Overheard At Our House This Week

Overheard by the resident five-year-old, “If I was a gigantic pincher bug, and someone zapped me and shrank me, I would pinch them.”

Aubrey, who had just finished memorizing her part for a play, and Kamron got in an argument while doing dishes and then Aubrey felt bad. She came and talked to me and I told her she should apologize. She came back in and said, “I apologized, but Kamron didn’t know his lines.”

Since a month is an eternity at this age, I was quite amazed at the one-year-olds’ proclamation, “I wan’ tree. I wan’ Christmas.” To this the three-year-old replied, “I want Christmas presents. I haven’t had any for years and years.”

Aunt and Uncle went to China town and brought back a little Chinese doll. Aubrey was told she could play with it for two months, but that it was gift for their Grandma and would be given to her when they take their next trip to Utah. Aubrey thought about this for awhile and said, “All right she will be a for arrange student and stay with Alex (her doll) until she has to leave, but I’m sure they will not get along.”

Kamron coughed and Brennen says, “I will not get sick, because I wrinkle my noise and blow out with my lips and then shake my head and that keeps the germs away.”

After a vigorous wrestle match that resulted in tears Kamron said, “I was just defending myself, because even though I’m bigger you can still hurt me. I have nerves, you know!” Brennen looking puzzled says, “Why do little nerds make it so I can hurt you?”

Music

I had to find some appropriate music for Kamron to begin learning in his voice lessons today. Our teacher is not LDS and so doesn't know what music is best for sacrament meeting, so I went searching. Have you seen the church's interactive music player on the church website, www.lds.org? How cool is that thing? You can speed it up, slow it down, just play the part you are learning or change the key. Awesome. So I picked out a few I thought Kamron would like and had him listen to them-he chose "Come Follow Me." We'll see if this suits the teacher today. She is, shall we say exacting. I am gratified that she has shown very slight periods of being impressed with Kamron's ability to follow and to match her pitch, while at the same time demanding a great deal from him.

Our Visit to the Exploratorium

We spent the day at the Exploratorium in San Francisco today. Everyone of my kids loved it.
The children got to feel what Alice must have felt like when she drank her "drink me" bottle and ate her little cakes as they played with visual perception.

They had fun bouncing metal marbles at just the right angle to get them to go through hoops at varying distances.

The saw the different patterns that differently shaped rods would vibrate in.

A favorite of the older children was the high voltage electricity that skipped through the air from one rod to another.

Sethy's favorite was the water. In this exhibit the children got to place objects in a continuously flowing stream of water which had foam on top and so made foam trails around what they placed. Sethy also decided it was a cool place to drive the car he was carrying in his hand.



There were many more hands-on exhibits, including cow eye and sheep brain dissections. My daughter was fascinated by these, but I must confess that like my son it made my stomach turn.