mathmom's blog

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.