November 30

Good Morning

Boys are still asleep -- though I have been hearing yells from the bedroom. My sons are both 'active' and 'vocal' sleepers. It makes it hard, sometimes, to know if I should go in or if that would just wake them up...

At any rate, Tom is off to work. Snow has changed to rain though they are thinking there may be more snow this afternoon. I am more worried about ice, to be truthful, and about the drivers who, now that the visible dangers are lessened may not be as careful. Ah well, Life will go on.

Remembered a funny story, and a telling one. Be careful what you read to your children -- this story makes that clear. Let me explain: I have been reading the Milne poems to the boys. One of their favorites is called "The King's Breakfast" -- you know it: The King asked the Queen and the Queen asked the Dairymaid... Well Xander knows that poem quite by heart and has taken to announcing, whenever he wants butter on his bread, 'Mommy, you are the Dairymaid. I am the King!' Hmmmm. Always suspected that 'the naming of things is a difficult matter' -- one needs to be careful. In our case, we named him for Saints and Czars, Kingly folk all and he is certainly determined to live up to that idea!

At any rate, despite snow and cold, we did have some fun yesterday. The front door is now decorated with paper snowflakes while the wreathe that Tom and Jason made on Thanksgiving day adorns the side wall. Jason did quite a bit of math yesterday -- when I told them I would read them books, he collected a pile. I had him count them and then, as we read, he practiced his subtraction. He has also been getting practice adding with the whole points system and is so fascinated by adding numbers that he will, out of the blue, present math questions to me. Then we go back and figure out how to answer them. One of these days I shall have to buy that Numeric Scrabble game for the boys -- and I include Tom in that group!

The boys also amused themselves shooting balloons around the room -- I was trying to get dinner ready and had handed over the hand pump to Xander (He wanted to pump his OWN BOON!). He couldn't get it to work and asked his brother for help (We have been encouraging Xander to ask Jason for assistence and encouraging Jason to help. This may backfire on us, of course...) Jason happily took over the pump and, to the boys' mutual amusement, began pumping up then releasing balloons. It kept them busy until CRASH, a bottle of Salsa exploded in the pantry when it fell off a shelf as I was reaching for something else. Then, as I was attempting to clean that up, the door bell rang. Jason answered it and called me over. It was our neighbor from across the street: "Your pipes broke, I think" she said, pointing at the front of the house. Sure enough, water was spraying the street, the driveway, the front yard. I called Tom, as I was uncertain where the water shut off valve was. 'I'll be home in a very short time.' he said 'but the valve is around the side of the house near the electrical outlet (HUH?!)' So I went and found it but I must've turned it the wrong way because nothing worked. Then Tom came home and shut it off. The 'good' news is that he does not think it was the pipes but rather the valve in the sprinkler system. Still I shudder to think how much water has been lost and what that is going to cost us. On the other hand, it simply confirmed in Jason's mind that his Daddy is a hero who can do anything. 'I knew Daddy could fix it, Mom!' he said, smiling sweetly.

opps. a boy is calling.