The things kids learn in school

Here are the kinds of jokes that I’ll be hearing for the next eight years or so, as my children go through elementary school.  They are brought to us this morning by Middle Daughter… who learned them from Oldest Daughter… who has been telling the same jokes multiple times for the last few weeks now…

Middle Daughter: What’s your name?

ordinary (mostly): Ted.

MD: Spell it.

o(m): I-T.

MD: Good!  You got it right!

As I said, we’ve heard it multiple times – yet somehow, it doesn’t seem to lose its humor…

That one was followed minutes later by this one…

MD: What’s your name?

o(m): Ted.

MD: What color is the sky?

(I look out the window at the wintery sky…)

o(m): Gray.

MD: No, you have to say, “Blue.”

o(m): But it looks gray to me.

MD: But we usually say that the sky is blue.

o(m): Ok.  Blue.

(MD points up in the air…)

MD: What direction am I pointing?

o(m): Up.

MD: You just said, “Ted blew up!”

(MD laughs.)

It’s going to be a long eight years.

Turning the soil

We’ve had some really nice weather in the Chicago ‘burbs throughout this week and continuing today.  Although I had to put in a Saturday morning at work, I got home by early afternoon and (thanks to some prodding by Ordinary Spouse) was able to get out and enjoy it.

In our back yard, we have a small garden that OS tends.  There’s not much space, but I’m thankful for her efforts because the fruits of her labor add to our meals throughout the summer.  My favorite staples are probably tomatoes, cucumbers (which also show up as pickles), and arugula, but we get other things depending on which seeds in the catalog caught her fancy in January.  Turns out that this year we are still enjoying leeks and cilantro into mid-November.

Today, she wanted me to get the plot ready for winter (well – all except the patches of leek and cilantro) which consisted of taking down some rabbit fence, pulling some stakes, spreading some rich soil from our compost pile, and turning everything over just a bit.  I grumbled a bit as I was motivating my body out the door, but once outside the weather was so nice, and the work so rewarding, that I was thankful to be there.

Thanks to an Andrew Kreider song in my head, I got to thinking about the curse of the garden in Genesis.  Here are some excerpts from the song…

The soil in the garden, voluptuous and new
Bursting with promise and moist with the dew
Awakens in me the desire for you
To make me the work of your hand

We feasted that day without a care
Using spoonfuls of pepper that would singe your hair
A worm in my apple, breaking the curse
Renewing my love for the earth

“Our Souls Are Soil”
(from “Firebrands and Golden Strands)
by Andrew Kreider

Have you ever noticed in Genesis 3 that the curse is directed at the ground, and not at Adam?  And how in Romans, Paul says that “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God”?  As my spade was breaking the ground, I was contemplating that line, “…breaking the curse, renewing my love for the earth”, and praying that God’s children would be a blessing to the ground.

In the chorus, Andrew’s song compares our own lives to the ground.  It’s rather profound:

Oh, our souls are soil.
Won’t you turn them gently?
Our souls are soil.
Won’t you turn them again?

If God the gardener is tending to the soil of my life, I hope there are some hot peppers planted.

The trials of the dishwasher saga

The dishwasher is still not in working order (we’re waiting Maytag), and it’s taking a toll on everyone.  Just recently, Oldest Daughter said…

I’d rather rinse the dishes.  Washing them hyperextends my back.

Well – I guess we wouldn’t want that, would we?

Fit for a princess

“Rose Garden Castle” by Oldest Daughter, 5″ x 7″, acrylic on canvas, 2009.

Grow your vocabulary!

Oldest Daughter has turned into a bookworm.  Tonight, she made this declaration to Ordinary Spouse:

It’s good for me to read the toy catalogs, because it helps your vocab.  It can go up by 10% a year.

 Indeed.

Cute words

At the breakfast table one day…

ordinary (mostly): I’m trying to remember cute words that Youngest Daughter says.

Ordinary Spouse: YD, do you say cute words?

YD: Yeah.

Middle Daughter: Say ‘ball’.

YD: I can’t.  It too hard say that word.  I little bit shy.  I walkin’ way.

(she walks out of the kitchen, but seconds later runs in with arms raised)

YD: Here she backs!

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And here is a current, quick list of cute words.  Some have been mentioned before.

• Tomlin – this is a class at the YMCA
• Bleckees – breakfast
• Mookees – music
• Feddah – sweater
• Fingin – on the fing set
• Plincess – I have three of them in my house
• Tickey – what fingers are, after eating
• Tinkey – when a diaper needs changing
• Kunchees – the chunks of granola in her favorite cereal
• Baffwomb – I’ll let you figure that out

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 Additional words (4 Nov 2009):

• Fimmin – what we like to do at the YMCA
• Bashin – what we like to do in the fimmin pool

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 Additional words (5 Nov 2009):

• Boon – used to eat, with a fork and knife

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 Additional words (6 Nov 2009):

• Soplise! – what we shout when Daddy gets home and we jump out from our hiding place
• Flingoes – pink birds at the zoo
• Can – what we color with (the vowel is pronounced over an extended duration – ca’an)

Random trick-or-treating observations

Trick-or-treating is happening now (4:00 – 7:00 pm) in our town.  Here are my random observations…

• According to Ordinary Spouse, we had 40+ children the first year.  Numbers are down since then.
• Love the parents with one-year-old children.  Guess who’s getting candy tonight?
• If I’m the one answering our door, you better not simply hold out a bag.  I’m likely to take something out of it.
• It’s great fun when you get kids you know.  You can offer them green beans or tuna or other random canned foods that you know they don’t like.  You get sad looks, but they’re too shy to say anything.  That’s my idea of a trick.  (Don’t worry – I make up for it.)
• Love the kid who just came to the door.  Probably three years old.  He took one thing and said he wanted “two!”  Sure, I said.  So he took another, and said “two!”  At this point, I just let him go at it and waited to see when his mom would stop him.  Two became five.
• Ordinary Spouse has a theory for dealing with the candy that comes home to our house.  Let them eat it all right away, crash and burn from the sugar high, and then we’re done with it.
• According to Ordinary Spouse, Youngest Daughter wasn’t sure that she wanted to go trick-or-treating.  But after the second house, she figured out what was happening.  Then she charged along.
• Ordinary Spouse just asked, so I checked:  It’s 44 deg F out there.  That’s why they came home with ice cubes for hands.

Left: candy consumed.  Right: candy rejected.

This week in the “garden”… 31 October 2009

It’s October 31st and I’ve just finished picking up the leaves* in our back yard – really early this year.  I’ve put “garden” in quotes, because I only have one garden picture – and it’s all brown.

* I’ve finished, but it was Ordinary Spouse who made most of the piles.  Thanks!

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The Mother’s Day garden has mostly gone into dormancy for the winter.

There are a few leaves left on our tree, but not many…

…since most of them are here.

Sun sets over the back yard.

Quack, quack, quack!

It’s a weird end for October weather.  It’s fairly warm (65 deg F), but it’s raining cats and dogs.  Here’s the map (from Wunderground):

I’ve seldom seen such a well-defined band of rain moving across the country, and I thought that it was in the process of moving out of Illinois.  But in fact, that low pressure system parked at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers is spinning stuff up from the south.  So we’ve got a bit more rain before things clear up – hopefully by late tonight.  We’ve had two inches of precip so far.

In other ordinary family news, we continue to battle last Sunday’s malaise.  No one is incredibly sick at this point – at worst, some of us still have bad cold symptoms.  However, the symptoms come and go and change and linger and…  Well, after a week of this, we’re ready to be done with it.  Last weekend, Youngest Daughter said, “I say, ‘Boo-boo!’ and ‘Boo-boo’ make you better!”  We need her to say ‘Boo-boo’ a few more times.

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Weather update (five hours later):

I overestimated the amount of time it would take for this weather system to blow through.  When I left work, it was no longer raining and there were breaks in the clouds.  But it also got cold.

Now at home, we have a really colorful sunset.  And the interesting thing about the sunsset is that we are actually able to see it.  That’s a rarity since the leaves on our tree are usually still hanging on at this point (and blocking the view out our window).

The most amazingest contraption ever

Just overheard from the living room…  Middle Daughter to Youngest Daughter as she is looking out the front window:

Come quick!  This is the most amazingest contraption evee*!

* ever

And there goes the garbage truck.