When life gives you lemons...

Striking a pose like the clay figure in the back

The day  started with 8 yo complaining that his stomach hurts and then throwing up. Of course, this had to happen on a day when coop was taking a field trip to the local museum to look at Ancient Egypt artifacts. However, afterwards, he totally rallied, ate quite a breakfast and was bouncing on the bed after completing Rosetta Stone. So we went to the museum.

There is a problem when your kids keeps arguing with the docent about the displays. I am used to that in science museums, but this is a first in a history/art setting. I wished he would talk less and listen more, but this is my bias. I was brought up with the attitude that an older person has more knowledge, so you shut up and listen. He has guts? ego? self-confidence to think otherwise and to express his opinions and knowledge.

I brought a baby carrier for the toddler, I learned my lesson from chasing an overtired kid in Museum of Natural History. Only I'm not sure whether I gained anything, as most of the time it was "Pick me up! Put me on your back! I want down! Carry me!" However, even she enjoyed looking at Greek statues and wondering where the heads and arms went. Then we entered Central America and there were pots with feet. There she also looked for missing heads. Bottom line, the boys enjoyed the trip and I got suckered into buying everyone a scarab in the gift shop, although I milked it, making 8 yo calculate how much money I spent on those three scarabs.

Watching tree cutting

On the 7 minute car ride back. the scarabs were relating their journey to each other in squeaky voices: "I'm glad to be out of that basket. This street looks familiar. Remember coming here on a truck?" I decided to make this into a creative writing assignment when we come home.

When we got home, the neighbors were having a tree cut down. There was a man, 30 feet up a tree with spikes on his boots and a chainsaw. They boys camped out in the backyard to watch. They even asked for picnic lunch, so that they would not miss any action.

I assumed that would be the end of schoolwork for today, but they came in when the tree people went for lunch.

8 yo did spelling. He filled in more dates on his timeline and marked off Egyptian epochs ( his idea). He did Lashon HaTorah and then we did Chumash. I talked it up into a mystery saying that he already dealt with the same story in Lech Lecha, and the end was the same, but the details were different. We did first four pesukim of perek Chav. He translated two pesukim without any help. We discussed that Avimelech got a nevuah but paroh didn't. However, what he was most interested in was the map of where Avraham traveled. His Chumash has one in the back. I found it interesting to see where Tzoar was: it is surrounded on one side by mountains and on the other side by the Dead Sea. No wonder Lot's daughters felt that there are no people left in the world.

6 yo wrote a short song about his scarab and did Lama without much drama.


In the afternoon, we picked up some friends, watered our plants. They kids played outside. Then everyone made pizza for dinner. Ice cream for dessert, then group benching. Even 2 yo can do the first paragraph now and she tries to say brachot before eating. Some drumming before baths, some element watching before bed. Book reading. Discovering that 8 yo threw up in bed instead of toilet this morning. Unexpected laundry.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!