Amanda the philosopher

Yesterday when Michael and I came downstairs, Amanda was already down, standing in the middle of the kitchen thinking. She seemed glad to see us and pleased that she had come downstairs first. She asked, "What if it's a dream that I came downstairs first and you weren't here yet?" I gave her a hug and she said it could still be a dream that I hugged her.

Later that day she stopped Luke from banging on the table during lunch. We try to keep the kids from disciplining each other, so I told her that it wasn't her job. "I want to practice being a grown up so I can grow up!" I asked what other things grownups do, and she said that they gave kids timeouts. Hmm, maybe I was a bit grumpy yesterday...

New uses for words

Luke has very interesting ways to use words these days. He talks a lot about a "car-bus", for example. My favorite habit is the following (I don't even know what to call it): popsicle-stick means popsicle, spider-web means spider, and pumpkin-seed means pumpkin. As in, "There's a hungry spider-web crawling up you, mama!" And, "I made this pumpkin-seed for you!" and "I'd like a popsicle-stick for dessert." No amount of correction seems to get through. By the time he's in college, I believe he'll have figured it out.

Angelus

Last night we were singing through our Christmas Carol book. Actually, mostly I sing and Amanda dances. She looked at the picture of the angels on "Away in a manger" and said, "I like the angels. They're like big fairies!"

Poetry

When Eleanor was younger (although not that much younger) I would say good night to her with the old poem:

Good night! Sleep Tight!
Don't let the bedbugs bite!
But if they do, take your shoe,
And beat them till they're black and blue!

She thought it was pretty funny, and Eleanor made up more verses:
Take a pot, and boil them till they're red and hot!
Take your bed and squish them till they're good and dead!

In all those years, she never wanted to know what a bedbug was, or if she really had to be worried about them.

I had been hesitating to say the poem to Amanda. I'm not even sure that I knew why, except that my vague misgivings were confirmed the other night when I told Amanda the poem. "Mom, what's a bedbug? Are they real? Do we have bedbugs? If we did, would we really use our shoe? Can they climb under our sheets? How do you get rid of them?" I answered as best I could---we don't have any, they're real, we'd wash the sheets in really hot water... Bedtime was a bit later that night.

Then tonight, I said the poem again. She piped up, "Nooo, we wouldn't use our shoe! We'd wash the sheets!" I think perhaps I'll find a different way to say goodnight to Amanda...

BTW, our local science museum has a microscope where you can look at live dust mites. Since we have skin, I'm almost 100% sure we have dust mites. But seeing those little guys crawling around on the scrap of sheet made me want to wash our sheets on the sanitary cycle. And take the hottest shower I could manage.

Apple festival, the sequel

This weekend was Apple Festival up at Lutherock. We had a good time as always---just getting out of the weekend grind of errands and to-do lists is refreshing, not to mention driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiking up and down trails through woods changing colors, meeting new people and old friends.

Here are some highlights:

• Luke turns out to be incredibly afraid of fire, including fire in fireplaces. This was a problem this weekend, since the temperature in the morning was around 40 degrees, (although it got up to about 65 degrees during the day). When Michael lit a fire in the fireplace of the lodge where we were staying, Luke stood screaming at the door to the outside 3 rooms away, "I go out! I go out! Fire hot! It burns! Don't touch!" After about 20 minutes, he was able to sit in daddy's lap in the same room as the fire, but he was clearly still worried. I guess he got the message about fire, but perhaps I should have moderated it a bit.
  
• We did not take him to campfire, but I did take the girls. It rated as their most favorite part of Apple Festival, even though at the end Amanda fell off the bench she was walking on and couldn't stop crying for about 10 minutes. They did the skit with the "Swami" who tells fortunes by smelling shoes. Eleanor was the first to jump up and stick her shoe in the hands of the assistant---the swami predicted a beauty parlor in her future. Eleanor confided to the girl sitting next to her that she was planning on opening up a beauty parlor when she gets older... first I've heard of it.
• We listened to audio books on the way up and back: Ramona and her Mother, and Akimbo and the Crocodile Man. I really enjoyed Ramona and her Mother, even though Ramona is excruciatingly annoying at times. I often found myself thinking, "I've had this conversation with Eleanor!" Akimbo and the Crocodile Man is one of a series of books for children written by Alexander McCall Smith, the author of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency books. The two we have listened to so far (also Akimbo and the Elephants) are excellent.
• There were many apples up at Lutherock this year. The counselors climb up into the wild apple trees scattered around the property, shake the trees and apples rain down. Everybody else's job is to gather up the good apples and put them in baskets. I think we filled probably 12-15 bushels of apples off just 4 trees, not to mention the apples that weren't in good enough shape even to make into cider. They have an old fashioned cider press which the counselors and kids kept running all day, and which gave us delicious cider for supper and breakfast the next day. Anyone who had an apple recipe could make something in the kitchen, so we had pies, crisp and sauce. It was a very good haul.
  
• A few of the adults had official hiking poles. The kids all decided they needed walking sticks too. Amanda found a few beauties over the weekend, most of which were taller than she was. Luke found some too, but his were mostly thin and twiggy---not really useful, but if he dropped them he became very sad. The older kids of course discovered that they were great play weapons, and knocked a few heads. This was a bigger problem when the knocked heads were on the younger kids.
• Eleanor read Magic or Not? by Edward Eager and Little House on Boston Bay, about Charlotte, Laura Ingalls Wilder's grandmother. She did not read Dancing Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, because the beginning where their mother dies is too sad. She read instead of listening to the first part of the audio book we got, and when she wanted to start a travel game with us, she got distracted within 30 seconds of starting the game, and could not be roused from her book to take her turn.
  

As usual, there is much more to be written, but not much more time to write. You're all invited to come down next year.

Pest control

At dinner today, Luke disappeared for a minute or two. He was in the kitchen, so I didn't think he was getting up to too much trouble, but he was out of our view. After a minute or two of ominous quiet, I got worried and got up to see what he was doing.

Luke had opened up the box with the pantry moth traps in them---a piece of cardboard with extremely sticky stuff on the inside (see picture above---my first foray into putting pictures in blogs!). He had taken the two traps out of the box, and slid them on his feet. He was coming very proudly across the floor to show us his new footwear.

I learned in that moment that it is possible to find your child side-splittingly amusing and incredibly annoying at the same time. He was so proud. He was so cute in those little traps. They were very hard to get off his feet! But he had been very naughty. One of the rules is that you can't laugh in these situations---it just rewards naughtiness. On the other hand, yelling uncontrollably at your child is frowned on as well. Which left me paralyzed on the floor.

Fortunately, the other people in my family stepped up. Michael took Luke upstairs for a time out. Eleanor wasn't annoyed, but recognized that she absolutely should not laugh. Amanda was oblivious. I just hope that the next time he gets into trouble it is either obviously naughty or obviously funny---being both at the same time is painful.

Washing windows

A friend of mine gave some advice about children. "They're like sheepdogs," she said, "They need a job, or else they get destructive."

So yesterday when I was trying to finish up the Moroccan Chicken Crockpot recipe for the church potluck today, and Luke was opening all the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, taking various foods out of the pantry and generally hanging on my pant leg, I decided to give Luke a job. I noticed the window cleaning fluid on the counter, so I gave Luke the spray bottle. "Here. Please clean the windows!" "Otay," answered Luke.

He went over and started spraying the windows. "You have to wipe it all clean after you spray, Luke," I said, intending to get him a paper towel or two. "Otay," said Luke---and when I looked up again he had found a kleenex. Problem solved. He happily cleaned windows (actually one window) for about 10 minutes, when I was finished with the recipe.

This morning he started to clean windows again, and he amused his sister. Amanda was sitting there laughing at Luke cleaning the windows and talking about it. When she noticed that he was more interested in spraying on the window cleaner than wiping it off, she ran to get a towel. They worked more or less happily together for about 10 minutes, at which point the task got old.

We're almost out of window cleaner. I think I'll fill the bottle with water and keep some around.