Just a rainy day

A wear-your-pjs-much-too-long, share-sugary-cereal-
with-your-dinosaur kind of a morning

So today was a pretty quiet day.  Although it will probably one of the days the kids recall most fondly this year: the day when Mom let them lounge around the house and watch all kinds of television.

Although I did drag the boys out at one point this afternoon, when the rain let up, needing to take a trip to the grocery store.  And, since they needed the exercise, I let them ride their scooters to the store.  Alex didn't complain at all about being torn away from the television to go to the store. But he made it clear that his preferences were otherwise when he asked if he could wait by the checkout stand for me, and then settled down in front of the advertisement monitor, watching the commercials for bananas and toilet paper players as avidly as if they were a new Pixar movie.  All that was missing was the bag of popcorn.

I think that Alex is doing better: he getting back to his sweet, helpful self, particularly when I was struggling to get Joey home from the store.  Joey was getting sleepy, and, therefore, grumpy, and Alex bent over backwards to make things fun for him, trying to urge Joey home by pretending to race and showing Joey how much fun it was to ride through the puddles, making the water spray.

When we were in the last 100 meters, Joey sat down and didn't seem inclined to budge, but just about then a woman came by with her dog.  It was clearly a show dog: she was doing some agility and obedience training with it, commanding it to jump up on pylons and concrete fences, and then making it sit and stay while she walked 50 meters away. The boys watched, rapt, and then clapped as the dog finally trotted away.

I was hoping that Joey would see how well behaved the dog was and would take note.  "Wasn't that a good doggie, Joey? That doggie did just what the mommy wanted! Do you want to pretend you're a doggie?"

Alex certainly did, and dropped down on the ground and panted.  Joey had been inspired in a different direction.  Whenever he has something very, very important to say, he always adds a paragraph of extra babble before he gets to his point: I think he believes it adds gravitas.  So, now, he walked over to me, looked me in the eye and told me, very solemnly, "Abbado-deepa-doe-mamma-namma-Amma-neema-deepa-I-wanna-puppy!"

But at least his puppy dreams distracted him long enough to get him home (and my tail-wagging Alex), all the way home.

Joey continued to behave peevishly until he finally collapsed into a nap.  At one point he was playing with his cars and his car track collapsed. "Hey! Hey Cheryl! Hey! Get cars!" he called out to me, and Ella giggled.  "Uh oh, mom.  He's discovered your secret identity!"

Who is that masked mom?!

Ella shared Alex's good mood this afternoon.  Especially since she came home believing she'd finished up all of her homework at school, but when nochElla came by, wanting to confirm the assignment for the afternoon, my Ella realized she'd forgotten to do a set of math problems.  So she dashed over to nochElla's house and finished her schoolwork in record time, leaving me wondering if I can convince nochElla's mom to always let the girls do their work together.

Ella came back with a story about how nochElla's brother had offered her candy, and she'd refused. "Oh?" I asked, only half paying attention, "Did you say 'no' nicely?"  And here, Ella gave me a long look before finally saying, "Well, mom, I didn't tell him 'No, I don't want your stupid candy,' but I also wasn't all, like 'Oh, Paul, I'm so very sorry that I can't accept your candy, but thank you so very much for the offer!' I just told him 'No, but thanks, I can only stay long enough to get my homework done.'"

"Oh, um, well, that was probably the perfect response. Good, Ella."

And, at the same time, I filed away for future reference that my daughter is now old enough to find some of my questions asinine.

Otherwise, I spent most of the day packing for tomorrow's trip. Ella's putting together a play, and she and Alex spent a long time rehearsing a critical scene, in which the princess captures the dragon.

And, although this may not seem interesting to you, we had corn for dinner.

No, really, this is important.  Today at the grocery store, Joey pointed to an ear of corn and asked "Whazzat?"  Because corn simply isn't to be found here.  It's certainly not available frozen, and an individual ear of corn costs about two francs: they ship them all the way from Florida.  My integration teacher says that, rarely, farmers will sell corn at their garden farm stands, but that is rare and very seasonal.  But it is absolutely unacceptable that my son doesn't recognize corn.  Especially since, according to family legend, I myself consumed more than a half-dozen ears of corn at a corn roast when I was his age, to the absolute delight of my grandfather and great-uncle.

So tonight, we had a big splurge, and Joey became reacquainted with every kid's favorite vegetable.