Z". It's a heartwarming tale of gaining a smidgen of self-worth in the presence of letters that are more important or interesting.

The Birthday Crew

Here's the full laser battle group about to embark on their black lighted massacre. Birthday boy there, four from the right holding Jasmine back. There were no casualties to speak of and all were eager to back into the fight. (Jasmine liked the dance music and disco lights inside.)

Dancing with Daddy

It's more modern than the traditional standing on your father's feet while he shows you how to waltz, but on the other hand, it fits Jasmine's more active style.

And the second image shows how you have to remove her from the dance floor.

These pictures were taken at the Brunswick Zone while we were celebrating Kai's birthday with video games and laser tag. Fun time for all.

Goofy

I just bought new earbuds. Thank the gods for these instructions. I might have hurt myself without them. Theo suggested I also include the toothpick instructions:
http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/HitchHikers-Guide-To-The-Galaxy-6594.html

South Dakota Kids

For the recent holiday weekend, I took the kids on our furthest trip ever for camping, South Dakota. It was about six hours actual driving with breaks every two hours to get the antsies out. They are excellent car travellers. I took them out of school on Friday so we would have an extra full day to see things. I figured it was educational and luckily enough, I think their teachers agree.

Jasmine did have a bout of homesickness, which is turning out to be a typical, but low intensity reaction to camping. She definitely wanted to see her Baba ("Dad" in Mandarin). A funnier reaction happened on the last day when she put down her cheerios spoon looked around and asked, "Where IS GrandBaba?" We camped with my Dad a few weeks ago and she thought it was high time he showed up this trip.

In our two full days we toured, Wind Cave, Mammoth Site and Jewel Cave as well as see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. No big hikes, which was a shame, but I fully intend to bring the kids back with Theo ... even if we have to stay in a cabin.

Goofy Glasses

Jasmine will wear any glasses except the ones that have been prescribed for her. Here she works on her "smart chick" look or audition for the next J.K. Rowling movie.

Cap'n Kai, Pirate of the High Plains

Kai posed on every tent spike wearing his new eye patch.

Fraternal Battles

This is again at the "Fight A Scot" booth. The boys both have a Scottish middle name ("Drummond") so I guess this worked out. I heard the tapping of wooden swords and loud battle cries, "CRASH", "BANG", "WOOSH", "I HIT YOU!", "NUH UH! MY SWORD MAGICALLY BLOCKS YOURS!", "UUUGH! I'M DEAD AGAIN!"

Warrior Princess

Jasmine's taken to calling herself a "princess". If it weren't for her sword fighting prowess, I'd be worried. Here she is at the "Fight A Scot" booth with an accomodating young man.

Though the sword is bamboo, it doesn't hide the blood lust in her eyes.

My Monsters

We went to the Highland Games to experience authentic Scottish culture.

Ward Meets the Children

Ward is obviously ready to be a father (you can see his little four month old baby Sammy in the bouncy car in the lower right corner). The reason I say this? He's obviously quite okay having children walk all over him. He, Kelly and little Sammy came over for dinner. Theo really out did himself with a feast of tomato soup, turkey, apricot chutney, crispy rosemary sausage potatoes, and chocolate pie a la mode. MMmmmmmm. The boys had couscous and turkey. :)

This is Jasmine's latest trick inspired by Cirque de Soleil. She also is trying to stand on her guitar (a la Dralion clowns) and climb up the curtains. The kitchen curtain rod has already been pulled off the wall. I need to install a climbing rope that's in a weight bearing beam.

Funky NOAH Dancers

A few pictures from the dance floor. These most best illustrate just how much Jazz and Kai got into it. Rowan had an early night due to a little worry about potential food allergen exposure. I think I was the only one really worried, but I didn't want to have wished I'd gotten him benadryl faster.

Jasmine in Weird Lighting

This was a picture I liked from the NOAH conference, but endlessly cursed the lighting. Software can only do so much. I did manage to fix my flash's major red-eye production and used a little fill-in light and color cast fix and upped the contrast. GRRRRRR....

NOAH Series

I've been on a little posting hiatus. I wasn't super happy about my NOAH pictures. I'm really crappy at taking indoor photos, my lighting technique sucks and my timing is generally off. Part of the added problem was that I wasn't taking very many photos. That makes it harder to find the few gems in the muck. I took a lot of muck shots that weekend.

It is a shame that I don't have more pictures. We had an incredible time at our first NOAH conference. Jasmine was over the moon meeting all these people. I don't think she'd ever met any adults with albinism before. She also met many, many xiǎo péng you (little friends).

One of her friends, Natalie, spent quite a long time with Jasmine racing back and forth in the grand ballroom. Natalie is five years old and ran so much that she even had Jasmine out of breath. Quite a feat.

These pictures came out great in terms of capturing movement, but the colors were massively funky. Very yellow, orange. Part of this was definitely due to the fact that the carpeting was a very ugly brown, yellow, orange, and part I think was the incandescent lighting. Combine this with my flash and I achieved some color casting that was truely appalling and unfixable. I don't know, maybe I'm being too critical. Anyway, here are the running pictures in black and white.

Jump!

At first Jasmine hadn't thought about walking on the log, then she saw Kai doing it. So she wanted to stand, holding someone's hand. After a couple tries she could handle that pretty well, then she decided it was time to jump. I think it took three or four hand holding jumps before she was ready to climb up and jump off by herself. I was pretty impressed, since she can't see most of it. Jasmine has an awesome spacial memory.