flea

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:00:14 GMT

I am doing better suddenly than I have been in a long time. Today I did work on my "hobby" projects, got the kids to help (a little) cleaning the living room, played a lot with Dillo as Casper was out at the neighbors' doing girly stuff all day, and cooked a proper dinner and dessert of raspberry fool and dark chocolate digestives, which we actually ate (well, most of us) at the table while having a sort of conversation.

Now I'm tired, but not depressed and mindlessly surfing the internet, they way I am mosy days at this hour.

(Now watch, tomorrow will be hell. Casper is going to work with mr. flea, a special program for employees' kids, and it's just me and Dillo.)

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Future summer plans

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:18:52 GMT

This afternoon Dillo asked if we could go the the Alps. I asked why he wanted to, and he said so he could follow dinosaur tracks and then dig at the end of them.

So, maybe after the Badlands. (I can't think of any famous fossilized dinosaur tracks in the Alps, but he seemed very sure.)

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Notepad: summer plans

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:02:11 GMT

This summer I am planning to be home with the kids most of the time (Dillo all of the time; Casper will go to some part-day camps.) We'll do Camp Mommy again; I need the structure. I have to be careful not to get out of hand with the planning, but if I try to have a rough daily schedule, and theme weeks, I think we can manage okay.

One week is going to have to be Geology/Fossil/Dinosaur week; Dillo said this morning that he wants to spend the summer in the Badlands looking for fossils. (I told him that when he's a teenager we can probably find a volunteer project where he can do this.)

But! Cincinnati is actually very well-suited for fossil-hunting; my father used to do it as a child. Here be links to follow up on:
http://drydredgers.org/
http://ohiodnr.com/tabid/22049/default.aspx
http://familyfriendlycincinnati.com/2011/05/24/trammel-fossil-park-a-rocking-good-time/

I should also talk to our local friend who is a geologist manque and looooves to do outreach about geology, and see what he can cook up.

I also want to do a weekend trip to Pittsburgh to go to the Carnegie and see the dinosaurs (One of my few memories of living in PA from ages 3-6 is the dinosaurs at the Carnegie.)

See what I mean about getting out of hand?

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CSA and math

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:54:57 GMT

Our neighbor suggested we join her CSA, which has a convenient drop-off point at her house (across the street). It's $550 for a half-share, which I think is plenty for us, and we get delivery from Mid-May through October. So, probably 20 weeks, that comes to $27.50 a week. We certainly don't spend that much on produce now, although perhaps we should. Fortunately, the deadline is Tuesday, so I don't have long to agonize over the decision.

In related math news, the kids were driven by Phineas and Ferb ("there's 104 days of summer vacation...") to calculate their summer vacation. Sadly, it comes to far fewer than 104 days; they get out May 30, and go back August 15. Seventy-seven. I made Dillo promise he would not take a rocket ship full of cows to the moon while under my care.

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Summer ups & downs

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:39:34 GMT

We're in Week 7 of the summer this week - there are 11. The last one is the camp-free week, which I am taking off, but it looks like mr. flea has no vacation for, so maybe his mother and his sister and her kids will come down (his father has jury duty, which I'd have thought you could postpone for a family vacation, but he's not that kind of guy.) All up in the air, mostly.

This week Casper is at her second non-YMCA week camp - the local nature center, run by the city. She wasn't as wild about it as I'd expected - she was much more enthusiastic about the first day of Zoo Camp. Her friends the twins are there, but have been for several weeks so have a regular gang, and S. didn't sit with Casper at lunch. (In Good Save news, a friend of hers from Zoo Camp is there this week, and sat with her.) Her small group is all boys but her, and nobody interesting she says, and her swim buddy is a girl she knows from school but thinks is weird. I emphasized that she needs to be friendly to swim buddy girl just like she wishes S. would be friendly to her.

She's had a good social summer up to now, and this was supposed to be the highlight, with her close friend, but oh well. She's made good friends this year at the Y (so strange to have met none of them) and has successfully navigated some mean girl social stuff there (a girl told her her parents have stupid jobs - that girl's parents are apparently a musician and a tattoo artist. So sue us for not being hipsters!)

Dillo does okay at the Y, but he's not very happy. Like with school, he would much rather be at home, and tells me so. Several boys - at least 5 (Clayton, Michael, Eli, Cooper, and Baptiste) - from PreK - are at the Y too, but they are all already 5 and in the older group. He is with the little dudes - they have nap time! (Dillo hasn't napped in YEARS). Every Monday (this week, Tuesday) I have to use all my persuasive powers to get Dillo to go to the Y successfully. Luckily I am damned good.

He's also had a couple of evenings when he's overtired, and at bedtime segues into a litany of worry and fear and complaint about the upcoming kindergarten. He is afraid of homework (which they do not have in K, and he knows). He once wailed, "They are going to teach me to SPELL!" and it was all I could do not to laugh. I have talked about the cool K teachers (teacher assignments aren't until right before school starts) and how he will have some old friends from his PreK class and some new friends, but he isn't buying it. He's started to ask me to homeschool him, though not in so many words. Poor guy just doesn't like change, and doesn't like organized stuff, and wants to do his own thing. I hope we get the teacher our PreK teacher recommended, who is said to work well with the independent. He used to like school...

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