A Non-Newtonian Fluid

We spent Friday morning busting out some more yard work since we knew we wouldn't be doing any today what with the rain and crazy wind from our friendly little Nor'easter. It could be worse. It could be snow.

For dinner Friday, we finally got to see our fantastic friends Erinn, Kevin, Morgan and Tristan! Erinn made us all a seafood feast including stuffed quahogs and melt-in-your-mouth fresh-from-the-bay scallops. Unfortunately for my children (and fortunately for Erinn and I, who snagged their quahogs), they were once again far too preoccupied to focus on dinner for long.

I never even got Michael Jr to the table. As soon as he heard the words "time for dinner," he started frantically shaking his head "no" and ran back into Tristan's room and planted himself next to a box of cars. To Michael, Tristan's room was like the Holy Land of Matchbox Cars, and nothing so slight as a few hunger pains was going to draw him away. Scallops are better fresh and hot; I opted out of that battle and left him to his cars.

After dinner, Erinn brought out a box of cornstarch and a bunch of bowls.

Dessert?

Nope... Goblin Goo.

Goblin Goo is a mixture of cornstarch and water (twice as much cornstarch as water) that has the properties of both a solid and a liquid (otherwise known as a non-Newtonian fluid). You can gather it up in a ball, and as long as you're moving it around, it will stay in a ball, but as soon as you stop agitating, the ball turns back to goo and slimes through your fingers. This is thanks to the molecules of cornstarch, which are like long ropes. You can read about it here: Kitchen Pantry Scientist: Goblin Goo.

This is clearly a very happy set of circumstances for a little boy, but the girls had a great time as well (I promise, Mary had more fun than she is letting on).

The girls had fun, but after half an hour or so they started breaking ranks at the bowls of goo and heading back into Morgan's room for dress-up clothes.

Where was Michael Jr this whole time? On the road.

Erinn and I cleaned up all the dinner dishes and chatted and what-not, until we finally admitted that it was about an hour past kiddo bed time and we should probably feign responsibility and get them headed that direction.

So a full two hours after Goblin Goo start time, we had to pull Tristan away.

Who, me?

Yes, Tristan, you with the goo.

Don't worry about the state of the table. Cornstarch + Water, when it dries, is basically just cornstarch. It cleaned up pretty easily. However, after Tristan washed his hands, they were grey and pruny, like he had been in the bath for two hours!

And of course, a full four hours after we first arrived, where is Michael Jr?

With the cars. Always with the cars.

I had geared myself up for a meltdown of epic duration and intensity when it was time to leave, but shockingly, when I told Michael it was time to go he just set his cars down and waved "BA!" to everyone. The reasons behind this docile surrender will likely remain one of the great mysteries of my parenting years.

Today Grandma took the kids for a Cuffy's shopping trip while I packed some more things up in the house, and the storm started mid-afternoon so we opted for dinner in and more cleaning and packing. Tomorrow we get to catch up with all our friends at church!

Cape Cod Vacation 2

I think the kids (or at least the girls) are having the best vacation ever. Apparently coming back to an old place and old things and old friends is every bit as exciting as exploring a new place and new things and meeting new friends.

Thursday Nick and Athena treated us to the kids' favorite pancake lunch at their house. I completely forgot I had my camera with me, but rest assured there were eggs, pancakes, apple cinnamon pancakes, bacon, English muffins, coffee, and gummy bears in abundance. Catherine and Mary loved being in the house and recalling where everything is and enjoying the lunch routine with Nick and Athena that they used to do almost every week.

For dinner Thursday we took advantage of the generous hospitality always offered by our friends John and Debbie. Between the fact that the kids were still stuffed full of pancakes and all the fascinating not-toys within arm's reach all over John and Debbie's house, I don't think the kids ate three bites of dinner total. So John and Debbie and Kim and I enjoyed a delicious meal white Catherine and Mary set up the most elaborate tea shop ever, with Michael's "assistance."

After dinner the bell rang, signalling the opening of the shop, and we were all ushered into the sitting room for our tea and scones.

(Warning: all pictures are either too dark, orange cast, or have ugly flash lighting. I hate taking pictures after dark.)

And since the kids had saved all that room from not eating dinner, they had the perfect appetite for Halloween cupcakes (it's impossible not to revert to "vacation food rules").

Michael ate his cupcake so fast that by the time I put a cupcake in front of Catherine and Mary and turned around to take his picture, he was already to the point of licking the final remanants of icing off a fork.

Mary managed to get red icing up inside her nose.

Due to its grossness, this picture is only allowed to be included because they were "Halloween" cupcakes.

Cape Cod!

Sorry, I didn't take any pictures today, but I thought I'd give you a quick update. The kids all had another great night's sleep in our second hotel, and a pretty easy final leg of driving. Grandma did have to break out the Veggie Tales Christmas CD at one point, but we made it. Over a three-day, 20+ hour car trip, we had no major crises, no accidents (of the bladder or motor vehicle type), and only one emergency road-side potty stop. Not bad.

And when we pulled in to the house, we had three VERY excited children, reaching the point of ecstatic to see all the toys we left behind here. (Keep in mind, I specifically left only toys in which they had absolutely no interest, at least at the time of our departure.) Mary spent the next five hours running, darting, leaping, flying, and dancing from one room to the next exclaiming each and every toy she found to be her most favorite ever in the whole world. That whole "cycling toys" idea that says something that has been put away for a couple months becomes brand new again to a kid? It's spot on.

We arrived right after lunch and while the kids explored/destroyed the house, Grandma and I spent the afternoon in the yard (things were getting a little jungley around here). I still have quite a bit more to do outside and some smaller fix-it projects around the house, but we plan to spend most of our visit... visiting!

Road Trip Report

Days one and two of driving have gone remarkably well - only one memorable meltdown and no accidents! I'm especially impressed with Michael Jr considering that 90% of his waking hours are normally spent either running or sitting in my lap, and in the car he can't do either.

Grandma has made this drive so many times that she knows already where all the fun little stops are. Yesterday's highlight was Grandpa's Cheesebarn. It was perfect for the kids for three reasons: lots of free pretzels, a cookie at the end, and this little truck outside.

Catherine claimed first driver, and Michael Jr was content to ride in the back.

But when Mary hopped in front for her turn, he was not at all pleased that he was expected to wait through two turns.

It worked out, though. By the time it was his turn to drive, his sisters had gotten bored and run off to "their new house" under some picnic tables, so he had the truck all to himself.

This was a beautiful arrangement until it was time to go. Luckily, that cookie was waiting for him in the car. We had a similar problem when it was time to leave the toy firetruck he found at Cracker Barrel. It's really not a good idea to separate a boy from his trucks.

Sometimes we have to think creatively when we're in "avert meltdown" mode, but it's easy to get the hang of it. Here I simply started wearing a bucket as a hat. It was a lucky guess, and a catchy trend...

This is the result of Mary running out the door of a rest stop on day one and tripping on her flip flop on the side walk. She got both knees, both hands, and one side of her face from her forehead to the tip of her nose. She was actually doing pretty well afterwards, until she caught site of her face in the mirror at the next potty stop.

Thirty seconds of car ride:



Anyone want to join us?

Circles

One of the kids' favorite games to play with Daddy (besides Wrestling, Monster, and something that somehow involves a monkey in a cage), is spinning in circles. Two of them grab his hands and run around until someone (or everyone) falls down.

We just can't stay inside while the weather is this beautiful. Kali came to play today so everyone got to enjoy the sunshine. Michael Jr is getting a little better at "enjoying" play time when Kali is around, but he is still ultra-protective of his cars.

She looks so sweet... she wouldn't steel a car from anyone (not named Michael).

I'm completely convinced Catherine turned eight and nobody told me.

Mary, on the other hand, skipped directly to thirteen. I know this because only a thirteen-year-old has the special talent of being able to go from this:

to this:

in under a second.

Or from this:

to this:

and back again.

Actually, maybe Mary truly is acting her age, and the talent of the thirteen-year-old is the ability to circle back to acting like a three-year-old and expect to get away with it. Stay tuned... further study on this is going to have to be postponed about eight years.

Cooking Class

Today was a "busy with nothing" day. Michael Jr and I both have colds, and I have a lot to do to get ready for our trip on Monday, so the kids spent most of the day being entertained by Daddy and enjoying the georgous Autumn weather.

But here's a picture I found from earlier this week that cracks me up. Ever since Grandma took Catherine to a little cooking class a few weeks ago, Mary has been talking about how Grandma will be taking her to a cooking class soon. In the mean time, she set up a cooking class of her own. I'm sure this is a cooking class, because she told me very specifically that she had set up a cooking class for her dolls just like she was going to go to with Grandma.

I'm not exactly sure what the animals' postures say about the food they made...

The Upper Bunk

When we first bought the bunk beds for the girls' room, I assumed we would soon be mediating fights over who was going to sleep in the top bunk. It turns out that we were mediating fights over who wasn't going to sleep in the top bunk. We ended up with a day-to-day trade off, the girls taking turns each night getting to choose their bunks. They don't throw a fit over sleeping in the top, but whoever's day it is to choose, always chooses the bottom.

This is even more confusing considering that during the day they sometimes spend hours playing on the top bunk. The brain of a preschooler is officially a mystery.

Mama Catherine

If ever there was a mini-mom, it's Catherine. She wants to help, all the time. She does the dishes, sweeps the floor, helps with the cooking, watches "the kids", tricks Mary into using the potty, unloads the dishwasher, sweeps the rocks outside, brings in the recycling bins, and even straightens up now and then. This isn't to say she doesn't have many many moments of being a precocious, messy, obstinate, strong-willed, independent four-year-old, but for the most part, she tries to be good. She even has a song she wrote about trying to do good.

Here she is helping me make Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner. If that's the only thing I manage to teach her, I will consider her childhood a success.

She's also a budding photographer. (She made a habit of absconding with Monica's camera when she was visiting.)

She wants to use my good camera all the time, but seeing her walk around with it gives me an irregular heart beat and a twitch in my eye. Early one Saturday morning she posed Daddy and Mary with a group of stuffed animals then bolted down the stairs yelling that she needed to use my camera quick.

Then she decided she didn't like the arrangement and moved the stuffed animals around a bit so the taller ones were in the back and all could be seen.

Catherine often has a hard time deciding if she wants to be in front of the camera or behind it.

Have I mentioned most of her clothes are now of a size that requires regular old adult hangers? When I put them on the cute kid hangers, they slide off. [Sorry - I'm having a "they grow up so darn fast" moment.]

Random other side notes:

1) Some of you have already been asking about (and purchasing from... ahem, early birds) the Amazon wish lists. I'm working to build them up a bit more for Christmas - you should have more options in a week or two.

2) Please, for the love of my limited storage space, refrain from purchasing any random clothes, particularly for Mary. If it wasn't midnight right now, I'd take a picture of the kids' closet for illustration (the three of them share one closet). We are operating on a "one in, one out" policy from here on out, so really only buy clothes for them if you see them in something you want me to give/throw away. I can't say enough times how thankful we are for the generosity that surrounds us, but figuring out where to stash any more items of clothing in the house is going to send me back into the realm of eye twitches - I might as well just let Catherine run headlong down a hill in high heels with my camera in her hands.

3) If you were making any plans to come into the city Sunday morning for the half marathon, don't (at least not on my account). After much consideration I've decided against limping 13 miles, so I will most likely be there in a cheering capacity only. And if you happen to know anyone who would like to run an impromptu half marathon, I'd probably consider illegally "loaning" them my race number instead of wasting the registration fee.

4) We went to the Magic House with friends today. Our ranks totalled 2 adults and 6 children under the age of 5. I did not even attempt to take my camera with me.

Home

Sunday was a wonderful day: wonderful weather, wonderful company, and a wonderful occasion.

We spent the morning watching all the kids play in the sunshine in the backyard, as Christopher was finally overcoming his feeling of being overwhelmed by "too many cousins." Then after lunch we had a special mass in the chapel of the Archbishop's residence for our official confirmation and reception into the Catholic Church. If I didn't think it would have been slightly inappropriate, I would have run all about the house taking hundreds of pictures - it was everything a century house on Lindell in Saint Louis should be. Miraculously, none of our children broke, bammed, bumped, or otherwise destroyed anything there.

The chapel was perfectly small, seating only a few of our friends and family that have helped us along this path in the last few years. The kids were surprisingly calm and engaged and everything about the mass was perfect as far as I can tell. I'm still a little in awe of the fact that we participated in mass and received Eucharist in the private chapel of the Archbishop, where he and bishops before him and even the Pope have prayed for the people of Saint Louis and beyond. It was a special space.

I most certainly enjoyed the years we spent on the Cape and will continue to miss the people and places we left there, but I have to say, it is quite good to be home.

Cousin Christopher

Kristin, Brian and Christopher are visiting for the weekend. All five cousins were playing together today, but Christopher was the one hamming it up for the camera today, so he gets the blog spotlight.

It was another unbelievably beautiful Fall day, so we took a little walk around the neighborhood. Three adults, five children, two regular strollers, two play strollers, and two dolls. Basically, we had a parade.

Christopher and Mary kept racing to the end of the block, then sitting down to rest while the rest of us caught up.

Most of the rest of our day was spent playing outside in the yard.

Catherine sipped on a mug of "coffee-water" while she watched the kids play.

Mary sported several different outfits, like normal. I particularly liked this one with the swimsuit, matching dress/coverup, and scarf/belt.

I like this picture because it looks like Christopher is being really sweet with stuffed George, but in reality, he was in the middle of using George as a football and I just happend to catch a non-maniacal-throwing moment.

After our walk and a late night of racing laps up and down the hill in the back, I'm holding out hope for a good night's sleep for all the kids!