Digressions

• Every morning, Weston feeds Elsa--his one and only chore, initiated because he wanted a way to earn money--and then solemnly asks me, "How many cents do I have now?" Every day, the number goes up by ten cents and he never fails to comment, "Wow, that's a lot! What can I buy with that?"
• This morning, I made the mistake of being inspired by facebook. Go with me on this for a moment. A friend of mine had posted pictures of her adorable child playing with some homemade "cloud dough," and I thought, "Oh, yeah! I used to make that for Luke! I should totally make some for Weston." And then, an hour or so later, I remembered that the reason I stopped making it for Luke is that cloud dough (and other similar, homemade play-doughs) is apparently irresistible to the four-legged members of our family. Yellow Cat stepped in the bin I used to contain the dough and then tracked it all over the house. When I moved it outside to get it away from the cats, Elsa ate a fair amount of it and as a result, she now has flour all over her face. The 20 minutes of playtime was so not worth all the trouble. (Though if you asked Weston, he'd say that the playtime certainly was worth the trouble!)
• I find myself eying the brown leaves covering my back yard with a sigh. Didn't summer just begin? And yet, here we are, thinking about raking and putting covers on our outside faucets already. Come on!
• Many people I know are happily anticipating the time change this weekend. I am not. Yes, fine, the sun will be up earlier in the morning. But people. It will be dark by 5:30 in the evening. Who enjoys that?!
• The geese have been flying very quickly today. I wonder what this means. Usually, they migrate at a normal goose pace, but today, they have been flying faster than geese really should. This morning, a flock of them passed quickly over us and Weston and I both looked up, expecting to see a low-flying airplane or something because of how quickly their shadow moved across the lawn.

Where Did They Learn THAT?

As I was attempting to get just five more minutes of sleep this morning, McMoose and Luke were busy having the following conversation:

Luke: Do you know what makes the sunrise?
McMoose: Yes.
Luke: Well, I know it, too. The light from the sun, which is called the sun's rays, hit dust in the air and they get reflected--
McMoose: Refracted.
Luke: Yeah, refracted, which means they bend and then they make different colors.
McMoose: When light bends, it looks like different colors to our eyes.
Luke: I know that.

All day long, every time I've asked Weston to do anything, he has responded with, "Blah, blah, blah, whatever!"

Today, more than most days, I'm reminded that learning doesn't usually come from school, but from the people we interact with, the books we read, the things we talk about.

Not a Good Sign

I was driving Weston to preschool this morning when a bird fell straight down out of the clear blue sky and got itself stuck in the front grill of my car. My life, it specializes in the absurd.

It's a crisp morning and every time I look out the window, I see things falling. Leaves, pine needles, pine cones. So when I saw it falling, I thought it was a leaf. When I heard it hit the car, I thought it was a pine cone. What does one even do with a dead bird that is stuck to one's car?

It seems like an omen, a sign of some sort. It reminds me that I need to fill the bird feeder. It makes me wonder how one disposes safely of a dead bird. I can't put it in the trash, right? But then, what? I can't leave it in the yard, to be discovered by the kids or the dog. Am I supposed to bury the thing? Say a eulogy? In my copy of The Guide To Living Life As A Reasonable Adult, the page about how to deal with dead things that wedge themselves into the crevices of your vehicle must have been torn out because I am left with no instructions.

I'm thinking I probably need a Hazmat suit. Right? That sounds reasonable? If I take it in to Jiffy Lube, will they get the bird off? And how much do you suppose they'd charge for that service? Is bird carcass a good enough reason to abandon a brand new vehicle by the side of the road? I think it might be.

Lazy Afternoons

Luke is on intercession (aka: a two-week break) from school right now and we're having a lot of fun. One of the first things we did was to go to a craft store and get a few interesting looking craft kits and supplies so I'd have a response to the inevitable, "Do you have any suggestions for what I can do right now?" One of the things we got was a fossil excavation kit--a block of plaster, a couple of excavation tools, and the promise of fossils inside the block--and Luke quickly realized that "excavating" with the little flat stick they provided was terribly tedious and scraping the whole block on the ground provided much faster results. As a result, our front porch now looks a mess, but all that work did yield him a hunk of so-called fossilized dinosaur poop.

These are some of the only pictures in existence that show him with a genuine smile instead of the fake cheesy smile he puts on when he sees a camera. Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen childhood pictures of McMoose that look just like the first picture below, except with blond hair. (On a hair-related note: last night, Luke looked in the mirror after his bath and exclaimed, "I have golden hair! I didn't know I had golden hair! It's magic! My hair is magic!!!" Apparently, he has finally noticed the blond streaks in his hair. Up until now, he has been pretty convinced that his hair is black and usually points to Weston's baby pictures and identifies them as himself for that reason.)

Teaching Moments

Weston was being particularly Three-ish this morning and Luke was wandering around, offering him empathy and solutions and trying to advocate on his behalf with such statements as, "Can we please just give him an orange so that he won't be crying in the car? He'll eat it fast and we won't be late!" (What he doesn't know: all the oranges in the world wouldn't have snapped Weston out of the mood he was in.)

Once we were all finally in the car--25 minutes late, I might add--I thanked Luke for being extra kind to his brother.

Luke: Yeah, I was trying to be on his side. That's a good way to be a brother.
Me: Yes, it is.
Luke: A bad way to be a brother is to argue with him all the time, especially because he's my little brother. Because he learns how to be a big brother from me and what if, someday, he's a big brother? Then, he'll argue with his little brother because I argued with him.
Me: You're teaching him how to treat people who are younger than him.
Luke: That's right, I am. But Mama? You shouldn't argue with me or Weston and you should always be on our side because you're teaching us how to behave if we have kids of our own someday. And you're teaching us how to be a parent all the time.

Actually, I think that on any given day, they teach me more than I teach them.

Things My Three-Year-Old Does Instead of Sleeping

Weston has recently realized that he doesn't have to go to sleep just because it's bedtime (or naptime,) so he's staying awake and finding some rather bizarre ways to amuse himself.

• Arranges his animals in a line leading to his door and then closes his door and falls asleep, so when we come upstairs, we find everything just as it should be--closed bedroom door, innocently sleeping child--except with the addition of a queue of animals that seem to be waiting to gain entrance to the bedroom.
• Writes with his finger on the carpet, which disturbs the carpet and leaves faint, shadowy 1s, 2s, Ws, and Os all over the upstairs hallway. We're left trying to figure out whether the disturbances are just from a day of play or whether they were deliberately put there. (It's the latter as we discovered when I caught him sneaking quietly out of the room to draw on the carpet the other day.)
• Sneaks into the other room and gets a pile of books, which he then "reads" (ie, narrates what he remembers of the story) to himself for the next couple of hours.
• Moves the things on my nightstand to McMoose's nightstand. Moves the things on McMoose's nightstand to mine.
• Puts on various articles of clothing--socks, mittens, hats, scarves. Takes off other articles of clothing--mostly pants.
• Makes a nest out of the blankets and puts all his stuffed animals in the nest. (Perhaps if he actually covered himself with the blankets, he might not need all those mittens and hats.)
• Hides under the bed.
• Uses the bed as a trampoline/jungle gym.
• Puts socks on his stuffed animals. (This might be why we're always running out of socks.)

I blame all of this on the three and four hour naps he's been taking recently--and while I could wake him early from those naps, I'd so much rather deal with this kind of funny, if eye-roll inducing behavior than the atrocious level of grumpiness than happens when we wake him before he's ready. 

Clownin' Around

We went to an arts festival a few weekends ago and our local acrobatic circus group was there with some activities and performances. Obviously, we had to get clown noses! Weston has been wearing his around randomly--while building with legos, while eating his breakfast.  One time, I went to peek in on him during a nap and found that he had put it on before falling asleep. There is just something about an unexpected clown nose that can turn even the grumpiest day around!