mathmom's blog

Luke is definitely a toddler, and so one of his favorite words is "No!" He's recently learned to say "No way!" (learned from his sisters, most likely). It is actually less stressful for him to say "no way!" in his cute toddler voice than for him just to say "no!" since while he's being obstreperous and difficult, he's also being really funny. He's so grown up and so little at the same time. I'm toying with the idea of teaching him "No way, Jose!" but I haven't decided whether it would be funny or just annoying. The other words he is learning to say are causing some problems. It's really hard to refuse him anything when he makes the effort to say it. The other day he was talking about "bee bee baah ." He was quite insistent, and when I realized he was asking for a rice krispy bar, I gave in. He's so cute! He does the same thing with "Blue Juice" ( Powerade , usually reserved fo...

Eleanor had a homework assignment this week: research a mammal, write 5 facts about this mammal (using best handwriting and editing), make a model of the animal in its natural habitat. This could be fun, I thought. Eleanor had chosen the cheetah. My mind immediately started thinking about how we could do this... we have lots of shoeboxes . Hmm , don't cheetahs live in grasslands? Maybe we could paint grass...oh, or paint the sky and use yellow construction paper for the grass... We could use clay for the cheetah, or I know! That clay that gets hard when you bake it! We could make something that really looks great! I hope you see what was happening to me before I did. I eventually managed to bite my tongue. I bit it very hard when Eleanor drew her initial sketch for the habitat as a rain forest. I merely suggested she look for a picture of a cheetah in its natural habitat before she created the background. Sure enough, Eleanor came up with great ideas on her own. Some thin...

"I changed my mind," Amanda announced at dinner the other day. "You did?" I asked, trying to figure out the context. "About what?" "About superhero." This did not help me out very much, but I made a guess. "You mean you don't want to be a superhero when you grow up?" "That's right." I was curious. "So what do you want to be when you grow up?" "Maybe... a princess." That sounds like a reasonable career direction, at least as reasonable as a superhero. Michael was listening, and he said that Amanda was Daddy's princess. Amanda just looked at him, as if to say, "Don't be silly, Daddy." Apparently she only wants to be a princess when he grows up. In other news, Eleanor has decided she wants to be a veterinarian instead of a doctor. And she's not really sure about that. It will be interesting to see where they end up. Luke apparently wants to go into chemistry---his favorite...

I wanted to play a game with Amanda today while Luke was taking a nap. Luke frequently gets in the way of game playing with Amanda, since he tends to believe that all the cards and pieces actually belong to him, and the fact that Amanda and I are touching them interferes with his sovereignty. Amanda chose to play Quorridor , a cute game involving mice trying to make it across the board to their cheese, while other players place walls in their way. I knew it would be a difficult game when she grabbed the die that was on the box and said we would play with it as well. "Amanda, there are no dice in Quorridor ." "I know. We'll play with it anyway." I tried hard to make up some sort of rules for the dice: if you rolled a 2, you moved 2 spaces or put down two fences instead of 1. This rule wouldn't really work for high numbers, but we never rolled any of those. I knew I was in trouble when Amanda rolled a 4 and said, "I get to put the red coach on the ...

Last year there was a small group at our church called "Mother to mother." The idea was to talk about topics mothers would be interested in, like nutrition, marriage, mentoring, how parenting has changed over the past 100 years, and so on. One I especially was interested in was "Raising a lifelong learner." I wanted to hear what other people were doing, any tips they had for keeping kids interested in the world instead of getting tuned out, etc. The speaker had lots of ideas---none of which I was doing. She gave her kids themed birthday parties (right down to costumes for the birthday girl) which were based on books they read. They had "Children's Day" (like mother's day and father's day) when their favorite activity was to go to the art museum and sketch the paintings in the exhibit. They went to the free orchestra practices every Thursday. What surprised me was the visceral way I reacted to her suggestions. I felt defensive. I felt gu...

Yesterday I spent about 20 minutes out in the rain, watching Luke play in a puddle. I had to be right there, since the puddle is actually in the street at the end of our driveway, and Luke occasionally needed to be dragged in from the street when a car drove by. He had a wonderful time, walking in the water, splashing, getting entirely wet. It was a little cold for me to get into the water, though. It's a good thing he has a back up pair of shoes. My favorite part was when he found two sticks and proceeded to throw them into the puddle, then laugh uproariously. He thought he was pretty good! Two 8 year olds walked by, and as they walked past they looked curiously at Luke. You could almost hear them thinking, "I was never as babyish as that. I'm way too cool." I can tell you who was having a better time in the rain, though. When we got inside, I heard Eleanor and Amanda running around shouting "Mom! Mom!" I may have even seen a tear or two. Due to...

Last night Amanda was sent to bed early for gross insubordination. I did snuggle with her for a bit, but then went to wash dishes and other exciting stuff. When I came upstairs, 20 minutes after her usual bedtime, she was still awake and flopping around. "Amanda, are you comfortable?" I asked. "No," came the answer. "What do you need?" I asked, thinking she wanted water, to be tucked in, her doll, something like that. "A mama," she answered. I could do something about that. I snuggled her for about 5 minutes and she fell fast asleep.

Could someone explain to me why Luke has already popped (by squeezing) more balloons than his sisters have popped together in their whole lives? I think Eleanor still remembers one windy day when her balloon blew down into the grass and popped. It was traumatic because I wouldn't go get her another one, because Amanda (then a baby) was already buckled into her car seat and I was at the end of my rope. Amanda squeezed a balloon once and it popped, and I think it made an impression on her. She tends to lose balloons: she only likes to hold onto them at the very end of the string, despite my explaining that they are harder to hold onto that way and despite the many balloons she has lost. But Luke has squeezed 3 or 4 balloons to death, and although the experience is traumatic, he doesn't seem to have learned anything from it, since he does it again and again... When Eleanor was small, the pediatrician warned us to not have latex balloons in the house, since they are a choking ha...

Some time ago, probably over a year, Eleanor decided that she wanted to learn to play the violin. In my family, we didn't play the violin---piano was ok , band instruments were ok , but it was somehow not done to play a string instrument. I also knew that it was a lot of hard work (not Eleanor's strong point) and it took a lot of parent involvement (not my strong point, especially right then) and so after looking up violin lessons halfheartedly, I gave up. The problem was that Eleanor didn't give up. She kept asking. Every once in a while I would think that she had forgotten, and it would come up again. When our friends from England came to visit, they talked about their string lessons, and Eleanor brought it up again. My friend (who teaches strings) suggested that Eleanor play the viola or cello, since everyone and their dog wants to play violin (really, she said that you have more opportunities to play in groups if you play something other than violin). Thus a futu...

Luke is not always welcoming of change. I am really starting to appreciate Eleanor's flexibility and Amanda's easy-going nature. Since spring has arrived on the heels of the snowstorm last week, I thought Luke would enjoy changing from his fleecy jammies to his cotton stretchy jammies . (Also, Luke had managed to get the feet of his fleece jammies all wet, and they hadn't dried by bedtime...) He was interested when I got them out, but when I suggested that he wear them, immediate sadness ensued. Luke grabbed them away from me and tried to put them back in the drawer they came from. He screamed and struggled every step of the way: arms in, legs in, zipping up... The process took about 5 minutes longer than it would have if he had just cooperated. We made a big fuss over how handsome Luke looked, and how nice the jammies were, in hopes of reconciling him to the new pajamas. However, the next day the same thing happened. The day after that I asked Michael to put Luk...

I remembered the story about Eleanor I meant to post last night. Eleanor's hangers are mostly plastic and kid sized, but occasionally one of ours makes it to her closet. Last night, she found one of the hangers typically given by dry cleaners: plain metal wire. She looked at it and said, "This is a very beautiful hook! It looks like it's made of gold!" Last night she was sick, so no viola lesson today. Since her last one was scheduled for the snowstorm day, I'm beginning to wonder if the whole project is jinxed. So watch out for Monday, when her next one is scheduled.

Today Luke went for a walk at a nearby park. He ran up to everyone he met and grabbed them around their legs. It wasn't quite clear what he was trying to do, since he was roaring at them at the time. He gets this from his sisters, who often roar at each other randomly, to try to scare each other. Luke loves the noise, he loves joining in making noises, he loves doing whatever his sisters are doing. The time will come soon enough when he realizes that this is not appropriate, in the meantime, it is very cute. I was sitting on the porch and heard jingling from outside. A cute little dog peeked through the screen door. I went to investigate, and the dog walked as bold as you please, right through the open door. He wanted to go into our house (maybe he smelled the stew I was cooking...) but I managed to get him back onto the porch. I did eventually get a look at his collar and called the phone numbers on it (I would have walked him home, but Luke was asleep). A relieved owner...

We had an actually pleasant dinner last night, which makes me wonder if my children have been replaced by aliens and if I have to try to get my children back. We had pork chops, cooked with apricot jam and ginger, along with broccoli. When I carried the pork chops out to the table, Amanda made gagging noises about the "white hamburgers", and was trying to tell me that she hated them, but I made her try one. She proceeded to eat all the meat on her plate (and afterwards told daddy that the white hamburgers were really yummy!). Eleanor was pacified by giving her a sharp knife. She did use the knife to cut off all the "skin" (the part with the jam on it, since she doesn't like sauce) and kept trying to use her fingers instead of her fork to hold the meat as she cut, but she was too distracted by the fun of a new, dangerous tool to complain much. Luke ate his usual amount without much fuss. He has a tendency to stuff 4 or more pieces of food into his mouth and ...

Yesterday I bought 3 new sponges, one of which happened to be purple. Yesterday evening after supper as I was getting the traffic report from Michael, I heard Eleanor ask, "Mom! Could you please clear your dishes!" By the time I was off the phone (maybe 1 minute later) the table was covered in soap suds except for the dinner dishes. I quickly cleared them and then Amanda found a sponge. Then Luke wanted in the action. By the end of 10 minutes of more or less concentrated cleaning, the table and all the chairs had been soaped down, wiped down (by me), soaped down and wiped off again. They are pretty clean. I wonder if the magic of the new sponges will still be in effect tonight? p.s. Has anyone ever seen good rubber gloves for children? I have googled a few, but nothing really looks good quality---the Dora ones have cloth cuffs, there are some latex throw away ones... A few minutes of scrubbing made Amanda's hands hurt =(

School was actually canceled today. They started out by delaying it 2 hours, but as it got to be 8:30 and it was still snowing, they did the honorable thing and canceled it for the whole day. Lisa Belkin at the NYT " Motherlode " column asked what people did for backup plans: for stay at home moms, snow days are just like regular days only more intense. On most weekends, I have help from Michael or friends. On weekdays, I have one or 2 kids. Probably I'm just a wimp. Luke woke up late (7:30) and all 3 kids (and Michael) played outside for a long time. There was a snowman which became a punching bag, a start at a snow woman, snowball fights between Michael and the neighbor boys (Eleanor fought against both sides), tasting of snow (it tastes like water, but with more flavor), snowball fights with the neighbor girls (Luke won lots of hearts), sliding on cardboard, and so on. Luke came in first with cold hands and immediately wanted to go outside again. Then he came ...

Someone obviously lost the memo explaining that it is March , in North Carolina , and planned a snow storm. So all my plans for babysitters and helping in Amanda's class and a teacher conference trading babysitting so a friend could go to a career group and driving kids to school and getting Michael to watch friends kids are up in the air. I guess that will teach me to try to make complicated plans... At least, unlike Maryland, they have not preemptively cancelled Eleanor's and Amanda's school. I am expecting (hoping, actually) that it is delayed, but we'll see. They seem to have the attitude that if you can make it in, you should, because school is fun.