mathmom's blog

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.