mathmom's blog

Luke is helping me to decorate for Halloween. He painted some old plastic bottles and tupperware black (with ink from the dot-a-dot marker) and buried them partway in the garden. I think I appreciate it, but I'm not sure yet...

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...

Last night we were singing through our Christmas Carol book. Actually, mostly I sing and Amanda dances. She looked at the picture of the angels on "Away in a manger" and said, "I like the angels. They're like big fairies!"

Amanda was very interested in helping put away all the ornaments from our Christmas tree, and she was actually a big help, rather than a hindrance. We also took down the stockings, the wreaths, the Nativity scene... When we finished moving the Christmas tree out of the house, Amanda looked and said sadly, "Christmas is really all gone!" She was pleased to learn that it would come back next year.

Eleanor announced today that she wanted to have a New Year's party, with just our family. As usual, she was trying to explain this to me while I was doing about 10 other things, so I asked her to write down a list of what she wanted to eat and what she wanted to do, using abbreviations if necessary. In the past she would have demurred, saying that she didn't know how to spell, or write, or something else. This time, however, she agreed. Here is her list, from both sides of a sheet of paper: First side: 2009 cupcakes sandwigis yogret (Amanda) OJ Mlik Second side: race hoop's obstickle sandbox trow Thus we see that Eleanor is getting braver about sounding out words and writing down what she thinks they sound like. We also see that adding extraneous apostrophes starts early. Some notes: she wanted to have cupcakes decorated with the numbers 2009. Since we didn't have frosting, we used some chocolate chips on the chocolate cupcakes. The "trow" refers to eac...

Sorry I've been AWOL for the past few weeks. We've had guests, been really sick (which is a blog post in itself), and been doing family things. I've tried to make up for it today, and keeping up with the blog would definitely be one of my resolutions, if I were making any. Happy New Year!

Recently, I have been reading lots of blogs about whether you should continue to let kids believe in Santa, or whether you should tell them the Truth about Santa, that he is based on an ancient saint and in his current magical form, is just a Story. One article I especially appreciate is by Tony Woodlief , who wrote in the Wall Street Journal that it is important to retain a belief in the magical, rather than let the world be defined by what we can see and touch. I like the article, in part because it includes several of my favorite authors (Chesterton, Lewis, MacDonald), but I don't practice his advice in my own life. Here is my experience with Eleanor. We have always done Santa in a very restrained way: we have stockings filled with chocolate, socks and one toy. The presents under the tree are all from people, not from Santa. When Eleanor started asking questions like "How does Santa get into our house? There's glass in front of the fireplace?" I made a point...

I was inspired by reading some other blogs to post my favorite Christmas carols. My top three are: Of the Father's love begotten. 5 th century Latin poetry, 11 th century music. Mysterious, eerie, chill inspiring (in a good way =). It really manages to integrate doctrine and music; you get an idea of what questions the Christians were asking at the time from what Prudentius writes about in the hymn. Lo, how a rose ere blooming. 15h century German lyrics, music by Praetorious . I love the rhythms and the harmonies, which can be difficult to sing unless you have training from a young age in the Lutheran church... Hark the herald angels sing. Charles Wesley could certainly write a good tune (that is understatement, by the way). Fun to sing as loud as you can, with trumpets and organ, if you can find them. The girls like Away in a manger and Silent night, probably because those are the ones I can remember all the words to, those are the ones I sing to them at night, and thos...

The place we got our Christmas pictures taken today had a Santa Claus visiting (so you could get your picture taken with him, I suppose). Amanda was standing in the middle of the hallway in a daze of some sort, and he had to get by. She looked up, moved out of the way for him to pass, and went back to whatever she was doing. I asked her, "Who was that?" She answered, "I didn't know that Santa Claus was going to be here." She was interested in watching him, but not really in talking with him. Towards the end of the visit, she explained, "I saw you in a movie!" She had been watching The Santa Clause for about 10 minutes today while I tried (unsuccessfully) to put Luke down for a nap. I can see that seeing Santa was confusing for her. He's clearly not imaginary---she saw him both on TV and in real life. On the other hand, most people don't dress like that, but then again, she doesn't really have the experience to decide that he's r...

We finally got rid of our jack-o-lanterns today. I like making jack- o-lanterns mostly for the pumpkin seeds, which are worth their weight in gold based on the amount of trouble they are to make. Eleanor designed her own face this year, although the carving was done by Michael. Amanda provided direction on how to make her face, and Michael took off the top layer of pumpkin skin while leaving the rest of the rind. This made the face glow faintly when you lit the candle inside, which was a nice effect. Unfortunately this design made it difficult to get enough air into the pumpkin to keep the candle lit. Over the past few days, the pumpkins have been sitting in our entryway getting greener and hairier. We finally took them out to our "vegetable garden" (where we kill vegetable plants, as opposed to our flower garden where we kill flowers) for compost. Amanda had a good time helping me push the wheelbarrow ("I have very strong bones") and watching as I tried to s...

I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog (link missing because I'm too lazy =) that Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I mean, I spend the rest of the year trying to keep candy out of my kids hands, and I'm supposed to be happy about strangers corrupting my kids' taste buds ? (Not to mention the allergy issue, which makes everything more difficult.) I do enjoy the creativity of making costumes, but this year I got off remarkably easy. I thought that Eleanor was going to be difficult, because she kept changing what she wanted to be. I laid down the law: on September 15 th , whatever decision she made was permanent. All summer she talked on and off about being "a skeleton riding a bike." Not easy to make, but not impossible, I thought. But then on Labor Day we went to a party with a Hawaiian theme---they even gave out grass skirts and leis. Eleanor liked her grass skirt so much that she decided to be a hula dancer for Halloween. We then got a purple tank to...

Yesterday, Eleanor and Daddy went to a municipal fireworks display put on by a nearby town. Today, Michael bought a 41-pack of fountain fireworks at the grocery store because he felt that his daughters would be deprived without having their own fireworks. As a child, he was used to setting off sparklers, firecrackers (especially for tin can rockets), small bottle rockets, catherine wheels, fountains, and other fireworks, many of which were actually legal. For some reason, he thinks that he should pass this on to his children. Luke quivered in terror at all fireworks that made noise, sparks, or smoke, or even had bright lights. After they went off, he blew at them because they looked hot and needed to be cooled off. Smart boy. Amanda: "Those were great fireworks. I need to go into the house to get my raincoat. Can you put my raincoat on me?" She watched them, but I couldn't get a picture of her watching the fireworks because she was hiding behind me with her hands...

When I was little, I would make projects in school for my mother. I always assumed that she loved them, she never gave me any reason to think that she didn't. As I grew up a little, I looked objectively at the things I gave her and decided on my own that she really didn't love them, she loved me and was too nice to tell me that they were not worth keeping. I mean, who needs all those bookmarks and pots anyway. I stopped (mostly) giving her handmade things for mother's day, unless I thought they were really objectively worth keeping. This year Eleanor made me a necklace with a heart on it. "It's symmetrical!" she told me, and pointed out how she had made the beads the same on each side. Every time I would talk to her about school, she would mention that they were making a surprise, but that I shouldn't ask any more about it. When she brought home the present in her bag she uncharacteristically brought her bag right up to her room and hid it in her clos...

I was just reading a blog about a mother, recovering from surgery, who felt bad because she didn't have green milk and lucky charms for breakfast on St. Patrick's day this year. Some of the commenters said they try to make their lives revolve around their children, but they can't for too long... I have a hard time relating to this. I have always felt that the correct analogy for my children is not that I revolve around them like a planet around a sun, but that they are satellites revolving around me. Let me point out first of all that there are 3 of them, and I physically can't revolve around all 3 of them at the same time (unless by a miracle they all want me to do the same thing, which almost never happens...) They really do seem like my satellites. Luke is like something in low earth orbit, very nearby, practically crowding into my atmosphere. Amanda is further out (perhaps geosynchronous orbit) but well within view. As Eleanor gets older, she's going in to her ...

When I was in 2nd grade, my Grandma taught me to make Swedish hearts . Ever since then, I have made these for Valentines day (I often don't mail the ones I've made, so if you haven't gotten one, that doesn't mean I didn't make one for you...) I remember making 35 or so for all the kids in my class in elementary school. The best thing about them is that they look impossible, but they're really not too hard to make (although making 35 and writing names on all of them does take a long time, so I advise you to start much earlier than I did when I was younger.) When Eleanor started school, I continued the tradition by making the hearts for her class. When she was 2, I made all the hearts. When she was 3, she cut some of the hearts. Last year she did everything except weave the hearts. I was all excited this year to teach her how to weave the hearts, but when I asked her if she wanted to get started (it's best to start in January making a few each day) she ...

Here are a few traditions, old and new. Tree: We usually cut down a tree at one of the tree farms around here: it's cheaper, and you have more of a sense that this tree was actually growing somewhere before you decided to decorate your house with it. We were getting sick on and off, so we decided to send the girls and daddy out to buy a tree. They got a nice small one (so they could decorate more of it, they said). My mom used to buy a new ornament for each of the kids when we were growing up and then gave them to us when we got our own houses. We used those as well as a few the kids made and some I have gotten for them. We don't have a garland, but we have some fancy red and gold ribbon. We don't have a tree topper---nothing can hold a candle to the fiber-optic star my family had when we were growing up, in my opinion. This year we cut stars out of yellow tag board and let the girls decorate them with glitter glue. It is very festive! Gingerbread house: So we did...

Well, we had Thanksgiving at our house, and we had a good time. We invited a friend of Eleanor's and her family: the mom is Hatian, and was very interested in trying American Thanksgiving dishes. She said she had never had cranberries! We did very traditional dishes: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberries, green beans, pie and apple crisp. Except for the stuffing and the pie, it was entirely dairy, egg, soy, wheat, nut and tree nut free! This was actually not as challenging as it sounds: the key was having a good margarine (we use Benecol). Cooking a big meal like this is fun for me, although it wasn't always and it isn't without its own stresses. After many years of practicing, cooking makes me feel competent. When I change recipes to make them fit my needs but still taste good, I feel creative. And when I provide a healthy meal for my family (whether or not they eat it) I feel satisfied. Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving with...

Today we held Amanda's 3rd birthday party. We had a good time, despite the fact that I am incapable of being a relaxed hostess, and worry way too much about everything. We ended up just having one family from Amanda's preschool class over---we were supposed to have two families, but I didn't get around to inviting the second family until they had already made plans for the weekend... oops. Actually, it was just as well that we had fewer people, since I don't know where we would have sat if there had been more of us. They came over at about 11:30, we ate (hamburgers and hot dogs, chips, carrots and apples). It is amazing that the kids will sit still for so much longer when there are other people at the table amusing them. Then we went outside and played for a while with foam airplanes, big soft frisbees and water balloons---the water balloons were regular size ones that Eleanor filled up with water as far as she could in the sink, meaning that they won't break...

I have already mentioned that I don't really like Halloween. I had vowed not to take Eleanor and Amanda trick-or-treating this year, but Michael managed to get me to do it anyway by arranging a gas leak... I got back from picking up Amanda, and I wanted to let her watch a little TV while I nursed Luke in peace and quiet (because if she is in the room, Luke has no interest in eating and wants to eat all night instead). I went downstairs and caught a whiff of what I thought was gas. I really couldn't tell where it was coming from, it didn't seem to be stronger near the furnace room, so I didn't trust myself. You must understand that at the previous house I thought I smelled gas all the time, but no one else could smell it. Also, I had been sure about a year ago that we had a gas leak, and I eventually traced the smell to a very stinky dishrag. I turned on the gas in the stove to see if it smelled the same---it was very similar, but not quite the same. We had to go t...

Luke has been sick the last few days. Not quite enough to obviously go to the doctor: he had a low grade fever, was a bit sad, but wasn't throwing up or pulling his ear or dehydrated. Also, he always seems to get more sad at about 4:30, just the time when it's not practical to go to the pediatrician. Yesterday he was so tired that he glommed on to my chest and wouldn't let me put him down all afternoon---on the other hand, he didn't want to go to sleep in his crib. He has been much much better in the mornings. He was, however, sick enough at night that I've gotten 5 or fewer hours of sleep the last three nights. This makes me not want to take the time to write blog entries. It makes me not want to clean the kitchen, which is much more necessary (although less fun) in our home life. I have been falling prey to the problem that led me to start a blog in the first place: spending too much time reading random blogs and not enough time writing my own. Hopefully ...