mathmom's blog

My brother used to call my sister and me "the grils " when he was a toddler. I wonder what Luke will call his sisters. I was just looking at my post subjects, and I noticed I had 10 posts about Amanda, 10 about Eleanor, and 28 about Luke. I do apologize for not writing more about the girls, but frankly I'm not likely to write tons about them any time soon, for some good or bad reasons: Luke actually takes up much more of my attention. Eleanor is at school, Amanda is remarkably self sufficient, but Luke needs constant watching. Since I watch him more, I see more of what he is doing. Luke changes visibly every day. Just today, as I was dropping him off at church, he clung to me tightly instead of going to play happily---that was new as of today. Eleanor and Amanda are changing, but much more slowly and less obviously. Luke is much cuter than his sisters are right now. His changes are almost all pleasant and interesting, while Eleanor and Amanda are in the process of ...

In addition to his new clapping trick, Luke has started trying to write. He'll grab anything shaped remotely like a pencil or crayon, put one end on the table (or floor, or roundhouse, or paper if I'm lucky) and scribble madly. The look on his face is priceless: a mix between intense joy and concentration. Luckily for me, Eleanor has started bringing him paper when he gets hold of a crayon. I suppose it is easier than making sure your crayons stay off the floor... This gets added to his sets of "grown-up" type activities. He's figured out that you eat with a spoon, so when he finds a spoon, he tries to eat with it. He knows that when someone has a cup, you put it up to your mouth. When the cup is empty he tips it back. When the cup is full, I am usually holding on to it. He will put his lips to the rim and suck madly, thinking "I know Mama likes this, although I don't know why. If I keep trying, I'll figure it out, I know!" Then he tri...

Here are a few traditions, old and new. Tree: We usually cut down a tree at one of the tree farms around here: it's cheaper, and you have more of a sense that this tree was actually growing somewhere before you decided to decorate your house with it. We were getting sick on and off, so we decided to send the girls and daddy out to buy a tree. They got a nice small one (so they could decorate more of it, they said). My mom used to buy a new ornament for each of the kids when we were growing up and then gave them to us when we got our own houses. We used those as well as a few the kids made and some I have gotten for them. We don't have a garland, but we have some fancy red and gold ribbon. We don't have a tree topper---nothing can hold a candle to the fiber-optic star my family had when we were growing up, in my opinion. This year we cut stars out of yellow tag board and let the girls decorate them with glitter glue. It is very festive! Gingerbread house: So we did...

Luke is doing more and more things (I know I start all posts about Luke this way. I don't think I will have to come up with a new beginning for Luke for a few years.) He still puts everything in his mouth, but now he has a new game. He'll put something in his mouth, I'll say "Luke! What do you have in your mouth?" and he will look at me, grin with his mouth closed, and start crawling away. He clearly wants me to chase him, since he will look back at me to make sure I'm following. He giggles when I catch him. He has discovered that he can open the toilet lid. This was never a problem for Eleanor: we could leave the bathroom door open and the lid up, and she was frankly never interested. Amanda was more interested, but she got the message that it was not ok to play with the toilet and moved on. Luke, however, is fascinated. Distracting him is not enough, and now closing the lid is not enough. I apologize to all parents I secretly made fun of for buying to...

We went to the playground yesterday. I've already written elsewhere about Eleanor organizing kids into games---she did it again yesterday. She had a 6 year old girl playing very elaborate chase games. They went better when the rules were established (like freeze tag) than when the rules were made up on the fly (like being chased by the daddy wolf who was in a cage, but could come out of the cage once a day... you get the idea). The other girl was an organizer as well. Amanda has learned some things from her sister, and she is changing as well. In school they have noticed that she is starting to move beyond the "play alongside" stage, and into the "play with" stage. Yesterday she was playing in a little house at the park, and another girl came briefly into the house. Amanda clearly wanted to play with her, and ended up following her around the park, carrying a bucket of sand. However, the other girl was clearly too busy to play with Amanda, Amanda was too...

Michael has finally been able to set up the play structure he built. It consists (so far) of a platform about 4 feet off the ground, a black board underneath in the back, and a slide. Michael did a great job of over-engineering, thus making it very very sturdy and suitable for rough play. It is also beautiful, with rounded edges on all the 2 by 4s. It is painted dark green (like a forest, says Eleanor) and varnished, so it is nice to touch. It also turned out much larger than we expected. You would think that a math and CS geek together could figure out how much space it would take up in the room, but apparently not---you have to walk around the slide to get into the main part of the room. It does fit in perfectly with our haphazard decorating style. The slide is very fast. Michael ended up varnishing the slide surface, and since it is fairly steep, you just zoom down. I think that Amanda might be slightly afraid of it, we'll have to work on that. Eleanor likes lying down...

I haven't updated y'all on the aquarium for quite some time. It is doing pretty well. Plant wise, we have learned that violets, while pretty, don't really do well in such a wet environment. I got a palm plant which is doing quite well and a peperomia which is either doing well or badly, I can't tell. It really likes the florescent light and responds by growing florescent green leaves. It has taken over the top plant area, but its leaves are spread out and flopping all over the place. The Baby's Tears I got at the beginning did really amazingly well at first, but then slowly died. We are now down to 3 neon tetras (one died as soon as we brought it home) and 2 zebra danios. After Fred died, one died more recently and ended up on the pump intake, and the other has simply disappeared. Amanda claims that it is in the center pool, hiding in the rocks. I can't see it, but perhaps she knows something I don't. I am certain it has passed away, wherever it is...

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.

Three children are impossible to keep track of with only one Mama. (OK, any number of children can get into trouble in any amount of time...) 1. Today we got a box containing wrapped Christmas presents. Amanda started to pull off the tape for the box, so I opened it and explained that they were Christmas presents, for Christmas. I then tried to put one of the presents up on the high shelf where they await Christmas day, and by the time I got back, Amanda had unwrapped the other present... She didn't see what was in the box, I think, and it was a present for her. However, I think there is a disconnect between what I thought I was telling her and what she understood. 2. While I was trying to put Luke down for a nap this afternoon (he didn't go to sleep, but he did take a 2.5 hour nap this morning) Eleanor got something sticky in her hair. I still don't know what was in her hair, but she fixed it by taking the scissors and cutting out a hunk of bangs. I came down and ...

Amanda's stuffed animal is named " Baaa ." She named it herself when she was about 9 months old and baa was one of the few sounds she could make. I encouraged this name, since the name that was on the tag, " Fluffles ," was clearly not something I would call anything, much less a poor defenseless stuffed animal. Plus, you can sing, "Baa Baa Baa, Baaa Baa the Lamb" (to the tune of Barbara Ann). We got two lambs, since this it is generally a good idea to get a potential replacement for anything that is irreplaceable . Recently Amanda found both of them, and she has taken to carrying both of them around and sleeping with both of them. One was called "Baa" and the other is " Baa's mother." Michael suggested that we call the second one " Maa ." Amanda has never heard of calling one's mother Ma, so she immediately associated it with the kids TV show Arthur when Yo Yo Ma and Joshua Redman guest star. She started...

This just in: in a study of one baby at one meal, babies prefer french fries to baby food. (This reminds me of the real study the mother of one of my brother's friends did. There is an older study (from the 1930s, I think) that shows that children will naturally choose to eat a balanced diet when given choices of what to eat. My brother's friend's mother (a nutritionist at U of MN) showed that when the choices include junk food, the junk food wins every time. Thus proving that parents are still necessary.) In other fast breaking news, mothers prefer to waste time blogging rather than clean up the kitchen.

Today the family got out into the backyard and raked. We have a significant number of trees around, so we saw immediate results, both on the now clear lawn and on a huge leaf pile (although not equal to the leaf pile of my youth when we jumped from the shed roof into the pile... remind me not to tell Eleanor about this). It was an unseasonably warm day, so there were other families out doing yard work as well. At one point I looked around for Eleanor and discovered that she had taken herself over to the neighbor's yard and was chatting with their 3 year old daughter. They live kiddy-corner to us, so we don't see them all that often, and I hadn't even noticed that they were out. But Eleanor noticed, and therefore Eleanor had to go right over there and talk to the girl, her 2 year old brother and the father. She explained why we were out, asked what they were doing, asked if the little girl could come over to our yard, volunteered to make cookies for their family, and so...

Well, Amanda finally had an allergic reaction at school. Yesterday one of the "sensory experiences" set up for the kids was a flour table (wheat flour, of course). Amanda was so interested that she went over there even before she had washed her hands and got completely covered. There was no immediate reaction, but she was completely covered in it. She started itching (I don't know if she had any hives, I don't think so) so the teachers gave her Benadryl, washed her off and eventually changed clothes. If we had been really concerned about exposure to wheat, we could have asked that the classroom be a wheat free zone (just like it is a "nut free zone") with no playdough and no wheat snacks. If we were extremely worried, we could keep Amanda home and have Eleanor take a shower and change clothes when she gets home from school (I know some people do this). The truth of the matter is that Amanda just isn't that allergic to wheat, if at all. The risks ...

I got to talk to Jack Pearson today! For those of you have never heard of him, he's Mr. Song- Strummin ' Story-man, a folk singer who visits schools to sing and tell stories (his website is here ). I had called the phone number on his website to order some CDs for presents. Can you imagine how tickled I was to hear a very familiar voice on the other end of the line saying "Hello, this is Jack." I was very surprised, to say the least. We have had his CDs in our car for months. I think I've probably heard them more than he has! The thing I like best about them is that they do not get old. There are many types of songs, from new compositions to folk songs, stories and instrumentals. The favorite is probably " Eekebee ", a retelling of the fable of the lion and the mouse. As the lion says, "Even a mouse can do great things, if he is brave." My favorite is probably the story "Freedom Bird" from a Thai folk tale. I got to tell h...

We lost our favorite gymnastics teacher yesterday---she went from working part time at the gym to another full time job. To tell the truth, last year at this time I had no idea that I would ever have a favorite gymnastics teacher. Miss Q, who teaches the 3 and 4 year olds , is great, but her job is more herding cats with a little bit of gymnastics thrown in. When Eleanor was ready to move to Miss J's class after she turned 5, we were warned that "Miss J is strict!". I was worried, since Eleanor is not typically well behaved (one of the cattiest of the 4 year olds. =) However, while you might call Miss J strict, a better description would be having high expectations. She did not accept some of the shenanigans of the little girls, and so they stopped misbehaving. Eleanor had been prone to drastic mood swings about gymnastics, from overconfidence to despair when she couldn't do something right away. Eleanor tended to do something carelessly when she didn't like...

A friend just had a post about her son's desire to have a pink bejewled play phone (she and the people who comment have great things to say: here it is so you can read it). Thinking about her post made me very glad that for girls 5 and under (which is all I have experienced lately) there is no toy that is off limits as far as I can tell. Amanda's favorite toys are trains (although she doesn't play with them the way some of her boy friends do. I think Chanson's kids would play well with her version of trains). Her favorite movie is Cars. Her favorite TV show is Bob the Builder. No one in her life (relatives, friends, teachers) tells her that she can't enjoy all of these things. On the other hand, she likes to play with all these things while she is dressed as a princess... In Eleanor's class, everyone's favorite thing to do is woodworking, both girls and boys. The only mathematicians she knows are women, so she expects to do well in math as well...

A friend recently pointed me to the web site FreeRice The idea is that you play a vocabulary game, and for every word you guess correctly, the advertisers will donate 20 grains of rice to the world food program run by the UN. Since there are about 7200 grains of rice in a cup (found through google , so it must be true) and since this game is tremendously addicting (I easily get to my personal limit, 2000 grains of rice a day) it seems like a good deal all around. The best part is that anyone can play at her own level. I have been learning new words: nidus means nest and nabob means important official, for example. Then tonight I introduced Eleanor to the game. She gets excited when she gets words right, like snake means serpent ("I learned that from Narnia!") She doesn't always know what she is guessing, but I think she's learning new words, or at least that it is fun to know words. She also has learned some about what kids in other countries have to eat every...

I've been trying to write insightful, thoughtful posts about the nature of parenting and noticing your own character flaws in your children and trying to save them from themselves. It never comes out the way I want it to, so I'll post some cute kid stories instead (which, frankly, is one of the main purposes of this blog as well as the main interest of many of its family readers). Amanda comes home with pictures from preschool fairly regularly. Yesterday marks the first time she told me what they were pictures of. The first was a moose. The second was a train. She informed me that "The train does not have a cape." Hmmm . I watched Luke and a 4 month old baby in the nursery at church the other day. What a difference! The 4 month old sat in the baby swing and batted at the toys hanging over it. One of the toys was a handle that caused music to play and lights to flash when you pulled it. The little baby liked the lights, but wasn't quite coordinated enough...

Eleanor, while looking at the TV over the bar in our favorite Greek restaurant: "Daddy, what game are they playing on the TV?" Michael: "That's American rules football, as distinct from Australian rules football and soccer." This exchange tells you something about our family...

Well, we had Thanksgiving at our house, and we had a good time. We invited a friend of Eleanor's and her family: the mom is Hatian, and was very interested in trying American Thanksgiving dishes. She said she had never had cranberries! We did very traditional dishes: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberries, green beans, pie and apple crisp. Except for the stuffing and the pie, it was entirely dairy, egg, soy, wheat, nut and tree nut free! This was actually not as challenging as it sounds: the key was having a good margarine (we use Benecol). Cooking a big meal like this is fun for me, although it wasn't always and it isn't without its own stresses. After many years of practicing, cooking makes me feel competent. When I change recipes to make them fit my needs but still taste good, I feel creative. And when I provide a healthy meal for my family (whether or not they eat it) I feel satisfied. Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving with...

Today we finally had to say goodbye to an appliance that has been with us for our whole marriage, so far: the crock pot. Michael's Grandma Eleanor gave it to us soon after we were married, along with some recipes (including Crock pot beef, which had ketchup as the main seasoning). One of Michael's cousins gave us a fondue pot because "every married couple needs a fondue pot". I think he envisioned us using it more than we have so far---and for a long time the crock pot sat above our refrigerator along with the fondue pot. However, when we moved the crock pot moved down to a more accessible location, and we have used it at least once a week on average for about 3 years. Today when the kids and I got home, we were ready for some stew. Eleanor had her usual complaining performance before the meal, we were all set to feed Luke some meat for the first time, so I dished out the stew (1 piece of meat for Eleanor, a medium bowl for Amanda, and a good sized piece of meat ...

Here's another thing I didn't know happened in kindergarten. Today was a hard day---I had to take the girls to school with baby Luke, so we were running just barely on time, until as we were driving down the block I realized I had forgotten something at home. Then we got behind a school bus. Then we came to an accident: someone had tried to pull a u-haul trailer across a ditch, and had gotten stuck half-way into the right lane. So we were really late. Then Eleanor started complaining that her tummy hurt. Well, Eleanor complains that her tummy hurts all the time. We finally figured out that she's lactose intolerant, so that helps quite a bit, but she still has a lot of trouble. Fortunately, it usually passes and is not severe. This time, however, she was saying that she felt like she had to throw up and she looked awful. Well, I hadn't planned on keeping her home, but that was ok. But then she perked up when I said it was my turn to help in her classroom. Hmm, ...

Yesterday morning, while eating cheerios and sitting in his Grandpa J's lap, Luke reached up and tried to feed some cheerios to his grandpa. I then learned that Luke had been trying to feed green beans to Grandpa yesterday, while Grandpa was taking the ends off the beans and letting Luke teethe on the uncooked beans. Today we went to the pool. It is a "zero depth entry" pool, which means that the water starts out at zero feet and gradually gets deeper. (I'm really not finding words to explain this well: the pool is more or less the shape of a triangular prism, if that helps... =)What that means for us is that Luke can crawl around in the shallow end, going into and out of the pool. He was pretty convinced that if he just kept crawling deeper and deeper he'd be able to get out to where the big kids are. He got a few facefuls of water, which didn't seem to deter him any. There was another 9 month old crawling around in the shallow end. Since other babies...

I was informed the other day that Eleanor wants to get a new thermos. She lost the o-ring from her purple Tinkerbell thermos, and I have so far resisted buying another one for her, on the theory that you shouldn't just replace things that are broken since it doesn't encourage being careful with one's things. I have been sending her with the sippee cups that she has been using since she was a year old, which she has resisted giving up to the point of becoming partly dehydrated when I don't let her use them at home. Here's how the conversation went. Eleanor: Anna and Jane said today at lunch, " Kindergartners don't drink from sippee cups!" Me: That's very interesting. Eleanor: They are supposed to drink from thermoses. Me: Eleanor, would you like a new thermos? Eleanor: Yes! Get the purple one, please. If there is a crayon one, that's the one I want.... Who knew that peer pressure started in kindergarten? The sippee cups are perfectly f...

Given an (almost) infinite number of monkeys with keyboards with and (almost) infinite amount of time, an (almost) infinite number of interesting blogs will be written. However, none of this helps me live my life or take care of my children. Just because it is interesting, well reasoned, and worth reading in general doesn't mean that it is worth _my_ time to read. In other words, "So many blogs, so little time..." Luke's upper left incisor poked through today, finally. Three down, 17 to go.

In case you are wondering, the number of teeth needed for a baby to take big bites out of a whole banana is two. As we were eating this morning, I was carefully cutting banana pieces small enough so that Luke could pick them up and chew them. I took my eye off the larger piece of banana for a second, and when I looked back it was gone---it was in Luke's mouth, and he had already taken two big bites. After that, he just wasn't interested in eating the cut pieces anymore, he wanted the big piece. I did eventually give in, waiting to assist him in getting bites out of his mouth when he took too much in. I think toward the end he was getting the hang of it, he definitely enjoyed the big piece more than the little ones, he ate with much more gusto. Amanda was eating "bunny cereal". Perhaps I should put "eating" in quotes: her real goal seemed to be to line the x's, o's and bunnies in a row along the edge of the table.

Today we held Amanda's 3rd birthday party. We had a good time, despite the fact that I am incapable of being a relaxed hostess, and worry way too much about everything. We ended up just having one family from Amanda's preschool class over---we were supposed to have two families, but I didn't get around to inviting the second family until they had already made plans for the weekend... oops. Actually, it was just as well that we had fewer people, since I don't know where we would have sat if there had been more of us. They came over at about 11:30, we ate (hamburgers and hot dogs, chips, carrots and apples). It is amazing that the kids will sit still for so much longer when there are other people at the table amusing them. Then we went outside and played for a while with foam airplanes, big soft frisbees and water balloons---the water balloons were regular size ones that Eleanor filled up with water as far as she could in the sink, meaning that they won't break...

Miracles do happen! All the laundry was folded the day after it was washed! (no, it wasn't put away, that would be too much to expect.) I also got time to read some and watch Star Trek. Quote for the day: Amanda, cuddling her stuffed lamb Baa: "Ba is soft and cuddly. So I can throw him down the stairs! I can do it all by my self." After throwing: "Was that fun, Baa?" Is the tooth fairy in charge of bringing new teeth in addition to getting rid of old teeth? If so, and if any of you have any contacts with her, could you tell her to please hurry and bring Luke's new front top teeth? Right now he goes around with his tongue hanging out, feeling the bumps that will soon become teeth. Amanda had her "special day" at preschool today, and Eleanor was excused from snack at kindergarten to go and join the 2 year old class. From what I gather, Eleanor had a great time telling all her 5 year old buddies about visiting the classroom where she had pres...

Luke is endlessly fascinated by his own reflection. When I hold him up to a mirror, he kicks and squeals, and then he tucks his head down onto my chest and cuddles and is shy. It is quite clear that he doesn't know that the reflection is of himself yet, I forget when he gets that idea... Perhaps if there were a developmental psychologist reading the blog, she could post a comment =) So I shouldn't have been surprised this morning as he was crawling around the floor when he caught a glimpse of himself in the stainless steel garbage can and stopped to play with the cute baby. Our garbage can is round, and not shiny clean anymore, but he still recognized another person and was still interested in talking, waving his hands up and down, and so forth. I let this go on until he tried to kiss the other baby =) he probably played for about 5 minutes. What fun!

Today at the park I was observing my children and the different challenges they pose to anyone who is watching them. Eleanor has always been physically adventurous---I remember going to the park when she was two and being constantly afraid that she would fall off the play structure and hurt herself badly. I was continually chasing her and spotting her as she climbed higher and higher on the challenging equipment meant for older kids. She almost never fell, as in, maybe I saved her twice from falling over the years. She had a great sense of where her body was and what she could do, for example, she knew how high she could jump from, and how high was too high. Taking Eleanor to the park often involved telling other parents, "No, she'll be alright, she can do this..." and hoping I was right. I do occasionally call Michael to ask his opinion about what she's doing---as a confirmed risk averse person, I'm not always the best one to judge. Today I took my eye off ...

Sometimes the simplest things make a difference. There is an apparently new technology which allows labels to be printed on the inside back of things (shirts, for example) instead of having tags. This is important to me because now Eleanor knows which way her underwear go without having to ask me. Girls underwear has a definite front and back, but it doesn't have a label, and it isn't obvious to a 5 year old (or an older girl, for that matter) which way it goes. Now with the label on the back, she always knows which way it goes and can get dressed in the morning by herself (always assuming that she doesn't have a case of "the slows"). One wonders what took the clothing industry so long to come up with this.

Cooking for my children is not a gratifying experience. I am not a terrible cook (according to Michael), I enjoy cooking when I have time, I like making new recipes, I have a subscription to Cooking Light and use the web archive of recipes often. One of the reasons I need my computer in the kitchen is to access the recipes I've stored. (I realize that not everyone likes to cook, I'm pretty sure that there are things they do that I am not interested in doing. One of my good friends doesn't cook, but is a good gardener, which is something I very much dislike, for example.) If you ask Eleanor, however, I make the worst food in the world. After much bargaining we agreed that she is free to dislike what I make, she is free to tell me how much she dislikes it, but once we sit down at the table she can't comment on how awful the food is. She keeps her end of the bargain, and I only make her eat a few bites of the main dish, a good serving of vegetables or fruit, and then...

I have already mentioned that I don't really like Halloween. I had vowed not to take Eleanor and Amanda trick-or-treating this year, but Michael managed to get me to do it anyway by arranging a gas leak... I got back from picking up Amanda, and I wanted to let her watch a little TV while I nursed Luke in peace and quiet (because if she is in the room, Luke has no interest in eating and wants to eat all night instead). I went downstairs and caught a whiff of what I thought was gas. I really couldn't tell where it was coming from, it didn't seem to be stronger near the furnace room, so I didn't trust myself. You must understand that at the previous house I thought I smelled gas all the time, but no one else could smell it. Also, I had been sure about a year ago that we had a gas leak, and I eventually traced the smell to a very stinky dishrag. I turned on the gas in the stove to see if it smelled the same---it was very similar, but not quite the same. We had to go t...

Luke has been sick the last few days. Not quite enough to obviously go to the doctor: he had a low grade fever, was a bit sad, but wasn't throwing up or pulling his ear or dehydrated. Also, he always seems to get more sad at about 4:30, just the time when it's not practical to go to the pediatrician. Yesterday he was so tired that he glommed on to my chest and wouldn't let me put him down all afternoon---on the other hand, he didn't want to go to sleep in his crib. He has been much much better in the mornings. He was, however, sick enough at night that I've gotten 5 or fewer hours of sleep the last three nights. This makes me not want to take the time to write blog entries. It makes me not want to clean the kitchen, which is much more necessary (although less fun) in our home life. I have been falling prey to the problem that led me to start a blog in the first place: spending too much time reading random blogs and not enough time writing my own. Hopefully ...

Today we carved pumpkins. Michael pointed out that we hadn't done this since we've been married (15 Halloweens so far) and I pointed out that this is because I don't really like Halloween (maybe someday I'll blog about that, but not tonight). Eleanor loves Halloween, she's been bugging me to get pumpkins and lots of scary decorations, which is funny since she is so easily scared in general. Amanda loved carving the pumpkins. We put candles in them to dry out the insides a bit, and put hers in front of her at the table. She covered her eyes: "Where's Amanda? Here I am, pumpkin!" "My pumpkin and I are playing a game!". Michael very kindly roasted the pumpkin seeds. They were delicious---Amanda liked them, Eleanor didn't, Luke thought he probably should eat some too. Michael pointed out that lighting pumpkin candles is much easier now that we have those long nosed butane lighters. I remember debating whether one should light the can...

Well, the "keep Luke alive" program is going fairly well. Yesterday he was particularly interested in chewing on things (more teething, possibly?) and so I spent the day looking for appropriate teethers and taking away the inappropriate. Appropriate in this case means anything that would not hurt him and that he would not hurt. The problem is that his sisters are not cooperating with the program. They leave all sorts of things on the floor (bits of sidewalk chalk, for example, or little pieces of paper), they leave doors open (come back inside, Luke!), they leave the toilet seat lid up, they distract me when Luke is doing something he shouldn't. He has only fallen down the short flight of stairs once, and he does seem to have learned something from that (it was more like a gentle roll, but still scary). Yesterday as I was washing Eleanor's hair and Luke thought he'd like to eat the toilet paper from off the roll. I successfully distracted him from that a...

For dinner, Luke ate: 1 baby food jar of sweet potatoes about 5 baby carrots (on the larger side) from our beef stew about 1/3 cup cheerios I think he would have eaten more, if he could have. I was hesitant about feeding him the carrots from the stew: he's not supposed to have meat until later. Amanda is allergic to wheat, dairy, egg, soy, peanut, treenut , barley, and possibly rye, and I really don't want to create any problems for Luke by feeding him something too early. I washed off the carrots, but I think that they still tasted like meat, and he loved them. One of his favorite "snacks" is my leather purse strap---I'm not raising a vegetarian here. He definitely ate more than Eleanor, and tonight he ate more than Amanda (although sometimes Amanda really chows down on the stew). Definitely a growing boy!

...that when a baby is sad, his cry sounds like "Maaaaa maaaaa maaaa!" and when he is happy, it sounds like "Da da da da da"? Michael suggests that this is a survival mechanism. I think it is something the dads worked out ages ago when they were figuring out what to call themselves. Luke, however, doesn't care.

Today we got done swimming at about 5, so we needed dinner faster than driving home and cooking something on the grill (we usually eat between 5 and 5:30). We went to XIOS , the best local Greek restaurant, because Amanda can eat the gyros (and will eat lots and lots). However, I discovered when we got there that I hadn't brought any food for poor Luke! I am not used to having to provide actual food for him---one of the many benefits/pitfalls of nursing, I suppose. I went to the grocery store next door and picked up some baby food for him (peas and rice, mmmm ...) but he finished that and seemed to be still hungry! Eating everything in sight is apparently a boy thing: neither of the girls ever finished a jar of baby food in one sitting. The most appropriate finger food we had available was (drum roll please...) a french fry. Michael broke off the crunchy bits and gave him the soft middles in small bites that he could gum to pieces. He loved them! For a while we gave him too ...

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...

(Based on extensive research conducted by Mama, Daddy, Eleanor and Amanda) 10. Turn him upside down (Daddy does this). 9. Let him crawl on you. 8. Show him a tub of water (he took his first "big boy" bath today, on purpose, not accidentally) 7. Go through a doorway from a big room into a hallway (especially one with an EXIT sign: I think this was his favorite part of the apple festival). 6. Bang on a table with him. 5. Show him the baby in the mirror. 4. Say a funny word (Eleanor had him in stitches the other day with "bugaboo"). 3. Play "peek-a-boo" with him. 2. Tickle him behind his knees, under his chin, or on his feet. 1. Smile at him. He will almost always smile back, often with a much bigger smile than you gave to him. I realized today that when Eleanor was this age, she slept about 10-11 hours total every day. Luke sleeps about 13, more when he can get it. What a huge difference.

Luke fell into the bathtub tonight. It was just a matter of time, which you would know if you had ever seen him while Amanda takes her bath. He loves reaching down and splashing in the water, which he can just reach with the tips of his fingers by leaning as far as possible over the edge of the tub. Tonight he was reaching down and decided to try to grab a duck. The duck floated away, and since Luke has an imperfect grasp of physics, he leaned over and tried to catch it. His head is obviously bigger than the rest of him, and he went right in. I usually catch him, but this time I was trying to get some conditioner out of the bottle to wash Amanda's hair so I was distracted. Splash! If you think he learned anything from this adventure, you are mistaken. I plucked him out of the tub (he was actually submerged for about a second before I figured out what was happening). He cried for about a minute, but only half- heartedly (much less than he does when I take something away from...

For a few weeks, now, Eleanor has been asking for help learning how to clean windows. Her fascination with window cleaning dates from a long time ago (about 3 years) when she determined that she could climb up on the sink, fill the sink with water, and use the hand towel to rub water all over the mirror---and if she did this, I wouldn't get mad at her. She also learned that it was ok for her to get a wet paper towel and rub it all over the windows. Just recently, she realized that when she did these things, the windows and mirrors didn't actually get clean! She was spending a lot of time on this, trying to get her mirror clean, and Michael pointed out that what she really needed was some windex and a paper towel. Ever since then, she's been asking when we could get her some windex : "Mom, don't forget to get something for cleaning windows when you go to the store today!" Well, on Saturday we finally remembered to pick up her very own spritzer. She carr...

One of the downsides of having kids is that all of the things you hate dealing with for yourself you now get to deal with for 3 (in my case) more people. For example, one of my least favorite tasks is sorting socks. I dislike it so much that as soon as the frost is off the ground in the spring, I get out my sandals, which I wear until my toes start freezing. Soon after Michael and I married we made an arrangement whereby I would not have to sort and fold his socks. Now I get to keep track of and sort Amanda's and Eleanor's socks. It wouldn't be so bad except that as soon as they have been worn once, one of the socks seems to disappear into the ether (the hozone, Michael always says). Here's a math question for the audience: if you have 10 pairs of socks in a pile, and you reach in to the pile and grab a random pair, how many do you have to grab before you have a pair? (at least 2, at most 11, and I think it follows some sort of normal distribution, I think...) I...

A friend of mine asked me what Eleanor, Amanda and I talk about all day. To my surprise, I was completely unable to answer her question, despite the fact that we (or at least Eleanor) talk constantly. I resolved to pay more attention the next day. What I discovered is that I should not be a writer, since I clearly have no ear for dialogue: after listening for a day and trying to remember what was said, I still had no idea what we talked about. After listening for a few days and trying desperately to remember what was said, here is what I learned. Amanda's conversations, frequently with herself, have to do with pretending. She'll come up to me and say "Hi Mom." "Hi Amanda." " NOOO . Hi Mom." I'll then look and she'll be waving her hands. I am convinced that her hands are her imaginary playmates---at least, they are alive to her and she has conversations with them all the time. "Oh, hi little hands." "Will you play ...

Every day it seems as though something has changed about Luke. Over the weekend (at apple festival) he finally cut his first tooth! It's the bottom left (I think...) and he's only been working on it since he was born (chewing, drooling, etc.) The other bottom middle one is coming in soon. I've officially missed another chance to take a baby to the photo studio for some toothless grins. Also over the weekend we noticed that he had changed the way he talks. Earlier he would hold forth on a whole range of topics using mostly vowels, now he has added consonants (true to form, the first words were " Da da da da da !" He still isn't quite sure what he's saying, though.) He still is very talkative, and he and Amanda babble to each other in the back seat of the car. The "magic with cheerios" I wrote about earlier is over: today he managed to get about 80% of the cheerios I put on his plate into his mouth on the first or second try. I saw him...

...otherwise known as, why I didn't post this weekend =). We were up in the mountains at a Lutheran camp for apple festival. The basic idea is that a bunch of people get together to harvest apples from the wild apples around at the camp, and then we make apple cider, apple crisp, apple pie, apple muffins... This is along with typical camp things like campfire, crafts, songs, and so on. Last year there was a great apple crop. We walked to a few known trees, the counselors climbed them, shook down lots of apples, and the kids picked up the fallen apples and put them in the counselor's backpacks. I am sure we had more than a hundred pounds... Michael would have a better estimate of how many we got. Unfortunately, this year was not a good year for apples at the camp (due to a wet, cold spring and a dry, hot summer). So a crop of apples miraculously appeared on the front lawn at the main lodge! The kids ran around collecting the apples that were nowhere near any apple trees.....

More and more, when I meet friends at school or in the grocery store, they look at me and ask if I am OK . I think this is because I seem overwhelmed and tired, and the answer to their question is "mostly." The real problem, of course, is that I am parenting a pre -toddler. I think that the main purpose of parents for children from 6 to 14 months is simply to keep them alive long enough to allow them to be civilized---not an easy task. Parenting a baby who is not sensible enough to understand why he shouldn't put everything in his mouth, why crawling down the stairs head first is a bad idea, or even why he can't be with his mama all the time, is intense. For example, suppose I am carrying him around and put him down to do something (you can do almost everything while holding a baby, but not everything). One of a number of things happens: I hear a "crawl, crawl, crawl, thump, wail!" as he bangs himself into the table, or the floor. I hear just "wail...

Amanda is playing with water on the porch. She's got some rocks, the bottom part of my "fountain" (basically a square box made of slate), a pitcher, a measuring cup and some cups. She climbs up on the sink in the bathroom to put water and soap in a cup, then pours it into the pitcher (a few times) then takes that onto the porch, pours it into the 1 cup measure, then pours the measuring cup into the fountain. The rocks travel back and forth from the cups to the pitcher to the fountain as well. Since she has started she has taken off her pants and shirt (they got all wet, mama!) I think she's having fun.

Today we went to a nearby park. We almost didn't make it: Eleanor and Amanda had many spats about toys, who was breathing on whom, and so on, and woke up Luke. Eleanor couldn't find her shoes, then her socks, then something from school broke, then she could only find one sock, each of which caused screaming fits followed by whimpering fits... However, thankfully, getting out of the house proved magic and there were no more bad moods until we got home. Amanda, for her part has caught the whining bug, which made me not want to go out with her. Once I heard that it helps if the parent whines at the child, to help the child hear what she sounds like, so I tried it this morning. Amanda said "No, mama, that was my own sound. Not yours." I put some robeez shoes on Luke (they have little dragons on them!) In case you are wondering, Luke has big feet (which shows he belongs in this family, right David?) A while ago we went to the shoe store to get shoes for Amanda an...

An update especially for Michael, who was not home for bedtime tonight: Luke crawled up one stair today! I'm not sure that he didn't have help, though, Amanda was sitting right next to him and I didn't actually see the crawling. We'd better get the gate back up soon. Amanda and Eleanor got to bed _almost_ on time, but not quite. I put Luke down for bed while the kids watched "Rocket Soup". I finished with Luke as the movie was finishing, Amanda hopped right up and ran into her bedroom. But then as I was singing to her, Amanda started scratching the eczema on her feet just as she was going to bed, so we had to go back down for hydroxyz (which I had forgotten earlier). She was in bed, insisting that I needed to sing the song about the sling (David and Goliath) by about 7:25, not bad. (I didn't sing any more songs, in case you are wondering.) Then I went back into Eleanor, who wanted to watch "just a little more" of the video. We turned it ...