Pages

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Cleaning Day and Smoke Monsters


Ernie's project from "Tuesday is Craft Day" I love the marker-stamped eyes, they're so...alluring! I nicely asked her to draw me, and to draw my body, and she looked at me blankly. "But Mom...I don't know how! I can only draw heads and legs, see?"

Today is Wednesday, which means today is "Wednesday Cleaning Day" for school. The girls were in charge of wiping down all the windows, which I thought was fitting since it was THEIR chalky handprints all over the glass. Ernie switched the laundry for me and lugged a full basket up the stairs- I'm going to miss when the girls fight over the chance to help with the laundry. Ernie started the dishwasher, too. I swept up and did the dishes, folded and put away laundry, and supervised.

I am out of my mind bored with the 15 books we found for school reading, so we picked up some longer ones on our weekly excursion. I was hoping for James and Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl, thinking it would be a nice companion story to all the peach canning that's been going on around here, but it wasn't on the shelf. I found a storybook-sized book though, by Mr. Dahl, called "The Minpins." It's all about a good little boy named Little Billy who always does what his mother says, and stares out the window at the forbidden-to-him "Forest of Sin" while his mother periodically calls to him from the next room asking him if he's being good. He sneaks out the window and into the forest, and is chased by the most fearsome, smoke-snorting, nightmare monster you ever dreamt up, and it's getting closer and closer, and he can feel the smoke on the back of his neck and he's running faster than he ever has before in his life and....I stopped reading and told Ernie we'd continue the next day. Oh the look on her face was completely priceless- she thought I'd lost my marbles. With a horrified grin and a brittle and cheerful voice she quavered "Oh Mommy, that story is....funny!" So we read a nice pop up book about kittens playing with yarn, and who can ever guess what the yarn will be, and they make a blanket and fall asleep under it. We DID continue the story the next day though, and he climbed miles high into a tree and discovered little people with heads the size of peas, the Minpins, and today's story time was much less tense.

Tomorrow's school schedule is up in the air. When we'd normally be finishing up breakfast and getting ready for school, I'll be at the hospital getting our ultrasound. Umm....wow. Does that mean I've finished half the pregnancy? The pregnancy that still hasn't quite sunk in? So in, like, 4 or 5 months we'll have a BABY. Yikes. Any guesses what that wonderful technician will tell us?
Posted by Picasa

3 comments:

Su said...

Oh Mama, I can't believe you pulled the "To Be Continued..." :)
So you ARE going to find out if you are having a boy or girl. How exciting!

Unknown said...

I can't wait to hear the results!

My first (in memory) exposure to James and the Giant Peach was when my kids were young and the movie came on TV. Even as an adult, that story traumatized me. My kids seemed to like it, but I thought it was scary!

Anonymous said...

boy. :) Or maybe twin girls. :)