Report card

Noah taught Sarah's spelling lesson today.  At the end, he wrote up a report card for her.  He gave her a B and wrote, "She lies sometimes.  She doesn't try a bit."

Questions

I just opened an old notebook and discovered a list of questions I wrote in December of 1990.  These are the things I was pondering in my first year of college:

What is real?
How do we know that the universe and everything in it isn't expanding every day?
Is there a God?
How do we know we're not part of someone else's dream?
What lies outside our universe?
Why do people want things they don't need?
Where does my tuition money go?
Why don't all people speak the same language?
Is anyone really happy?
Is there a truly honest person anywhere?
What happens to us after we die?
Which came first, the can or the canopener?
How does the meter man get into everyone's houses?

Weird dream

Here's the dream I had last night:
I was in college, but I was living in Trivoli In the house where I grew up. I was taking a literature class about mystery novels.  The class was terrible, but the books were good, so one day I skipped class to stay home and read the book.  When my parents got home, I felt that I had to confess that I had skipped class. 

Somewhere in there I was eating a clementine, and for some reason I turned it over and spanked it, and bugs came flying out.  That freaked me out.  The mom of a kid I used to babysit 20 years ago was there, and she knew all about the bugs and explained them to me.  There were tiny white ones, which were the babies, and bigger brown ones and then the biggest ones, which looked like hairy tomato worms except their faces looked like those of a pug dog.  Ann (the kid's mom) pulled its forehead back, and it opened its eyes.  Ann recommended that I keep the bugs in a cage for about a month to observe them and then take them far away to release them, because when they're full grown, their fur weighs a thousand pounds.

I was still creeped out by the dogbugs, so I ran out the front door and across the yard, which was full of tall weeds.  As I ran through them, the weeds sprayed me with stinky green liquid.  Then my dad put me in his car to go for a drive, but as we were driving, somehow my dad wasn't in the car anymore. Instead it was a pastor and I think his wife and maybe someone else too.  We weren't driving very long before I realized I had no idea where we were. 

We were driving through this beautiful outdoor church.  Then we stopped, and I got on this train thing called the Spirit Ride.  It went super fast, and my hair blew off.  It whirled all around and then squished up like an accordion, coated me with chemicals, sprayed me with white paint, and then hosed me off with water.  The water was so powerful that it knocked my teeth out.  Noah's friend Addy was behind me, and some of her teeth came out, but they were baby teeth.  Then the ride operators passed out little bags of goo and said they would turn into yogurt during the next part of the ride.  They gave me two extra bags to make yogurt for those who couldn't do it themselves.  The ride started again, and I was working my bags of goo, but when the ride stopped, I didn't have any yogurt.  Everyone else was saying how delicious it was, and my grandma thanked me for making hers since she couldn't do it.

When I woke up, my mouth felt weird like there were no teeth in it.  Does anyone have any idea what any of that means??

Rumblings

Last night I was lying awake between a purring cat and a snoring husband.  They sounded similar, so why do I find one of them heartwarming and the other...well, not?

Miscellaneous

Jason hunted this poor robin down in the snow after dark and left it at our doorstep.  He was very proud.  Sarah drew the following picture of Jason stalking the robin:

My sweet little valentine

Wearing her special valentine hair accessory

Practicing

Telling time

Sarah was teaching Jason how to tell time.  He was very interested and kept trying to change the minute hand himself.

Since Jason's lesson went so well, she decided to teach Marty too.

Marty was not getting it, so Sarah told her to study the clock on her own for awhile.  Marty just doesn't care.

Freshly hatched kitten

Jason curled up and went to sleep in a dangerous spot today:  on Sarah's bed.  When Sarah discovered him, she put a pillow and her Webkinz cat next to him.  Hours later, Noah wandered in, saw the scene, and yelled, "Jason laid a kitten!"

Plane old day

One of my favorite things about Sarah is that she loves to make things and give them to people.  Today she presented me with a wrapped package and a homemade card on top.  Written in crayon on the card was, "Happy plane old day to Mom from Sarah".  Inside was a necklace that she made by stringing beads on floss.

Sign of the times

Noah encountered an unfamiliar word while reading and asked me what it meant.  I told him to look it up.  I headed for the bookshelf to haul down the dictionary that I got for high school graduation.  He headed for the computer.  Before I could even get the book down, he was telling me what the word meant.  While I was still trying to figure out what was going on, he waved my dictionary off and said, "I don't need that old-fashioned thing. I looked it up on dictionary.com."

Hi, Jean!

Today I subjected Noah to a thorough scrubbing.  He has clearly not been doing a good job keeping himself clean, so I had to get rough on him. His ears were caked with dirt and wax; his belly button had a layer of grime in it; his hair stunk; and his fingernails and toenails were too long.  I threw him in the tub and put earwax removal drops in his ears and gave them a scrubbing and scraping. Then I scrubbed out his belly button and dug into his hair.  While he was complaining about all that, I told him the way to avoid it is to have good hygiene.  He said, "Who's Jean?"  I explained that hygiene is all that stuff he hates...haircuts, nail trimming, teeth flossing, showering, etc.   He said, "Oh.  Well then I don't want to say hi to Jean.  I'd rather say bye!"

Vegetarian

Sarah came into the kitchen and got a bowl of carrots and some fruit.  She said, "This is a snack for Noah.  He decided to be a vegetarian today."  I always knew this day was coming....

When Noah was two, we told him that ham comes from pigs.  We didn't give him the graphic details, so he came up with his own explanation.  He thought pigs pooped the ham out.  He thought pigs pooped little strips of bacon too.  We let him believe that for awhile.  

I still remember the day when the lightbulb went on for him.  We were reading Laura Ingalls’ Little House in the Big Woods to him.  In the book, Pa shot two deer and hung them in the trees outside their house so the wolves wouldn’t get the meat.  Noah looked confused and asked, “So did the deer protect the meat from the wolves?”   Mike said, “The deer WAS the meat” and then we had to have the whole discussion about where the meat we buy in the grocery store really originates. He was three years old.  As I watched his face go from horrified to teary, I thought, "This kid is going to be a vegetarian."

Back to the present...
He was a vegetarian all day, but when I made bacon-wrapped chicken for dinner, it got the best of his vegetarian convictions. 

Kid writings

Every day, I give Noah a list of five words and tell him to write a sentence or two that uses them all.  I just recently started Sarah on it too.  On her first day, she wrote a poem that was so weird and lovely that my English professors in college would have approved.  Here it is:
The rainy day is melting quickly, 
dripping with ponds.

Today Noah wrote:
The farmer made his living milking the littlest cows that wagged their heads.

Monopoly Noah-isms

Noah, Sarah, and I were playing Monopoly.  Sarah had a monopoly on the big blue properties, and she had three houses on each.  Noah said, "I'm going to try to take her down, but it will be like chipping away at Pikes Peak with a toothpick."  After she won, Noah said, "You're so lucky, you should move to Kentucky!"

Snow ice cream

I went out in the blizzard to get snow to make ice cream.  Whipped it up with some sugar, vanilla, and milk, and this is what my family had to say about it:

Sarah: It's disgusting.  Tastes like clam chowder. (which she's never had, by the way)
Noah:  It tastes like banana spaghetti.
Mike: It's ok, but not worth wasting the calories.

I thought it tasted like whipped cream, so I put it in the freezer and will serve it on brownies or something someday and see if anyone recognizes it.