Car Talk

The saddest news I heard today is that Tom Magliozzi died. There are things to dislike about NPR, but The Tappet brothers have brought me joy for many years.

When I pick the kids up at school on Mondays and Wednesdays, we play at the park for a little bit, then we get in the car and take turns doing Roses and Thorns for the trip home. Each of us thinks of the best thing and the worst thing that happened during the day. Today, Helena's thorn was that "Mommy forgot to give me animal crackers for my afternoon snack and I only had gummy bunnies and there were only four small ones in the little bag!"  To which I say, in my head, "kids in Sierra Leone are dying of Ebola right this minute instead of counting how many gummy bunnies are in their individually wrapped, naturally colored, organic, non-GMO snack." Out loud I say, "oh, well, aren't you glad you had such a good lunch? With JELLY BEANS for a special treat?"

My roses were a bouquet today: Bach at morning assembly, breakfast at Buffalo Grille, a few errands, some quiet reading time at the arboretum, and then coffee with a new friend.  The thorn was that we got to our piano lesson and I realized Harper has practiced about 10 minutes total this week. Let's hope that hearing Mrs.F's mastery of Bach this morning inspired her to do better this week.

Did you know Bach had TWENTY children?? S.D.G. indeed.

and Tigger smiled his happiest smile and said nothing.

Three days in a row! That is a FEAT.

Hudson's book party went off very nicely, and then afterwards he took off his Tigger tail and he and some friends used it as nunchucks on the playground. Or maybe it was a sword? It was very hard to tell, but they were all Quite Earnest in their Ninja. Just what A.A. Milne was picturing, no doubt.

 

I spent two hours at the dentist today. The reason it took two hours is because I had not had my teeth cleaned in, perhaps, years. So there was much Dental Unpleasantness to endure. Which makes me want to never go again. Except that I have another appointment next Wednesday. To which I say BOTHER.

The unbearable lightness of being

I finally watched "Gravity" this weekend. I confess that, even in my extremely limited understanding of astrophysics, I was distracted by things careening when I thought maybe they wouldn't actually BE careening. The most stressful moments, for me, were when she finally got in those escape pods and the entire control board was in Cyrillic, and then Chinese characters. FRAUGHT. Because even if one is a brilliant medical engineer, one cannot possibly be expected to READ RUSSIAN AND CHINESE after only SIX months of astronaut training!! I actually mentioned this at church on Sunday to my friend Kelly's husband, who is a pilot in the Air Force, and he said that there was part of his training during which he was required to jump into planes manufactured in Russia and China and figure out how to fly them. He said the pilots before him had left POST-IT NOTES on the buttons to help with translating. Good GRIEF, can you even imagine?

Anyway, we took the canoe out again on Saturday, and I realized that there are many moments in my life during which I feel as though the entire control board is in a language I can't read. For example, "helping" the husband get the canoe loaded onto the top of the minivan. Also, in "helping" get the canoe down to the river. Also, in paddling the canoe in such a way that we don't run directly into river detritus. We launched into the Brazos River, and the husband was clanking with all manner of weaponry because of rumors of alligators and venomous snakes and even bobcats. Much to his and the kids' disappointment, the only wildlife we encountered was dragonflies, a Great Blue Heron, and a few other tiny, harmless waterfowl. Helena sits at the very front. Here she is, lolling:

 It is only natural that you are envious of my hat. Perhaps it is what scared off the alligators, venomous snakes, and bobcats?

On a related note, gravity and other physics concepts were rather unkind to Harper on the playground after school yesterday. She was running after a soccer ball and ran directly in front of a little girl who was swinging. Harper got a foot to the jaw, which was actually powerful enough to knock her into the air, and then unceremoniously dump her back down to earth. She was affronted, even as I explained that the swinging girl was utterly without fault. (Just for future reference, a wailing child is not easily comforted by a mini-lecture on potential and kinetic energy.) It was all very noisy, but she seems completely recovered today. It was actually a great time to remind her of an incident last week in which she tagged a little girl with too much force while they were both running at full speed, and the little girl tripped and tumbled heels over head, scraping various parts of her body. Moral: sometimes we ourselves are wounded by physics, and sometimes we ourselves are the vehicle for wounding others.

This little piggie

I am going to do a short post every day this week.

Our school, since we only have two campus days per week, does not spend any of that time doing traditional parties. Instead, whenever classes finish the books the teachers read aloud, there is a book party at the end of the day during which kids can dress as their favorite character from the book. I present Wilbur from Charlotte's Web for your viewing pleasure:

I tried to buy a pink shirt at Hobby Lobby the day before the party and there was nary a pink t-shirt to buy. And would you believe we didn't already own a plain pink shirt? Because we did not. So. I spent $5 on a yard of pink fleece and then spent 45 minutes sewing three seams (by hand because even though my friend Maggie loaned me a sewing machine 2 years ago, I still can't figure out the bobbin.) on this Pig Tunic Extraordinaire.

 

Wilbur especially enjoyed holding Templeton the rat. Her classmate especially enjoyed unfurling her piggy tail. It was RADIANT.

ObSTREPeroUS

I hate to be one more voice complaining about communicable diseases, but we have been battling the streptococcus at our house. Hudson got the tell-tale rash (scarletina! It sounds like a lovely piano composition!) on Friday, and when we got to the pediatrician, she decided to swab Helena as well, even though she'd been feeling chipper. Chipper, with strep throat. So, she is on her first ever round of antibiotics.  She and Hudson claim the medicine tastes like dirty socks, but I think they actually like it. I am just thankful we have the medicine we need. See how much better they feel? (sorry for the grainy pictures. They were moving really fast.)

The husband has been wanting a canoe. So, we went to REI and bought a red one (along with Much Gear),  strapped it on top of the minivan (I am very sorry not to have a picture of this. It is Griswoldian), and took it out on the bayous of Sugar Land. Since three-fifths of us were not feeling ship-shape, we mostly lolled in the canoe and soaked in some vitamin D while the husband and Harper rowed us around. I see lots of canoe adventures in our family future.

 

It has been a week of firsts for Helena. She also got her first ever new pair of running shoes. She hasn't seemed to mind all of the handed down clothes and shoes, but she was pretty thrilled with how bright and shiny these are. They make her look older, somehow. She has also realized she can pick Sasha up. Sasha is less excited about this than Helena is. There has been quite a bit of smothering and disgruntled growling.

We had our science class at the Museum of Natural Science two weeks ago, and we had the best time with the butterflies afterward. There was an elderly museum volunteer trying to herd recently hatched butterflies from the glass encased butterfly hatchery and it was HIGH comedy. He was so amazing and gentle, grabbing the butterflies and trying to get them into a net hamper so he could release them in the atrium. He would get a blue morpho into the hamper, only he wouldn't zip it closed all the way, so the blue morpho would sneak out and start fluttering around the little room. The kids would then squeal and tap on the glass and point to let him know he had an escapee. We watched for over an hour, then he came out and took us with him for the release. It was a good day.

October 1, 2014

1. Hudson had to stay home from school today. Our first absence. He had a fever, and then he threw up. He made it into our bathroom, which was a relief. He did not quite make it to the toilet, and, unfortunately, SEVEN pairs of the husband's dress pants were draped in the environs of the splatter zone. So, the dry cleaning bill will be higher than usual this month (the dry cleaning bill is usually zero dollars.) Hudson spent most of the day napping on the couch. He also watched "Clone Wars" on Netflix (first time--boys who throw up get special t.v. time) and a couple of Ninjago episodes. Then we did a little of the school work he was missing--chapter 8 of House at Pooh Corner. Piglet was brave. Can a WOL and a silly old bear really be trusted to hoist a Piglet up to the topsy-turvy mail slot? Piglet is not sure at all. We also learned about an animal named a pink fairy armadillo in the animal encyclopedia. It is as cute as you might imagine. We did not accomplish any math or spelling.

2. I don't want to forget that the kids still call us Mommy and Daddy. I don't know when that stops. Never is fine with me.

3. I got a fairly severe paper cut one day last week, and I under-reacted just to model for Helena that it is possible to reign it in. It bled and everything. It was her story Bible that did the cutting. Like an actual sword! Does anyone remember Bible drills wherein we would present our Swords before we frantically rifled trying to find Haggai before our friends did at the Wednesday night church festivities?

4. A few months ago I inadvertently requested a large print book from the library. It was a delightful mistake! Now I do it on purpose! While also utilizing my readers. The font ends up being about a centimeter high.

5. Harper started Suzuki piano lessons in June, and she is making nice progress. I am re-learning with her and, this time around, I love to practice. She seems to really enjoy it too. Just as she did with our gymnastics class (a cartwheel on the high beam! A bounder on the trampoline! A back hip circle on the bars..) she is intent on the next skill, and she works and works. We stopped gymnastics in May and it's possible she can't do any of those skills anymore. At least she can still play piano when she is 85. The bounder on the trampoline? Doubtful.

The paper cut heard round the world

We started a new school. Big News. The kids are on campus (without me!) two days a week, and we do lots of work at home on the days in between. The kids seem to be adjusting really well, and I am trying to get organized so our days at home run more smoothly. As long as we get all of our work done, we take Fridays off to play.

We stopped at Marble Slab to celebrate after the first campus day. The first home day was pretty frazzled, but we managed to get everything finished (at 5 p.m.) Then, on the third home day, when I thought things were going pretty well, Helena got a paper cut just after breakfast, and her reaction was EPIC. It went from drama to high drama to higher drama. Of course she could NOT write, even though the cut was on her left hand, and she is right-handed. Then just when she would decide she might be able to stop howling about it, some fresh new indignation would occur (salt, soap, air) and the shrieking sorrow would begin again. I finally asked her WHAT I could do to HELP and she wailed, "I just need you to feel SORRIER for me!" So I tried to feel sorrier.


You might imagine that I have plans aplenty for my days at home alone. One is to blog more frequently. May it be so!