First, worth a note: we had our first picnic of the year! We usually do eat a meal outside in March, but more typical is for all of us to be in our snow pants in a snow fort eating chili. But this was a genuine picnic with grilled brats and no coats on March 2nd. Remarkable.
Here’s some favorite kid quotes (or stories) from the past week:
I walked into the kitchen and found Hattie (age 8) in the midst of a major, never-discussed art project. I just looked at her and she explained without a concern about the great mess surrounding her, “I wanted to set the table very beautiful for dinner, so I thought I would paint some rocks for the middle.”
Elias, age 4, got a beta fish on Thursday, the most thrilling thing that could happen to him, it seems. We’ve had the fish 4 days and so far his name has been: Bluey, Billy, BillyBlu, Blueberry, and Jonathan. It seems BillyBlu is sticking.
Hattie has been baking every single day lately. Like a lot. She looks through my cookbooks, finds what she wants to make and has at it. In the last week she has made pancakes, buttermilk biscuits, gravy, blueberry muffins, french toast bake, cookie bars, monster cookies, granola bars, egg in the hole, egg bake and corn bread all without a minute of help from me. There have been rave reviews all around and there have been some lessons. Like when we were eating the granola bars at our picnic and everyone was commenting that it seemed there weren’t very many oats in the granola bars. I said, “did you put three and a half cups of oats in the bars?” And Hattie cocked her head, “I thought that meant three half-cup scoops.” No one was actually sad about the oats- they tasted great!
Then today she made cookie bars and after the batter was in the pan I noted that it seemed really wet. “Did you do 2 and 3/4 cups of flour?” I wish everyone could know Hattie because it makes me laugh out loud to type this. She looked at me like this was not her fault at all, “we don’t have a 3/4 cups scooper.” “Okay, so you just didn’t add the 3/4 cup?” And she nodded. So then I explained that she could just use a one cup and eye ball it. And again she said with a ‘not my problem’ face, “I don’t know how to eyeball.”
Fraction lesson first thing Monday morning.
Alden asked Elsie, age 11, why there is a leap day every four years. And she replied without knowing I was in ear shot, “So there is an extra day to weave on my loom.”
Ivar said excitedly, “guess who we saw at Menards?!!” Just then Rory called him out of the room. I yelled, “Cliff Hanger!” And all the kids wondered who that was. I explained Cliff is a guy who is always leaving people in suspense. “Where did you meet him?” they wondered.
