mathmom's blog

Luke is now tall enough to ring the doorbell. This helps when he lets himself outside and then wants to get back in. He rang, I came to the door, and he looked proudly at me and said, " ning ning ." In case any of you are wondering what Luke sounds like, he sounds an awful lot like Amanda. When he is talking to his stuffed animals ( Froggy , Hopper and Ribbity ) he sounds just like Blue from "Blue's Clues." I don't know where he gets that from---neither Eleanor or Amanda talk for their stuffed animals like that.

Eleanor's grandparents put her to bed last night, which means that some things went differently. They wanted to watch "Dancing with the stars," so Eleanor got into her PJs before the usual time, so she would be able to watch with them. "I don't usually get to watch TV after 5 o'clock," she says (although Word Girl is on at 5). She got to watch "a quiz show where you get money by answering questions." It was on "the ABC channel." She didn't understand most of it, she said, but she did get the question about Star Wars. She thought that there was a lot of money involved...maybe 16 million dollars? or maybe 16,000. I think probably Jeopardy was a bigger highlight than the dancing, since she didn't mention dancing. But I think that the biggest fun was sitting with her grandparents, spending time with them doing something that her parents don't let her do. And I'm fine with that. As long as she doesn't want to ...

The other day I opened Luke's window for a little bit, noticed that the screen was out, and closed it. Luke was watching intently from his crib, so I explained that he should never stick anything out the window, he should be very careful near open windows or he could fall out and hurt himself. (We actually have a friend whose 2 year old child fell out a window. The child is fine now.) Today I sang "How much is that doggie in the window" for Luke. He liked the song, but the second time I came to the chorus he started yelling: "Stop! Doggie ! Stop! Window! Stop!"* I think he was afraid that the doggie was going to fall out the window. Tonight I sang "Jesus loves me" and he said "Stop! Jesus, doggie , stop! Window!" I can't wait until he can speak in sentences, it should be fun. Bonus Luke story: This morning I was trying to get a diaper on a very squirmy Luke. For fun, I asked if his froggy blanket needed a diaper change. ...

At Eleanor's birthday party , Amanda got fed up pretty quickly with our preparations. There was a playground, so she wandered down to play by herself. Then I think she got confused about which way our shelter was (it's not one of the ones we usually see at the park) so she went down the path, looking for our birthday party. Meanwhile, we finished with the preparations (Michael was hanging up balloons, I was setting out table cloths and such) and Michael went with the first few kids down to the playground. I thought Amanda was with him, he thought she was with me. Neither of us knew something was wrong until we saw her walking up to the playground, cowboy hat in hand, with a strange parent. "Is this your child?" I think what happened was she didn't find our shelter, but found another shelter where there was another birthday party. One of the parents figured out what was going on, and looked for another birthday party at the park. She knew our names, and she ...

Eleanor celebrated her birthday last weekend. We had the party at the park, the same one we had her 3rd birthday party. We decided on the park because she wanted to invite her whole class, I didn't want to spend lots of money at at "venue" (which we have done many times before, but for smaller groups) and we didn't have room or activities for 22 kids plus parents plus siblings at our house. They have a great playground at the park, so some of the time could be spent playing... but I knew from experience with Eleanor that a playground only keeps 7 year olds occupied for so long before they get bored. So, hearkening back to my childhood parties, we had bubbles and chalk (I was only missing the paper bags to put them in--we had purple plastic goody bags). We had big bubble makers, pipes, lots of little wands, and lots of bubble juice, most of which was used up. I think I'm going to have to learn how to make bubble juice. The other activity we had was a picture ...

This is (apparently) the Pythagorean theorem sung in Swedish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuqF45MLYFQ It makes me wish I knew some Swedish. It seems to involve the proof, not just the theorem (which would make for a shorter song). I can't find out anything else about it. I can't quite read the letters on the diagram they're using, which might make more sense. And now back to your regularly scheduled kid stories.

Sticky things I have had to wipe off Luke's face, mouth, hands, and everything else today: lip gloss chocolate soy nut butter caramel chocolate syrup ketchup candy cane I am taken aback by how Luke eats with his whole body, not just his mouth---I picked a piece of candy cane from behind his ear, just now. Most of those things were authorized (not the lip gloss or the chocolate syrup), so it's not like he was getting into things he shouldn't. He's just very messy. In other news, yesterday Luke saw a teenager walking across the street in front of us. The teenager spit on the ground. I didn't think much of it until a few minutes later, when I saw Luke bending down, trying to spit. He kept it up at dinner tonight, which earned him a few time outs. More than once the time out was almost done when he spit again, starting the time out over. Ugh. Keep in mind that whatever you are doing, the toddler is watching...

Michael was reading Luke a book which involves looking for elephants all over the world. Amanda and I were sitting nearby. "Elephants don't live in the sea!" said Michael. Amanda, out of the blue, says "But sea elephants do!" Me, after a few seconds, "What?"

Chanson at Letters from a Broad has a post which includes of one of her parenting successes , involving the benedictory smile of a Swiss cashier. I've had some of those public recognitions of good parenting, and I always try to point out to parents when their kids are doing particularly well (especially when the parents look harried). Sometimes, though, the success doesn't look like a success to outsiders. Last week we took the kids to our favorite Greek restaurant. We have been getting gyros for Amanda for a few years now (dairy, egg and nut free!), and we have typically gotten one plate of gyros for Amanda and Luke to share. We get it with french fries, and Amanda is "rewarded" for eating the meat by getting to eat as many french fries as she can (she needs all the calories she can get). Luke's idea, smart boy that he is, is that he doesn't need to eat anything other than the french fries. This week we had had enough of this, and instead of letting Luke...

The other day I was looking over our "lawn" (the weeds are sometimes the only thing that make it look green...) and I noticed little red sprouts, about 4 inches high, peeking over the grass. "That's odd," I thought, and went to pick one up. There was an acorn attached. Looking at the rest of the lawn, I began to notice more and more of these sprouts popping up all over my lawn. Oh no, I thought, they're oak trees... You should understand that last fall our oak trees decided to re-forest all of central North Carolina single-handedly, and dropped a record crop of acorns. My inlaws were visiting while the acorns were falling, and we took thousands of them off the lawn. I thought that the squirrels would take care of the rest, but aparantly they were not doing their job. So now we have hundreds of little oak tree sprouts growing in our lawn, and it turns out to be my job to remove them. Amanda considers it her personal job to remove all the wild garlic gr...

Michael and I were upstairs, and he was working on part of his presentation for the trip he was leaving on that day. Suddenly, we hear thumping coming up the stairs. "Daddy! Mom!" It was Eleanor. She arrived breathless in the room. "Luke learned how to use the printer and now he's printing lots of copies!" Michael went downstairs to retrieve the presentation he had just printed off, trying not to laugh. I think it says something about Luke that both his sisters thought he could figure out how to print "lots of copies" on the printer.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child! (Apologies to Shakespeare!) Luke managed to find a black sharpie permanent marker in the living room. I hadn't realized it was there, as it was in a box with lots of other things in it. He proceeded to write on many things. He wrote: on the cabinets on the floor on the train tracks on the coffee table on the tan leather couch (of course, not the dark green one that we don't like as much) on the angel food cake pan Where was I while all this was happening? Blissfully unaware, making very delicious cinnamon-apple bread with my daughters. Or criminally negligent, depending on how guilty I am feeling at the moment. It took about 5 minutes, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. People say "House-proof the baby, don't baby-proof the house." I have seen it argued that kids who don't ordinarily get exposed to dangerous things can't handle it when they are exposed to those dangerous...