Even though that clip kind of disturbs me.

What doesn’t disturb me, though, is this: my girls woke up sans fever this morning, and not runny-nosey. I love when there’s no snot running down anyone’s face.

Instead, Sadie came down with a fever last night, and Audrey had one this morning. “I’m sniffy!” Sadie said when she woke up, and laughed hysterically. “I’m so, so sniffy!”

Yes you are. Sniffy—okay, sniffly—with leaky eyes, too. Though it’s less hilarious now that we’ve wiped your nose eleventy billion times.

It’s just that, so far. Congestion and a bit of fever. Nothing scary, just sickish enough that we don’t want to take them out in the world, though they don’t want to do anything at home. They ate popcorn and drank chamomile tea, and maybe tomorrow they’ll wake up restored to their typical two- and three-year-old glory. We’ll be skipping church either way, just to be on the safe side.

And maybe I will try to bake that fruit crumble. Because if I’m only going to accomplish one thing off my list, it ought to be that. Don’t you think?

[Feel free to imagine the crazy dance moves that inspired such a comment. Your imagination can’t be any worse than my actual dancing.]

ME: Um… thanks. I think that might be the only comparison you could make where I’m the better dancer.

DANE: Hmm. I bet you dance better than sock puppets.

—-

Notice how he said “I bet”—he can’t actually be sure without a side-by-side comparison, but PROBABLY I dance better than a SOCK WITH BUTTONS SEWED ON THE END.

Not a sock MONKEY, mind you, which would have stuffed limbs and a tail—no way I could outdance something with a tail.

So if you’re wondering what we’re doing this weekend: we’re most assuredly not going out dancing. Just for the record.

Also for the record, these are the specific muppets whose dancing skills I put to shame (starting around 1:45):

That is all.

We started out the day with math, I know; the kitchen table was covered with pretzels and pencils and apple slices and an abacus and tangrams and the tangrams puzzle book (the one that conveniently has no solutions in the back, just a note: send $6 for the complete solutions guide!) and a math book or two. All of which are equally necessary math supplies.

And then, after the math… seriously, I have no idea what we did between then and bedtime. There was some reading aloud. There was some reading silently. There was probably some other stuff that didn’t involve reading.

At one point the kids decided to make the living room into a zoo, complete with enclosures and signs and an elaborate hand-drawn map. There was much deliberation over whether the zoo ought to have pythons and cobras, or whether turtles were enough to fill the whole reptile-and-amphibian display. There was also heated debate over whether camels ought to be included at all. (Owen’s position: yes, camels are cool. Abigail’s: no, camels are weird, the last time we visited them at the zoo, all their humps were deflated and flopped over to one side because they weren’t storing water. The imposed compromise: imagine non-weird camels! Voila, problem solved.)

But that’s what the kids did, not what I did. I read some email, I wrote some email. I gave the toddlery person a bath. I made meals, I made snacks, I put people to bed. And… um… that may be pretty much all. But I FEEL strangely accomplished! And that’s what counts, right?

Hmm.

Well.

Possibly not.

I suppose there’s always tomorrow…

(Wouldn’t blog badges be more fun if they WERE shiny?)

My NaBloPoMo profile is here, in case you want to be ning buddies. Or in case you want to see a couple of random tiny pictures of me. Or in case you want to read an abbreviated version of my about page. All that and more (er, not really more, that’s pretty much it), now on my NaBloPoMo profile! Oh boy.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, for any number of reasons, chief among them being: does it look like I have time to write 50,000 words this month? I barely have time to BATHE most days, and I promise that you would rather have me bathe than have me NaNo. (Dane’s not NaNo-ing either, though he has in the past. Why not? See above re: bathing. Applies to him too.)

In non-acronym-related news, it appears to be November, which means it’s almost December, which means I’m working on coming up with a list of books we’d like to get the kids for Christmas. I have to start kind of early so I can scout the used book stores, and also because whittling down the list pretty much kills me every time. (I may have mentioned this in years past.) And yes, the list is already long, but: do you have suggestions for me? Any favorite books for a two-year-old, three-year-old, six-year-old, or nine-year-old? Or bedtime read-alouds for the whole crew? All suggestions welcome.

I have made my grievances known in the past. This time, I do not dignify your existence with a blog post.

Or, well, okay, this is one blog post, but after this, I shall only mention you in passing. So there.

Love,
Me

See, the thing I don’t like about daylight savings time is that it doesn’t work. I mean, it might work to save energy. That’s possible. But it doesn’t work. We fall back, we get an “extra hour,” and the kids do not sleep longer. They do not sleep in later. They don’t even really go to bed earlier, because if they went to bed an hour earlier, they’d be going to sleep before Dane even got home from work. And that’s just silly. So I end up being awake later, and up earlier, and the whole thing’s just, you know, not all that fabulous.

I know, I know, we’ll all be adjusted soon enough, and then I can forget about how much I detest daylight savings time until the spring, when we change the clocks and I get to remember all over again. Whoowee. Something to look forward to.

We carved pumpkins. Dane tried to talk us out of it, but only because he’s mess-averse and also didn’t want to have to finish all four pumpkins when the children got bored and/or frustrated and wandered off. Which happened. But didn’t he do a great job finishing up for everyone?

Owen was aiming for traditional:

Abigail wanted a very feminine pumpkin face. I think she managed it:

Sadie didn’t care at all, so the design of this one fell to Dane. You might notice that he chose a brief phrase, and one involving no curved letters. Those things were absolutely on purpose.

Audrey wanted a Creepy Pumpkin Face. In fact, after carving, she named her pumpkin Creepy. “It’s perfect!” she said, admiring her final creepy product. Judge for yourself. Unlit, and lit:

Three-year-olds may have an unorthodox view of “creepy.”

And now we’re all caught up. Welcome to November!

DANE: Looks that way.

ME: … And the day is off to an excellent start!

The end.