During Travel Day (TM) when our family of five went from one coast to the other, Matt and I both heard Samuel say cheerily to several flight attendants as we disembarked from various flights, "Thank you for the airplane ride!" 

Even though thanking the flight attendants for the ride does seem quite right to me, (I'm all in favor of thanking flight attendants but I'd be more likely to thank the pilot for "the airplane ride") the flight attendants looked pleased with his thanks. And as Samuel told me later, he likes flight attendants because they are always smiling and they give him treats like ginger ale and cranberry juice.

Thank you, God, for the ride of parenthood. For six years of life with a wonderful, funny, observant and sweet little boy. A boy who requested and relished his chocolate cranberry birthday cake. A boy who can out-talk a used car salesman. A child who clutches tightly to my arm when the book gets to a scary part. A big brother who volunteered to get the first flu shot and bravely didn't even say "ow". Thank you, God, thank you for the ride!

Matt: "I'd have to say that one of my favorite foods in the whole world is cornbread stuffing with gravy."

Samuel: "My best food in the whole world is mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce."

Isaac: "The most eat-able thing in the whole world . . .  is food."

It's October? Really? How did that happen?

Alexei is still in his chrysalis but should be hatching in the next few days. The chrysalis is a paler green and bits of structure begin to be visible. The golden dots on the pale green oblong look jewel-like.

I just warmed up with a cup of tea and for the first time in a while held onto the warm teacup to absorb all the heat I could. I'd grab socks but mine are all shut up in my room with a napping baby. My morning routine needs to start including socks again.

Nature study for today might consist of drawing something that has been brought inside instead of being outside with notebooks and pencils. It's 45 and cloudy.

We read Rudyard Kipling's "How the Camel got his Hump" this week. I'll leave you with the poem from the end of the story. But you should read the story too.

THE Camel's hump is an ugly lump
  Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
  From having too little to do.

Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo,
If we haven't enough to do-oo-oo,
    We get the hump--
    Cameelious hump--
The hump that is black and blue!

We climb out of bed with a frouzly head
  And a snarly-yarly voice.
We shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl
  At our bath and our boots and our toys;

And there ought to be a corner for me
(And I know there is one for you)
    When we get the hump--
    Cameelious hump--
The hump that is black and blue!

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,
  Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,
  And dig till you gently perspire;

And then you will find that the sun and the wind.
And the Djinn of the Garden too,
    Have lifted the hump--
    The horrible hump--
The hump that is black and blue!

I get it as well as you-oo-oo--
If I haven't enough to do-oo-oo--
    We all get hump--
    Cameelious hump--
Kiddies and grown-ups too!

Happy Fall!
We picked up a Monarch caterpillar from friends yesterday. Our friends had named all the caterpillars after the Romanov family, ours is named Alexei. They kept Anastasia, which is a really good name for a caterpillar. This morning, Samuel and I sketched the caterpillar in our nature notebooks. He was already hanging upside down in the "J" position. Sometime around lunch he shed his skin and now we have a lovely green chrysalis to draw. We are following his progress using the lesson from the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock.

Laying partisan politics aside (which I realize may be impossible, but let's pretend) I love my country and respect the office of president and so I thought it would be great for Samuel to listen to the president's address to the nation's students. Although I was a student during the last two times that presidents addressed the nation's school children (that would be Reagan in 1988 and Bush in 1991) I never heard either of those speeches as I attended a private school and we probably weren't wired for the infrastructure necessary to watch.

Samuel and I were unable to watch the speech live on Tuesday as Samuel was at his gymnastics class. But I waited until the speech was available on whitehouse.gov and we watched on Wednesday after we finished our regularly scheduled schoolwork.

I told Samuel that the speech (at around 15 minutes in length) was too long for him to attempt to remember and narrate all of it back to me (he gets very frustrated if he cannot do a FULL narration when he feels he is expected to) but that I expected him to pay attention and be able to remember something at the end when we would discuss. Samuel listened carefully and Isaac did his part by sitting quietly on my lap and not interrupting (this is big, if you know Isaac)

The first fun and unexpected lesson was the boys were really taken with the playing of "Hail to the Chief". Of course they didn't know about that and they really liked the idea that it was the president's song. We've hummed the melody several times since then.

Samuel with no prompting was able to articulate several key points including, in his words, "Schoolwork may be hard and not fun but you should do it anyway" and "It's important to set goals for yourself". He also related back to me the entire story of the president being taught by his mom at their kitchen table during their time in Indonesia. Samuel thought the idea of falling asleep at the kitchen table was hilarious and expressed relief that he didn't have to get up at 4:30 am to do his schoolwork.

When I asked, Samuel related back the stories of the three students that the president gave as examples of dedication to education in adverse circumstances. I had to do a little interpretation as Samuel had no idea what foster care was but after clarifying that he came up with "School work would be really hard if you didn't speak the same language or you had a bad sickness or you didn't have a family." We used that idea as a springboard into thankfulness for the blessings we have.

I enjoyed the speech for it's language of personal responsibility. I talked with Samuel about how students, parents and teachers all have different responsibilities for education. Samuel enjoyed the idea that the speech was for all the students in America "kindergarten to twelfth grade", of which he is one!

As we finished up our nature walk/train track viewing/errand-running adventure today, we walked along the parking lot at Wegman's. A very shiny new red Harley Davidson motorcycle pulled into a space a few yards ahead of us. The proud owner turned off the motorcycle and stood next to it, removing his helmet and gloves.

Samuel turned to him and spoke up, "Your motorcycle is really nice. I like it."
The man smiled and responded and Samuel sensing the opportunity to have more motorcycle interaction stepped off the curb to examine the bike more closely.

I called out some word of caution but Samuel explained what he was doing. "I'm looking for the button that turns it on."

The man smiled more broadly and I explained that last week, we had met some people with motorcycles who had told Samuel that you pushed a button to start the motorcycle (those were also Harley's) Samuel at this point had returned to me on the sidewalk and was crouched down looking at the motorcycle.

"Would you like to push the button and start it up?" the man asked. Samuel stayed crouched on the ground, considering for a moment.

"Samuel?" I prompted.

"Yes." He got to his feet and walked to the bike. The man showed him how and let Samuel push the button. It took a few attempts because the first two times he didn't push it for long enough to actually start the bike. On the third try it roared to life.

Samuel, grinning, thanked the man and so did I. "Have a good day!" I called out as we resumed walking.

"You, too." He returned. I felt like stopping to say that we were.

when your three year old comes up and perfectly retells to you the story of the Laconic Answer with a really mischievous look in his eye.

"and the letter had one word in it. It said 'IF' and that meant they were not afraid at all."

I've met my child's teacher . . . and she seems a bit scatterbrained.

Having a farm share is like getting presents every week. OK, sometimes the presents are mostly kale and that's fine. But sometimes you have a moment like I did when I went to put away the veggies that Matt and the boys had brought home.

First I got excited about the big bag of organic carrots. Fresh organic carrots are the best!

Then I gasped as I reached into the first cloth bag to pull out two giant tomatoes. I thought there were no more local tomatoes due to late blight! What a wonderful surprise. Fresh heirloom tomatoes are the best!

Is that another basket of raspberries on the counter! Oh yum!

Two Italian sweet peppers and an eggplant go into the fridge. Mmmm!

What's this last bag sitting on the floor. Probably the greens. Oh, it's green beans! More green beans! Yay!

And two delicata squash? Is it delicata time already?

OK, I'm a big weirdo but most of you already knew that :)

I think this op-ed piece from the New York Times excellently sums up what the research says about how preschool aged children (ie children under age five or six) learn. But you won't be hearing that from people with a vested interest in selling you something.