mathmom's blog

When we were younger, our family would get together with another family and make gingerbread houses. I had a lot of fun, especially exploring the house of the other family, and playing with her Fisher Price record player. My father, being an engineer, took the entire enterprise very seriously. We didn't have "royal icing", we had "mortar". We didn't merely make gingerbread houses, we constructed them. Dad had all sorts of techniques to bring his houses to a higher standard: Instead of cutting out pieces on the counter and moving them to the cookie sheet (which can warp the pieces) or even cutting out the pieces on the cookie sheet, we would bake a big sheet of dough and then cut out the pieces when the dough was still soft and warm. Of course the pieces had been arranged so as to waste the smallest possible amount of dough. We always used a pizza cutter to cut out the pieces and make nice straight cuts. When assembling the house, use paper "hinges...

Yesterday, as I rushed down the stairs from the office on my way home from work, my phone rang. It was from home. I answered, ready to say, "Yes, I'm on my way home now" but I heard a muffled voice, barely rising above screaming in the background, say, "Luke cut his head badly and he's bleeding a lot. mmrmph ummmph rrr ..." Ella doesn't do so well with telephones; she sometimes forgets to hold the microphone near her mouth. Apparently Kim had asked her to call me while she took care of Luke. Probably the incomprehensible bit at the end was something like "We are getting into the car to go to the hospital" but I had to ask for her to repeat herself a few times. It was half a minute before I realized that I was talking to Kim, not Ella. I never knew before that Ella's voice is like Kim's! She was telling me that she couldn't tell whether he cut himself badly enough that we should take him in to let a professional take a look. Mean...

The other day we went to Historic Oak View County park (all of my local readers should go there, by the way) for their sleigh ride and cider celebration. They had storytelling, a band, hammered dulcimer, and the house was decorated for Christmas. They also had Santa Claus, and since we got there early we were able to go see him before there was any line. Unfortunately, it was also before I was able to prepare my kids. We really don't talk very much about Santa around here---the closest we get is watching the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special. So Amanda and Luke were left without very much context. Amanda went first, and when Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas she said, "Nothing." He asked if she was sure, and I mentioned that she had wanted a pony and we talked about that for a while. He asked again if there was anything she wanted and she saw the big basket of mini candy canes on the floor, for giving out to kids. "I'd like a huge basket of...

Amanda has branched out in what she is learning to write. Unfortunately, she hasn't got spelling down, but since she spells it like it sounds, it's not too hard. "farm Amanda, to Joolyona" (from Amanda, to Juliana) "my marmad" (my mermaid) It's times like these I think of Mark Twain's " Plan for the Improvement of the English Language ." (This is posted at a government web site, which makes me want to see what else is posted there...)

Why leaf raking is the perfect exercise: It takes place outside in beautiful fall weather. It can be done while watching kids play outside. It isn't too hard, but can be done vigorously. It is something useful. It doesn't require too much thought, so you can think of other things. At the end, you have a great leaf pile to jump in. We have a pile about 2.5 feet tall and 6 feet in diameter---not as big as the piles of my youth, but still substantial. I've been raking for at least 30 minutes every day since last week. I'm not sure what can replace this exercise, since we don't live in snow shoveling country. Does anyone have any ideas?

I used to think poorly of parents who kept their 3 year olds in cribs. What's the point, I would think, they can climb in and out. Why not just get them a bed and be done with it! Are you afraid they'll fall out of bed or something? I now repent. Luke, who will be 4 in February, is still sleeping in a crib. It has more to do with inertia than anything else. When his sisters were 3, there was another baby who needed the crib, so they were in beds, no problem. I'm not opposed to putting Luke in a bed, but to do that we'd need to figure out the whole bed situation which seemed extremely complicated... We finally decided to get two low loft beds for the girls. We did not get the castle curtains that are supposed to go around them ( hmmm , Christmas presents?). Then we'll give Luke the bed we got for him when he was born---a bookshelf bed with a trundle that matches the dresser in his room, which Ella has been using until we decided what kind of bed to get for ...

Amanda's 6 th birthday party was a week ago. She wanted a mermaid party, so we decided to invite a few girls (on the theory that the boys might not be really interested) from her class to our house for a mermaid event. There are only 10 girls in her class, so I decided to invite all of them over on the theory that most of them had soccer or other activities and wouldn't be able to come. All but 2 came, and a few brought siblings, so we were pretty full up. Fortunately it was an absolutely beautiful warm fall day, so we were able to take much of the stuff outside. The first thing we did was the most fun birthday activity I've ever done. We got a long roll of butcher paper and I painted a few pieces of seaweed on it. Then we got out ALL our brushes and a box of Crayola poster paints. I told the girls to paint undersea things--- octopi , sea horses, mermaids, fish... Some painted jellyfish, or clams, and Ella added a ship. It came out so beautiful! Everyone had fun....

One of Ella's chores (suggested by her Aunt L.) is to put the stuff in the bread maker every night and program it so we have warm bread in the morning. This works well, and is also a great science experiment. We have discovered that: Bread made without salt looks OK but is barely edible. Bread made with 3 times the salt is inedible, and doesn't rise right. Bread made with no yeast is edible, sort of like a tasty rock is edible, and Ella really needs a system to make sure she puts the right ingredients in the right amounts in the right order. I've encouraged her to line up the ingredients on the counter before she starts along with the correct measuring equipment. After the last failure she allowed that that might be a good idea. We'll see. Here's our recipe for bread: 1 1/4 cup water 2 Tbsp. Earth Balance buttery stick 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar 2 cups whole wheat flour (we get ours from Great Harvest) 1 cup white flour (bread flour makes it rise better) ...

Luke has gotten out all of our train cars and made a long train and track. Then he got out the meat tenderizer hammer and crushed two graham crackers. He mixed up some "muffins" with the crumbs, spices, food coloring, cous cous , applesauce and honey. He got out the blender, plugged it in, put another graham cracker in and asked, "Now I push start?" with his finger on the button (makes me glad we don't have a blendtech ). It is now 8:40. I said, "mama needs a break!" and he allowed that we could have a break while I ate breakfast. p.s. we just got a laminator . I warned Michael not to show Luke how to use it (having seen how he reacted to being shown how to work the 3-hole punch and the comb binder). He snuck up and watched anyway. I'll let you know what gets laminated.

http://www.candyexperiments.com/p/experiments.html I can't wait!

Amanda to Ella: "Could you tell me how I am annoying?" Ella looks up, speechless (for once). "By telling you things that you already know?" continues Amanda. "Yeah," answers Ella. "But I bet you already knew that..." says Amanda. I really could not have made that one up, folks.

I was in the car today, driving Ella to pick up Amanda from school, and I realized that it was awfully quiet. Luke is almost always talking. I looked back and didn't see Luke in the car. "Luke! Luke! are you here!" I yelled. Ella looked up from her book, and said in a worried voice, "No, he's not in the car!" As you can imagine, my thoughts immediately went back to the house where I must have left him---I had a million things to remember today (we went from string lessons to social group to dinner to Taekwondo ), and I have always worried that I would end up forgetting a person. I did once forget Amanda in a waiting room for 3 minutes when I went in to Ella's gym class, although she was 3 months old at the time... "Poor Luke! He must be so worried! He was probably bawling and terrified! He'll never trust me again!" I worried silently. I needed to get off the highway right then, call Michael to pick up Amanda, call the string teac...

It is very interesting to see what the kids get up to when weare not around. Gramma and Grampa came to visit, and supervised what ended up being the Acorn Project . Grampa blogged about it, fortunately, or I would never have known even half of what happened.

Amanda brought a bag full of small pieces of paper which she had colored on. "Could you laminate these, please?" It turned out they are invitations for mermaids. She wants to laminate them and then drop them in the ocean. One side has a picture of a mermaid on it, complete with a tail instead of legs and surrounded by blue water. The other side has a few symbols: A, ♥, M. It turns out that she wanted to write on the back, "Dear mermaids, could you please come to the state pond of North Carolina? Love, Amanda." As she said, "If you can't write that whole sentence, you just have to write A heart M." It seems like a good plan, although she did ask me tonight if the place where mermaids live is connected to the pond of North Carolina. I first asked if she thought mermaids were real. "No, mermaids are pretend," she said. "Well, in that case," I said, "the mermaids can certainly come to North Carolina." She seemed rel...

I took the girls to their first martial arts lesson yesterday. I'd been looking around for some sort of physical activity for them---they both are taking string lessons, but I think there needs to be something more active. A friend of ours mentioned that the local studio is run and taught by women, and Ella thought that was pretty neat and wanted to try it. They got there and tried on their uniforms: both ended up being a little big, although Amanda's (the smallest size) really needs some taking up =) They got to sit on a spot on the floor, learn a few rules (don't be a bully was the most important one---don't abuse your Tae k won do). They learned a few rituals: bow to the flags (Ella correctly identified the Korean flag), tell the teacher "Thank you ma'am," jump up in the air and shout "Taekwondo!" Then they got to do a few punches and kicks into a small round foam circle. I think the main purpose of the exercises was to learn how to move ...

As Kim just blogged, we went to the mountains for Apple Festival -- for the fourth year running. Amanda was disappointed last year that she couldn't do the ropes course, and this year, as a great big five-year-old, nothing was going to keep her away. This involved a lot of waiting. First, waiting for over an hour and a half before starting climbing. Then she climbed a free rope ladder with rungs about half as far apart as she is tall, to a platform about dozen feet off the ground. Once she got there, we discovered that the "lobster claws" she was wearing were not long enough to read the safety wire, so she had to wait while they changed her over to a different set. Walking a pair of beams never seemed hard to Ella or to me, so it didn't surprise me that Amanda did fine. The bigger surprise was that she never fell off the high wire, and in fact didn't seem to have to use her hands very much -- good balance. She wanted a helping hand before she jumped across a...

Last weekend we went up to a camp in the mountains for a family "retreat". My good friend Julie had been a counselor up there in the (now distant =) past, so she knew the trails. While Ella and Amanda and Michael went on the intermediate ropes course (Ella's favorite part of the trip), I wanted to go on a hike. There were two options: a short (15 minute for a grownup) hike over mostly flat ground, or a longer (1 mile) hike up to the top of the mountain. I had gotten enough sleep that night, or was feeling ambitious, and Julie told me that it would be alright, so we opted for the latter. As with so many things in life (getting married, having children, getting your PhD, etc.) if I had known before I started what was entailed, I wouldn't have done it. Having done it, I'm glad we went. The first part of the hike was over a leaf covered trail, through the forest. As we got higher up, there were more and more rocks to climb over. I pulled Luke up the first part ...

Yesterday, Amanda got home from school and wanted to go play on the play structure. Fine, I thought, and I put her school bag and lunch box on the porch. We played and went in, and I forgot about the bags until this morning. This morning, when I went to make Amanda's lunch, I remembered that the bags were on the porch. They hadn't gotten wet, so I brought them in and got out the lunch bag. It didn't take me long to realize that the lunch bag was full of ants. I chased them down, killed most of them, and washed out the bag. YUCK! Then I got to the school bag. The inside was coated with ants too. I emptied them into the sink, and washed them all down. If giant ants emerge from the sewers in a few months, you can blame me! In all, making lunch took about 10 more minutes than I expected, which was OK because today, I was running about 10 minutes early. Now we just have to get rid of the stragglers. Hopefully we are not in for a long process. In the mean time, I keep...

Last week, Ella found the bag of fiberfill and started rolling it on the carpet to make something somewhat yarn-like. She wanted to knit with it, but since she was rolling it back and forth instead of twisting it, it wasn't really strong enough. Daddy remembered that when he was a boy, he made a drop spindle and learned to spin with it. He offered to make a drop spindle for Ella, and tonight after dinner, we went down to the shop. We put together some found objects: a scrap of wood, a long thin bolt, a scrap piece of copper wire, some electrical tape, the only two nuts we could find that fit the bolt, and a very small nail. It's not perfect but it works. We grabbed a handful of fiberfill, and twisted some thread by hand -- enough to tie to the spindle, wrap around the shaft, and slip through the hook. Then we started spinning. Ella did some of the spinning, but fiberfill was really not intended for this, so it's hard to use and makes very unforgiving thread. Ella deci...

I am in a Bible study with some older women who have teenagers (and beyond!). We share prayer requests and just socialize, and they often share about life with their teenagers, various troubles they have and the new worries they have. It is interesting, but I have to say that I am grateful for the perspective. My kids aren't learning how to drive, they aren't trying to get independence, they aren't blowing up at me or keeping secrets... Right now their fondest desire is that I play with them. Taking the long view makes it a bit easier to spend time with them instead of wishing they would grow up. I'll be off the floor and away from the trains soon enough.

Amanda looked over my shoulder as I checked something on my phone, saw my current "wallpaper" background choice, and said dismissively, "That's la-a-a-ame!" Kindergarten. It's where the cool kids are.

We have been taking Luke to speech therapy, where he gets to play all sorts of fun games while learning to speak more clearly---he doesn't even seem to notice that he is learning something. The therapist has a small plastic tote filled to the brim with wind-up toys: airplanes, cars, flipping ladybugs... The other day Luke was playing with the toys and he started winding one up and watching the wheels on the bottom turn. The toy (a submarine driven by a fox) would go forward and then turn suddenly. Luke explained to me how it changed direction and then he asked the therapist, "Open it, please!" She was confused (part of the reason Luke is hard to understand sometimes is that he says such unexpected things) but he finally made her understand that what he really wanted was to look inside and see how the whole thing was put together. He actually tried to get it apart, before she distracted him with something else. Better hide our screwdrivers, I think. =)

Daddy drives the "school bus" every morning, and especially on Tuesday and Thursday when Luke doesn't go to school, it is a long ride for Amanda. About 30 minutes with the cro-magnon chauffeur who isn't a particularly good conversationalist, don't you know? At the start of the school year, Amanda amused herself with picture-heavy books like Olivia in which the picture really tells the story, and laughed delightedly at the funniest pictures; especially Olivia's reproduction of Jackson Pollock's painting on the wall of her room. A couple weeks ago, though, she started picking up a joke book and reading the jokes, telling her favorites aloud. In the past week, she has been reading longer story books with fewer pictures, such as Amelia Bedelia and Morris Goes to School . Just like Ella three years ago, there's nothing like regular stretches of intense boredom to drive a child to learn to read fluently!

I (Michael) was choosing a ring tone for my cell phone. Among the many choices was a classical old-style telephone bell that anyone who grew up in the AT&T monopoly would recognize as the sound every telephone used to make. As soon as Luke heard it, he called out, "That's a phone!" It's not entirely clear to us how he knows that is a phone more than any of the other ring tones he heard, many of which are used more often as ring tones than the classical bell (pun intended) sound. Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

...don't hide behind the business end of a flyswatter.

We are part of a CSA association (community supported agriculture) and we really love almost all of it. There are a few things we don't like to eat: NC grapes and eggplant are two of the biggies. Fortunately we get to choose which box of food we get delivered, provided that we request early enough. Unfortunately, for the past 2 weeks I have forgotten to request the correct box. Most of the default box is just fine (apples, peaches, loads and loads of cucumbers), but we've gotten peanuts in the boxes. First we got raw, then salted and roasted. I really feel anxious having them around the house with Amanda, like any minute she'll break out in an allergic reaction... We'll probably give away the raw ones and Michael will take the roasted ones into work, and I'll be glad to get them out of the house. Except that Ella and I tried the roasted peanuts this afternoon (Luke refused and had almonds instead). Peanuts are so good! There is nothing like them. We ea...

We went biking yesterday on the greenway . It was a bit silly---we had to drive 15 minutes to get there, and then spend time wrestling our bikes out of the car and putting them back together, then we rode down to the other end of the greenway and back in about 40 minutes. But it was exercise, and it was beautiful: clear dark blue skies, warm sun but cool dry air, leaves beginning to show tinges of color. We rode through woods and a field of black-eyed susans , as well as over the highway on a pedestrian bridge---something about being above cars moving at 60 mph is really fun. Can't wait until Amanda is a good enough biker to join us, although we'll have to find something else to do with the bikes other than bringing them in the trunk of the van. I'm grateful to be in NC in the fall.

Ella is definitely a glass almost empty/glass almost full kind of person.

Luke found some thumbtacks and was about to poke them into inappropriate places around the house (furniture, etc.) I went to the garage and got him a cardboard box. "ohh ooohh oooh!" he said as he carried the box back to the thumbtacks. I wish I could please everyone that easily.

While we were on vacation several weeks ago, it seems that pantry moths were undisturbed in our pantry, and busily did what they seem to do best. Last night, we were suddenly beset. Like Birds , except very small. Each moth is easy to kill; collectively, they are very disturbing. This morning, deep-cleaning the pantry was a three-hour task. Three bags of trash, and the not-obviously-touched food (and bags, boxes, and other containers) into the freezer for three days just in case, since that is supposed to kill the eggs. We'll see. There are suggestions in some articles to put all dry goods in the freezer for a month or two, since the moths' life cycle is about a month long. Previously, we kept a pheromone trap in the pantry, but perhaps that attracted them. We are now trying a trap next to but not in the pantry, as well as using an insecticide spray sparingly, and a lemongrass spray more widely (don't know how well it will work, but at least it smells nice).

Here is a list of the posts which I have meant to write but haven't written: Luke getting out of bed by himself. A good thing, until he runs around at 6AM shouting, " Maaammaaa ! Where Aaarree you!" Amanda and Luke's last day of preschool. The difference between 3 year olds and 5 year olds . Mother's day presents, and my favorite things to do according to Ella and Amanda. Building a playset , and the big black long visitor. Garden success: weeds, peas, beans. Maybe: radishes, lettuce, raspberries. No: carrots. My favorite: Pumpkins taking over the whole garden! Roses and irises. Amanda and violin, Eleanor and viola Eleanor and her 10 inch long hair. Changing her name to Ella. Maybe I'll write some of these sometime soon....

Amanda has 4 sleeping toys, which she calls her "kids." Sometime this spring she figured out that my mom is her grandmother, and my grandmother is her great grandmother. Working this all out, this implies that I am now grandmother to a spotted eagle ray, a blanket, and two sheep. This is not precisely what I had imagined grandparenthood would be like. (Don't laugh too hard, mom, because you're their great-grandmother!) For a while she had another "kid," and so she had 5 children. She told me that she had won the war with her grandma in Florida. "You mean the card game?" I asked (she had done quite well playing various members of the family). "No, the kid war!" I had to figure out what she was talking about, but it turns out that the Florida grandma has 4 kids, and she had 5, so she won. Perhaps she is a little competitive...

Yesterday was Eleanor's school's carnival, complete with gem mining, a bull ride, ponies, and a talent show. The whole thing was lots of fun, but one of the most fun parts had to do with Eleanor. She decided quite early on that she would like to do an act in the talent show. After convincing her not to do hula hoop or jump rope (which are not things she's especially interested in, normally) she settled on telling jokes. She loves jokes, tells them all the time, and makes them up. We found some of her favorites from the everything joke book, and typed them up. She got one of her friends to help with the duck joke, my favorite joke of all time. Her friend played the duck, and they hadn't really had time to practice, but that was the roughest patch. The MC helped out by laughing uproariously, and shouting out responses. (for example: "How do you spell mousetrap with only 3 letters?" "HOW?" "C-A-T.") I'm proud of her for getting up...

We went to the library today, and I wanted to walk through the science fiction section on the way out, just to see what was there. As I was looking at the shelves, I heard Luke say, "That's my book!" He sounded happy, but I was distracted, so I didn't look to see what he had until we were almost to the door. He was happily hugging a 600 page book to his chest, one which we hadn't checked out. "Luke, you have to leave that at the library." "No! It's my book." "Luke, please put that down so we can leave." "But it's my Star Wars book! It's my book!" (You will not be surprised to hear that he dissolved into tears at this point. I took the book from him, and looked at it. Sure enough, it was a Star Wars novel... We really don't watch Star Wars. However, Luke has seen a Star Wars movie exactly once, and we talk about Luke Skywalker , and he also has friends at school who like star wars. One characteris...

Yesterday I was able to see Luke's preschool class walk across to a small playground. Luke had his jacket partway in his bag (it was a beautiful day) and was trying to stuff it even more into the bag. It fell out as soon as he stopped stuffing. Then one of the children who was following Luke called out, "Hey, Luke! Your jacket is on the ground!" The teacher who was leading them (the other teacher was back in the room) called out to Luke to leave it on the ground, but none of the kids following Luke was able to pass it. The kids in front of Luke walked to the playground like nothing happened, the kids behind him watched anxiously as Luke went back to his jacket, managed to stuff it all the way in, and then continued on the way to the playground. Catastrophe adverted! It reminded me of the scene from the beginning of "A Bug's Life" where a stick (or was it a leaf?) falls in the middle of the train of ants bringing food to the offering. The ant just behi...

We don't really have pizza in the house. For a long time, Amanda was allergic to wheat, and is still allergic to dairy, and so if we get regular pizza we have to figure out what Amanda is going to eat. Add this to the fact that Eleanor really despises tomato sauce in all forms, especially on pizza (why would you let tomato sauce get in the way of lovely bread and cheese?), and we really haven't had pizza for a long time. Thus, when Luke is faced with a piece of pizza, he reacts the same way he usually does to an unfamiliar food: Why are you trying to poison me? Why are you giving me this burning hot piece of so-called food? But last weekend when I asked Michael to come up with an idea for dinner this week and Eleanor had already suggested bratwurst, he suggested individual pizzas. He has become enamored with roasted garlic (a result of Easter dinner, lamb shanks with rosemary and 3 heads of garlic in the slow cooker), and so he wanted to try it out on a white pizza. Sinc...

Amanda and I have been playing "make new friends at the playground" with her dolls for a long time. The script goes something like this: One doll meets another, introduces herself, asks the others' name, then they find something to do like going to the beach, going to Mars, and so on. I've noticed Amanda trying the script out on new friends at the playground. Luke has been paying careful attention, apparently. The other day at the park he walked up to the mom of one of the 18-month- olds at the park and announced, "Hi! I'm Luke!" They got into a nice exchange of names. I went over to make sure he was being polite, and he announced, "I'm just making friends!" (he's pretty loud with these announcements). Then he was sliding down the double slide right next to another boy about his age. They got off the slide at the same time and Luke got right next to him and said loudly, "Hi! I'm Luke!" I was right there, so I sug...

This evening Eleanor went down to practice viola. As soon as she started playing, (the Tallis Cannon, if you're interested) another vibration started up. At first, I thought it might be the speakers for the TV or something. However, it hadn't been going on before I went downstairs so that didn't make sense. I made Eleanor stop playing so I could hear the noise better, and the noise went away. She started again, and the noise came back. Hmmm . Maybe a bug? The noise was coming from behind the couch, so Eleanor and I looked but didn't see anything. We figured it was probably under the couch and couldn't be easily found. Eleanor tried to keep playing, but the noise was pretty distracting. I went up to find Michael to see if he would kindly remove the bug from our rec room so Eleanor could practice. When Michael came down again, the bug (almost certainly a cicada) was quiet again, but started right up again when Eleanor started playing. Michael said the bug ...

Amanda, holding two similar-sized balls: "This one is gravity-darker!" "You mean heavier?" "Yes!"

The easter bunny did manage to make it to our house last night, thanks to a late night trip to the grocery store. This brought up reason #4291 to hate food allergies: it's hard to find a chocolate bunny. Fortunately, they had purple straw, candy corn, jelly beans (I love the starburst ones) and my favorite, robin's eggs. They are malt inside chocolate inside a candy shell, and are soooo good. Well, Luke found his basket this morning (after some broad hints) and he ate all the candy corn. Then he wanted a "marble", so I gave him a robins egg after telling him what they were. He bit into one and started crying. He then started rubbing them in the floor, trying to get the candy coating off. "I don't like the ones with poop in them!" he cried. Which left me dumbfounded. But I guess I'll have to eat his robin's eggs for him. Too bad...

Over spring break we drove up to Williamsburg VA, and went to two places, one educational and one less so. they were both fun. We went with some of Eleanor's friends from school. Luke vastly preferred Busch Gardens. Although there were many rides we had to sit out from, one of the first ones we went up on was an "airplane" ride, where you control your height by pulling back on a stick. Luke got the idea right away. Later on, we spent a lot of time going from the gliders to the balloons to the gliders to the balloons---there were no lines, so we just got on. I think that was the most fun Luke had all day, no waiting. Eleanor started out the day at the Loch Ness Monster, a roller coaster which has loop de loops. She claims to have had a good time, but after that she forswore any further roller coasters, to her father's disappointment. Eleanor especially enjoyed anything that got her wet: Le Scoot, Roman Rapids and Escape from Pompeii. Pompeii had real fire ,...

Luke, climbing under the sink (it is empty): "Hi, I'm going to New York City. Bye! I push the button." He closes the doors. I hear a "hmmmmmm..." noise. I didn't know you could get to new york city on the elevator... on the other hand, maybe it was a transporter.

Sunday night at my house: Me: "OK, Luke, it's time to get into jammies !" Luke: It's not night! Me: But it's 7:15 (later than usual bedtime), and so you need to brush your teeth and get ready for bed. Luke: (going over to the window) Look Mama! It's still morning! It's not time to go to sleep yet! Me: You still have to go to school tomorrow at the same time, so you need to get to bed. Luke: (grabbing the carpet with his fingernails as I drag him off to his bedroom) ( ok , that's an exxageration .) Noooooo ! When we had finished getting into jammies and brushing teeth, the sun was starting to go down and he said, "See Mama! Now it's night!" I'm glad we don't live in Alaska (or England, for that matter). He had trouble sleeping last night, due to bad dreams. When I asked him about them, he said, "I will tell the pumpkin to go away!" Apparently they were about a pumpkin, "and that scared me and made me cry....

We were playing "guess the number" at breakfast today. It goes like this: "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10," "Is it 5?" "Higher." "7?" "Lower." "6?" "That's it!" Eleanor brought up the idea of using fractions, and her number turned out to be 3.5. Then Michael started in. "I'm thinking of a number between 3 and 4." 3 1/2? lower. 3 1/4? lower. 3 1/8? higher. I figured out as soon as he started that the number was pi, and so we had a discussion about the fact that you could get closer and closer with fractions, but never guess the exact right number. This is hard for much older kids, I'm not sure exactly what Eleanor got... Then we had to discuss what pi measures. The idea that you want to know the exact distance around a circle makes sense, although Eleanor figures that in the real world, you could just take a measurement and it would be good enough. I star...

During the winter Olympics we recorded some days and watched them later (less commentary, no commercials, no hockey) (sorry, hockey loving friends). One day we watched figure skating, downhill skiing, and the snowboard cross---4 snowboarders going down the hill all at once. Guess which one Amanda wants to do when she grows up. Not figure skating. She thought the snowboard cross looked good. I guess at least it's not hockey =)

We have 2 unopened bottles of Diet Coke in our pantry. We got them for parties, more than a year ago, I think, and now we're saving them to put mentos in , whenever we get around to it. Luke has been playing with them lately---I got him to stop throwing them, so now he rolls them around. Today he found some pencils the girls had gotten from valentine's day. He took two and started singing his favorite song, "My Favorite Pillow," while banging on the tops of the bottles. He then gave me a pencil as well. I started banging, and he said, "No! It's a violin!" So I played the violin, and Luke played the drums and sang. Here are the approximate lyrics to "My favorite pillow" (the louder the better, especially in the car or in restaurants): My favorite pillow! My favorite pillow! Fire truck! Fire truck! My favorite pillow! Fire Truck! There's a fire station! Fire truck! etc.

We were getting ready to go get Eleanor, and I sent Amanda out to the car to get something. She came running back in, breathless. "Mom, there's a dog in our car!" I tend to leave the garage door open to give the kids the opportunity to ride bikes, and I also have the bad habit of leaving the car doors open, so I wasn't entirely surprised, although I hoped it wasn't our next door dog, since he's a Golden Retriever and very big. I also hoped it wasn't some other sort of animal that Amanda had mistaken for a dog... Sure enough, the little neighborhood dog (a Shih - tzu , as I later found out) was snuffling around in our car after crumbs. This is the dog that followed me onto the porch last summer, and he's really sweet, but not shy at all. I got him out of the car, looked at his tag, and went inside to get the phone. He followed us right in and started looking around the table for more to eat---he seemed a bit astounded by the sheer volume of crumb...

I managed to organize the games cabinet. This means I put all the random pieces back in their correct boxes, and I threw out the ones that have lost too many pieces (except Blokus , which will never be the same after Eleanor broke the pieces so she could spell her name). It doesn't look all that different, frankly. I did make the lowest shelf for games the kids don't need to touch, the top shelf is for games they could (theoretically) play by themselves, and the middle is for games they can play with a grown-up. Most of the games on the middle shelf are there because there are so many pieces in them that I don't want them gotten out at random: Candyland , puzzles, dominoes, card games, etc. Luke, Amanda and I tried paying a few games. Amanda really enjoys playing games at school, and is especially good with shape games. Hmm , I should pick up some tangoes for her... At any rate, we played " Cariboo " which involves matching cards to pictures on doors, usi...

We got a little bit of snow last night, although it doesn't look as though school is closed or delayed. Eleanor's assessment: "That's the kind of snow that melts right before you go outside."

Yesterday Eleanor and I went to "Family Aerobics" at the gym. It is meant for kids older than 6 and their whole families---there were quite a few girls with their moms, but also dads and sons, and a few families. I think Eleanor mostly went because she wanted to see the mysterious "upper floor" of the gym ( cardio and weights)---only 12 year olds and up are allowed up there. She was pretty convinced that she wouldn't have any fun, and kept repeating that, but I'm not sure. We were called out just as class started to change Luke's diaper (they won't do it in the child care center), so we missed the warm up. The class was marching on these half ball things, which I think Eleanor would have enjoyed. We then played "jumping jack tag," and Eleanor got to be "it"(one of 3) for one of the games. Jumping jack tag is a bit like freeze tag, but you go to the edge of the room and do jumping jacks instead of being frozen. Also, you ...

Amanda has been coming into our room in the morning, before I'm really ready to get up, to snuggle. As the middle child (and as the quietest and least demanding of her siblings), she gets all too few moments alone with me, so it is nice. Today she came in as usual, and I tried to get back to sleep for a few more minutes. One of Amanda's strengths is that she can be still an quiet when asked to, although sometimes she just needs to talk ("Mom, did you know that a mouse has teeth that are so sharp they can bite through your finger? Mom, how do you make air?"). But she whispers, and she will be quiet for a minute or two when you shush her. She came in this morning, and we snuggled, and then we heard Luke wake up. Amanda agreed that we could invite him in, so she ran to her brother and asked, "We're having a snuggle party. Would you like to come?" Luke agreed, so I got him out of his crib with his 3 friends, and we snuggled. Luke is constitutionally ...

Luke is amazing to me---he pays careful attention to "the way things are done," and then does them that way, without being taught or prompted. Here are some things he learned somewhere (not in our house) and has decided to do. Put your shirt on with your arms first. Michael may actually have taught him this, but I never ever tried putting his arms in first until he started asking me. Now he absolutely insists. He's actually pretty good about getting into his shirt and can almost do it by himself. Eat your cereal with milk. Eleanor may have done this once, but none of the rest of us do---I don't eat cereal, Amanda can't have milk (although she can have soy milk) and Michael hasn't had milk in his cereal for a long time. Luke only will eat the cereal with milk. Put water on your toothpaste before brushing. I have no idea where he found out that this is the correct procedure---I read somewhere that doing this dilutes the toothpaste so I have never put wate...

Just after the snowstorm, we ventured out and got the kids a haircut. I admit to getting their hair cut really short so that we don't have to go in as often. I wish I could cut Eleanor's hair---she's saving her hair for "Locks of Love" and so really she just needs trims, but she's so squirmy I'd be afraid of poking her eye out, much less doing something silly to her hair... Amanda always gets the "Stacked bob". It fits her face, hair, and personality beautifully. In fact, she's a walking advertisement for the hair cutting place, since people often comment "What a beautiful haircut!" and she tells them where she got it. For Luke, I just ask for the "short boy cut." This time the stylist used the buzzers and zoomed them around his head. He, for his part, spent the haircut trying to see what the buzzers were doing, another reason I'm glad not to be cutting the kids' hair. He looks awfully cute, but much too muc...

After the snow and the slush, it was finally nice enough for the kids to go to the park today. Eleanor hosted a "Y princess" meeting, so it was just Amanda and Luke. I could not convince them to put on their jackets, but it was 40 degrees, sunny, and not very windy so they were comfortable. They dug in the sand, swung, and played on the equipment (favorite game: Mama sits at the bottom of the slide and children run into her). The biggest excitement, though, was when a young teenager started practicing his skateboarding tricks. Amanda ran over first and tried to talk to him. Then Luke ran over and tried to run in front of him as he was skating---not a good idea. I put him and Amanda on top of the climbing rock so they had a good view and couldn't get down to get in the skateboarder's way. Amanda watched for a while, very interested when he tried to jump up on the bench and slide along it. Luke was fascinated, watching the whole time. The kid protested that he ...

Last weekend half the neighborhood came out to the "big hill" in our neighborhood and went sledding. It made sense: there were clearly not going to be any people driving on it for a while. This snow reminds me again why flexible flyers exist: they were just perfect on the ice. I never saw the point of them in MN, but they work great down here. One of our problems was that we only had the "sledge" that Michael made (here I would insert a picture if I were technically inclined). It works fine for puling kids, but not so well for going down the hill---it kept getting caught, going sideways (a result of warped 2x4s, as well as no varnish yet). Eleanor helped out by running ahead of Luke and Amanda on the sledge, which kept it going and kept it reasonably straight. However, Luke fell off, banged his shoulder up quite nicely, and after that refused to sit on the sledge if it was heading even remotely downhill, even when Daddy was pulling it. There were plenty of sl...

In case anyone is wondering, Amanda's and Luke's feet are now the same size---well almost. Amanda's left foot is a size 9.5 and her right foot is a size 9. Luke's right foot is a 9.5 and his left foot is a size 9. (They are left and right handed, respectively).

Today, in the car: "I know what hiccups are for! They're to push all the words back into your word box!" (Yes, word box means voice box. But Amanda calls it word box.) "Mom, how far does Jesus take our sins away from us? Like to outer space? But then what happens when we are in a spaceship in outer space?"

Yesterday was not a good day for Luke and Mama. He broke the vacuum cleaner (at least, he was touching it when it broke). He pressed enough buttons on the TV that I had to reset the TV, and was nearly knocking the TV over by leaning on it. Then I thought I'd get ahead by cleaning the house while the kids were playing downstairs---and I come down to find that he's written on the carpet in dry erase marker. You know, the kind that say "does not come off of porous surfaces." You would think that we wouldn't have any of those sorts of markers left in the house after the sharpie incident, but we haven't managed to purge them all yet... This, in a nutshell, is one reason the house is not cleaner than it is---leaving Luke for a moment leads to disaster too much of the time.

Amanda yesterday came home talking about the "brownhog," which comes out of his ground on brownhog day. If he sees his shadow, he "runsdowntohisholeasfastashecan!" and goes back to sleep. She then told me that we get 6 more weeks of winter. (I was never sure whether this was a good thing: 6 more weeks of winter sounded great compared with 3 months in MN...) She is also learning a southern accent while at school---her teachers are from South Carolina and Georgia. She's definitely a mimic. Noone would be fooled by her accent, since she lays it on pretty thick ("Ahhd lahk to go out saahhd!") but it is pretty humorous...

We got ice and snow yesterday. Here are a few notes: I made Eleanor and Amanda eat breakfast before they went out. I didn't let them call any neighborhood friends at 7:30. I know, mean mommy. When I asked Luke if he wanted to go outside, he said, "No, I don't think so." When I asked him why, he said, "It's too cold." I think he had some traumatic experiences with snow inside his boots and mittens when we went skiing. He's a little southern boy... Eleanor complained that we didn't have a sled. I told her that we could buy one later, but she wanted to go out right then. Unfortunately, there is no way we are even getting out the driveway even today with our tires and front wheel drive car. So she asked Daddy if he could try to make something in the workshop. It didn't take too much wheedling before Michael (the original MacGyver ) whipped up a sled from an old piece of plywood and some 2 by 4s. It doesn't go all that fast, but it ...

Got up this morning at 7:30 (oh, the luxury!). I was surprised, but not that surprised, that Eleanor and Amanda were sleeping. But when I went past their bedrooms, the doors were open and Eleanor's light was on. I heard their voices---followed the sound, and they are down in the basement playing happily together. I can't quite figure out what they are playing (might be school) but you know, I think I'll let them keep playing. Someday I'll wake up and they will already be dressed and have eaten breakfast, and will probably be driving to the mall, or something.

Many years ago (back in graduate school) one of my favorite rituals was going to the campus bookstore and getting a calendar for the new year. I never lost hope that this was the year I would suddenly get organized---hasn't happened yet. One of my favorite calendars used to be the Nature Conservancy. The pictures were really stunning---more than the Audubon calendars, which had more animals and birds and other distractions. One year in particular, I wanted to save the whole calendar, but instead cut out 3 pictures that I really liked: a picture of a cloud over a rock, some brightly colored leaves on a green background, and a purple flower on a background of grey. I put the pictures in a see-through frame (2 sheets of glass held together by light wood) and never even managed to put them up. So now, more than 10 years later, my kids are going through the pictures we didn't put up on the "picture wall". Luke found the picture of the rock and the cloud, and he kept g...

Luke does not want to turn the humidifier (fire!) back on, even if he coughs. This is because if he turns it on, he will get the hiccups, and fly up into the sky, and get trapped on the ceiling. He doesn't want to get trapped on the ceiling because of the monster. Sometimes it's really hard not to laugh...

Luke's class at school made "stone soup" a few months ago. Luke was very impressed with making it, less impressed with how it tasted. At any rate, one of his beloved teachers apparently splashed some stone soup on Luke's nose and wiped it off with a kleenex . Luke came home and told us the story, and now whenever he has a runny nose he wants us to wipe, he says "I have stone soup on my nose! Wipe it off!" This comes in varying degrees of intensity, depending on his emotional state at the time. This would be the end of it, except of course that Luke's pronunciation is that of a 2 year old boy, and so when he says "stone soup" it comes out as "tone poop!" When trying to get him to say "soup", it often comes out as " sssss poop". I have finally started to understand what he is talking about, so I don't get one bodily function confused with another. But his older sister (Amanda, not Eleanor, who is too old to...

Amanda, as I was leaving her room: Mama, you forgot something! I went back over to Amanda and she grabbed my neck and gave me a kiss. Me: A kiss! Just for me! Amanda: You can keep that one. It was sweeter in real life than it looks in print.