It's the law

As I was just getting ready to go, Sachy ran up to me yelling, "Go! Go! Go!  SWAT Snuggling Team!"  So I swatted him.

Incidentally Addie and Gilad have both been sleeping really poorly the last few nights.  A couple of nights ago Gilad came running into my room at about midnight announcing, "Mommy, I don't like this storm!"

"Um, there's no storm."

"Oh."  And with that he turned around and pitter pattered back to his bed.

And now Sachy just came up behind me reiterating his status as head of the "SST."

The Newest in Fashion Accessories

Hat!

 Cookie!

Sachy gave Addie a cracker.  She held it up to me and confirmed, "Cookie?"  I said yes, cookie.  She asked again, "Cookie?"  I said yes.  She asked, "Nom, nom, nom, cookie?"  I said yes, it's a cookie to eat.  She grinned, put it on her head, and shouted, "Hat!"

I said, "Not hat!  Cookie!  Eat it."  So she pointed at the cupboard and asked, "Nom, nom, nom, cookie?"  I said no, that's not cookie, that's furniture.

So she licked the cupboard.

Department of Things You Don't Expect to Hear

Four-year-old Gilad was on the computer, playing games on Disney's Club Penguin, a sort of gaming and social networking site for the preschool/grade school set.  All of a sudden he says excitedly to the screen, "Yeah!  I got his underwear!"

Kayla and I both agreed we did not want to know what was going on (Sachy later informed us though that it was probably a particular penguin mission in which you have to get the belt from a mannequin after which its pants fall down so you see boxers).

Sometimes she scares even me

I have LibraryThing set as my homepage for Safari.  When I open up my internet browser, that's the page I get first.  Tonight Kayla was looking over my shoulder as I opened my online profile, since I was going online to email a copy of an essay she wrote to her teacher.  She started singing, "LibraryThing, (da, da, da, DA, da)

You make my heart sing, (da, da, da, Da, da)

LibraryThing, I think I love you."

Then we emailed her essay on, I joke not, the bassoon.

A few more days' report

icelandic beret
Originally uploaded by LeesyLou

Well I've still been spinning my Moorit Icelandic rovings, and I've cast on Donna Druchunas' North Star Tam (from Arctic Lace) with the first ball. The second ball is spun true woolen and is much softer and fluffier, which will make it suitable for a scarf, mittens, or even a cowl. It's noticeably fluffier on the bobbin.
Feivel and Kayla are still sick, and Tirtze and I aren't feeling to great either. I've got a fever, but things are really nuts at work this week, so off I go. I wish we could convince Tirtze to show a little more dedication to getting done what she needs to do, but then she's a teenager.
Jeffrey took Gilad to a Barry Louis Polisar concert on Sunday, which they (particularly Giggle) enjoyed immensely. Jeffrey got Gilad a copy of Polisar's book, Don't Do That!: A Child's Guide to Bad Manners, Ridiculous Rules, and Inadequate Etiquette, autographed to Gilad; and they bought a copy for Auntie Julie and family and had that autographed too!

eta: I finished the top of the beret this evening, but then put the project aside to work on one of my outstanding (in the sense of being late to be finished) projects

Gilad blows his horn

Gilad visits the "shofar factory" at preschool:

Maybe not those horns.  Reminds me of the time in preschool when Sachy told me they had many shofars at school, including his friend Karen (karen or keren means horn in Hebrew).

Move over Michael Phelps!

We give you Gilad's cover shot (he did this, we didn't instigate it):

Then Addie got all giddy,

and then she decided she wanted to dress up too:

So Kayla decided to make use of her vocabulary flash cards in a more substantive way than usual (it says "nemesis"):

And finally, who should show up but Diego and his baby jaguar:

Three year old sensibility

Kayla has been loving using some mosaic magnets I had bought for Sachy to play with at camp, making many different designs.  Today she followed a pattern and created a cute giraffe scene:

Then she showed it to Gilad and asked if he liked it.

Gilad answered eagerly, "Yes!  Can I 'estroy it now?"

With Daughters Like These..

I whined that my sunburn was just getting to the point of driving me crazy with itchiness.  Kayla asked,  "So your problem is that you're flaky?"

Geeks of the world! Represent!

Go forth and name! Mark Isaak will show you how it's done by the professionals (well, the ones with a sense of humor, a chip on their shoulder, or a grudge against someone).
Who thought taxonomy, genetics, and biology in general couldn't be fun?

Actual conversation

True conversation held with 3 year old Gilad this morning while he ate breakfast:

Gilad: Look! Is pancakes! (points to the picture of Eggo waffles on the side of his box of Frosted Flakes)

Me: Well, waffles, but yes.

Gilad: I have them when I finish my cereal.

Me: Sorry, we don't have any waffles right now.

Gilad: But they right here!

It's really funny how their minds just don't quite grasp reality. At least, it's funny in a 3 year old.

Hives--we has 'em. Weird kids too

Feivel has developed some kind of allergy to one of his soaps--every time he bathes in the last week, his whole abdomen is covered in hives! I took a photo of his cute tummy to show you, but then he panicked, becoming convinced that I was planning on sending the picture to a doctor who was going to put him in the hospital. I told him I'd get him some Cetaphil and some Ivory, gave him some Benadryl, and got him calmed down.

Meanwhile, last night while Jeffrey changed Gilad's diaper, Gilad lay on the sofa whacking his own head with his own hand, and yelling at himself, "Stop punching myself! Stop punching myself!" He thought it was just too funny. We don't live in a sit-com, we live in a cartoon.

Philosophy major at 12

image from wikipedia

Last night, the girls were discussing books and looking for books to Mooch. Kayla decided to look for Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Tirtze complained that it was a tragedy. Kayla countered with "Aristotle recommends tragedy."

Likewise, when Tirtze complained a couple of days ago that everything you have to read at school is depressing, Kayla told her that was because it was cathartic. Yes, she used that word.

Shall I go ahead and send her application in to Bryn Mawr now?

Units of Measurement

I'm just beginning to catch up on what happened over chol hamoed Pesach (last week) so you'll have to bear with me a bit.
Playing in the yard on Friday morning, Tirtze found a dead rabbit behind the forsythia. Either some predator got scared off before finishing its meal, or some fox is really, really bad at creating food caches. Anyhow, Jeffrey wasn't sure whether he should just bag the carcass and put it in the municipal trash for collection, so he called animal control. They told him they only got involved when a county resident finds a carcass "bigger than an adult opossum."
Somehow using an adult opossum as a unit of measurement just really amuses me. You know, "smaller than a breadbox, bigger than an adult opossum."

Maybe I'm just sad and easily amused. It reminds me of Dave Barry though, who once wrote about how when wildlife writers discuss piranha attacks, they always use cows as a unit of measurement, a la "a school of piranha can skeletonize a cow in 5 minutes!" He wanted to know why a cow was a standard unit of measurement. Do cows frequent piranha infested waters? Do piranha often prey on cows?

Life with Feivel, story #?

Feivel just headed off to bed, saying to me, "Good night." I replied, "Good night." To which he then replied, in all earnestness, "You forgot the 'E.'"
If you understand that, you are a big step ahead of me. Or else you also have ACC.

A conversation every 3 year old has with a parent at least once

Gilad: Mommy, you NOT come in de kitchen! Never, never, never!

Me: Why not? Are you eating cookies?

Gilad: You not come in here! Yes, I eating sugar cookies [actually it turned out he had mini saltines]! You never come see!

Unfortunately, later he proceeded to paint with humus while sitting with Sachy at the computer, but that's another story.

the biogeek in me comes out

I just love this. 'nuff said.

PB&J

This morning Gilad announces, "I have jelly sandwich for breakfast! Is good idea!"
In case you're wondering, yes, everything he says does come with an exclamation point (unless a question mark is indicated).
He gets the jelly out of the fridge, realizes it's quite light (of course no one who uses jelly told me we were running low), holds it up to his face to peer at it, and yells, "Hello! Anyone in dere? Is any jelly left?" Then he puts it to his ear like a phone and keeps yelling, "Hello! Hello! Jelly?"

He settled for a peanut butter sandwich ("Is good idea!"). Of course there was just enough pb to make one sandwich and now we're out of both.

Kayla update: she's taking today off from school. T and I went to the library last night and checked out a bunch of books for her so she can just stay on the sofa all day and rest. Yesterday was just too much for her and even the school nurse asked why she was back in class already. We'll give her another day or two and by then she may not even need the crutches much less the wheel chair (though I think I'd want her to at least take the crutches in case her foot starts hurting during the day).

I can haz moonburger?

Last night, the boys were all tired and hyper and Feivel had been sick so we sent them up to their room 1/2 hour early to read in bed and settle down. It was a very windy night, thanks to an arctic front bearing down on us, so we had the usual complaints from Feivel about how scary it sounded, with the usual responses from me ("go back to bed, I can't make the wind stop").

Then there were a bunch of emergency vehicles which went by, in their usual on/off siren mode. We've explained to the boys that at night in the neighborhood the firetrucks and police try to keep their sirens off except when they're going around tight, blind curves or when they're running through intersections, but since we live between one of each of those the siren noises do sound a little odd and it's unnerving the the kids, so that upset him a little, but he settled down again.

Then at about 9 pm Feivel comes to me, all upset. "Mommy, you have to come see! There's a fire up high outside, a real fire, it's really an emergency, it's all yellow and it's on fire!" Now leaving aside the fact that their windows have opaque shades and he could only see something outside if he's out of bed pulling the shade aside to look out deliberately, I figure maybe, just maybe, he saw something real. So I follow him up. The other two boys are in their beds, quiet. I look where Feivel points out the window. There's a house with a regular light, just a steady lamplight, nothing at all like a fire even in a fireplace. He points above it. "There, Mommy, there! See, it's all yellow! A fire! What do we do?" I realize what he's pointing to. Sigh.

"Feivel. You see that almost every night. It's called the Moon. It's supposed to be there."

Война и мир (War and Peace for the rest of you)

Conversation held with Feivel this afternoon:

Him: Mom, I want you to order me a book online I want to read.
Me [anticipating yet another request for something like Guiness book of world records, or another Garfield book or something else we've already said no to]: What book?
Him: War and Peace.
Me: Um, what?
Him: War and Peace. They read it in Because of Winn-Dixie and I want to read it myself.

Now, I wan't a Russian major for nothing, right? So I went downstairs and got him a paperback (English) copy. All 1400+ pages.
Fortunately, he has agreed that it might just be a little beyond him right now. Maybe next year.