Spots

Sarah loves to have tea parties, but she doesn't like to clean her room (or anything else). I told her that her room had to be spotless before she could have tea. She was less than enthusiastic, until she came up with a slogan. Then she started chanting, "Spot-free for a spot of tea!" the whole time she was cleaning.

Boy Spelling

I've been working on spelling with Noah lately. Today I sent him to his room with a bucket full of magnetic letters and a magnetic board and told him to spell some words. He came out and asked if he could use the letters to write a message to his dad. I told him that he could write anything he wanted, as long as the words were spelled correctly. We've been studying the Revolutionary War, and Noah likes to design innovative weapons with Legos and have imaginary wars with Mike. So I wasn't surprised when he came out with this message on the board:

war
gun
run
Noah

Backhanded Compliment

My painfully honest son was staring intently at me and then said, "Mom, I think you're pretty." (Note to self: next time, say "thank you" and leave it at that.) And I said, "Really?" Then he qualified it with this: "Well, you have a lot of freckles and moles, but you're really pretty on the inside."

Free To Be Me

Lately we've been enjoying the song "Free To Be Me" by Francesca Battistelli. The chorus goes:

I got a couple dents in my fender
Got a couple rips in my jeans
Try to fit the pieces together
But perfection is my enemy
And on my own I'm so clumsy
But on Your shoulders I can see
I'm free to be me

Our free-spirited daughter has latched onto it as her theme song. It's fun to see her dancing around and singing at full volume about rips in her jeans. But our deep-thinking son listens intently to the lyrics and wants to know, "Why is perfection her enemy? Isn't perfection a good thing?" That's one for the Question Jar. If you have an answer, please leave a comment.

Question Jar

The questions around here fly so fast that I have trouble keeping up with them all; yet I don't want to let any slide under the rug. So we have created the Question Jar. Whenever the kids have a question that I either don't have time to answer or don't know the answer to, they put it in the jar. Then I get to them whenever I can. Right now in the jar are three questions from Noah:
1)What is tobacco?
2) What is gravity?
3)What does CVS stand for?

Mom School

Not a very easy day today. Sarah didn't get enough sleep, and that fact alone can ruin everyone's day. I sent her to the corner and then had to spank her while she was there. First time I've had to layer the punishment on her. Noah noticed and said, "Poor Sarah. Mom, maybe you should take some classes to learn how to be a better mom." That wasn't especially helpful.

Blueberry disaster

I buy the industrial sized bag of frozen wild blueberries, because we eat them a lot. This morning I grabbed the bag and whipped it out of the freezer. Apparently the zip top was not properly zipped. A full four pounds of blueberries went flying all over the kitchen.

I got down and started scooping them up with my hands, which turned a dark bluish purple color. Of course, Sarah appeared during this time and had to walk through the kitchen. For fifteen minutes, I plucked blueberries off the floor while imagining that I was on a sunny green hill in upstate New York picking blueberries off bushes.

The floor was not exactly clean, but I put all the blueberries back in the bag anyway, because they're very expensive and I couldn't stand to waste them. Then I had to wipe all the blue stains off the floor and appliance doors. Just when I thought I was done, I opened the freezer to put the bag back, and a bunch of blueberries came tumbling out. They were all over the inside of the freezer, snuggled in between all the packages of frozen food.

I put them all back in the bag, zipped it up tight, and put it in the freezer. When I got out of the shower, there was the evil bag of blueberries sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, unzipped. I felt like I was in a bad horror movie. I was staring at the bag, thinking I must be losing my mind because I was sure I had put them away. Enter Sarah with blue smears all over her face.

She smiled, revealing blue teeth, and said, "I got some blueberries all by myself!" About an hour later, I noticed a blueberry peeking out from under the refrigerator. I swiped a ruler under there and pulled out several mushy blueberries. While I was lying on the floor, I noticed a few more blueberries under the cabinets. It's like a plague. They're everywhere! I don't think I'll ever get them all. We'll probably have to move.