Yeast!

He may not have looked like he was paying attention, but Pauly did learn in the yeast class at YEA today. On the way home Roger wanted to drink the root beer, but I told him that we had to wait a few days for the yeast to eat the sugar and make carbon dioxide. Then Pauly said, "And make more yeast, then even more carbon dioxide." A little later, when asked, he told me that the yeast eats the sugar in dough to make carbon dioxide to make bread rise.

Rain

It was sprinkling as we went into YEA this morning. As he got out of the car, Roger put his hands on his head and said, "I'm going to keep my head closed, so that rain doesn't get inside it."

I hate my digestive system.

That is all. Although you might note the time this was posted. : ( I'll be up for the day in four hours and I haven't been to bed yet. whine over

Rosemarie is 9 months old!

Rosie is 9 months old today. She had her 9 month well baby check today -- she is 17 1/2 lbs and 28 inches tall. Unfortunately, she was not actually well as it turned out she had a very bad ear infection. Hopefully she'll be better soon.

She has two bottom teeth, and the corner of one top tooth has just come through -- the poor baby's gums are swollen all around it. She is crawling well, pulling up well, and just starting to stand alone without support. She can get into anything she wants, and she wants to get into everything! She is very stubborn and persistent, but is not easily upset at all. She is a very, very happy baby. Even with super painful teething, and the ear infection we only just found out about, she has been only mildly cranky. Her grumpy is other babies' normal!

She can say "mama," "dada," "dog," "kitty," and "kiss." Bob insists that she said "tools" but I can't attest to that. She does bounce up and down and say "heh heh heh" whenever Bob is using a power tool. We don't really have any recent pictures -- not my fault, I don't have a camera. I think my parents have some on their computer from about a month ago (my dad's birthday) that I never saw. . .

Alas, she does not seem to be a true redhead after all. So we're going to have to return her and get our money back.

Roger at the Art Museum

while walking through a gallery

"This is not art!"

a moment later, after looking around more

"Maybe art is a planet."

Freedom?

I picked up Whose Freedom? by George Lakoff at the library this afternoon. He's a "progressive" writing about how liberals and conservatives really have two different definitions of the word "freedom," and that conservatives are attempting to change the "traditional" (liberal) idea of freedom for the conservative one. I'm sure it will irritate me, but as he's approaching it as a cognitive scientist focusing on memory, brain function, etc., it is also sure to be interesting.

I thought this bit was really interesting, because I think a conservative could say this about liberals without changing a single word:

I believe that one version of freedom is traditional and important to keep for the deepest moral reasons. I believe that the other version of freedom is dangerous to our democratic ideals and to the moral system behind the founding of our nation.

This is just wrong.

http://www.bigidea.com/music/singalongs/12morning.mp3

Homeschool Co-op

We're members this semester of YEA -- Young Explorers Academy, a local homeschool coop. This offers enrichment classes each week. I, however, have been a real failure as a co-op mom. We've only made it to the classes twice, or perhaps three times. (I'm pretty sure it is twice!). We've missed due to sickness, schedule conflicts due to out-of-state family visiting, and then yesterday because I had to make an urgent doctor's appointment about my foot. Since I could barely walk or drive yesterday morning, we really wouldn't have been able to go even if I'd made my appointment later. :(

Yesterday, Pauly was really looking forward to YEA. He has been disappointed that we haven't gone more often. Roger seems to be perfectly happy staying at home, he seems to find YEA a major stressful event. The times we have gone, he's had a major breakdown (or two) by the end.

These last two weeks (which we missed) they used stamps to make YEA specific T-shirts. Honestly, my kids are still so little that they won't even notice when they are on a field trip, but I feel bad about it anyway. I hadn't even been sure we'd be able to afford to buy a couple cheap shirts, and getting out of the house is a real pain for me. Anyway, maybe we'll get some paints and do something at home for ourselves. Or more likely, I'll think about doing it but never get around to it. . .

We should be able to make the field trip next week, although we may be late. I just realized today that I had scheduled Rosemarie's 9 month well baby check on Tuesday at 10:20 -- so we'd have missed a good portion of the regular class schedule. Hopefully we'll get in the groove and be better participants the rest of the spring.

We have a date!!!!!

Bob's first day of orientation at Spirit (for which he is paid) is March 30th!!!

He's the Master Pasta maker from Derby!

No, it's not Alphonso, it's my hubby! A few weeks ago Bob had attempted to make fresh pasta for the first time, but without a pasta maker he had to roll it out and cut it by hand, and ended up with something that would be fantastic in homemade chicken and noodles, but it really wasn't all that great with a tomato sauce. It didn't "feel" like pasta.

Yesterday he borrowed his dad's pasta maker/cutter thing, and tried again. Pauly was enlisted to help with turning the crank, and together they made copious amounts of linguine! We cooked about a third of it last night, and left the rest hanging up to dry. It was very yummy, Rosie certainly liked it! We'll probably be having pasta again tonight, and maybe tomorrow, but I don't think that anyone will mind.

Feet, feet, feet!

Or foot, that is. This morning while I was vacuuming I hurt my foot. It felt like there was something sharp in the carpet that scraped my foot, and the only external injury was a small dot of blood, and a thin scrape leading off from it. Oddly enough, though, it hurt to stand on that foot, far out of proportion to the external injury. After a while, it seemed to get better. After walking down to the corner store, and cleaning Rosa's shower, though, it's hurting again. A lot. And there still isn't anything outwardly wrong with it! Even weirder is the fact that it doesn't hurt where the scrape is, but hurts in a spot in close proximity to it. My toe might be slightly swollen, also, but it's not enough for us to be sure.

Books -- We need a young priest and an old priest!

My sister mailed me a box of books (yay!) and I received it last Friday. Part of why I haven't been posting much is that I've been spending all my spare time reading.

Here are my thoughts on the books:
The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir. This is a non-fiction historical work that explores the period of turmoil in England between the death of Henry VIII and the accession of Elizabeth I. It is primarily about Edward ?? (I forget his number), Lady Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth and the relationships between them. In fact, in some ways it is as much about the powers behind the throne, as much of this period of time has different factions vying for power in England, each trying to promote their own candidate to the crown, or (in the case of Edward) trying to seize the true power which lay in the protectorate. I found it to be very interesting, although I'd agree with some of the reviews on Amazon that it really doesn't explore the personal relationships between the individuals, simply because the movement in history lay with the various factions and not truly with the individuals.

It is also an exceptionally fair presentation -- both Catholics and Protestants are presented with their warts and glory, and it doesn't seem to be biased toward either side. I'd like to get a copy of Weir's earlier work called The Six Wives of Henry VIII to see what she says about them.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. This was really good. The cover calls it a "Modern Masterpiece of Romantic Suspense." I don't want to say too much about it, because I don't want to give the story away. It is about a girl (maybe late teens, early twenties??) who meets and marries a rich widower. And then stuff happens, but you'll have to read it to find out. I do think, however, that there should be a law against packaging good literature like it is a cheap romance novel. I'm pretty sure Bob would hate it, it IS a girl book.

When the Day of Evil Comes and The Soul Hunter by Melanie Wells. These are books about spiritual warfare, and what I believe would be called "demonic obsession" by a Catholic in-the-know. The first book in particular seemed very good, and different to anything else I'd read. They have a Christian author, but don't have a pushy "you need to have a born-again experience" feel to them. I was only disappointed in two things in the first book -- first, the ending seemed a bit flat, and it didn't provide any explanation for the involvement of the main character's dead mother nor the main demon guy. It just solved what had originally seemed to be a secondary plot line, and then the book ended. Secondly, I felt like it was missing something since it wasn't Catholic. The narrator/main character even thinks at some point, "At this point in the movies, we would call a priest, but I don't know any." Her answer is to go consult a pastor, who provided her with some advice about what she could do herself to protect herself from the demon, but what she really needed was some priestly in persona Christi demon fighting. Which besides being safer than handling things yourself, is just cooler in a story.

The second book, however, disappointed me. It was still an enjoyable read and I finished it quickly, but it felt like part of a detective/who-done-it series. Which is what the first book has been turned into, I guess. Apparently this demon just shows up, and inadvertently leads Dylan (the main character) into solving a murder mystery, which surprise, surprise, also happened in the first book. I have a feeling that this will also be what happens in the third book, which is supposed to be the last. This definitely had a "continuing demon saga" feel to it, though, so I think the author could continue this series indefinitely, not that she ought to! The demon no longer seems like the main conflict in the story, but just a convenient plot device to aid in solving the mystery and to make the reader squirm.

Weather

Yesterday we wore T-shirts and shorts while playing outside, today it is too cold to play outside for long at all!