mathmom's blog

Sorry I've been AWOL for the past few weeks. We've had guests, been really sick (which is a blog post in itself), and been doing family things. I've tried to make up for it today, and keeping up with the blog would definitely be one of my resolutions, if I were making any. Happy New Year!

I admit that earlier in December and November, I had started to be concerned with how many words Luke knew. He had a grasp on the important ones: Mama, Daddy, candy, TV, popcorn, and so on. He also clearly had things to say---he could hold his own in any conversation he thought worthwhile, expounding on various subjects at great length and with great emotion, although without using any actual English words. But he didn't know the requisite number of words you're supposed to know at 2, he would repeat words I said but not come up with them on his own, and he certainly wasn't using any sentences. How things change in a short time. Luke started asking " Wha dat ?" for everything he saw in books and in the world. He started putting together sentences ("telegraphic speech," according to the FNDP (friendly neighborhood developmental psychologist)) like "Mama beep!" In addition to making noises for animals, he says their names: cat, doggie , s...

Eleanor's cousin introduced her to the "dot" game: you take a grid with dots, each person draws a line connecting two adjacent dots (north, south, east or west), and if you draw the fourth line creating the square you write your initial in it and go again. Here's the wikipedia article, if you're interested. Eleanor drew her own (slightly wobbly) grid with 100 squares. She was quite impressed with the grid and she was convinced that her mother would much rather play dots with her than clean the kitchen. I actually felt as though I had paid my dues playing the dots and boxes game when I was younger, but I started playing just to spend time with her. I was expecting to be bored, try to help her win, and go back to cleaning. Almost immediately Eleanor decided we should change the rules for the game. Now you didn't have to connect adjacent dots, you could connect any dots, as long as you didn't go through another dot or cross another line. When you compl...

(I realize that for trademark reasons I should call it "disc golf". As Michael points out, however, "disc golf" does not slide off the tongue. And we all know what it really is.) A new park opened up nearby recently, complete with a frisbee golf course. There are signs near the road: "Watch out for flying disks." There are goals along the road. And I wondered when it opened whether 6 year olds and 4 year olds could play. It turns out they can. We have gone a couple times over the holidays. When my family plays (at least when the kids and I play together) frisbee golf turns out to be more a walk in the woods, with occasional throwing and chasing of frisbees . Amanda has gotten it into her head that she needs to hit the trees, which she does with some success. Eleanor tries to throw the frisbees long and straight, with some success. Even Luke knows what to do: he drops the frisbee in front of him and says, " yay !" He also knows th...

Recently, I have been reading lots of blogs about whether you should continue to let kids believe in Santa, or whether you should tell them the Truth about Santa, that he is based on an ancient saint and in his current magical form, is just a Story. One article I especially appreciate is by Tony Woodlief , who wrote in the Wall Street Journal that it is important to retain a belief in the magical, rather than let the world be defined by what we can see and touch. I like the article, in part because it includes several of my favorite authors (Chesterton, Lewis, MacDonald), but I don't practice his advice in my own life. Here is my experience with Eleanor. We have always done Santa in a very restrained way: we have stockings filled with chocolate, socks and one toy. The presents under the tree are all from people, not from Santa. When Eleanor started asking questions like "How does Santa get into our house? There's glass in front of the fireplace?" I made a point...

I was inspired by reading some other blogs to post my favorite Christmas carols. My top three are: Of the Father's love begotten. 5 th century Latin poetry, 11 th century music. Mysterious, eerie, chill inspiring (in a good way =). It really manages to integrate doctrine and music; you get an idea of what questions the Christians were asking at the time from what Prudentius writes about in the hymn. Lo, how a rose ere blooming. 15h century German lyrics, music by Praetorious . I love the rhythms and the harmonies, which can be difficult to sing unless you have training from a young age in the Lutheran church... Hark the herald angels sing. Charles Wesley could certainly write a good tune (that is understatement, by the way). Fun to sing as loud as you can, with trumpets and organ, if you can find them. The girls like Away in a manger and Silent night, probably because those are the ones I can remember all the words to, those are the ones I sing to them at night, and thos...

The other night at dinner (during my internet outage), we were talking about what Eleanor and Amanda wanted for lunch the next day. Eleanor announced, "If you put salt on apple slices, they don't get brown." My immediate reaction was to tell her that her idea was silly, and that you put lemon juice on apples to keep them from going brown. Not only that, but salted apples would taste terrible! For the purposes of education, I squelched that reaction. After all, I had never put salt on apple slices, even though I had a pretty good idea of what would happen. I asked Eleanor where she had learned the fact about apples. Her teacher had said so, at least, that's what Eleanor thought she had said. Well, the tried and true way to see if something works is to do it yourself, so I suggested an experiment. We took 3 slices of apple (Mountaineer apples, very tasty) and sprinkled one with salt, one with lemon juice, and left one alone. The one sprinkled with salt made the...

Luke doesn't really get to watch much TV, although, thanks to his sisters, he watches more than they did. Also thanks to his sisters, he starts chanting "Tee Dee! Tee Dee!" whenever he thinks we are going to watch some. He has an ear infection today, and was pretty sick yesterday as well, and one of the ways we can take him out of his misery is to turn on the TV. Yesterday I found the perfect show: "Benji the Hunted" or something. No words, just a dog taking care of some mountain lion cubs. Luke was enthralled. " Oof ! Oof !" he would say whenever Benji did something on the screen. When Benji barked, that was the best. The biggest problem was the commercials---louder, brighter and more annoying than the show itself. The girls (who got to watch it too) were completely caught by them, since they watch PBS and Disney almost exclusively. Today after he decided not to take a nap this morning, we went down to try to find something else interesting....

Eleanor is on antibiotics for the third time in 2 months. It started before thanksgiving, when the teacher called on Friday afternoon. It looked like Eleanor had pink eye, so we brought her in to the Dr. and he announced that yes, she did have pink eye and gave us some eye drops. I'm glad the teacher caught it, so we didn't have to go to urgent care on Saturday. That Sunday, Eleanor complained again of a sore throat. It had been going on for a while, but she was still pretty healthy seeming so we knew it wasn't strep throat. Still, if you even suspect that your kid has strep throat, it is polite to bring her in to the doctor to make sure she doesn't, before you accidentally infect the whole class. The doctor agreed with us, after looking her over. "Probably not, but we'll do a culture, just in case." He came back in a few minutes later saying that the test was positive, and he had never seen it turn positive so fast. Thank goodness for amoxicillin...

I had always assumed that when they said someone was "tied to his mother's apron strings," they meant he was very timid, hiding behind his mother and not thinking for himself. I never thought (until today) that it might actually involve a real apron, and some tying of an actual child to some actual apron strings. From the free dictionary: if someone, usually a man, is tied to their mother's apron strings, they still need their mother and cannot think or act independently. Which is to say, that since Luke is definitely not "tied to his mother's apron strings," it might be useful to tie him to his mother's apron strings.

Luke can get into more trouble in 5 minutes than I can get him out of in half an hour. Eleanor has taken to calling him a "Walking Disastrophe ", which I think describes the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake. This morning: he climbed over the knee wall, past the dish drainer to stand on the counter in front of the "baking cupboard". He then took out the baking powder and emptied all of it out into a bowl I had just washed. Then, because he knows that you should clean up while cooking, he put the baking powder container back in the cupboard. He was trying to get out some spices (" Mmmmmm . Yummy!") when I came back downstairs. Before I got the spices away from him he got some powdered cloves on his tongue, which made him pretty sad. Of course the problem is not just that he is so terribly inventive about trouble, but also that I keep trying to get other things done around the house. This morning, for example, I was moving laundry from the was...

I have something to confess. I do my laundry every week on the same day. When I sort the laundry, I put the piles in exactly the same place every week. I have a list of what to do after dinner every night to get the kitchen clean. The list is prioritized, with putting away food first on the list and sweeping the floor last. We have a shelf in our house where the library books go. I have a weekly menu template: each week we have one dish each of beef, chicken, pork, bean, pancakes, including one cooked on the grill and one in the crock pot. We plan our menu on Sunday, I go shopping on Monday. This summer I even had a monthly menu: meals planned for a month! I still can't quite believe that we used that for 4 months. I am confessing this because I want you all to understand that I am not a born organized person. In the past, I've been proud of my unpredictable habits and freewheeling, spontaneous personality. The truth of the matter is that these habits have been develo...

The place we got our Christmas pictures taken today had a Santa Claus visiting (so you could get your picture taken with him, I suppose). Amanda was standing in the middle of the hallway in a daze of some sort, and he had to get by. She looked up, moved out of the way for him to pass, and went back to whatever she was doing. I asked her, "Who was that?" She answered, "I didn't know that Santa Claus was going to be here." She was interested in watching him, but not really in talking with him. Towards the end of the visit, she explained, "I saw you in a movie!" She had been watching The Santa Clause for about 10 minutes today while I tried (unsuccessfully) to put Luke down for a nap. I can see that seeing Santa was confusing for her. He's clearly not imaginary---she saw him both on TV and in real life. On the other hand, most people don't dress like that, but then again, she doesn't really have the experience to decide that he's r...

A complete abdominal work out: lie on your back with a 1.5 year old bouncing on your stomach. Laugh. I guarantee that if you are not injured, you will get a great workout!

Recently we've been using the timer function on the bread machine to make delicious bread that is finished baking right when we wake up. For a long time we've used the coffee maker timer to prepare coffee that is ready as we come downstairs. A few weeks ago there was a potluck at church. We live 35 minutes away, so we weren't going to come back here to get the food out of the oven or anything like that. Solution: cook the split pea soup in the slow cooker overnight, bring it to church and plug it in to warm before lunch. Easy! I love that it smells so good in our house when we wake up after cooking overnight. It does feel a bit like Wallace's inventions (see Wallace and Grommit by Nick Park) doing all the work for us while we sleep. But I think the thing I like most is the feeling of getting something useful done while I'm asleep. Now if there were only some way to do the laundry while sleeping... For your pleasure, my recipe for Split Pea Soup: Slow Cooker ...

Luke was having his diaper changed this morning, and he was having a rough time. He wanted to take his arms out of his jammie sleeper, but since he was lying on top of it, he was getting frustrated. As he was pulling on his sleeve, he glanced at it and saw something interesting: it looked like a giraffe puppet we play with. He flopped his sleeve around, tried to make it talk, and started having a good time playing with his "puppet". He doesn't say many words, but the way he was playing with his sleeve is the way he plays with the puppet, so I am guessing about what he was doing. I asked, "Where's your hand?" He lifted up his sleeve to his eyes and peered in, then triumphantly said something like "Here it is!" as he pushed the hand out of the sleeve. Great laughs (babies are not shy about laughing at their own jokes). He did that a few more times, until I was finished with the diaper change. What a difference a change of perspective (from ...

I asked Amanda if she was getting sick. "Nope! 4 year olds don't get sick!" When I told her that Eleanor, Mama and Daddy had all gotten sick when they were 4, she seemed taken back, but still sure she wasn't sick. We went to the pool for swimming lessons. Eleanor has hers first. We usually watch Eleanor for a while, and then Amanda changes into her suit in the changing room. This time I wanted to leave our big bag by the side of the pool (it was heavy!) so I told Amanda, "Now it's time to change into your swimming suit. Let me find it in the bag..." In the time it took to find the suit, Amanda had taken off her dress and was working on her underwear. A friend nearby held up a towel so we were able to complete the process in relative privacy. Modesty is definitely something that is taught, not something innate. A few days ago I told Eleanor the famous duck food joke . I first heard this joke on the Prairie Home Companion joke show, told by Roy B...

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away. Luke loves candy. The other day he pushed the chair up to the counter, climbed up on the counter and opened the cabinet where the Halloween candy is kept. I don't give him as much as his sisters get, but his desire is clearly larger than his sisters', since it is unmitigated by any sort of internal restraint. He quite unabashedly begs for candy from his sisters. I tell them to take the candy and eat it in their bedrooms, away from Luke, but they feel sorry for him and don't like to see him cry (perhaps they sympathize, having to deal with the same cruel mother). They will give him a square from their candy bar, or a skittle, or some other small token to help him feel better. And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay ...

Everyone (except Michael) has been very whiny and grumpy today. I know why: there is a cold going around which makes noses and ears stuffy and throats sore. But it just doesn't make it any easier, especially when I am afflicted with the same cold. When Luke whines about something not going his way (my not giving him his sister's juice, or not letting him play in the cold garage in his jammies ) or Amanda stands next to me holding her shoes saying " uhh ! uhh ! uhh !" it makes me want to whine. That is certainly not the motherly response, but it is a human response. I can't make these kids feel better, I can't let them do whatever they want, what can I do? I suppose what is called for is a little understanding, some hugs, and a bit more patience than usual, as this is the exception, not the rule. And perhaps I will go into the bathroom and whine at myself in the mirror.

Luke today watched one of his sisters spin around and around. He likes to do whatever his sisters do, so he very seriously started spinning. He stopped, and started smiling a little. He repeated, spinning for a longer and longer time each time, and smiling more and more as he got dizzier. Finally he stopped and wobbled back to the dinner table, definitely having had a good time. It was a gift to see something that I am very familiar with from the viewpoint of a child, experimenting with it for the first time.

Today as we were driving to Eleanor's teacher conference, it started snowing. In November. In North Carolina. Of course, this is the day that the kids get to wait 1.5 hours outside while a friend and I have conferences... The reaction in the car was immediate. Eleanor started making plans to wake up early the next morning and make snowmen and build a fort. Amanda said, "And we can have snowball fights!" Amanda actually remembers the last big snowfall we had, when Daddy built a sled out of scrap lumber, cardboard and a humongous plastic bag. Clearly, most of their knowledge of snow comes from books (Eleanor is reading "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder) and from a visit to Colorado to go skiing. The reality of snow in North Carolina is not that exciting. The girls both started chanting, "Snow! Snow! Snow!" Luke joined in: "No! No! No!" He doesn't have to understand to enjoy what his sisters are doing. They had a great tim...

We finally got rid of our jack-o-lanterns today. I like making jack- o-lanterns mostly for the pumpkin seeds, which are worth their weight in gold based on the amount of trouble they are to make. Eleanor designed her own face this year, although the carving was done by Michael. Amanda provided direction on how to make her face, and Michael took off the top layer of pumpkin skin while leaving the rest of the rind. This made the face glow faintly when you lit the candle inside, which was a nice effect. Unfortunately this design made it difficult to get enough air into the pumpkin to keep the candle lit. Over the past few days, the pumpkins have been sitting in our entryway getting greener and hairier. We finally took them out to our "vegetable garden" (where we kill vegetable plants, as opposed to our flower garden where we kill flowers) for compost. Amanda had a good time helping me push the wheelbarrow ("I have very strong bones") and watching as I tried to s...

Amanda wanted a "superhero party" for her birthday. I was willing, especially since having my children plan the parties really takes the stress off of me (I hate planning parties). Since I won the actual party at the jumping place, I decided to make nice capes (from Puking Pastilles ) as party favors (also much better than more candy or cheap toys). I made 14 capes. I still can't believe it, but I started early and worked steadily, and finished a few days ago. One superhero birthday party, coming up. (Please note: nothing else about the party has a theme: not the cake, not the napkins, nothing else.) I loved Amanda pretending to be a superhero. She would run and jump in front of me, saying " SuperAmanda , to the rescue! How can I help?" She did seem to think that wearing her cape made her less likely to be hurt, and better able to jump and run and everything. I could tell that thinking of herself as a superhero made her feel powerful. Today, I noticed t...

I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog (link missing because I'm too lazy =) that Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I mean, I spend the rest of the year trying to keep candy out of my kids hands, and I'm supposed to be happy about strangers corrupting my kids' taste buds ? (Not to mention the allergy issue, which makes everything more difficult.) I do enjoy the creativity of making costumes, but this year I got off remarkably easy. I thought that Eleanor was going to be difficult, because she kept changing what she wanted to be. I laid down the law: on September 15 th , whatever decision she made was permanent. All summer she talked on and off about being "a skeleton riding a bike." Not easy to make, but not impossible, I thought. But then on Labor Day we went to a party with a Hawaiian theme---they even gave out grass skirts and leis. Eleanor liked her grass skirt so much that she decided to be a hula dancer for Halloween. We then got a purple tank to...

I went shoe shopping with Eleanor yesterday. We had tried to go Saturday, but the wait would have been over an hour! Shoe shopping is hard enough, without trying to amuse 3 kids in a small store with tons of other kids misbehaving and crying and... Yesterday we waited 10 minutes. Eleanor has a problem with latching onto one pair of shoes and not letting go. She also has the problem of feet that are just on the cusp of the younger youth shoes (size 8-1) and older youth (size 1-3). The last problem is that she does not yet know how to tie her shoes (she's working on it, but it's not going very well =(. Combining these problems makes shoe shopping potentially unpleasant. Eleanor chose a pair of white shoes with a sort of quilted sides and lights. They were very nice, but they only went up to size 1. Eleanor is size 1.5. She wasn't really willing to pick out a new shoe, and the one she did pick wasn't available in her size. There weren't very many velcro shoe...

Luke went to the broom closet, got out the swiffer , got out the little pads that go on the base, got one pad out of the box (instead of dumping the whole box out on the floor). He then went over to me and tugged at me and cried, holding up the swiffer pad and pulling me over to the swiffer . I put the pad on the swiffer , and he went off, happily swiffering the floor. If only I could harness this energy and keep it going until he's a teenager... Update: a few minutes later he had taken his cup of milk from the table and dumped it into the 1 cup measuring cup on the floor. Then he had poured all that into a bowl. Then he tried to take the dishwasher powder and spread that all over the floor. So we have a few tiny bugs to work out.

I just wanted to recommend a few new blogs. I'm trying to make them non-political, but some politics seems to be slipping in. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ by Lenore Skenazy . She manages to separate sensible precautions from overboard hyper-parenting, and she's really funny at the same time. Also check out the essays she's published . My favorite is the one about skills Sarah Palin could have learned in the PTA. Cake Wrecks This blog has made me laugh so much I've had to sit down. It's about professional cakes that go terribly wrong. My favorites are the cakes that put the instructions for the decorations on the cake. Sand in the Gears by Tony Woodlief . He is a conservative, but his viewpoint is not the typical one---he often points out follies of knee-jerk (emphasis on the jerk) conservatism. He is also raising 4 boys, and his post about going out to eat with them could have been copied almost verbatim from our conversations. Finally, one I just ...

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy when I was younger, so I was surprised when I was thinking about this list at how few books were on it. The other thing that is interesting is how many books I just remember a few details from, but not anything useful like a title or author. Half Magic and the whole series, by Edward Eager: My favorite is Knight's Castle, although I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I had ever read Ivanhoe... Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald: I'm not sure when it happened, but I now identify with the parents rather than the kids. The Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris: I came back to the Jr. High library to check this out even after I moved on to the high school. Girl with the Silver Eyes by Wilo Davis Roberts: I always wondered what would happen if I had ESP and other "special" abilities. The OZ books, by L. Frank Baum: I read almost all of these (all the ones I could find in the library, rather). My favorite is Tik - To...

Some friends of ours came over to play yesterday. They have 4 kids, from almost 5 years old to 13 years old. One of the things the Mom does when she comes over is ask, "what can we help you get done?" She wants to help accomplish something that I've been dreading doing, since it is much more fun to work on something with another person, rather than trying to get it done alone. Well, I set the older 2 girls to alphabetizing our library, not a small task since Amanda and Luke have determined that it is their duty to take all the books off of the shelves, at least the ones they can reach. They got about half way done before they went back to playing... I really appreciated it, and I especially appreciated that they could do the work without adult involvement . What an idea! We worked on cleaning out the garage, which had been needed for a long time. We needed to get the styrofoam bits off the floor, and she suggested the shop vac. I was willing to do it, but she cal...

This weekend we had the chance to go down to a beach house of some friends of ours. October may not be the time you think of for going to the beach, but we had a wonderful time. The weather on Saturday was pretty bad: cold, raining much of the time, wet. I hadn't packed much in the way of appropriate beach clothes, so I encouraged the kids not to get too wet. We stayed inside or under the house most of the day. Eleanor went down to the beach, but Amanda sensibly stayed inside. I had a chance to play a board game that is kind of like Monopoly, but much more interesting, since in addition to buying things, you get to do things and make things. Sunday was much nicer, and there was a trip to the beach to go swimming. Eleanor went in a shirt and underwear (I had forgotten her suit!) and Amanda went down in a dress so she could go wading. In fact, since Amanda usually doesn't like swimming at the nearby indoor pool (it's too cold, she says), I insisted that she not be dres...

The coffee paradox states that you are too sleepy to make your coffee until after you have had your coffee. We made coffee with a french press for a long time, but it took time and energy and intelligence, all of which are lacking before you drink your first cup of coffee. We thought we had solved the problem with a Capresso, a nice coffee machine which has a burr grinder and a basket that swings over to the water side after the beans are ground, keeping the steam from getting into the beans. It makes quite good coffee. Unfortunately, if you forget to set it up properly you end up with a pot of hot water in the morning. And if you aren't awake in the morning, you pour the pot of hot water back into the coffee maker, which melts the coffee maker. Which is what I did this morning. Hopefully Michael can fix it (his practice repairing waffle makers and clock radios should come in handy). If he can't fix it, maybe he can help Luke take it apart. This isn't the only machine...

Today Luke and Eleanor and Amanda were playing under our two oak trees in the front yard. I cam out to check on them, and Luke led me over to the oak tree. He said something unintelligible , pointed up at the tree, said something else, and put his hands on his head and ducked. He did this 3 or 4 times to make sure I understood. Given that the ground beneath the tree is thickly covered with acorns, can you figure out what he was trying to communicate? I think it shows that you don't need to know the language to tell someone a story.

These books take place "a while" ago. Mostly they give a good sense of place and time, and a child can learn a lot from them if she isn't paying attention. The "Shoes" books by Noel Streatfeild :England from the 1930s to the 50s---from the depression, through WWII, and afterwards recovering from bombings and dealing with rations. Plus, stories about being on the stage and performing, which I have no personal experience with. My favorite is "Skating Shoes" or "White Boots," which is not available in the US (except by amazon.co.uk)... Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Whenever I feel like my life is difficult, I reread "The Long Winter." At least I'm not grinding wheat in a coffee mill to make bread for my only meal of the day. I also really like "Farmer Boy." There are new books coming out about Laura's daughter, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. They are pleasant to read, but no...

Here are some more books from my childhood and later. I read a lot as a kid, and these books are the ones that stand out in my memory. I figure that if I can remember them 25 years after I read them, they must be pretty good. I'm calling this the "Reality Segment," not fantasy, not science fiction, not history, just real life. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin : This is probably my favorite children's book of all time. I read it in 3rd grade or so, then read it again to clear it up more. Then I read it in 6 th grade and finally understood what was going on during the second reading of the will. In more recent readings I've understood more about Sydelle Paulaski and the relationship between Dr. Denton and the lovely Angela. What a pleasure. Ellen Raskin has written many other good children's books (all quirky and surprising) but this is the jewel. Bruno and Boots books by Gordon Korman : As the FNDP (Friendly Neighborhood Developmental Psychologis...

Eleanor: "Mom, can we get some cacti?" Me: " mmmmm ..." Eleanor: "Because if we plant the cacti at the end of our driveway, the deer will think they are in the desert and not eat our flowers." Eleanor did buy one cactus at the grocery store today. She named it Morgan le Fay, after the coolest librarian in the universe (not really the character from the old King Arthur stories). It's easier to take care of than a rabbit, I hope, which is the pet she really wants.

One more post, since it is more interesting than folding clothes or cleaning the kitchen... We got pansies, as I mentioned earlier, and we decided to try to get them in the ground before they perished. Because of a misunderstanding about the size of the flowers, instead of 36 pansies, we actually got 54, a few more than I wanted to plant (I am just glad we didn't end up with 72, which was possible). We went out to the triangle with our shovels and the flowers and started to dig holes. One of the shovels is lost in our car somewhere, so I actually ended up digging most of the holes with my hands. Fortunately, I was just digging in dirt placed over the lawn, so it wasn't too hard to dig. Eleanor picked a pansy, named it, planted it, then picked another one to be the child of the one she planted first. Amanda dug huge swaths out of the mulch, putting the mulch and dirt on our lawn. She planted two pansies. Luke, contrary to expectations, did not want to help me dig holes. H...

Well, we went to the Diwali festival, and it wasn't quite what I had hoped. Not bad, but not what I wanted. First off, we got there late. Which meant that we had to park a long way away, which meant that we got to the festival even later. We arrived at the park just as the dancing was over, which was too bad. Amanda loves to dance, and she had fun dancing to the last performance. I think that she amused people, this little blonde girl imitating the Indian dancers on stage... I ran into one of my professors from graduate school, which was an amazing coincidence---there were hundreds of people, but there he was, with his volunteer ribbon on, telling us about what we had to see. It was hard to find the people we had arranged to meet, much less someone I hadn't seen for probaby 6 years. Eleanor really wanted to go to the bazaar and spend some of her allowance, but it was much too crowded for the stroller. We managed to get some food. Because it was so crowded and we were...

Today, we did errands: get flour from the bread store (freshly ground this morning!) get gas, get pansies and bulbs get our car washed (a free car wash at the McDonalds across from Lowes ---we of course got some french fries and apples and a coffee, so it wasn't quite free) grocery shopping (we ran out of OJ, soy milk, hot dogs and cereal!) Now it's time to plant the pansies. I'm not a gardener, and frankly I believe that the pansies will be regarded as salad for the deer that eat our day lilies. But I will make the effort. At the garden store we bought 3 plastic small spades, and I hope to get the kids to help. Maybe one of them will enjoy gardening more than I do. Luke is sure to like it. "Dig! Dig! Dig!" We plan to go to the local Diwali festival with some friends for dinner. This is the reason we needed hot dogs, so that I can feed Amanda and probably Luke. I'm hoping that Eleanor will try some of the other foods, especially when her friends eat t...

On Friday the girls were out of school, so we had a field trip to the Durham Museum. We had an excellent time. We saw the rocket ship, we saw the alligators, the drums. We met a friend from Eleanor's 4 year old class, and ate lunch. It was going great until Luke reached out for the slushie on the tray as I was carrying it to the table. Between the two of us, we spilled the slushie on Amanda's chair, my shoes, into my open purse, and my soda on the ground. Sigh. The huge spills of sugar on the floor did distract the wasps from our table, and we went back to get a watermelon slushie instead of the grape. The highlight came after lunch when we went to the remote control sailboats (between the two of them, Eleanor and Amanda sailed a number of boats. Then we saw the " ornithopter ". An ornithopter is a machine that flies by flapping its wings. The museum has a huge seat with huge wings attached, and a lift that lifts it 15 feet up in the air. If you twist a...

Recently I've been rereading some books from my childhood---I pretend that it is to find out which ones are good for Eleanor, but I really just enjoy them. Here are 4 series that I enjoyed then and now which involve experiments, the scientific method, and fun things you can do with engineering and technology. Although the descriptions here are dry (they reflect what I notice re-reading them as an adult) the books strengths are in fun, and in having smart, thoughtful protagonists (you could call them geeks...). Mad Scientist's Club by Bertrand R. Brindley . A bunch of kids do experiments and get into trouble. Probably the most technical (I think you could actually learn things about designing rockets and such from the text). Danny Dunn by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams. 3 kids use their friend Professor Bulfinch's experiments to get in trouble. Pretty fanciful, but loaded with ideas about testing hypotheses, thinking through to conclusions. We only have the homew...

Today for dinner, in honor of the kids' aunt and uncle and cousin, we had: sloppy Uncle Joes, with Anderj juice, and Aunty pasta Amanda got much more enjoyment out of eating the meal after the boring names were changed. Even Luke wandered around the table, laughing like a maniac (he imitates his older sisters very carefully) although he didn't want to actually eat anything else.

Eleanor had many toys that she slept with, but she never seemed particularly attached to any particular one. Her favorite was "Sprinkles," a soft giraffe, but she never really carried it around everywhere she went. Amanda slept with one toy, Baa the lamb. We had a backup, who she eventually named "Mr. Maa ", Baa's brother or mother, depending. Amanda does take her toys everywhere, which means they get lost for the night fairly frequently. We explain that they have gone on an "adventure" and she sleeps without them for the night. Mr. Maa was lost for a long time once, and she kept asking him. Eventually she found another sheep, about twice as large, a different brand, a different color... "Look who's back from his adventure! It's Mr. Maa ! He got bigger!" A few weeks later, she found Mr. Maa , and then she had to explain the third sheep... The third sheep eventually was relegated to the toy box. Luke got very attached t...

Last night, just before we were going to eat dinner, Luke started wailing. He didn't stop, he wanted to be picked up and put down and curled up into a ball, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs. I gave him motrin , but it didn't help. So I called Michael and over the screaming, told him to come home as soon as he could. Since it was 5:30, I know that wouldn't be very soon, since traffic is awful at about that time. So I made Eleanor and Amanda eat their sausage beans and rice (several times I offered to let them go to bed early if they didn't want to eat dinner). I offered Luke a popsicle , and he wouldn't even eat that. Finally, after 45 minutes of uncharacteristic screaming, I called the nurse line. The nurse was helpful and asked a few questions, and then told me to take Luke into the emergency room. The hospital across town has a pediatric emergency room, and she said she would call them to let them know I was coming. At that point, I figured ...

There used to be a book called " snigglets ," full of words that aren't in the dictionary, but should be. For example, " picklessence " was the waiter's art of interrupting you when you had a mouthful of food to ask, "Is everything OK?" The " hozone " (or "hose-zone") is the place where lost socks go in the laundry. I have been plagued lately by children's socks disappearing. It was especially troubling when one of Eleanor's fancy socks would go missing, since she is particularly picky about how her socks and shoes fit. A few days ago, the washer came up with an error code. Of course, this happened just before we went to sleep, but Michael got up and investigated. It turns out the washer was not draining very well. Well, after we got the laundry out of the washer, I was poking around and found a hiding hole under the rubber gasket around the door. In that hole, there were about 10 kids socks. Later, Michael foun...

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Luke has the normal 19 month old fascination with dogs. Here is something like a stuffed animal, only it moves! how exciting! Since he loves sound effects, his natural response to seeing a dog is to say " oof oof ". We went over to a friend's house for a potluck lunch the other day. The friend had a smaller dog in a kennel type thing (it actually looked like one of those fold down laundry baskets). Luke didn't eat, he spent almost the entire time bending down to look at the dog, and saying things like " da bka lskt ncal da oof oof dlkba sha ckalsdgf kadl oof oof ." It is becoming clearer to me that he thinks he's comprehensible, and will throw in words we understand every once in a while just to confuse us. (Note: he spent most of the rest of the time in their house opening all the drawers in the kitchen and trying to start the dishwasher. The hosts (who have 2 kids, one in college and one graduated) didn't know how to set the ...

I've been taking a break from blogging for a while, although I hope to be back with short blog posts for a while. The problem is that the longer I think about a post, the longer it gets and the longer it would take to write... Also the longer I'm away, the more things I have to write about and the more overwhelming the whole thing seems... I suppose I should call the 6 people who are following the blog and tell them I'm posting again =)

Luke likes to clean more than either of the girls ever did. This evening, after Luke and Amanda's shower, Michael asked Amanda to dump some water out of the toys that the kids were playing with. Luke heard this, dumped the water out of the toy that he was holding (he didn't even dump it on the floor!), put it in the corner where we keep the toys, and then collected all the other toys and put them away. He really enjoys putting dishes away when the dishwasher is clean. I just ask him to come over and help and he busily puts all of the kids plates, bowls and cups into the drawers that they belong in---I don't need to direct him, he does it by himself. The only time that this creates a problem is when he tries to put dirty dishes from the dishwasher into the cupboards. He really loves using a broom. So much so that he will take his bowl of (dry) cereal and dump it on the floor, run to the closet, get the broom, and start pushing the cereal around on the floor. I hope tha...

Eleanor lost her first tooth September 15 th . It was hanging on by a thread, the permanent tooth behind it was poking up, and Michael noted that she probably didn't want to go to sleep with it like that. Now she has the second loose tooth, right next to it. Her permanent tooth is not quite as tall as it is, but the old tooth is not coming out and the new tooth is coming up pretty far back on the gum. I hate to think that she has my crooked teeth instead of her Father's, Aunt's and Grandmother's straight teeth, but there you go. I called the dentist. He told me to tell Eleanor that she has a homework assignment: wiggle the tooth as much as possible. Silly me, I remember doing that without any assignment. Could it be that the tooth fairy is really just encouragement to get the baby teeth out sooner? I had never thought of that before. Luke has an extra tooth popping out, right between the incisor and canine. Sigh. Couldn't they all just have beautiful, strai...

We have an excellent recipe for sausage, black eyed peas and rice. I like it. Michael really likes it. The kids, however... Luke will actually eat it. With a spoon, he manages to move the rice from his plate to his mouth. Somehow when he is done eating, his plate contains only tomato pieces. Amanda loves eating the sausages (my little meatatarian !) but isn't really excited about the rest. She spent much of dinner gathering the black eyed peas into a pile and saying that they were sheep, gathered in a cozy bed, snuggling up next to each other. I wanted her to eat them, but she informed me that she didn't eat sheep. She would eat it if I put spoonfuls into her mouth, but only if they contained no tomatoes or onions. Eleanor dislikes the entire dish. Finally, after about 35 minutes she managed to choke down one small sausage round (about the side of a quarter). She puts it in her mouth and chews for about 5 minutes (does she realize that she is prolonging the agony?)....

Yesterday I had Luke at home while his sisters were both at school. He was supposed to take a nap, so I could get lots of work done (organizing the closets that are starting to burst, wiping the table, dealing with the humongous pile of paper that counts as our filing system, making the books straight in our bookshelves, etc.) However, Luke did not get the memo, so instead we had to play. We went outside in the light drizzle and down to the puddle at the end of the driveway. Luke was so excited he stamped his (bare) feet in the puddle, which made big splashes and led to more splashing. He moved mulch from the garden to the puddle. He moved mud from next to the puddle into the puddle. He went down the road to get some different mud to put into the puddle. Then he noticed the manhole cover in the middle of the road. He had to stamp in that, move some mulch there, and stamp some more. There was a big stick that made good splashes too, and was good for mixing things and for general...