SPRING BREAK!

Bella had a staycation for Spring Break, so she and her daddy did some screenprinting with two screens he found in the trash (on the street! They were clean!). We blocked out the facial details on the images of a man and a woman and screened the resulting image on sheets of paper. Then Bella was in charge of drawing in faces on each one. The results were both hilarious, poignant, scary and weird. Take a look!














Needless to say, we'll be doing some more of this stuff.

HONEY BIKE

Now that spring has sprung and spring break week is here (and gone!), Bella got a bike. She went to the local bike shop and picked it out herself: a Raleigh 16" that's yellow with a honeybee theme to it and a bell that she was not going to pass up. It has training wheels, which is fine for now.

On day one, she rode it a bit through Riverside Park, but not much. On day two, she did not want to ride. On day three, she rode "honey bike" from our apartment to Central Park and down to the American Museum of Natural History - and back. That's about 2 miles. I held onto a handlebar most of the way but only to soothe her nerves. I didn't steer or push. She did all of that, unless the hill was long or steep. Then I pushed with her pedaling. Here she is posing beside Central Park.

























On day four, she and her friend, Milo, rode there bikes up the Hudson River greenway from 158th Street to the Little Red Lighthouse at the George Washington Bridge - and back - another two miles! This time she rode most of the way with me walking/jogging beside her or nearby. She was obviously more confident on Honey Bike, learning to ride the brakes down a hill, steer, and maintain control in a tight situation. She even rode over a small curb! Here she is approaching the bridge.



We suspect the training wheels will be coming off soon. Check back for updates and videos!

DIGITAL ARTIST

Not long after I downloaded DoodleBuddy on my phone, Bella became hooked. Essentially one can start with a blank canvas, select a background or import an existing photo and then draw over it with your finger using a variety of color choices, chalks, brushes, erasers, or - Bella's favorite - stamps that play some quirky sound when placed on the screen. She really gets into these sessions and it's good for distracting her when she's done eating at a restaurant or waiting for me to get my haircut. She also shakes the phone to erase the image and start over again all the time, so it's sometimes difficult to capture what she's working on. But here are a few examples I managed to save or salvage.

MONKEY BARS

Another video shot nearly six months ago just seeing the light of day.

Over the summer of 2011, Bella practiced and mastered the monkey bar rings at the playground. She also mastered the other triangle-rings on chains at Riverrun Park. Parents and children would stand and watch her, amazed that someone so young/little could conquer the bars with such verve and ease. It made a parent proud!

So this video shows her doing the rings - albeit slowly - because what she really wanted to do at this point was skip a ring like the big kids do. She worked at it for a while that evening and the second part of the video is actually the second time she managed to do it.

Now, of course, she does it all the time and it teaching her friends to skip a ring as well. Next up: gymnastics!