Quiet Day

Today I woke up feeling quiet, and comfortably sleepy. Then the lady who helps us work with Vander called and asked if today we could start our AIT for two days...that means no tv or music or electronic noise until it's over...not even baby toys. Perfect mood for that. The children are quiet. The house is quiet. Even the air is quiet. Somehow on an 108 degree day our house is perfectly cool even though I turned the a/c off early this morning.

I just put some banana bread into the oven. Vander helped me put it together. I put the ingredients in, and he pats them with his little hands and the flour goes everywhere like dandelion fluff in the breeze.

I admit that I am usually too busy with responsibilies and with myself, even in my mellowest moods, but today I want to make little things with my oldest kids. With Anduin we made a fuzzy chicken with some yarn and other items. Atreyu wanted to try a project in a very old 1960's childrens science book that uses "cigarette boxes" for many of the structures in it...even the drawn pictures in it are so very "Mad Men". We opted for a tissue paper snake. We cut it in a coil and laid it on a tin lid. Then we used a fur stole (yes, I do keep a fur stole about, but no cigarette boxes) to charge a plastic pen with electricity. When placed over the snake it lifts it up and looks a bit like the snake is alive and charmed.

Then I showed Anduin how to make a sailboat with a plastic cup. It's a design I came up with as a kid...I remember spending hours in our front yard after a summer rain putting my little boats in the streams and tiny rapids that formed in our long dirt driveway. Anduin opted for the bathroom sink.

It's been a good, quiet day.