mathmom's blog

Well, you all probably knew this, but in case you are tempted to use the purple cake decorating food coloring to make oobleck (corn starch and water), don't. I gave Eleanor and Amanda some oobleck to play with today while I made dinner (crock pot stew, mmmm) and a little later they came up to the front door meowing. The dye had turned their hands dark purple, and they had rubbed oobleck on their arms, legs, and (in Eleanor's case) face. Luckily, the oobleck on the face wasn't very purple, and the stuff on the legs and arms is not as bad as the hands. As Eleanor said, "Purple kitties love to dye their fur!" I hope you can learn from my mistake =)

We had the second day of Eleanor's cooking club today. 4 6-year olds , 2 4-year olds , 1 3-year old and 2 babies. We planned to make cinnamon rolls, trifle, and dill dip. The dough for the cinnamon rolls turned out great! North Carolina has a great climate for raising dough, the perfect humidity and temperature. We didn't quite have time and energy for making the rolls, but we made golf ball sized dough, rolled it in butter and cinnamon sugar. They got baked for a bit longer than I meant, but they were pretty good. The trifle was the most fun. We made instant pudding, cut up pound cake, and layered fruit, pudding and cake in clear plastic cups. Everyone had an excellent time. Again, the moms were key. One mom washed piles and piles of dishes, the others helped with the kids and the babies. It was fantastic to have them. In fact, one made the dill dip: the kids were running around terrorizing the neighbor boy... We've got two more. Next time we'll be making ic...

Luke enjoys sitting in the front seat of the car, pressing all the buttons. If someone accidentally leaves the door to the garage open, he'll go out, climb in the open sliding doors, climb up to the front seat and start playing. Me, to Michael: "I think Luke is in the front seat of the car again." Michael: "Luke, you're too young to drive a car!" Amanda: "That's right, Luke. Only Mama and Daddy and me are allowed to drive the car." Amanda: "This is something my mother gave me when I was a little girl." Me: Amanda, am I your mother?" Amanda: "No. You're mama."

Me, to Luke, after removing him from the middle of the table for the 100th time that day: "What part of 'no' don't you understand?" Eleanor: "All of it!" Update: Michael remembers her saying "The N and the O," which is much funnier...

Luke picks up a few cheerios very carefully with his spoon. He lifts the spoon to his mouth. On its way to his mouth, one cheerio falls out. He looks down and tries to grab it with his other hand. The rest of the cheerios fall out of the spoon. He puts the spoon in his mouth and is confused by the fact that there are no cheerios there anymore. Repeat. This is why when you come to my house, you are allowed to wear shoes. Perhaps someday we will be able to go around our house with no shoes on.

(Eleanor is helping me write this.) This morning, Eleanor got ready to go to Cooking Camp at her school. She left almost right on time and got to school just as the 9:00-12:00 camps were starting. There was a problem, however: Eleanor's camp started at 1:00. Oops. Well, that was a very big mistake. Mama had to drive to Daddy's work and pick up Eleanor. It was very very very funny. Tomorrow will be better.

We went on our first "Adventure" today. (Friday is adventure day. Thursday is laundry/project day, Wednesday is playdate day, Tuesday is library day and monday is errand day. This is what I learned from kindergarten.) It was to the local inflatable jumping place (slightly more sophisticated than just a jumping castle, but the same idea). Eleanor and Amanda always want ice cream as a snack. Today they were especially persistent and forwent other snacks in favor of a promise of ice cream, so I let them get "snow cones". These snow cones were very hard (from having been in the freezer) and hard to eat, so they ended up jumping for about 20 minutes and spending 45 minutes or so eating their snow cones and watching Charlotte's Web on the TV screen (with no sound, even). I think they just blew their chances of ever getting ice cream at the jumping place ever again. Luke had an excellent time. Just walking across the surface is plenty of adventure for him, not...

Eleanor has been wanting to have a cooking club ever since I accidentally mentioned that it might be fun, about a year ago. So this week I finally gave in. Eleanor came up with the theme for the club (Eat the Alphabet! Applesauce, bread...vegetables, whipped cream, xray bananas...) and made the invitations. We sent them to 10 girls in Eleanor's class and I explained in a note that although 4 sessions are scheduled, not everyone can come to every session. The first session went well. We made bread, fruit pizzas, and "silly sandwiches" (Eleanor's idea: stack saltines, sunflower seed butter, jam, or cheese and ham in 4 layers). One of the moms who was there watched her 3 year old son with Amanda and Luke (when he wasn't attached to my hip). The other helped with ingredients and washing dishes. They were both amazingly helpful and made my disorganization a little less painful. I had really tried to be organized, getting out ingredients and mixing bowls the nig...

You may have heard stories of boys who, when given dolls, will bend them at the waist and turn them into weapons. Heck, you may have even experienced this. The other day at the pool, Amanda took two diving "toypedos" (diving toys shaped like torpedoes) and cuddled them, talked to them and otherwise played with them like dolls. So it does go the other way, as well.

Eleanor learns Spanish in school (a teeny tiny bit) and I think Amanda feels a bit left out. So she has been making up her own language. She calls it Spanish, although it is not related... often she'll say some nonsense syllables and then say, "That means I don't want any more chicken, in Spanish!" Sometimes she'll just say the nonsense and look at me as though I should understand, especially in the past few days when she's been listening to the Hispanic house painters. The only word that has any reliable meaning is Odé. It means "look at this!" or "here it is!" or something like that. If she asks it as a question, it means "is this right?" For example "Odé seloma " meant "Are these the right sleeves?" yesterday. I used it the other day and she looked up in surprise. "That's my word!" She was pretty pleased with herself. This does occasionally lead to ridiculousness , as it did a week or s...

Luke got his first haircut today. He was not impressed... He got what was called "the boy cut," I assume that this is a standard cut that all hairstylists learn to do. I held him in my arms while he alternately sucked on a lollipop (also his first, unless his sisters snuck one to him earlier) and screamed. This is why I need to take my children to have someone else cut their hair. She took of the slight curls and the parts that were coming over his ears. She used the little buzzer thing to go in front of his ears and on the back of his neck---he really hated that. And at the end, he looked like a little boy instead of a baby. His sisters, of course, also got their hair cut. They had much more hair cut off, but since it was a smaller proportion of their hair, it wasn't really noticeable . Well, the biggest change was that Eleanor got the beads she had been wearing since her last haircut cut off, and replaced with a strand of beads on the other side of her head i...

Luke loves to "garden"--- he will sit digging in the dirt for up to 30 minutes at a time (he might sit for longer, but I have never let him). The other day we were by the back door gardening, when I heard the girls screaming inside. I went in to find they were fighting, and left Luke a few feet away gardening happily. I even left the door open so he could come and find me. When I went outside again, I thought I could hear him around the corner playing in the leaves, but when I went to check on him he wasn't there. I didn't worry yet, I walked around the house. Then through the house. Then around the house again, but this time I was starting to get frantic. I went into the house through the back door and heard someone (an adult) at the front door. I ran up the stairs, and there was our neighbor holding a screaming Luke. The big problem was that it was our neighbor from across the street. He had been using his weed whipper, turned around and saw Luke standing ...

Luke has moved from the high chair to a booster seat with a tray attached. Last night the try was dirty when it was time for dinner, so I pushed the booster seat right up to the table and gave Luke his own plate, just to see how he did. Not surprisingly, he did fine. Within 2 minutes he had dumped his own empty plate on the floor and reached out for the serving plate of pancakes and a fork (both of which I thought were out of reach...silly me) and started helping himself. Luke is also showing interest in computers. He loves to try to type on my laptop, and create all sorts of havoc. (This may be the reason comments have been turned off for the past few days, it's hard to tell.) A few days ago I wasn't quite able to reach him before he started typing, and so I said "Close the computer, please." Luke looked at me, and put the lid down on the laptop. I sighed with relief, but then he unclicked the latch and started opening up the laptop again. I had been trying ...

Since I originally wrote in the blog heading that this blog would contain some parenting advice, I thought I would share some that I have found useful, although contradictory. In the book How to Talk so Kids will Listen and how to listen so kids will talk (Faber and Mazlish, a fantastic book) they point out that kids get really tired of being told what to do all the time, and keeping on telling them often breeds resentment and rebellion. Frankly, I get tired of telling them what to do all the time! They suggest alternative ways to get the kids to do the right thing. For example instead of "Pick your dirty clothes off the floor," describe the scene: "Hmm, I see a bunch of dirty clothes on the floor." Or use one word: "Clothes!" This method has the advantage that it makes it seem as though picking the clothes off the floor is the child's idea, and so they are more willing to do the task. The funny thing is that it seems to work, at least as far as...

Eleanor illustrated a book called "Kitty Life". It involves pictures of (what else) purple kitties doing various things: walking, flying, playing by a river, doing magic tricks (one is lying on a bed of nails---I'll see if I can put it on the blog, it's hilarious). There is one page of "scribble" writing, but there are no words. She told me that different people get to write the words using post-it notes and putting them opposite the pictures. Then we can all change the stories and add things that we like. You do have to be near us to participate in the wiki, but I think she's captured the spirit pretty well.