"But last week you said you were proud of my persistence!"

Last week, Middle Kid spent an entire afternoon learning how to blow bubbles with bubble gum.

Today, he learned to make noises with his armpit.

Technology Lacking

Why have they not invented a camera that captures that new baby smell?

Giving Dad Hope

Conversation in the Car:

J: [apropos of nothing] Mom, why is a triple rarer than a home run?
A: I don't know...Oh, I know. Because usually a home run puts the ball over the fence, so it's not in play. But a triple necessarily has the ball in play, so it's more likely that they'll stop the runner at a single or double.
J: Unless it's an error.
A: What?
J: Like if they drop the ball.


Can you imagine how delighted Randy would be if Jesse were as fanatical about baseball statistics as he is about Pokemon stats?

Sock Races

Earth Day Conversation

T: Mom, do you know what the enemy of food is? That makes your food bad?
A: What?
T: It's ethylene gas.
A: Really? Where did you learn that?
J: On TV, on a commercial for Greenbags.
T: Yeah.

For a moment there I thought they were getting really advanced in their science lessons at preschool.

Turner's View

Turner looks adorable walking around with the camera, strap around his neck, like some sort of Japanese-tourist savant.

Bon Appétit!

Turner turned his nose up at dinner, and we refused to make him something else. So he decided to make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, even better than mine because he cut off the crusts.

Is this what they call a "tween"?

Conversation between me and Jesse:

A: Do you want a sandwich, skinny boy?
J: Yes, mother who is in danger of getting diabetes.

Excessively socialized

Jesse had his class picture today. I carefully combed his mohawk down, out of deference for those parents who might not wish to see a mohawk in their child's class picture.

Strings Performance

This is Jesse during his strings performance in December. It's a lousy photo, but I was way in the back so I was lucky to get a shot at all, even with a lovely bald head in the foreground.

Yew Nork

T: Mom, can we go on a trip tomorrow?
A: No. But where do you want to go?
T: I want to go to Yew Nork.
A: Yew Nork? What do you want to do there?
T: The stuff there is to do there.
A: Yeah, New York is a pretty cool place to go.

Big Changes

I was too slow to think of taking a picture, so you don't get to see the roof with the shingles off.

They replaced the flat roof last week, thank goodness. We previously had a perfectly flat roof--actually convex in spots--which was holding water and breeding mosquitoes for the whole neighborhood. It was also leaking and rotting the wood underneath. They stripped the cover off, replaced a bunch of the wood, covered it with a product specially designed to convert flat roofs to sloped roofs (and is incidentally insulating), and topped it off with a tough white membrane which reflects heat. Now it is ever so slightly sloped, so the water runs off on all four sides.

This week the roofers replaced the asphalt shingles on the mansard roof with faux slate, which looks fabulous and is supposed to last longer than the house. The windows for the upstairs have been ordered, and the window guys will clad the wood in cream trim when they replace them. The roofers also replaced a lot of the wood around the windows because it was also rotted.

Sigh. It's going to be gorgeous when we are done.

Lunge

Did I mention that Jesse has started fencing lessons?

Turrrrrrnerrrrrrrrrr

When Turner hadn't mastered pronouncing his r's, even to age 4 and a half, Randy and I asked him a few times to carefully repeat a word or two. He obliged, pronouncing his r's clearly. We were satisfied that it was just a bad habit, so we let it drop.

Last week, Turner decided it was time to start enunciating his r's, with a vengeance. Now every r sounds like a baby bear, a throaty growl, grrrrr without the g, like a snippet from a pirate's signature, "Aaarrrrghhh."

"Rrrrright, mom?"
"Can we go to a rrrrrrestaurrrrant?"
"Where arrrrre we going?"
"I'm rrrrrready to get up now!"

It makes my throat hurt just trying to imitate it.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Taken March 30.