mathmom's blog

When I was young, if I wanted to make a skirt, we went to the fabric store, looked through the pattern books, bought the pattern, fabric, and notions, pinned the tissue to the pattern, cut out all the little triangles... and so on.  Eleanor, on the other hand, picked up some fabric from a trunk sale, looked up free skirt patterns on the web, printed off the directions and went to town.  Now she's almost one skirt richer.

Saturday, before breakfast, Luke got out the fish tank cleaning tools and started cleaning away. He wanted to use kleenex to wipe off the algae from the structures, I tried to convince him that only mamas could do that. He wanted to siphon to clean the bottom ("vacuuming!") but we needed to let some water sit before I'd let him. Then he went to the piano (the "pananno", sounds like banano) and played, looked at the mechanism, decided it was broken and found a bunch of screw drivers. When I wouldn't let him do that, he found the digital clock in the basement (he probably remembered stories of his daddy's escapades with clocks) and tried to fix it. Then he got out the eggs, soy milk, oil and made a "recipe". I have told him that we are not allowed to use eggs except for recipes out of cookbooks, but he was adamant. While I was folding laundry, he cracked 5 eggs and mixed everything up (in the salad spinner...) I didn't even know he could...

Luke told his teacher today that he was a golden retriever. OK, she said. She's used to Luke. Yeah, I'm a golden retriever because I can retrieve gold things from the playground! That's genius! she said. (Apparently a leprechaun visited the playground and deposited gold painted rocks all over. Luke says we're going to have a solving party to solve the mystery of the rocks. Sounds like fun, I suppose.)

This is Amanda's rocket ship.  She noticed that two red triangles make one blue triangle, so she turned it into a rocket.  Then she asked me to take a picture and told me what to write. We love magnatiles. I think the kids party with them at least 15 minutes, probably more, every day.  Unfortunately, they haven't been available because of floods in Thailand. We hope (for many reasons) that the floods recede soon...

This is Amanda's favorite food, I think.  Wash and dry the kale well, drizzle with olive oil, bake in a 350 oven for 20 minutes, turning once.  Sprinkle with sea salt and enjoy.

Ella put on her "let's try to trick daddy face" and asked, "So, is a right triangle a triangle with three right angles?" Daddy decided that an introduction to spherical geometry was in order.

Luke just turned 5. This has some implications around our house. Luke collects many many stuffed animals and other things: Lemma, Mr. Gotche, a pillow named Eyeball and another named Pillowy... you get the idea. Tonight he was missing his blanket. We couldn't immediately find it, so I used the excuse I had been using for years: "Blankie just went on a little vacation. He'll come back in the morning." Luke looked at me like I was a crazy woman. "But they can't MOVE!" I tried again. "Don't worry, Luke, Blankie will come back in the morning." He just repeated again, "THEY can't MOVE!" After a few more tries I did get through to him the real explanation, that he had moved Blankie somewhere, but that we didn't know where and would have to look for it in the morning. In the end Luke saw Blankie's corner sticking out somewhere, so it didn't matter anyway. But I'm left wondering how many more convenient expl...