Itsy Bitsy Spider

Part One...

...then we ran out of room on the camera, so here's the end of the song:

Do You Believe in Magic?

Summer of Swimming

Here's some videos of Miguel's swimming class this summer. Doesn't he look great?? :)

Last Day of School

Yay Miguel!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Thursday. We are out of all breakfast foods except oatmeal. Miguel won't eat oatmeal – this morning. It's going to be a great day!

our weekend

We made some raised beds with my mom. Finally our yard is coming together!

Miguel's friend Lio came over on Saturday night for dinner. They had fun playing in the dirt in the backyard and splashing around in the hot tub. Miguel learned what a "nuggie" is from Lio's mom Becky. In bed, he was drifting off...I thought he was asleep when all of a sudden he said "Mom, I had never heard of a nuggie before, had you?"

Then his friend Elliott and family came over Sunday for dinner. MIguel was very nice to share some of his little kid toys with Ben, Elliott's little brother, Ben. They played while parents enjoyed margaritas.

Miguel has been pretending he's Indiana Jones quite a bit. Picture to come soon.

Today we are off to the Cinco de Mayo celebration with his preschool. Thank goodness for the warm weather!

Indy

Battlestar Galactica

In common

Today, Doug and Miguel were talking about Indiana Jones, whom Miguel is fascinated with. Miguel wanted to know if Indiana was his real name. Doug explained that no, his name was something else and Indiana was his nickname. To which Miguel responded:

That's just like Frederick Douglass. Douglass wasn't his real name, either. He was a slave, but he escaped and the slave catchers were trying to find him. But they were looking for Frederick Bailey, so he changed his last name to Douglass to make it harder for them to find him.

Drive my car

Miguel's twin kittens driving his Lightning McQueen slippers.

Adios, Piano

We tried to give it away, no takers. So it's off to the dump, along with a sofa no one wanted. And a bunch of rotting wood from the garage. It feels good to get rid of stuff!

Presidents

Miguel picked out books about Teddy Roosevelt and JFK the other day. The JFK one, published in 2006, ends with this sentence:

"And the United States continues to work toward peace with all nations."

I told him I didn't agree, but when he asked why, I gave my fallback answer: "It's complicated."

Miguel is at Gramma's this weekend while we clean out our garage. It's a beautiful weekend!

update: I think it's the "all nations" part that got to me. If it said "around the world," well, maybe that would have been vague enough. Maybe.

Thursday update

Miguel's latest fascination is George Washington Carver. We've been reading a book about him. I always thought of him as just the person that invented peanut butter. Did you know that peanut butter came out of his efforts to promote crop rotation? Peanuts fix the nitrogen in soil for growing better cotton. The problem was, no one liked peanuts; they were used mostly in animal feed. So he invented peanut butter, along with other things, to make peanuts more popular so that farmers would grow them.

Veerry iiiinteresting.

I'm really enjoying being learning about things by following Miguel's interests. My knowledge of the Titanic has expanded 100-fold since the day he saw his friend Levar Burton read a book about it on Reading Rainbow (OPB, 3 p.m. weekdays). I'll never forget that evening when he told us about it while he was in the bathtub: "There was a big ship called the Titanic, and it sank, and many people died."

Happy Thursday!

Overheard in PDX: The mall will do that

My first contribution to Overheard.

Kid's say the darndest things.

Today, Miguel and Elliott were in the car on the way home from school.

Elliott: Did you know some kids got taken from their parents? In another town, not here. (He overheard some talk about the Texas polygamist town.)

Miguel: Good thing we did our homework.

(I didn't remind him that, in fact, he has not finished his homework.)

Anybody Want a Piano?

Here is a lovely piano that was in our garage when we moved into our house in December '06. We are trying to get rid of it. If you want it, let us know. If you have any ideas on how to get rid of it, let us know. We've tried ethos and piano santa. No one wants it. I don't know why, it's so beautiful. Maybe we'll need to take an axe to it and burn it in a big bonfire this summer.

Miguel with his good friend Elliott

Sometime last year. Not an exciting video, but I'm trying out how easy it is to post from youtube.

Make 'Em Laugh

Miguel is taking piano lessons now. He's 3 years old in this video.

Welcome to Our Blog

Hi!

Welcome to the blog of our household, Pam, 37, Doug, 38, and Miguel, 5. And of course, Chloe, who is 70 in dog years.I thought it'd be fun to post the latest news here, even if we're the only ones who read it.

Miguel is finishing up a fantastic year in his pre-K Spanish/English program at Beach Elementary in North Portland. His latest interests include Amelia Earhart and the history of slavery in the US, of all things. We have found books about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass at the library that he has read multiple times.

The other night he was looking for his new Amelia Earhart book and said "Mom, where's my new Hillary book? I mean, Amelia book?"

Good night for now.