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 ...