A tree dies in Houston

For a couple of months now, one of the huge oaks in our front yard has been dying. Its leaves rather quickly began to turn from green to an orangish-brown before even a hint of fall was in the air. Then, last week, one of its massive branches came crashing down on our neighbors' driveway, narrowly missing their car. We knew it was only a matter of time before it happened again, so the tree guys were called and yesterday, while we spent the morning at Dewberry Farm, and the afternoon playing with a new group of homeschooling friends at a nearby park, the oak was dismantled limb by limb (the husband said there were very precarious moments involving dangling men wielding chain saws)and, by the time we got home at 5pm, only a stump remained.

The mystery of the whole thing is that, in spite of the drought, the rest of our trees and all of the grass around the dead tree seem to be doing just fine. I suspect the roots of this one branched deep under the slab of our house and under the neighbors' driveway. It's all very Luke 8. The healthy tree in the good soil flourishing 10 feet away from the dead tree choked by concrete. What remains:

A couple of days ago, Helena fell and started crying in the front room. I was in the kitchen and went in to see what had happened. I asked Harper, who'd been coloring at the table, if she had seen the injury. She said, "WELL. She was running. In the House. WHICH is inappropriate." I told her I needed a little less editorializing and a little more fact recitation. "She fell. AND started crying," she said with Great Judgment and Reproach in her voice.

We had a great day at Dewberry, once I surrendered the crazy idea that I was supposed to try to keep our group of 40 all together. I got very few pictures, but trust me, there was Fun of all sorts. Harper always enjoys the rubber duck racing:

Helena (and her shadow) on the bouncy things:


Hudson racing in the go-carts:

One other thing I don't want to forget. On Monday night, the husband was teaching a late class, and Harper and Hudson asked if we could go outside and star-gaze after baths and stories. I said yes, grudgingly, because I say no ALWAYS to any requests to delay bedtime on days when I've mothered solo all day. Anyway, I realized it was a lovely night, and that I probably say no far more than I should, so we read two books to set the mood (The Big, Big Sea by Martin Waddell, ill. Jennifer Eachus, and On a Starry Night by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, ill. David McPhail) and went out to snuggle in the hammock. It was all going fine until I scooted too far to one end of the hammock and then the hammock stand toppled over, landing the three of us and Sasha in a big heap on the ground. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, though I have a bruise on my left arm where I took the brunt of the collapse. I laughed really hard, and I think the stars were adequately gazed upon.

Week in review (a tad late)

My zeal for any consistent weekly posting wanes quickly. I don't think I'll do a day-by-day of last week, because it was pretty similar to the week before, but here are a few highlights:

**We went to the Children's Museum on Tuesday and discovered the fun treehouse exhibit we've been enjoying all summer has been replaced by a "blood-suckers" exhibit. I learned more than I wanted to about mosquitoes. There is also a tank full of leeches, and it made me happy when Harper said, "Like the ones that got on Nelly Olsen when Laura tricked her!"

**Speaking of books, I believe I've mentioned that the husband has been reading through the Narnia series with Harper and Hudson before bedtime. Hudson says "In Arnia" instead of "in Narnia" which makes me giggle.

**And on the subject of mispronunciations, Harper has always pronounced words that end in 'rn' with an extra 'i'. I first noticed it with the word 'pattern' which she pronounces "patterin." Other favorites are the planet of Saturin and the camping light lanterin. Now Hudson says them that way too. Feel free to call your neighborhood speech pathologist and send them over post haste.

**It was my birthday on Thursday and I am now 41. We went out to dinner and I got a dessert called Charlotte's Web and it was a trifle sort of thing with pieces of chocolate cake, white chocolate espresso pudding, whipped cream, and an entire Heath bar crumbled on the top. Happy birthday to me.

**My friend Molly called and invited me to join her at the symphony on Friday night. We used her dad's very excellent season tickets (5th row center) and thoroughly enjoyed the musical stylings of Idina Menzel. Idina Menzel was barefoot and full of amusing anecdotes. She sang songs from "Wicked," "Rent", (I'm not sure where that comma is supposed to go--it looks odd both ways) and "Glee." She stopped and apologized several times during the "Glee" song for making a symphony orchestra play Lady Gaga. The first half of the program (sans Idina Menzel) included Wagner and "The Funky Chicken." The conductor amuses me with his jiggy, energetic conducting and unconventional choices. He was trying to play songs that all had something to do with defying gravity (get it?) and chickens who try to fly do indeed seem to be in defiance of gravity.

**I had the thought, while watching the orchestra, that most of the musicians seemed to be about my age (now that I am "in my 40's") and this made me a little sad. I think it's officially too late for me to be a cellist in a symphony orchestra. Considering I've never actually played the cello. I had the same thought when we watched the ballet dancers a few weeks ago. On the bright side, the cello is much more likely than the professional ballet dancing.

**The kids do a presentation every week at our Classical Conversations group (it's pretty much show and tell) and this week Harper took an acorn she found and this visual aid:
I'll admit I encouraged her to take it up a notch after last week, when she brought a few of her rubber Squinkies and said, "My name is Harper and these are my Squinkies. I bought them at Target with some of my allowance money. Any questions?" Then another little girl got up next and showed the class this illustrated history of the ancient world that she had compiled when she was 4. There were paper dolls of Greek philosophers and pop-up pyramids and everything. It was awesome.

**I caught Hudson locking Helena out of his room one day and told him it was not allowed. He said, "But she plays with my Squinkies and she says 'POO POO' to me and she hits me!" I'm pretty sure at least two of those accusations are founded, but he still doesn't get to lock her out.

**Saturday night, the husband and I went to a dinner party with 3 other couples and it was delightful. At one point, the husbands were on one end of the table having a very spirited discussion about politics, while we on the Wife End discussed shopping and high school escapades and homeschooling. I thought to myself, "How grown-up we are!!" The other very big deal is that we had our first baby sitter who was not my mother.

**During the big Saturday house clean-up (because of the impending visit of the not-related-to-us babysitter) I found this scrap of paper on my desk, on which I had jotted a conversation between Harper and Hudson from around a year ago:

Harper: Hudson! Do you know that you did something very unkind?
Hudson: YES!
Harper: You ERASED my BEAUTIFUL drawing on the chalk board Hudson.
Hudson: I like red, Hopper.
Harper: I DON'T.
Hudson: You like pink, Hopper?
Harper: I like pink better than you! I'm not going to play sleepover with you tonight. I will make you play something you DON'T want to play! I will play by myself for the rest of my life.

It reminds me to be thankful for how much more harmonious their relationship is now.

And now, another week has begun. What will it bring, I wonder?

What's your point? Wednesday

I was going to write this entire post about the plagues in Exodus and how appalled I am by the Old Testament in general, but was gently reminded by my dear husband that perhaps it might be best to keep those thoughts to myself. He's right. Though poor Mrs. S got an earful at the park this morning. I have good friends who put up with me and my many eccentricities and bizarre notions. I'm thankful for that.

I think I'll do a short list of events that have transpired this week and their individual pros and cons.

1. The dog pooped in Hudson's room this morning, even though she had just come in from outside. CON. However, it has been a couple of months since this has happened. PRO. And no one stepped in it before we discovered it. PRO!

2. Monday during Hudson's nap time, he did not take a nap. CON. Then he came out and casually told me there was a lizard on his fire truck. I thought he meant a rubber lizard because we have several of those floating around at any given time. Then I went to check and it was a real lizard. I actually think lizards are kind of cute. PRO. Plus they eat roaches and mosquitoes. PRO. But it took me 20 minutes to finally catch this one (in a coffee can) and put it outside. CON. At one point, it was panting on one of the spokes of Harper's bicycle wheel, and it closed its eyes and seemed to be so exhausted. So I explained to him that it was important that he let me transport him outside because I did not want to find his tiny lizard carcass in Hudson's closet two months from now. He then tried to tell me something about how he had seen plenty of bugs to eat in Hudson's closet and I said, "LA LA LA LA!" and he closed his eyes again and let me scoop him into the coffee can. Also, during the Great Lizard Chase, Helena was busy filling up her nap diaper with something very foul, that would, perhaps, have ended up in the toilet if I had not been chasing a lizard. CON.

3. I am almost finished reading Jane Eyre. PRO and CON. I am really enjoying it, so much more than I did the first time I read it, and I don't want it to end. Even though I remember exactly how it ends. With the Brontes, happy ending is a relative term.

4. Everyone got a treat when Helena was finally successful in her excretory endeavor of the secondary kind on the toilet. PRO. We were at the Bass Pro Shop when she decided to perform. CON.

5. Hudson was doing some sort of Spiderman Activity on the back of the couch Monday when he slipped and slammed his chin down and bit his tongue really hard. There was lots of blood in his mouth. When he saw it, he started screaming and generally lost all control of his senses. CON, CON, and CON. Then he finally recovered, strapped on his guns and knives, and headed outside to climb the crepe myrtle. PRO.

6. I'm still working with the camera. Helena is, by far, the easiest to photograph. I can't really figure out why, when generally she moves the quickest. She was smiling sweetly at a bird in this shot. PRO. She was not wearing any pants. CON?

7. The kids are learning to read music and play songs on their penny whistles for our fine arts component. PRO. The kids are learning to read music and play songs on their penny whistles for their fine arts component. CON.

Week in review: donkeys to kablabi

The husband made something called kablabi for dinner tonight and it was delicious, even though he only gave it a C-. It's Tunisian and he read about it in the Wall Street Journal this morning. It's a garbanzo bean stew. Kablabi! Say it, you'll feel better. And not only did he prepare the kablabi, he also unloaded AND reloaded the dishwasher and did all of the cleaning up, something I doubt many Tunisian husbands do.

Let's review the rest of the week, even though I have technically begun at the end with all this kablabi blathering.

Monday:

Our second annual trip to the wonderful Oil Ranch. We rode a train, we took a hay ride to feed the cows and the sweet baby donkey:
We played a little miniature golf, climbed on rusty old tractors, bounced in a bounce house, milked an extremely patient cow named Daisy:The kids' favorite part this year seemed to be the barn, where they leapt around on huge stacks of hay bales and then moved vast amounts of hay from the ground floor to the hay loft. I think they could have done this for many, many more hours, but there were baby animals to visit with: A little lamb tried to escape, but Mrs. S was quite the shepherdess:
Then, as a grand finale, since we pretty much had the place to ourselves at that point, each kid got to ride the horses as many times as they wished! Helena hopped right on like it was no big deal:
I would love to post a picture of our whole group, but I don't have one. It was great to spend the day with the Swanks, Whiles, Rives, Wimberleys, and Wheelers though--even if I have no photographic proof!

The rest of the week was pretty low key. We stayed home on Tuesday and Thursday, played at the park with the Swanks on Wednesday, and went to school yesterday. On Thursday, Harper and Hudson decided to help me mow the back yard, which, because of the drought, hasn't really needed it most of the summer. They took the task very seriously:It's funny to me that they rarely want to do most of the easy tasks I ask them to do (for example, one afternoon, I asked Harper if she could push Helena in the swing for a minute while I ran in to put some clothes in the dryer and she complained and acted as though I had just asked her to mow the back forty with a pair of scissors) but they jump at the chance to do something that frankly isn't all that helpful (they can't really push the mower hard enough to actually cut the grass properly) but feels really difficult and important.

It has been raining steadily here for about 4 hours now! Our dry and weary land rejoices.

What's your point? Wednesday

A numbered list, because I'm sleepy:

1. The weather is splendid.

2. Hudson has decided to nap again. Helena, who usually falls right asleep at naptime, is currently in there singing "Happy Birthday" to each of her many bed animals. Big Bird just had his turn. I may have to go confiscate in a minute.

3. While Harper is reading and writing very nicely these days, she can't be bothered with correct spelling. Yesterday she colored a little fall picture for me, with all of the illustrations labeled. There are "Pukin's, Maypole's, and Aconors" (pumpkins, maples, and acorns, of course). She handed me some labeled pictures of fruits and vegetables while I got dinner ready a couple of nights ago: "Origi's, Shrobare's, grap's, and Tomato's" (oranges, strawberries, grapes, and tomatoes). Clearly we need a little work. Clearly I need to properly explain the apostrophe and how, contrary to many Christmas cards we've received over the years, it is never used to denote a plural, unless said plural is possessing something. She also said "Hudson and I's turn" in the backyard yesterday and I almost came unGLUED. Is she planning to star on reality television someday?? I calmed down and corrected her.

4. This morning during our memory work, we were reviewing our Latin nouns and I said, "Hudson, 'nihil' (it's pronounced "nee-hill" in case you, along with me, aren't fluent in The Language of Caesar)? And he responded, with alacrity, "Illinois!" which is absolutely the correct answer if I had said, "Springfield" instead of "nihil." It was funny and we all laughed. It made me realize how much of this stuff just sounds like gibberish to them. The promise with classical education is that, at some point, all of this memorization is going to have meaning attached to it. I've never been to Springfield, incidentally, but I am certain it is something, and not 'nothing.'

5. Speaking of geography and meaning, why do New Hampshire and Iowa basically get to decide who the nominees for President are going to be? It's weird. I know everyone complains about it, but why doesn't anyone actually DO anything? Plus, Herman Cain needs to stop referring to himself in the third person if he wants me to take him seriously.

6. Helena figured out how to push herself on the swingset glider this week. I love it when they work me out of the equation that way.

7. We went to Oil Ranch on Monday (more photos to come on Friday) and I fell in love with this adorable creature:I told Sasha we are going to trade her in for a baby donkey.

And that will be all. Harper is ready to read Pooh and laugh derisively at Owl when he spells his name 'WOL'. Irony, irony.

Week in review: Culture Club!

The husband had to work Saturday morning, which meant the respite I usually look forward to was naught, so I loaded all of us into the car because there was Excessive Whining and fervent requests for lolling on the couch in front of the television. And yes, that is describing my own personal behavior. We ended up at the Arboretum, where another mother told Hudson that "dirt is not for hitting! Baseballs are for hitting!" in the sand pit part of the play area. Instead of yelling at her (which I REALLY wanted to do) "REALLY?? Did you REALLY just tell a little boy that it is not okay to hit dirt with a stick?? WHY? WHY is that not okay?" I glared a little (behind my sunglasses) and steered him toward the ropes course because yes, Hudson, these ropes ARE for climbing:Then we all took a hike. Then Helena started crying about 10 minutes in, so I put her on my shoulders, which made her shriek as though I was doing some horrible, horrible thing, so I got her down (after she almost gauged my eyes out while wildly trying to find something to hold on to from the Horrific Height to which she had been thrust) and tried to get to the bottom of this new terror. She could not talk about it. She could, however, continue to cry about it for the next 30 minutes while we got lost in the forest and the temperatures soared to 96 degrees. So. This is just before the Great Trauma:Here is Harper on the rope bridge. I bought that outfit as a stay-at-home play clothes choice because it was super cheap, and of course, she loves it and would like to wear it every day. The knee socks with the peace signs came in a package of socks, and she calls the peace signs "wagon wheels" which is cute. I never think she looks like me, but in this hippie getup, with her wild hippie hair, I see a little of me circa 1978 in this one:

Monday:
We joined the Rives familia for "The Velveteen Rabbit" at the Miller Outdoor Theater. It was free. It was opera. There was a nice breeze under the shaded amphitheater. There was a grown man dressed up as a bunny. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Tuesday:
We stayed home. I cleaned vomit off Hudson's rugs.

Wednesday:
Rode the Herman Park train with the Swanks. Went to see "The Velveteen Rabbit" AGAIN. Because I am a sucker for free culture. I gave the kids the option to do something else, and they chose to see it again. During this performance, the Velveteen Rabbit cried real tears during the song when the boy is so sick and needs him, even though the Velveteen Rabbit knows if he goes to the boy, he'll be tainted with the scarlet fever germs and have to be destroyed. It was very touching. It could also be that the tenor in the bunny suit was crying because his body was ON FIRE inside a bunny suit when it was 95 degrees outside.

Thursday:
Went to a FREE performance (it was homeschool day) by apprentice students in the Houston Ballet. The dancers, all of whom are training to dance professionally, were breathtakingly talented. They performed seven dances from around the world, so we got a little geography along with our fine arts. Helena, never having seen boys in tights before, asked, rather loudly and clearly SEVERAL times, "That his BOTTOM? That his BOTTOM?"

Friday:
We had our school day, came home for naps, then met our friend Helena (she is, by default, referred to as Big Helena, which we will certainly need to rethink at some point) and her mom for some play time at the park. Then we met the Daddy at Escalante's for dinner.

Mrs. S and I just had a talk about how amazing it is to live in a big city where there are so many opportunities to do things like go to kid-friendly and FREE opera and ballet performances in the middle of the week. I'm thankful.

Typically

A couple of days ago, Harper and Hudson were talking about flowers and Hudson said, "Typically, boys don't really like flowers," which made me feel frustrated. Why have we defined our gender roles so rigidly (and WRONGLY, in my opinion) that a four year old boy thinks he can't think a flower is pretty or interesting?? Blech. I told him it was fine for boys to like flowers AND guns.

I think I've mentioned once or twice about how I really don't like arts and crafts. Harper can now happily entertain herself for HOURS drawing or painting independently. The only way I have to be involved is by making sure we have plenty of white printer paper at her disposal. Another highly time-consuming, independent craft she loves is fuse beads. They are these plastic beads (also called perler beads) that are placed on little peg boards shaped like flowers or puppies or stars or hearts, then you use an iron to melt them together, which gives you something like this:
As you can see by her joyful countenance, Harper was really pleased I was taking a picture. The only negative to the fuse beads is when a certain small sister sneaks over to the unaccompanied bucket full of 11,000 tiny beads, grabs herself a handful, and flings them.

Hudson learned to snap on Friday! We are now a family of snappers. Or "smappers" as Helena pronounces it. She says "sm" for "sn". My favorite is "smack" for "snack" and I especially enjoy it when we are in public and she proclaims, in a very loud voice, "I'm ready for my SMACK now!" She also played with some rubber smakes at the train gift shop this morning. Hudson also has, in the past week or so, stopped sleeping during nap time. We've had a nice long run, so I really can't complain. He'll still be playing quietly in his room for an hour or two each afternoon.

Hudson did get the throwing up thing Helena had, 5 days after she had it. Thankfully, it was just the one episode, but it was in the middle of the night, and he managed to get it all over his bed and both rugs in his room and down the hallway to our room. I remember reading once on Amy's Humble Musings that a kid officially becomes a Big Kid in their family (6 kids) when he or she can make it to the toilet before throwing up. Yes, that will be a marvelous day indeed. It takes about 30 seconds for a kid to spew, and about 2 hours for the complete clean-up. Needless to say, I was a little grumpy all day yesterday, and felt a little sickly myself by afternoon. I have diagnosed myself with a disease I am calling Chronic Unwell Syndrome (or C.U.S.) because that is what is makes me want to do--CUSS. And loudly. I went to the doctor for a physical a couple of months ago, which I had not done in almost a decade, and he ran extensive tests and found not a thing wrong. I need to clean up my diet and exercise and go to bed earlier. But then, I wouldn't be able to complain about getting sick every other week. Hm, choices.

While I was feeling puny yesterday, Harper and Hudson decided to put on a play, inspired by the free performance of "The Velveteen Rabbit" we saw at the Miller Outdoor Theater this week. I never did get the title of their play, but the main characters were Batman and a ballerina, sets were constructed, curtains hung--there was no real dialogue, but there was plenty of action:
In fact, it was hard to take a decent picture because the action was so fast and furious: