cheflet

elias helped me make spaghetti sauce, or gravy, last night. he did very well. stirring, no splattering.
crumbling herbs in with a deft hand. and tasting all the time. it turned out quite well. this morning,
he made pancakes and waffles for himself and sophia. really quite competent with the toaster oven. he and sophia received digital cameras yesterday. they are being used almost constantly. it is like being under surveillance. mostly there are pictures of shoulders and the tops of heads. sometimes there are people in the frames.
what should i teach elias to cook next? suggestions welcome.

Annual meeting of the pumpkin goblins

On Tuesday the school had its annual meeting. This means that there is lots of boring stuff discussed and eventually there is some entertainment provided by the students. As is the custom with the school, we had no idea that Elias was performing at the meeting. I happened to ask his reading teacher before school about the event and she said that he would be dancing. We were very excited. All afternoon we asked to see the dance and Elias kept saying that he couldn't, that he didn't have the pumpkin and he was supposed to be a goblin. I did not understand and I did not succeed in getting a preview of his dance. When it finally came time to see Elias' dance I understood why I was not able to see if ahead of time. It was interpretive dance and it was interactive dance. Three students were involved. One was a pumpkin and two were pumpkin goblins. The goblins approached the pumpkin and they poked. Everywhere they poked the pumpkin changed shape and moved. The goblins danced and laughed and poked and danced some more. It was absolutely hilarious. Elias had an opportunity to be both parts and he was awesome at both. My sweet little goblin loves to dance.

zebra bar?

there's a boy at sophia's school who is not, according to sophia, her friend, because he is not "cheerceful". but she still gives him a hug when she leaves. in fact, she gives everyone a hug when she leaves, especially when she stays for a full day as she did today, and which normally happens about once a month. she'd probably prefer it happen more. anyway, today she needed to give everyone his/her hug before leaving. imani wasn't all that interested in stopping what he was doing to embrace her,
but she said "hey, you", actually more of a yell, and then "come here" in the imperative, with her arm out, and her fingers beckoning him. not an invitation or a suggestion but a command. he dutifully obeyed and she got her final hug. for snacks they had zebra bars, she told me, which are kinda a big but a little small but not very much small, but kinda big but small too and medium big. what the bloodclat is a zebra bar and exactly what size is it?

Day-snoring

Sophia likes to play hard. She is happy to stay up late watching movies and for a long time when she was younger she used to ask if we could stay up "All night long". We have never given her permission to stay up all night long and it doesn't seem to matter because the girl cannot do it. The first clue that Sophia is getting sleepy is that you suddenly hear her snoring. When you look over at her she is still awake. This is something that you might expect Homer Simpson to do, not my beautiful little girl. No matter, she is an awake snorer and there is nothing I can do about it. After the daytime snoring starts, people normally start giggling. This sets off many claims that we are "Teasing on her" and we are often warned that she is "Not going to be our friend anymore". So we quiet down and watch. Her eyes start to droop. Many yawns escape. She seems like she is never going to give in. I think for the most part she waits until we are not looking. Our Sophia sleep vigil becomes just slightly less attentive and she drifts off while our heads are turned. And then the daytime snores become night-time snores.

on/off

cybele has discovered how to turn the tv on and off now she derives immense pleasure from turning it on when off and off when on. she always looks around to see who noticed and then puts on her most innocent, 'who me?' face. i enjoy following her around durning her daily perambulations, especially at her grandparents' house, where there are lots of hallways and turns to be taken. those turns, she takes 'em as fast as she can. she usually bumps into a wall she is in such a hurry to take it tight and fast. she really careens around the place with such purpose that you'd think she is late for a very important appointment, but as far as i can tell, the only appointment she has is one with a refrigerator magnet and her mouth.
it would be great if she were completely converted to 'legurar' (that's sophianese for 'regular') food, but we still find ourselves giving her baby food on occassion, because her way with food she feeds herself is a little to free and easy, i.e. appallingly filthy messy, to be tolerated 3X/day.
she has become a mistress of the verbal combinations made of the 'n' sound combined with various short vowels. she has at least 5 words of intent or names for things that she devises using them. they all pretty much sound like 'non'. but we know exactly what she means by each one, because we're her parents, and we make things up on her behalf.

The pumpkin whisperer

I love October. I realize it is November now and I do like this month too, but I love October. It is like one big family month, what with the pumpkin patches, hayrides, haunted houses, leaves for jumping, trick-or-treating, you know what I mean. I tend to start coming up with all sorts of things that we need to do with the kids, mostly because I really like doing these things and it looks better when you bring your kids with you. Last year I think I made everyone go to the pumpkin patch five times. This year we only went twice but somehow we ended up with about fifteen pumpkins on the front porch. When we went to the first pumpkin patch we noticed something strange about Cybele. I think she is a pumpkin whisperer.

The other kids get in the pumpkin patch and they start running around, tripping over pumpkin vines trying to find the perfect pumpkin. Cybele gets very quiet and very serious. She approaches each pumpkin with caution and she lays her hands on it. Then she leans in like this and she listens.

I don't know what she hears, but it must be something cause my girl was listening to those pumpkins and she is no dummy.