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Showing posts from November, 2007

Free Rice

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...

Funny stories

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...

Cultural illiteracy?

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...

Turkey Blog

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...

Goodbye to an old friend

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 ...

School anxiety

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, ...

Luke is cute

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...

Kindergarten Fashions

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...

Infinite monkeys

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.

Breakfast

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.

Birthday party debrief

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...

In other news...

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...

Who's that cute baby?

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!

Accidents happen

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 ...

It's the simple things...

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.

Feeding Children

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...