mathmom's blog

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...