mathmom's blog

Today we watched the space shuttle Discovery take off---live, but via computer. I still remember sitting in class watching the first one take off (or maybe not the first one---the teachers might have worried that something would go wrong). The whole school stopped, there were cheers, and everyone wanted to be an astronaut. I'm still not sure where I watched it---there almost certainly weren't enough TVs to go around, but the gym doesn't sound feasible. Probably we went down the hall to watch with another class. I remember when Challenger was destroyed: launches were routine enough that school didn't stop for them, but exciting enough that they still put TVs in the hall for us all to see. I was near the home ec classroom, and I remember talking to my sewing teacher, although I'm not sure I understood what was going on. Today as we were watching, I wondered what kind of space flight my kids would live to see. Luke watched with glowing eyes: "It's takin...

I found Luke grinding salt into a bowl. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Making winter," was the answer. He brought the bowl of salt into the kitchen. "Now we have to microwave it. The salt will puff up and turn into snow!" Now he's asking to add sugar, and that is how you make winter. Or maybe you put the salt outside and freeze it... Hmmm.

Typically my girls don't play pretend with bad guys, but for a long time Amanda was a superhero who fought them every day, and Luke is "Luke Skywalker ," whose claim to fame is killing bad guys. I am decidedly ambivalent, but I do admit that when I try to intervene, the games get less exciting. The bad guys usually apologize and are forgiven, a common scenario for the pint size badness in our house (tearing someone's paper, playing with someone's toys, hitting someone). It is not as satisfactory for the big size crimes of the pretend bad guys. They've watched and read plenty of stories with bad guys who die horrible deaths---think of Hansel and Gretel. So is it OK to push someone into an oven? Is it OK to pretend to push someone into an oven? What if you are acting out Hansel and Gretel? It makes me cringe to see my kids pretending to kill anyone, even a bad guy. But I haven't found a good solution. Of course, there is the logical solution of the...

Luke just turned 4, and we had a family birthday party for him. There were presents and a cake with candles. He has apparently gotten over the worst of his fear of fire, since his eyes were glowing happily when we lit the candles, and he didn't protest when we moved the cake closer to him so that he could actually blow out the candles instead of blowing across the table. I think he doesn't remember previous birthdays, since he keeps saying "This is my first birthday party!" We do correct him, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. He does love to help me bake, and he was very clear about what kind of cake he wanted. "Blueberry chocolate chip," he told me on the playground earlier today. I'm not surprised, since he's fascinated by blueberries, although his sisters both don't like them. So this afternoon I went to my favorite search engine and looked for vegan blueberry cake. (I realize I should have planned ahead. In my defense, I ...

Luke, bringing a box of kleenex: "Could you please wipe the tears out of my eyes so that I can talk not baby talk? ... Thank you, now I can talk not baby talk!"

Ella and I (Michael) built an air film bearing hovercraft , at her specific request and sole instigation. This is surprisingly easy. The hard part is to get the right tension on the skirt. It can hold an adult. The whole family tried it (serially, not simultaneously). It's hard to really get the idea from a still image, though; it really takes a movie .