mathmom's blog

Amanda and Luke were in the back seat discussing superpowers.  Whenever one of them declared that they had a superpower (like x-ray vision), the other would steal it from them. Amanda got tired of this and declared that her superpower was that no one could steal her superpower from her.  My mind is still trying to wrap itself around that.  Amanda is definitely the philosopher of the family...

For many many years I've wanted tickets to the symphony, but somehow we never got them.  I still remember going to see "Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" soon after Amanda was born and sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time worried that my phone would ring and I'd have to go home. (Looking back on this, I was being ridiculous.  Michael was perfectly capable of handling any emergency.) This year we finally got season tickets.  For the first concert, I was out of town visiting my brother.  No problem, Michael took Eleanor.  For the next concert, Amanda got sick that night.  If she had been less sad, we probably would have gone anyway, but we decided that she needed to have a parent there.  But there was no time to change the tickets, so they would have to be used that night. We asked Eleanor, who flatly refused.  I called the neighbors.  My friend was busy.  As we were doing all this calling and asking, Luke kept pestering us.  "Can I go to the con

Occasionally your children do something that makes you think they'll turn out OK.  On Halloween, Amanda trades away much of her candy because she's allergic to dairy and nuts.  Eleanor loves peanuts especially. So during trick-or-treating, Amanda specifically picked up things with nuts because she knew that Eleanor loves them.  And Eleanor specifically picked up Amanda-safe candies because she knew Amanda would have to trade. Made me smile. =)

So we didn't get any pictures of kids in costumes this year.  I'll tell you why later, but first let's get to the costumes. Eleanor wanted to be Harry Potter, or at least someone from that franchise.  She had some money saved up and asked if we could actually buy her costume---not my favorite thing to do, but for a Harry Potter robe, it actually makes a certain amount of financial sense.  She did not buy the wand (which lit up) or the broom or the tie or the white shirt, figuring that she could make something of her own.  She got a dowel from the hardware store and turned it into a wand and broom of her own. The most troublesome part came when she insisted that she'd wear her rollerblades.  They don't really fit.  She can't go up and down hills or steps in them.  She's already broken her foot on the scooter, not to mention falling down and busting out several knees of her pants.  I was seriously running out of ideas for how to say, "This is a really