Rainy Day!

And, In an Effort to Beseech the Football Gods for an Offense:

It's raining, and the kids are very excited. So excited that they ran out on the back porch, and stopped. "It smells bad!" "It's too loud!" They had intended to go play in the rain, but instead just stood on the covered porch. I called them scaredy-cats, because that's the sort of mom I am.

Now they're putting on bathing suits.

When I came downstairs today, my dictionary and thesaurus were out on the floor. I supposed they'd been used as steps. Seph corrected this impression by telling me she'd been looking up the word 'ignore', so that Rone would believe it was a real word.

Cotton loves loves loves piles of laundry. Clean, dirty, doesn't matter. She hugs it, chews on it, rolls on it and loves it. Seeing how much she hates getting dressed, it's odd that she loves the laundry so much. She also loves toilet paper fresh off the roll, the china cabinet and one plastic dinosaur she likes to chew. She can clap, shake her head 'no', and make a funny arm gesture for 'I don't know.' Her favorite food is meat, so Chance has decided to keep her.

The kids and I are watching the episode of Little House on the Prairie I've had DVRd for a while. I was attempting to wait until at least Thanksgiving, since it's a Christmas episode, but the high today is only 87 so it's just like winter here. It's an episode that has some scenes right out of the books, so I thought they'd like it. Rone's already complaining that it isn't Spongebob. Sigh.

Today we got Seph a Nintendo DS, by selling some old videogames. Luckily, Chance has kept every one that he's owned since 1993, so we had enough store credit to get a used DS and a game. Seph was very excited.

We've been doing Campfire and tennis lessons, along with karate for Rone and piano for Seph. We're all working on having quiet reading time. We went and saw James and the Giant Peach at a theatre recently, and this weekend I'm taking the kids to Maker Faire. I'm pretty excited, because I missed last year for being too pregnant.

A small one, since the theme was choke-able toys. We had the Lego cake, which I executed better in my head than in real life, and everyone got some bricks to build their own spaceship/boat/statue/thing, and I took pictures. Rone had a great time, and is now officially 5 years old. He's got some trouble distinguishing his actual birthday from the day his party is on, and I'm not certain he really thought he was five until there was cake.

This morning, before I'd even gotten coffee perked, Rone had an idea. Lately, all conversations with Rone pretty much revolve around when and if he'll be allowed to play videogames. So I'm pretty certain he thought this idea was genius. "Mom, my idea is, how about I only play videogames if it's really sunny out?"

Sure, that'll work.

Seph had a class at the library downtown yesterday. The class ended with a scavenger hunt all around the sections of the library the kids had just learned about. She liked it very much, and is excited to look for things on her own now.

And the xanga editor won't let me put it in the post, but there's a new video on the videoblog, so you can go check that out.

Seph: "This is the best day ever."

Mom: :skeptical look:

Seph: "Well, along with all the other best days ever."

Not much posting because things have been pretty hectic. Cotton is cruising, having foregone crawling entirely. Rone will be 5 soon, and has told me that he's pretty sure he'll feel very different when he's five, and he's worried that he'll be too different. Seph has some new art that I've got to get scanned. And Chance is away, so this weeks lesson plan is 'co-operation'.

Or possibly, bricklaying. One of those.

Note: edited, because I originally put 'skeptical look' in carets '<>', so it wasn't there at all. Programming schmogramming.

In the interest of preserving my mom's sanity, I would like to note that the current track for Ike has it swinging east of us. We're not even in the outer bits. So it will rain here, and be breezy. Which is good, since it's still in the upper 90s every day. Yesterday's low was 77 or something equally outrageous.

Today is the first full Saturday of football season, and Chance is looking forward to a lot of sitting in the tv room and yelling. The kids are working on not standing in front of the tv, and Cotton is being trained to ignore the shouting. So far she's still making the Very Sad Baby Face every time, though. The one with the corners of her mouth nearly at her chin? And the little wibble, to make it extra sad? That one.

The kids are outside, making water balloons and tossing them, while the baby watches from the saucer. The water balloons have been a long project: saving allowance, me not wanting to go to Michaels, finding some at Randalls, figuring out the funnel-things don't really work, then the balloons are too small to fill on the faucet, and then it's morning an mommy is sleeping and won't help. Now they've worked out a method, and are happy.

I meant to start lessons and seatwork this week, but with the two pool days, and football coming, it just didn't happen. Seph is reading 30 minutes a day, and Rone started a giant lego sorting project. Seph is also writing a comic book, inspired by her reading Calvin and Hobbes. She's also been working on her handwriting every day, in a giant book that Chance got with her at the bookstore.

This months Campfire newsletter has an article by Seph, which you can read here. She wants to start writing a daily newspaper, for Chance to read when he gets home. To do this, she wants a typewriter. Neither of us can convince her that the many, many computers available to her are a more practical tool. So there I am on ebay, surfing for ancient typewriters. Because I need more junk, especially junk with keyboards, in the house. But I really want to read the newspapers!