That's yife

Seth is into punning and clever word plays now. He loves nothing more than humor. As we often say, the development of humor is an ugly process. :) (I could mention the endless knock-knock jokes that don't make sense..."Knock knock! Who's there? Dinosaur. Dinosaur who? Dinosaur that wants to eat you! BAHAHAHAHA!" But...nah...I won't mention those.)

But the other day, he came up with a cute one. "Daddy, what color is the sky?"

"It's blue."

"It's not blue. It's blue-tiful!"

We all had a good laugh at his cute shot at humor. But later, a puzzled Skyler (who still can't say L) asked me, "Mommy, when Sethie said the sky is byoo-tiful--why is that funny? The sky is byoo-tiful."

Same world, different planet

At lunchtime today, I called for everyone to come eat. I heard Anaya parading slowly down the stairs and around the corner. "Anaya is gone," she announced. "She went...somewhere. And I am a queen," she added pompously, with a fair imitation of a British accent, "visiting from a faraway country. My name is Elizabeth."

Well, far be it from me to get in the way of my children's imagination. (Does this explain why they refuse to color in coloring books, and instead plead for plain white paper, so they can draw their own designs?) Queen Elizabeth, decked out in a slithery purple dress-up scarf and a Middle Eastern dress, joined us for lunch. The conversation centered around the religion in her country (which she informed us eventually was "Zim-bobz-we"), the peculiarities of ours, and our need for servants like they had (can't agree more there).

"Where are your servants?" queried Her Elegance.

"Right there, there and there," I replied, pointing to Anaya, Seth and Skyler.

"I'm not a servant!" Queen Elizabeth was shocked.

"Well, then, there and there."

"You just have your sons as your servants?"

"They're not very effective," I acknowledged, "but they're all we've got."

Eventually Queen Elizabeth tired of her meal with us, bade us a gracious farewell, and went out the door to return to her country. Anaya exploded back in the door a moment later, gasping, "Didn't you love Queen Elizabeth? Wasn't she amazing? I love her!"

Zeal not according to knowledge

This morning Skyler came bounding into our room with an announcement. "Mommy, I just went outside and yelled, 'I yuv you, God!' I did it two times." He paused. "I thought He would yike that."

Life is too busy!

And my first post in 2012 is in...July. The end of July, actually. That's pretty bad.

But anyway...I need to get going again. Life has just been exceptionally busy this year. I basically put almost all extracurricular activities on hold while I focused on schoolwork with the kids, and getting our lives organized and structured.

I started homeschooling in earnest this past January, and Anaya whizzed through all of first grade and 3/4 of second by the end of April. Seth made it 3/4 of the way through first grade, too, though considering that he's only 6, I am afraid we're getting going too fast, too soon! In general, I believe in starting later rather than earlier, to prevent burnout. But he was eager...and here we are.

So anyway...I'm trying to resume blogging. Got a lot going on in our lives. I'll try to say more about that later.

Authentic Thanksgiving

Yesterday we participated in a little homeschool Thanksgiving play with a group of other kids and parents at a nearby park. At the beginning, a woman stood up to explain the upcoming program.

"...And then Squanto will come up and tell us about..."

"Is that the Squanto we read about?" Skyler whispered to me.

"Yes, Sweetie," I answered, thrilled that something of our Thanksgiving studies had actually sunk in.

His eyes widened. "Is he still a-yive?!"

Renewable resourcefulness

Today we were talking about fire safety. "What would you do if your hair or clothes caught on fire?" I asked, testing the kids.

"I would run outside and roll on the ground," Skyler assured me.

"Sweetie, don't run outside," I said. "If you are on fire, drop down on the floor and roll. I don't care if the house catches fire. I can get a new house. I don't want to lose my little boy."

"We could get a new house," Anaya put in. "But we couldn't get a new you."

"That's right," added Seth. "There are lots of houses in the world."

"But we could adopt another boy." Anaya thought that was worth mentioning.

"No other boy could ever replace you, Skyler!" I told him.

He wasn't so sure. "But what if he obeyed?"

A new definition of forever

Recently we talked about how many times Jesus says to forgive someone. Skyler is still having a difficult time understanding numbers, so seventy times seven was confusing to him. "That's lots more than you can count, Sweetie," I explained. "Four hundred and ninety!"

This concept is so amazing to him that it bears repeating regularly now. (Of course, he finds it most necessary to rehash this concept when his own transgressions necessitate forgiveness.) Yesterday he felt the need to preach a mini-sermon on forgiveness to Anani, an enchanting little visitor his age who is staying with us this weekend.

"Mommy," he asked me, "how many times does Jesus say to forgive?"

"Seventy times seven," I answered yet again.

"Anani," he addressed her solemnly, "you have to forgive sevenny times seven. That's for-ever."