I’ll put it at the top this week: Jen hosts 7 Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary. There are dozens of people participating every week; go check them out!
I was going to post this last week, but couldn’t, because my Vista-infected laptop wasn’t working. It finally turned out to be a malfunctioning virus protection; apparently, it got stuck partly updated during the intermittent internet incident or something, causing the computer to refuse to work for five days. Now that my computer has recovered from its autoimmune disease…
1. Oooh… internet rabbit trails! And what I found was a list of converts to Catholicism. Really, it’s more interesting than it sounds, especially since there are a number of surprises on there. Did you know that Cardinal Arinze converted as a child? The priest (Fr. Thomas Byles) who stayed on the Titanic to hear the last confessions of those who were sure to die was also a convert. Cool stuff.
2. First vocabulary word for the year: groppel, also spelled graupel. I looked out the window and said, “Um… it’s raining tiny snowballs!” It isn’t hail; it’s soft. The kids said it looked like styrofoam pellets. You can hear and feel it hitting, but the balls fall apart easily. Really weird stuff. (We had to listen to the local weather report to find out what it was; we sure didn’t know!)
3. I have it! Photographic proof that Diva can concentrate… when she wants to. And has enough art paper and a new set of markers. (Our lake looks funny because it’s frozen just enough to have jumbled ice and areas of flat ice.)
4. So, Crash shows up, all upset, and announces that Empress told him, “Wo bu xihuan gege!” (I don’t like big brother.) because she was mad at him. Of course, I had to chastise Empress for telling her big brother she didn’t like him… but I was secretly proud that she put together an unpracticed sentence in Mandarin. Just not that particular sentence.
5. In other random, “oops, I took a photo but forgot to put it up on the blog” news, I decided that we needed some Chinese food for the kids’ play kitchen. We had been learning all kinds of vocabulary, but didn’t have noodles, fish, dumplings, or several other things. Since they’re rather hard on plastic sets (and the Chinese food sets I found were both pricey and sort of short on variety), I decided on felt.
The noodles are just lengths of yarn, knotted firmly in the middle. The fish are “fresh” on one side and “grilled” on the other. There’s also clumps of bok choy, scallions, pan-fried dumplings, fat steamed buns (upper left), and siu mai (open pork dumplings, usually brown with some pink shrimp showing). I made the sushi by rolling scraps from the other pieces up in the middle of scrunched-up white felt inside of a sheet of black, then cutting, the way sushi is actually made.
I keep debating opening an Etsy shop…
6. It took seven months, but the tooth finally came out (with some persuading by Daddy)! The kids’ dentist says Crash has “stubborn teeth.” No kidding. I mean, it started wiggling in the middle of the summer. Diva, on the other hand, shows me a wiggly tooth at breakfast, and it’s usually out by dinner.
7. We had a rough week, starting with freezing all day at the March for Life in DC. Tuesday was supposed to be a school recovery day, but nothing went on schedule. Wednesday was doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment (interrupted by a pleasant lunch with Mary; thanks Mary!). Just when I’ve about had enough, I get out of the shower tonight to hear… talking, coming from the girls’ room. At 10:30 at night.
When I went to check on them, they were snuggled together in Diva’s bed, reading Aesop’s Fables. It isn’t even an illustrated version. I remember when I thought Diva would never read all that well. Empress protested that she wasn’t sleepy and really, really wanted to keep listening to the stories.
Ok, maybe they’re doing all right, after all.
