knitting librarian

The Tenth Circle the movie is on Lifetime now. I love happening on things I’d like to watch. I hope it’s as good as the book! (I think I finished the book a few weeks ago so it’s even pretty fresh in my mind.)

AJ had a really good day today. He wasn’t all over his sister, he behaved, he took his rest without a battle. After rest, we went out to my friend Theresa’s to visit for a bit and he was great there too.

T’s daughter was playing with me and she ended up getting mad and hit me (not hard, but still it wasn’t nice.) She ended up in time out until she said sorry to me. When we left about an hour later, she still hadn’t said sorry. She’s her father’s daughter, that’s for sure!

We came home and had dinner with John, AJ played with the neighbors for a bit and then came inside for his book (we started The Adventures of Captain Underpants today) and bed. John initially suggested that I should give Zoe a bath, but when I chided him that he could do it as easily as I could, he actually did! I’m so proud of him! I think that’s the second bath he’s given her since she was born.

We’ve been sitting on the porch for the last hour or so, laptops in hand, and enjoying each other’s company. We occasionally share what we’re reading/doing, and then go back to our own little reverie, but it’s been nice. I’m off to bed really soon!

You know, sometimes I’ll go to an eighth-grade graduation and there’s all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it’s just eighth grade. To really compete, they need to graduate high school, and then they need to graduate college, and they probably need a graduate degree, too. An eighth-grade education doesn’t cut it today. Let’s give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!

I’m just off today. I don’t know if it’s just the end of school blues are still sticking around or if it’s stress from dealing with the house and thoughts of building—which should be exciting!—or what, but I’m off.

AJ and I are continuing to read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume and he seems to be enjoying it. He seems to recall the parts of the story that I ask as a memory check before we start again, he knew tonight even though he was at my Mom’s last night that we were picking up with Chapter 4. He asked how many chapters were in the book, so we did some looking at the table of contents and talked about that part of the book tonight, as well as identifying the page numbers and finding the right page to start reading on tonight.

This morning, Mom told AJ to go put on his knit shorts. “Knit” to AJ is not shorts it’s the stuff Mom does on needles so he argued that his shorts were not knit. This led to a discussion about knit v. woven and Vince took some pieces of paper and wove them together to show AJ what woven means. AJ seemed to understand and decided that his shorts were knit. After they finished the fabric lesson, Pop told AJ to come sit on his lap and then said, “AJ, repeat after me, ‘I am not the world’s leading authority on everything.’”

When Vince told me the story, I said, “And AJ said, ‘Pop is not the world’s leading authority on everything.’” Vince said, “No, your mother said to me, ‘Come sit on my lap for a minute and repeat after me…’”

I’ve also been reading “Running with Scissors” which has been pretty disturbing. I do want to finish it, but I just cannot imagine how this man survived his childhood!

The three Hs (hazy, hot and humid) ruled today in central PA. I’m not sure what the high was today but at 5, it was still 92 degrees. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 95 and feel like 102, Monday 97 and feel like 101. I forgot to mention yesterday that Zoe was playing with AJ’s brush last night and trying to brush her hair. It was pretty cute, so I grabbed the camera and did a little recording. I can’t seem to figure out how to embed Flickr video here, so try this link.

We picked up the kids and went to Reptiland this morning. We watched the education program and the kids both touched the alligator and the boa constrictor. (Zoe had some help but didn’t seem to have any fear, which was nice. I don’t expect that to last much longer!)She was in the BabyBjorn and enjoyed the fan that was moving the air, including signing about the fan and leaning back to look at me. She was adorable! After the program, we went to watch them feed a Rainbow Boa a “rat-sicle” (pre-killed frozen and then defrosted) and also to see Rocky and girlfriend “Adrian” (good job Sandy, send me your address!). The boas are named after Laverne and Shirley characters.

We came home and had lunch. Zoe went down for a nap while AJ got sunscreened up to go out and play in the sprinkler with kids from the neighborhood. I sat out on the porch and read my book while I waited for John to put Zoe down. I broke a fingernail and so I was waiting for him to come out so I could go. He got sucked into playing Rock Band and eventually came down about an hour later.

While I was getting my nails done, they showed a few different clips of Hillary endorsing Barack Obama. One of the other women there was talking about how disappointed she was that Hillary was calling it quits and that she didn’t think Obama will win. She said that she doesn’t think he can be elected, we’re still too racist as a country. I don’t know if she’s right or not, but it makes me sad to think that she might be. She also said that she didn’t “think the world was ready for a woman president.” I said, “There are women leaders and presidents all over the world, if there’s any truth to it, it’s that Americans aren’t ready, not the world.” Later, she wanted to know who else was going to be a candidate. Really? Really! Crazy!

We had dinner and AJ went back out to play for a bit. We put the baby swing up on the hooks on the front porch and put Zoe in it and John, Zoe and I hung out on the front porch.John was itching to get back to Rock Band, he’s got a serious videogame addiction!

A little before 7 we called AJ in out of the heat and he and I started to read Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. He did pretty well at listening. I had him predict what he thought was going to happen next a few times while I was reading and we read the first two chapters. We’ll continue tomorrow night. I’m trying to improve his listening/comprehension skills and to help him with some creativity and picturing what he hears rather than just looking at the pictures. We’ll see how it goes. He did tell me he liked the book so far, so I hope that we’ll continue.