A wondrous Wednesday

9-12-2007 Wednesday


Almost 1:30pm. So far today….

The kids watched one last episode of The Electric Company before it went back, and then they watched most of Shrek 2. (They got up insanely early today and I didn’t have to work, so I was half-dozing nearby.) Marian made me a card featuring ogress princess Fiona, and some of her best cursive writing yet…




All three of them walked the dogs out front, and Marian helped clean the adult foster cat’s cage. Then she started working on alphabetizing a list of a dozen or so magic related words (charm, conjure, spells, wizard, etc). We listened to some polka, swing music, and Dean Martin. All three kids fell totally in love with Dean Martin and want to learn more about him, so I see that in our afternoon. We sang “Spirit of Life” to the foster cat (named Spirit), while driving him around in the car for a little feline field trip, and meanwhile Leo asked if willow trees were conifers, which led to a lot of tree watching and identifying and discussion. We went to the hardware store and thrift store, and arrived home moments before the cable installation guy. The kids watched him for a bit, then watched lunch, and now are in the bedroom with two of the dogs, and Marian is holding the formerly feral kitten who is still here for health issues.

More later!

…..

Well, we got TV. :) The first thing we did was sit down and go through all of the digital commercial-free music stations, and we’re in the process of writing down our favorites since the guide they gave us is incorrect. Marian was absolutely giddy about all the classical and opera, and Leo was drawn to the show tunes. I stopped on Reggae for a bit (one of my favorite genres) and they enjoyed that as well. After that, we shut off the TV and went to the animal shelter, where they assisted me in syringe-feeding 10 tiny kittens, watched me give a shot of penicillin to a very sick kitten, and of course petted and loved on everyone else. We took home a new kitten as a fosterling, since it has some sort of unidentifiable injury on its tail, and they will assist me with cleaning, diagnosing, and treating him. Took him to the local pet store to borrow their black light, where they got to see how to check for ringworm. (Ringworm generally glows bright green under a black light.)

Marian read us a story, “A Cold Wind Blows” from Highlights magazine, and browsed the Nick Jr mag for awhile as well. She’s in the process of writing a lucky potion, which she has determined so far requires one drop of snake blood (or Snape blood, your preference :lol), and one drop of Voldemort blood. She warns that this potion is very difficult to create. We were inside a store with window chalk writing on the outside, and Leo was reading short words aloud, even though they were backwards to us. That was cool. Once home, we set up new kitten in his new abode, and then they watched the last 10 minutes of Rachel Ray. (Leo adores cooking shows.) Still haven’t watched a full TV show yet, which is fine by me. I’m about to go put on some music. :)

…
We washed the new fosterling, with everyone supervising and assisting, and discovered that it was worse off than expected. The kids got to see a bit of tail skeleton, since there was a half inch of it sticking out the end of the kitten’s tail. Afterwards, the kids played outside for a long time, making “shakes” out of dirt and water, and doing I don’t know what else, since I was on the phone about the alarming foster kitty situation. We observed the bird carcass from yesterday (still plenty of activity there, so I won’t move it off the front lawn quite yet), and worked on some dog obedience techniques.

Tonight we read several books of their choosing…I read them Picnic (McCully), If I Were an Ant (Moses), a couple of poems from This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness (Sidman), and an book about African history and heritage Grandpa, Is Everything Black Bad? (Holman). Marian and Leo read The Dog from Arf! Arf! To Zzzzzz to me and Sophie. It was my turn to choose the next chapter book (we recently finished Half Magic, and I read them the first chapter of The Midwife’s Apprentice (Cushman). Marian and Leo are walking dogs now, and Sophie is in bed with a pile of books. Marian and Leo will head ot bed shortly, falling asleep to a Harry Potter audiobook, I’m sure.