Domestic Adventures

Each day we talk through some word problems in math.

A: If I had four cats and I gave two away, how many would I have?
E: Why would you give away two cats?
A: If I had four cats and I gave two to my daughter, how many cats would I have?
E: You’d have four cats! Because my cats are your cats and your cats are my cats.

I could have predicted this. It’s just how her mind works.

And as a bonus, this little piece of information was shared with me during school today…

E: Momma, did you know that everything I do is not…well…. perfect?

Almost every night, we stay up too late watching the olympic games. The women’s gymnastics and of course Michael Phelps are our favorites to watch, but we’ve enjoyed beach volleyball, synchronized diving, and olympic trampoline jumping as well. (I had no idea some of these things were olympic games!) Emmaline enthusiastically cheers on our American athletes and no one wants to go to bed. We’ve had some late nights, but they’ve been awfully warm and snuggly.

Despite a construction zone in our kitchen, Tropical Storm Fay off our coast, and a touch of sickness in our house, we started school as scheduled. And really, it went very well.
At one point Emmaline was drawing a self portrait in her journal. She drew a lovely little girl in the center of the white space and I asked her what was around her in the picture. “Is there a park? A house? Is anyone else in the picture?” She lit up with inspiration and drew a garden with a pond full of goldfish and trees full of birds. As I watched her fill in the space I realized that if I were in a classroom, I probably would have asked myself, “Do I have time to kill or do I need to hurry up?” before encouraging her to continue drawing. Here at home, the question instead was, “How can I get her excited about this day and this learning?”
It’s good to be here at home. Can’t wait to see how we do when we have electricity and no power tools buzzing in the next room.

When I was in college, there was always a whiteboard by the soups in the cafeteria. Sometimes it looked like this:

“Soup” of the Day
Split Pea

Sometimes it looked like this:

Soup of the “Day”
Split Pea

And sometimes it looked like this:

Soup of the Day
“Split Pea”

No matter where they put the quotation marks, I never trusted the “soup”.
If you’ve ever chuckled at inappropriate quotation marks, you really need to check out The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. It’s almost as good as Engrish.

We are not sports people in this house. Really, we would astound you with our complete ignorance of all things sports. The one exception is the Olympics - particularly the summer Olympics (okay, and maybe the occasional baseball game). This is the first year Emmaline is really old enough to “get” the Olympics and I’m excited about watching with her. We’re looking forward to gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and the diving competitions, and tonight we’re ordering Chinese and watching the extravagant opening ceremony. The games haven’t even started yet and Emmie is already pronouncing herself an Olympic gymnast as she balances on the arms of the couches.

P.S. I found this nifty medal tracker to keep track of who’s winning what

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Today we got to visit my dad at the hospital where he works. I always enjoy visiting people’s workplaces because they spend so much time there - it’s nice to be able to picture your dad or husband at work, what his office looks like, what he does all day. PopPop took us on a grand tour, the highlight of which, for the kids, was the enclosed bridge from the parking garage to the hospital. Two train tracks run underneath and the kids got to look out for trains below. And of course, being wheeled around in high style made it all the more fun. We walked through the beautiful courtyard, got to meet some people he works with, then PopPop treated us to lunch in the hospital cafeteria and bought popsicles and chocolate tacos for dessert.
All these fun treats reminded me of being a kid and my dad taking me to the police station where he worked then. All I can remember about it are the colored lights on the switchboards and this nifty device to send papers across the room. And of course, that it’s tons of fun to visit Daddy’s (or PopPop’s) work.
Thanks, Daddy!

T: Hey, Micah, is Emmie the boss?

M: No. Emmie is the grumpiness!