mathmom's blog

Amanda leaves a lot out of her cartoons, but she explained this one to me.  The man and the woman are having a conversation about whether the year 33,033 will ever happen. (This was inspired by my observation that I've seen 2 palindromic years, but amanda might not see any.  Doesn't seem fair.)  The man can't believe it, but the woman knows that you can't stop time.  At least that's how I understood what she was telling me at the time. It was interesting to me that she really seems to believe that women in general are smarter than men, but she thinks that michael is smarter than me.  Go figure.

This summer I had 2 goals for my children (I know, making goals for your children is incredibly arrogant, but I made them anyway). I wanted Luke to learn to swim and Amanda to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. Well, Luke is not doing so well in the swimming department, but Amanda has ditched the training wheels. I actually removed the training wheels from her bike a few months ago, but she has responded by not riding her bike. For the past few weeks we've been visiting Grandma and Grandpa, where everyone rides bikes. I asked Michael to test Amanda and help her learn to ride without training wheels. He came back and said that Amanda was capable of riding without them, but she wanted them on. Apparently she was afraid of falling. The problem is that training wheels really interfere with riding fast and without falling. We would ride down the long sidewalk near GM and GP's house, and she'd be stuck with Luke, while the big kids were riding fast and furiou...

Amanda and Luke have taken ancient cell phones (about 10 years old, I think) and are "playing" video games on them. Luke is playing "Star Wars," where he plays Luke Skywalker and fights hundreds of bad guys and kills them. Amanda is playing "Dragon World," where some mean dragons have stolen Toothless, and you play Hiccup trying to rescue them. Whenever you make progress, there is a short video you get to watch with Toothless doing funny things to the dragons who captured him. Can you please tell me where they get these ideas? As far as I know, Amanda's only contact with video games is 1) playing with the screen savers on my phone, 2) playing PBS kids games, and 3) watching one of her friends play for about 15 minutes every week while she's being carpooled. I'm not sure Luke has ever held a hand held video game aside from the screen savers we play on my phone. It sure makes me more resolved not to buy a DS or other game for them, though...

Amanda has taken to doing math before bed instead of reading stories. I'm not sure I understand, but I do enjoy---we've looked at addition, subtraction, multiplication, roman numerals, symmetry, and so on. If you have any ideas for what to cover next, I'd love to hear them! One night I decided to look at math in music---specifically, some patterns in the violin piece she's been practicing. I told her that we would be doing music math that night, and she said skeptically, " Ooookaaaay ..." She seemed to enjoy the subject. But afterward, she said that she was a bit surprised. "I thought that by math music, you meant something like 'One violin plus one violin equals one banjo, and one banjo plus one banjo equals one guitar!" I guess I know what she thinks of banjos... =)

Amanda has branched out in what she is learning to write. Unfortunately, she hasn't got spelling down, but since she spells it like it sounds, it's not too hard. "farm Amanda, to Joolyona" (from Amanda, to Juliana) "my marmad" (my mermaid) It's times like these I think of Mark Twain's " Plan for the Improvement of the English Language ." (This is posted at a government web site, which makes me want to see what else is posted there...)

Amanda's 6 th birthday party was a week ago. She wanted a mermaid party, so we decided to invite a few girls (on the theory that the boys might not be really interested) from her class to our house for a mermaid event. There are only 10 girls in her class, so I decided to invite all of them over on the theory that most of them had soccer or other activities and wouldn't be able to come. All but 2 came, and a few brought siblings, so we were pretty full up. Fortunately it was an absolutely beautiful warm fall day, so we were able to take much of the stuff outside. The first thing we did was the most fun birthday activity I've ever done. We got a long roll of butcher paper and I painted a few pieces of seaweed on it. Then we got out ALL our brushes and a box of Crayola poster paints. I told the girls to paint undersea things--- octopi , sea horses, mermaids, fish... Some painted jellyfish, or clams, and Ella added a ship. It came out so beautiful! Everyone had fun....

Amanda to Ella: "Could you tell me how I am annoying?" Ella looks up, speechless (for once). "By telling you things that you already know?" continues Amanda. "Yeah," answers Ella. "But I bet you already knew that..." says Amanda. I really could not have made that one up, folks.

Amanda brought a bag full of small pieces of paper which she had colored on. "Could you laminate these, please?" It turned out they are invitations for mermaids. She wants to laminate them and then drop them in the ocean. One side has a picture of a mermaid on it, complete with a tail instead of legs and surrounded by blue water. The other side has a few symbols: A, ♥, M. It turns out that she wanted to write on the back, "Dear mermaids, could you please come to the state pond of North Carolina? Love, Amanda." As she said, "If you can't write that whole sentence, you just have to write A heart M." It seems like a good plan, although she did ask me tonight if the place where mermaids live is connected to the pond of North Carolina. I first asked if she thought mermaids were real. "No, mermaids are pretend," she said. "Well, in that case," I said, "the mermaids can certainly come to North Carolina." She seemed rel...

I took the girls to their first martial arts lesson yesterday. I'd been looking around for some sort of physical activity for them---they both are taking string lessons, but I think there needs to be something more active. A friend of ours mentioned that the local studio is run and taught by women, and Ella thought that was pretty neat and wanted to try it. They got there and tried on their uniforms: both ended up being a little big, although Amanda's (the smallest size) really needs some taking up =) They got to sit on a spot on the floor, learn a few rules (don't be a bully was the most important one---don't abuse your Tae k won do). They learned a few rituals: bow to the flags (Ella correctly identified the Korean flag), tell the teacher "Thank you ma'am," jump up in the air and shout "Taekwondo!" Then they got to do a few punches and kicks into a small round foam circle. I think the main purpose of the exercises was to learn how to move ...

As Kim just blogged, we went to the mountains for Apple Festival -- for the fourth year running. Amanda was disappointed last year that she couldn't do the ropes course, and this year, as a great big five-year-old, nothing was going to keep her away. This involved a lot of waiting. First, waiting for over an hour and a half before starting climbing. Then she climbed a free rope ladder with rungs about half as far apart as she is tall, to a platform about dozen feet off the ground. Once she got there, we discovered that the "lobster claws" she was wearing were not long enough to read the safety wire, so she had to wait while they changed her over to a different set. Walking a pair of beams never seemed hard to Ella or to me, so it didn't surprise me that Amanda did fine. The bigger surprise was that she never fell off the high wire, and in fact didn't seem to have to use her hands very much -- good balance. She wanted a helping hand before she jumped across a...

Yesterday, Amanda got home from school and wanted to go play on the play structure. Fine, I thought, and I put her school bag and lunch box on the porch. We played and went in, and I forgot about the bags until this morning. This morning, when I went to make Amanda's lunch, I remembered that the bags were on the porch. They hadn't gotten wet, so I brought them in and got out the lunch bag. It didn't take me long to realize that the lunch bag was full of ants. I chased them down, killed most of them, and washed out the bag. YUCK! Then I got to the school bag. The inside was coated with ants too. I emptied them into the sink, and washed them all down. If giant ants emerge from the sewers in a few months, you can blame me! In all, making lunch took about 10 more minutes than I expected, which was OK because today, I was running about 10 minutes early. Now we just have to get rid of the stragglers. Hopefully we are not in for a long process. In the mean time, I keep...

Amanda looked over my shoulder as I checked something on my phone, saw my current "wallpaper" background choice, and said dismissively, "That's la-a-a-ame!" Kindergarten. It's where the cool kids are.

We are part of a CSA association (community supported agriculture) and we really love almost all of it. There are a few things we don't like to eat: NC grapes and eggplant are two of the biggies. Fortunately we get to choose which box of food we get delivered, provided that we request early enough. Unfortunately, for the past 2 weeks I have forgotten to request the correct box. Most of the default box is just fine (apples, peaches, loads and loads of cucumbers), but we've gotten peanuts in the boxes. First we got raw, then salted and roasted. I really feel anxious having them around the house with Amanda, like any minute she'll break out in an allergic reaction... We'll probably give away the raw ones and Michael will take the roasted ones into work, and I'll be glad to get them out of the house. Except that Ella and I tried the roasted peanuts this afternoon (Luke refused and had almonds instead). Peanuts are so good! There is nothing like them. We ea...

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...

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...

Amanda, holding two similar-sized balls: "This one is gravity-darker!" "You mean heavier?" "Yes!"

We were playing "guess the number" at breakfast today. It goes like this: "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10," "Is it 5?" "Higher." "7?" "Lower." "6?" "That's it!" Eleanor brought up the idea of using fractions, and her number turned out to be 3.5. Then Michael started in. "I'm thinking of a number between 3 and 4." 3 1/2? lower. 3 1/4? lower. 3 1/8? higher. I figured out as soon as he started that the number was pi, and so we had a discussion about the fact that you could get closer and closer with fractions, but never guess the exact right number. This is hard for much older kids, I'm not sure exactly what Eleanor got... Then we had to discuss what pi measures. The idea that you want to know the exact distance around a circle makes sense, although Eleanor figures that in the real world, you could just take a measurement and it would be good enough. I star...

During the winter Olympics we recorded some days and watched them later (less commentary, no commercials, no hockey) (sorry, hockey loving friends). One day we watched figure skating, downhill skiing, and the snowboard cross---4 snowboarders going down the hill all at once. Guess which one Amanda wants to do when she grows up. Not figure skating. She thought the snowboard cross looked good. I guess at least it's not hockey =)

We were getting ready to go get Eleanor, and I sent Amanda out to the car to get something. She came running back in, breathless. "Mom, there's a dog in our car!" I tend to leave the garage door open to give the kids the opportunity to ride bikes, and I also have the bad habit of leaving the car doors open, so I wasn't entirely surprised, although I hoped it wasn't our next door dog, since he's a Golden Retriever and very big. I also hoped it wasn't some other sort of animal that Amanda had mistaken for a dog... Sure enough, the little neighborhood dog (a Shih - tzu , as I later found out) was snuffling around in our car after crumbs. This is the dog that followed me onto the porch last summer, and he's really sweet, but not shy at all. I got him out of the car, looked at his tag, and went inside to get the phone. He followed us right in and started looking around the table for more to eat---he seemed a bit astounded by the sheer volume of crumb...

I managed to organize the games cabinet. This means I put all the random pieces back in their correct boxes, and I threw out the ones that have lost too many pieces (except Blokus , which will never be the same after Eleanor broke the pieces so she could spell her name). It doesn't look all that different, frankly. I did make the lowest shelf for games the kids don't need to touch, the top shelf is for games they could (theoretically) play by themselves, and the middle is for games they can play with a grown-up. Most of the games on the middle shelf are there because there are so many pieces in them that I don't want them gotten out at random: Candyland , puzzles, dominoes, card games, etc. Luke, Amanda and I tried paying a few games. Amanda really enjoys playing games at school, and is especially good with shape games. Hmm , I should pick up some tangoes for her... At any rate, we played " Cariboo " which involves matching cards to pictures on doors, usi...