Skip to main content

While the cat's away...

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 noticed that she looked different and figured out what happened.

As I was looking at her, I realized that I had a hard time being too upset with her. She is blissfully unaware that she looks very silly, and she isn't fazed by our taking away her scissors for a while. It just doesn't seem right to punish her harshly when all it does is make me laugh. (At least we already had the pictures taken...)

3. Luke has a slightly harder time getting into trouble, since I'm mostly right near him. However, he is very quick! Today at dinner he reached out of his high chair to the table and grabbed a big piece of apple that I had been eating. He started chewing on it, and since I was right there, I decided to let him give it a shot. He actually ate quite a bit, using only his front 3 teeth, tongue and gums. If anyone thinks this is not impressive, I challenge you to try eating apple without using any of your back teeth.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Things that are true

"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.

Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown. I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!

A day at the fair

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...