Imperfect Translation

Clara's been walking around tonight singing a song called "Clara's Seven Days in the Week."

I can almost guarantee what they taught her in preschool today was "There are Seven Days in the Week."

Lee was outraged by her impertinence, and kept insisting it must be the latter title.

I responded with "Well, I have seven days in my week, and you have seven days in your week, and Clara certainly has seven days in her week."

Siblings Without Rivalry

Bridges' mom gave me the above-named book a few years back. I need to re-read it. The competition around here can be fierce at times, although generally the girls get along really well. Most of the competitive behaviour seems to come from Lee, who obviously feels threatened in her position of complete and total dominance over Clara (just kidding, Clara is able to stand up for herself once in a while).

We're still getting tears in the morning if Lee isn't the first one downstairs. And the jockeying for first place is very literal on the walk to school (during which you must walk on the curb that is only wide enough for one kid at a time).

It shows up here and there in other ways too. Today Clara asked for a piece of cardboard to color, and so I gave her a shoe box that happened to be waiting to be put away in the basement with a pile of other discarded shoeboxes.

"Mommy, why did you give Clara a shoebox?!?" I heard a few seconds later.

Because I love her more than you, of course, my evil side thought to itself.

Two Queens

Lee's been playing with Polly Pockets again the last few days. Today she gave a bunch of them a bath, and then she told me that they were all getting ready for a wedding.

"Really?" I asked. "Who's getting married?"

"These two." She showed me the two female dolls who have long blonde hair. Of course the ones with the long blonde hair.

"Who are they marrying?" I asked.

"They're getting married together. Not to have children or anything. When they get married, they're both going to be queens."

As opposed to a king and queen. They'll be two queens, you see. She doesn't even know the other use of that word.

Chiesa Farm

Yesterday were doing yard work and other miscellaneous house stuff, and it was such a nice day we decided to put it all down and go on a picnic to Chiesa Farm, which is a conservation area nearby.

It was a bit chillier than we expected, so the girls borrowed some clothes.

We had such a great time, catching grasshoppers and crickets. [By the way, the best way to tell them apart is that grasshoppers have short antennae and crickets have long].

Crickets Vs. Grasshoppers

What is the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper?

This is just one of the many questions I feel compelled to investigate now that I'm an official homeschooler.

Small Blessings

I have to remind myself sometimes that there is an upside to my periodic insomnia. Hell, this morning I had dinner made before 6 am.

The Sky is Falling

Recently I have been remembering The Tale of Chicken Little. It does indeed feel like the sky is falling around here, especially the last few days since the wind has picked up. I do love our huge oak trees, but most likely due to the incredible amount of rain this year, we are experiencing a bumper crop of acorns.

The last two days I have raked up tens of thousands of acorns. Oh no, contrary to my normal inclinations, I am not exaggerating. During the somewhat monotonous task of picking up pile after pile of acorns ,I actually estimated how many I had collected. Several trash cans worth of acorns is quite a large number.

And as much as I love our oak trees, I also love the huge skylight in our upstairs bathroom. Unfortunately they don't go so well together at this time of year. The wind blows, and what sounds like a volley of shots goes off as the acorns hit the skylight. It is unbelievably loud. You need to be here to really experience how unsettling it is, especially at 4 am.

I'm hoping that this is the temporary cause of my recent insomnia (the kids, mercifully, sleep right through it).

Sisters

Stretchy

Today, against all better judgement, we brought home a pet we found in the woods. Stretchy The Turtle.

We found him in Minuteman National Park, on a dirt road, covered in dust and looking all dried out. His shell is only about an inch long, so he's a tiny little thing. Lee was immediately taken with him, and since I had just forced her to release a cricket back to the wild, she saw another chance to bring home a souvenir of our walk.

"Please, Mommy. We'll take good care of him."

Well, he does seem sick, I thought to myself. He's so lethargic and is barely moving.

Ruth, he's a TURTLE! yelled the other side of me. They are, almost by definition, lethargic.

He'll probably die anyway. Bring him home and you can always release him later. And the kids will have so much fun, I said to myself.

You know who won that debate. So here we are with a turtle splashing around in some water in a loaf pan. He's very lively now and seems perfectly well. I had no idea turtles could move that fast. So we may have a planned release coming up later today.

Physical Challenges

Well it's been a few weeks full of physical challenges.

The first thing to happen was that my lower back went south again. This is the third episode this year, despite my nearly fanatical dedication to back and core exercises over the last six months. It's rather discouraging and after two weeks I don't seem to be progressing all that much. Sigh...

Clara came down with a case of hives. The first time was at home on a Friday morning and I couldn't figure out what was going on. The next day she broke out again in the middle of Target and this time was much worse. A week later and they seem to mostly be gone, except that her skin seems to turn red and swell very easily.

Then last week, Lee woke up screaming, saying her neck hurt and that she couldn't move. Of course my first thought was "MENINGITIS!" but in the lack of a fever we quickly ruled it out in favor of a good old-fashioned crick in the neck. Who ever thought a five-year-old could get a crick-in-the-neck that lasted for days? She was in a lot of pain and it took all morning just to get her down on the couch, and then she spent two days with her head off to one side. But today she says she can hardly feel it.

Yikes, what next?

Yeah, baby

Late in the summer, Lee and Clara started saying to each other "yeah, baby." I'd ask Clara if she wanted cereal for breakfast, and she'd respond "yeah, baby!" This would result in both of them erupting in giggles with repeated cries of "yeah, baby!" back and forth.

I asked them where they got this, and they responded "Greg." Greg is my brother's friend who visited for a weekend. I gather that he said "yeah, baby" to my brother a few times and it made quite an impression on the girls.

The "yeah, baby" went on for quite some time although it's dying out now. I should really try and get some audio of it while it lasts because it's pretty damn funny.

Tell Me a Story / A Whole New World

Lee loves stories. Several times a day, she'll say "Will you tell me a story? A pretend story?"

Bridges is pretty good with the made-up stories, but my imagination sometimes fails me and I end up telling her about real things, which seem equally as interesting to her.

Two favorites this summer were Mt. Everest and Jacques Cousteau. Lee got very interested in Mt. Everest, especially the dangerous aspects of it. We took some books out of the library, and she talked about Mt. Everest frequently. She learned about the snow line and the tree line, and Sherpas, and about all the different equipment you need for high altitude climbing.

She loved to also hear about Jacques Cousteau and the world underneath the ocean. I told her about how he invented scuba equipment, and how he discovered a whole new world that no one else had seen before.

As the summer wore on, Lee became more comfortable in the lake and started wearing her goggles and swimming underneath the surface.

"Mommy, it's a whole new world under here!" she exclaimed one of the first times she clearly saw under the water. She was just full of the joy of discovery. After that she would swim under the water, coming up to announce that she'd seen a big fish or a little fish, or showing us a particularly pretty rock.

When Santa Gets It Almost Right

Lee has been coaching Clara about Santa quite a bit lately. She explains that you get to ask Santa for one thing, and that afterward he gives you a candy cane.

The other night in the car, she said "Clara, what are you going to ask Santa to bring you?"

"Candy," Clara said.

Lee explained that Santa already puts a truffle in your stocking (well at least at our house!), and that Clara should ask for something else that isn't candy. Perhaps, Lee suggests, Clara could ask for a whole bag of tigers.

Uh, oh, we think. We can't even find one replacement Tiger, much less a whole bag of them. She can't put it in Clara's head that she can ask for a bag of Tigers.

So I ask Lee, do you mean plastic tigers? No, no, she assures me. Stuffed Tigers.

But this must remind Lee of something else to tell Clara.

"Clara, Santa doesn't always get it quite right. Last year, I asked for a beating heart with a button on it. I meant a little red heart with a black button on the back that never ran out of batteries. And the one I got was much bigger and much fluffier! But, I'm always happy with what I get. "

Well, Lee, I said, Santa can't read your mind, so he just does the best he can with what you tell him.

Gender Roles

Somehow Bridges and I have fallen into pretty traditional gender roles around the house. I often feel that I should do more of the handy stuff, because it would set a good example for the girls. It's not that I'm not capable of changing batteries, it's just that I'd rather leave it for Bridges to do. Honestly, he seems to enjoy the handy type of work more than I do, although perhaps I'm just telling myself that.

But I realize that we're sending our children a pretty strong message when Lee tells me that we have to wait for Daddy to get home to fix this or that.

Today we were busy moving into our new closets (yes, we are almost through with construction), and I found a picture of an elephant that I proceeded to hang in the girls' bathroom. The next time Clara was in the bathroom, she saw the picture.

"Mommy, I like that picture of the elephant. Who put it there?"

"I did, Clara."

"All by yourself?"

She stared at me intently and then said "Without a g....?". She was about to say "without a grown-up?" which is a phrase she uses when she does something all by herself, but she cut herself short when she realized I was indeed a grown-up.

Instead, she paused, and then said "Without a Daddy grown-up?"

Our Stay at the Lake

The girls and I stayed at the lake for almost five weeks this summer. It was really wonderful, and I'd like to do it again next year, only it would be fun if Bridges could take a few weeks off in the middle.

Here's a quick list of things we did:

-Storyland (with Bridges)

-Cindy, Ben and Eliza visited. We took them to the Science Center, the beach, and Ragged Island.

-Lee made a necklace at the bead store.

-We made creations from polymer clay.

-I painted teeny-tiny pictures (fish, polka dots, sprinkles, ladybugs, butterflies, mice) on teeny-tiny toenails.

-We did lots of coloring and other arts and crafts (it was very rainy the first few weeks).

-Lots and lots of reading books aloud.

-Visits to the beach.

-Lots of lake->hot tub->lake->hot tub cycles....until the supervising adult called it quits.

-Campfires with s'mores.

-Sunsets on the boat.

-Amazing blueberry picking on Ragged Island.

-Huckleberry picking in our very own yard.

-Lots of paddling (sans kids).

-Ruth swam around Sandy Island.

-We visited Lost River Gorge.

-We drove the Kancamagus with Grandpa and swam at Rocky Gorge.

-We climbed Mt. Morgan.

-We introduced the girls to tennis.

-Uncle Dave took the girls for ice cream when he went to get gas for the boat

-Lee and Clara played many games of Little Bear with Grandma

-Lee played countless games of Milles Bornes with any available and willing adult.

-Bridges and Dave played many games of corn hole (as well as backgammon)

First Day of Homeschool

So today was Lee's first day of not going to kindergarten. Funny how just three weeks ago we were all on the kindergarten bus (so to speak) and here we are, doing a still rather unconventional thing. We'll see how it goes this year, but I'm pretty excited about it, and she seems pretty happy too.

This month is going to be busy finishing up the construction and attending several homeschool events in order to get a sense of the different support groups in the area. There are more things to do than we could ever attend, so I don't think we'll be lacking for social interaction. It's a bit like starting over though, although we're hoping to still see our friends in Lexington and those from church as well.

Clara starts preschool on the 14th, and construction should be done by then, so we'll get into more of a groove then. This week the kids mostly played in the yard and we ran errands, with a few educational things thrown in here and there. I"m sure any outside observer would have thought "Oh, she's homeschooling."