mathmom's blog

Luke climbed up onto the table, grabbed his sister's cup (a real cup, since I'm interested in getting Amanda off the sippee cup before she's 5), climbed down carefully, and dumped it all over the floor. He then started laughing and splashing in the juice. At the bottom of the stairs that lead toward the kitchen, there is a "knee wall", i.e., you can look right from the stairs into the kitchen towards the sink. I have always kept the dishsoap , sponges, silverware basket between the sink and the wall. Now Luke climbs up 4 steps, gets on his tip toes, leans way over the 3rd step to grab things from behind the sink (he is now standing on one tip toe on the 4 th step and holding onto the top of the ledge), then pulls himself back onto the 4 th step so he can stand up again, with whatever he managed to grab. Today he grabbed the dish soap. Since he can't flip the top open, he unscrewed it. He tried to drink it, and then dumped it on the stairs. I now hav

We arrived home on Sunday. It was only 2 weeks, it felt like longer. Fortunately, this wasn't all bad, since we had a mostly great time. We spent the last week at a resort in a small town in northeastern Wisconsin---close to the upper peninsula border. "Resort" makes it sound more glamorous than it actually was. This resort was founded (I believe) in the late 1800s, and many of the cabins were built then. The cabin we were staying with had a butler's pantry and the maid's room off the kitchen. On the other hand, they recently added a dishwasher. I'm not sure any house with a dishwasher can be called a cabin, but this is a definite improvement over the previous sink, which may have been the original equipment. We spent the week with my grandma, her kids, their spouses, kids and grandkids (got that?). We were 23 for dinner when everyone was there, including 5 kids (Eleanor was the oldest and Luke was the youngest). Luke was charming almost all of the t

Yesterday we went to the Water Park Of America with the girls' cousins. A good time was had by all, although 3 adults to 6 kids is not a big enough ratio... Eleanor wants me to write about her favorite part (and Amanda's favorite part): the family raft. First you climbed the stairs to the tippy-top floor (the 10th floor). There was an elevator that brought the 8-feet diameter rafts to the top floor. You got in and started down. The raft would go up the sides of the tube as though it were tipping over--Eleanor says it felt as though you might fall out. Sometimes you were on the inside of the building and sometimes you were on the outside. Michael and his sister took 5 kids: an 18 month old, 2 3 year olds and 2 6 year olds. I think they went down about 8 times. Amanda wasn't too sure she wanted to go down at first, but after the first ride when we were standing around deciding what to do, she started walking up the stairs all by herself. She was ready to go down a

Luke has found a variety of toys to play with at his grandparent's house. They include: A bucket of sand, a bucket of compost, and some plastic pots that flowers came in. Two ice cream pails, one of which is filled with clothespins. He keeps biting on the open end of the clothespin and pinching his fingers. The wood burning stove in the family room, which has lots of levers and knobs and is fun to bang on. Folding picture frames, which both have pictures of family in them and are fun to open and close. The girls had a good time swinging on two swings hung from the clothesline: it's a very complex system, where the girls influence each other's swings and how high they are off the ground and how they bounce up and down. They had a great time... until the clothesline broke. Eleanor is reading. She's moved on from the Magic Treehouse books to the reference guides. Right now she's reading The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, which has the advantage of being long enough th

Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy. (from the restaurant Ingredients in White Bear Lake, MN.) This is definitely a better sign than things like "Unattended children will be sold to the highest bidder." I might be tempted to take them up on the latter, but the puppy would be a definite deal breaker.

We've started our annual midwestern trip to see family and friends. On the one hand, it is useful to have all our family in one area of the country, on the other hand, it means that we inevitably miss seeing people, which is sad. Yesterday we woke up at 4:30 or so eastern to try to leave the house by 5 and the airport by 6. We did pretty well, leaving the house at about 5:20 and getting the plane all loaded by about 6:30... but there was a problem. Because of all the wonderful rain we've had recently, there was a lot of fog. At about 6 we could have taken off. By 6:30, however, the fog had come in and there was no chance of taking off until it lifted. So we took a walk, used the restroom, ran around in anticipation of 7 hours in a cramped airplane, and we took off at about 7:15. The problem with taking off so late is that the afternoon thunderstorms started to form by the time we got to the midwest . This meant that instead of flying for 3.5 hours in the airplane, we

Yesterday, Eleanor and Daddy went to a municipal fireworks display put on by a nearby town. Today, Michael bought a 41-pack of fountain fireworks at the grocery store because he felt that his daughters would be deprived without having their own fireworks. As a child, he was used to setting off sparklers, firecrackers (especially for tin can rockets), small bottle rockets, catherine wheels, fountains, and other fireworks, many of which were actually legal. For some reason, he thinks that he should pass this on to his children. Luke quivered in terror at all fireworks that made noise, sparks, or smoke, or even had bright lights. After they went off, he blew at them because they looked hot and needed to be cooled off. Smart boy. Amanda: "Those were great fireworks. I need to go into the house to get my raincoat. Can you put my raincoat on me?" She watched them, but I couldn't get a picture of her watching the fireworks because she was hiding behind me with her hands

Luke is still sick, so if he wants something to eat that isn't actively bad for him, he gets it. This morning, he was barely tolerating milk and soft foods. Shortly afterward, he asked for a corn chip. We thought maybe the corn chip tasted good enough that he would eat it even though his mouth seemed very sensitive. He brought it outside with him while we moved the last ( yay !) of the mulch to the back yard. (The formula for mulch moved over time had been approximating 1/x so we had been feeling hopeless.) When we noticed that Luke had been quiet for too long, we looked to see what he was up to. He was using the corn chip to scoop up dirt, and licking the dirt off the chip. Mmm . Salty dirt.

At the doctor's office yesterday, the Dr. mentioned that Luke had some ulcers on the inside of his mouth. "Has he had a fever? A rash on his bottom or hands and feet? There is hand, foot and mouth disease going around." When I answered no, she said that in that case, the sores were probably just from some virus and would go away. I went away thankful that Luke didn't have hand foot and mouth disease. Well, he woke up last night with a fever, and even after motrin this morning he still had a fever. He was sad enough to snuggle with daddy for about 10 minutes this morning (while Daddy let me sleep, since I will have to carry Luke around all day today). I think he pretty clearly has HFMD . Now the challenge is to try to keep Amanda and Eleanor from getting this. We have instituted strict hand washing protocols, but it is difficult to keep Luke from (for example) putting his fingers in Amanda's mouth, or having them both blow raspberries on the couch, or hav

Amanda and Luke have been seriously underweight for a long time. Amanda actually lost weight when she was 10 months old, and has been hanging on just under the 3rd percentile line for a long time. Luke went from 50th percentile at birth to 10th to 5th to 3rd at a year, although we never measured a loss for him... It has been hard figuring out exactly why they weren't growing like expected. I know in my head that Michael has some relatives who were small children. Amanda and Luke certainly are not interested in eating---too many other things to do. Luke has lost his appetite over the past few weeks, while Amanda's has been improving steadily and becoming more regular. Well, today we had a weight check. Amanda is up to the 5th percentile for weight and 15th for height, while Luke is up to the 10th percentile for weight. I know that someone has to be below the 3rd percentile (otherwise it wouldn't be the 3rd percentile, right) but I'm just as glad that my kids are

I think what I am suffering from in parenting Luke is a failure of imagination. Today I needed to change Amanda out of her PJ's, but Luke was playing happily downstairs in the kitchen. I cast a quick glance around the kitchen, moved the OJ off the table (he had put all his cereal into a cup of OJ yesterday), moved the sharp knives and food containers off the table, and went upstairs, secure in the knowledge that there wasn't too much trouble he could get into in 5 minutes. I came back down to find him on the table (his favorite place) having completely emptied the cinnamon sugar shaker into a bowl of dry cereal, the table, the floor and the chair. I had felt so prepared and good about Luke-proofing the area, but I hadn't grasped his imagination. The other day he was playing with the kid's broom upstairs while I was washing Amanda's hair. He can play with that for hours (well, minutes, anyway) with no trouble, so I concentrated on getting the soap out of Amanda

Recently I had my birthday. My favorite part was Eleanor's gift. A few days before my birthday, we bought mushrooms and I mentioned how much I liked them. Eleanor came up with the idea that she should make me mushrooms and eggs for my birthday---this was her own idea with no prompting from me (although I may have mentioned how well Swiss cheese would go with the omelet ...) On my birthday, she and Daddy went downstairs early to cook. She shredded the cheese and cracked the eggs, Daddy used the stove and chopped the mushrooms. He had to flip the omelet too. They even made my coffee drink for me and sliced some bread. Mmmm, delicious and a very nice present. A few days after my birthday I had my own party. You know you are a grownup when you get to bake your own cake. I made Red Velvet cake, but without the red (one of my friends is allergic to red dye). I really think it tastes different when it isn't red---or perhaps that is my inability to cook cakes and other thing