another "dear diary, today..." post

Not much got done today.

The children were programming when I woke up, and I didn't want to disturb that since it's one of the projects I would have scheduled in had I felt I could manage a full summer semester.

Around noon we went out to a book sale. I found a set of books for primary readers about art in ancient times. The Storyteller found an ancient paperback on programming with Visual Basic. He sat down right then and there and started reading it. He and the Scientist also picked out some scifi novels, including Isaac Asimov and Star Trek, then spent much of the day reading them.

I noted last night that the Hero had begun to pick up letter names from our frequent discussion of spelling, but he still hadn't made even a single letter-sound connection. I made a tentative plan for fixing that and got a chance to implement it this afternoon.

It's simple. Sometimes he asks me to write down a whole list of words he is planning to copy. Today I asked him to give me a list of words that start with the hard c sound. I had to suggest the first three, cake, cat and cookies, but then it clicked in his head. He heard the initial sound and he started giving me words. By the end of the list, he realized all these words not only had the same initial sound, but also started with the same letter. Bingo! I stapled together some paper so he could copy them all and make a C book, but he ran off with it and I didn't see where it ended up before we were all running out the door.

Then we had our funny moment. I'd gotten a slew of very happy-making messages in my various inboxes, too. 'd had to take an emergency anticonvulsant, a powerful downer. All of this occurred in the space of an hour and I was still psyched about my book sale finds. Then the Hero asked me, "Mama, what are you going to do next?"

I said, "Uh... well... I think I'm just gonna float in a bubble of bliss for about ten minutes."

The Storyteller piped in with an enthusiastic statement of understanding. "Oh, like watching lolcats!"

That site is like crack for kids.

At five the Partner dropped me off at a doctor's appointment and took the children to an auction. The appointment was over way before the kids were due back, and I am not sure what to do with all this free time. Maybe I'll be able to go to sleep early so I can get up earlier. If I can get up by six, if I don't seize, we get a lot more done.