mathmom's blog

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 ,...