mathmom's blog

Yesterday I went to a dentist appointment (no cavities!) and a friend watched Luke and Amanda while I was gone. When I got back, I noticed that Luke was being quite attached to Amanda. He wanted to be where she was, doing whatever she was doing. For example, Luke noticed that Amanda was sitting on the floor of the kitchen eating a chocolate chip cookie. Luke went over to her, hugged her head, fell over her, backed up to her (his new trick is walking backwards) and tried to sit in her lap, petted her hair, and so on. Some of this attention was unwelcome on Amanda's part, but she generally liked it. A bit later Amanda was sitting in a wheeled walker toy. Luke was pushing her across the floor. When they ran into something, Amanda would move it out of the way and tell Luke to keep pushing. This is especially impressive considering that Amanda is 27 pounds and Luke is 19. He will go over to his sisters during dinner and beg food from their plates (they happily oblige). They try ...

Eleanor turned 6 last week, so today she had her 6th birthday party. I was up worrying about it for an absurd number of nights, but it ended up being a lot of fun. I think this mostly has to do with the fact that although we invited 10 people, only 4 were able to come =) I'll skip telling you about my myriad lists (3 shopping lists, schedule, to do lists for days before the party... I only do this because I am so disorganized that if I didn't, nothing would get done...) and go straight to the party. We started out decorating kitty masks (made out of foam---my sister's idea) and crowns (Eleanor's idea, she saw them when we were at the craft store). 5 and 6 year old girls can be very creative, and they take much more care in their work than, say, 3 year old girls who mostly want to squirt glitter glue everywhere. The masks worked just like I hoped, which is pretty good considering that I couldn't find a pattern online so I just made it up. (For those of you who ...

I was feeling kind of sad---I had spent all day cleaning up after the kids and trying to get things done for Eleanor's birthday party on Sunday, and the house is still a disaster area. So I went up to do some computer therapy, and Michael pointed out that the world record for most mentos and diet coke geysers had just been broken in Belgium . I couldn't watch the video there (caused firefox to crash) so I went to youtube, and found this . I watched a few more world record breaking geysers and found myself in a better mood. Thank goodness for the internet.

Luke is learning about the world by imitating, even when he doesn't understand. It is thei clear lack of understanding that makes his actions so cute. For example, when we give Luke popcorn, we mostly take off the hull and give him just the soft part. As he has actually eaten popcorn with the hulls on, I decided that it is OK for him to have the whole pieces every once in a while. The other night, he wanted to sit in my lap and eat from my plate (everything is tastier from Mama's plate) and so I let him take popcorn from my bowl. He proceeded to take a piece of popcorn, bite it in half, and put the other half on his high chair. Because that, apparently, is the correct way to eat popcorn. He has his own little "words" (a word is just a sound that means something, right?). One is to smack his lips when he wants to convey hunger, thirst, mouth, and so on. Last night he pointed to the mouth of one of Amanda's dolls and started smacking his lips. Pretty good...

This past week Michael has been at a conference. It actually doesn't matter much that the conference is being held in our town: he leaves early in the morning and gets back well after the kids are asleep (after I should be asleep, actually). Since he is away, I've been taking care of the children by myself. This makes for a long day. Some of the length is from the feeling that really, no one (aside from the kids) cares what I'm doing (and they often think I would do a better job with more ice cream and fewer rules). There is no one to tell my troubles to, no one cares if I managed to get the kids all to bed on time and happy, no one (adult) will laugh at Luke's antics and see how he is growing... I know objectively that there are many people who care about the kids (most of whom read this blog) but it feels very lonely and unrewarding, with only my self knowledge that I have done a good job to keep me going. At any rate, today we had a triumph. After church we o...

Luke has finally discovered the joy of climbing stairs. For the past few days, whenever he becomes quiet, I know to try looking upstairs. Fortunately for us, he is agile enough at this point to get up them with no problems (unless one of his sisters is laughing at him from below). Amanda, when she first learned to climb stairs, was much younger and managed to fall down them at least twice. I still try to walk behind him as he climbs, but I do let him climb since he gets so much joy out of it. If adults enjoyed climbing stairs the way he does, many more stairmasters would be out of people's closets... The entire nation would probably not be facing the obesity epidemic. I like watching him climb onto the couch. He gets up there and plays and plays. He makes attractive noises as if to say, "look at me! I'm so clever!". He makes me smile. Luke also loves climbing up onto chairs and stools to reach for whatever happens to be on the counter or table. His current ...

Sometimes when we go to Target, we get a snack. Eleanor loves the pretzels, Amanda loves the smoothies. I usually get some goldfish crackers for Luke, but what he really loves is popcorn. Someone had spilled some popcorn on the floor in the snack area, and the attendant hadn't had a chance to sweep it up yet, so Luke cruised around the area, picking up little pieces of popcorn and trying to put them in his mouth. He succeeded in the first one, but I managed to get the rest from him after he picked them up but before he got them into his mouth. "I need that please," I would say, and he would (reluctantly) give the pieces over to me. It got to be time to go, and the floor was much tidier than it had been, so I turned to throw away our trash. When I turned back to Luke he had a very plump mouth and a funny smile on it. A lady nearby was watching him, and she told me that he had bent down to pick up a piece of popcorn, held it out as if trying to give it to someone, and...

Here is how Luke goes to sleep. He shows us that he is tired by being fragile---every little setback starts him crying. I find his froggie , which makes him giggle and kick excitedly (through his tears, if he is really tired) and take him into his room. We don't really have a routine, although I make sure his blanket is at one end of the crib, turn out the lights, and nurse him. I nurse for 15 minutes or so, and then, whether he is asleep or not, I put him into his crib. He is a tummy sleeper, so he curls up into a little ball and rolls over onto his front (he's actually on his knees with his bottom in the air, directly over his froggie ). I actually encouraged him to sleep on his side since that seemed to keep him asleep for longer, and as soon as he could roll over he slept on his front. I cover him over, and if he is awake, he reaches out and pulls the sides of the blanket under him as well, tucking himself in. Sometimes he talks for a while, mostly he just falls asl...

On Sunday, Eleanor and Amanda started talking about their cousin Anders. They both wanted to be his cousin, but it was important that the other one not be his cousin. "I'm Anders' cousin!" "No, I'm Anders' cousin!" I tried really hard to explain that they could both be his cousin (and in fact, if one was his cousin, so was the other one). Eleanor thought she was more his cousin since he was born just after her (actually he was born almost precisely in between Eleanor and Amanda). I suggested that Amanda had been his cousin for her whole life, so maybe she was more his cousin. Or that maybe Luke was more his cousin because he was a boy. Eleanor and Amanda remained stubbornly unconvinced. Unable to cut the Gordian knot, I passed the buck. In a few days, Anders will get a package containing pictures from Eleanor, Amanda and Luke. He then gets to pick who is his cousin. I'm hoping my sister will be able to come up with something good to te...

Well, adventure week is over. All that is left is to finish the "Travel Journal" Eleanor will turn in to her class about what we did. Adventure week is what I called spring break to distract Eleanor from the fact that, unlike most of her friends (it seemed to her, anyway), she was not going on a big trip this past week. One of her friends went skiing, another to Disney World... She asked the mom going to Disney world if she could come along with. The mom said that she didn't know if there would be room in the hotel. Eleanor replied, "I could bring my sleeping bag and sleep on the floor!" It was also a way to convince myself that staying home during spring break wasn't a bad thing. I think we took one spring break trip while I was in school, down to Florida. The other kids in my school went to Sanibel or Cancun, and came back tanned, while I spent every break in "Sunny Minnesota," reading and wishing the weather would get nice. Plus, we had ...

The last neon tetra died within days of Eleanor announcing that her name was "Emma." I found out the fish's name when Eleanor had to write down the inhabitants of her house for her "Special Day Book": Mama, Daddy, Amanda, Luke, Eleanor and Emma (the fish). We went to get some new fish. I think I remember that my sister-in-law recommended rosy minnows, so we got two. They cost 12 cents each (quite the bargain!) and I think they were worth approximately what we paid for them. They were very timid, although they found great places to hide from the danios including in the roots of the plant that are growing out into the water, in a crevice in the back of the lower pool, just below the second pool... Finding them was always a challenge, but they kept turning up alive after I hadn't seen them for days. Since they were rosy minnows, Eleanor decided to call one of them "Rose Red". Sure enough, soon after this fish was named it showed up plastered to...

When Eleanor was about 1 I made a list to help me clean the kitchen. It had the important tasks in the order I thought it made sense to do them, so I wouldn't start on one thing and randomly clean up bits of the kitchen... I also like figuring out the "critical path" for getting the project done in the least time and most efficiently. My list began with things like "Put away clean dishes" and ended with things like "Wash the floor" which never got done because I was always fed up with cleaning by the time I got halfway down the list (to "Wipe down the counters", actually). I eventually memorized the list and didn't need to look at it for a long time. I looked at the list again when we moved to our new house when Eleanor was about 2.5 and Amanda was a baby. The very first thing on the list was "Clean the floor". I could not figure out what I had meant, I had no memory of writing that step on the list. It didn't mean wa...

Eleanor and her kindergarten class have been studying the presidents. Eleanor actually has all 43 (more or less) memorized. The other day Eleanor asked me if there had ever been any "girl presidents". I told her not yet, but that Hilary Clinton was running for president. She told me, "I hope Hilary Clinton wins." Today she told me that the other 3 people at her "table" in kindergarten were all Obama supporters! I can't believe they talk about this, but apparently Eleanor has decided to be in the minority at her kindergarten table. I can respect that. She sometimes calls Obama "Maraca Bama" (the Maraca is her third favorite instrument). I had to laugh when she told me what Duncan said about Clinton---he hopes that until the end of time forever and ever we have boy presidents. Eleanor says she hopes there can be some girl presidents as well.