Quiet rainy Sunday

It's been a lovely Sunday with time for reading and writing text adventure computer games (we all played a bit of Zork last night as practice) and crafts and laminating and baking and movies and learning. Unfortunately there are at least 5 loads of laundry to fold, lunches to make, plans to make for the last week of school so our day of rest may be over now.

Berlin Wall

We have been doing This Day in History daily with the big brothers and it's been amazing how much history I've forgotten (or possibly never learned). Today was about President Ronald Regan's trip to West Berlin in 1987 where he told Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. This of course led to a long discussion at dinner about why Germany and Berlin were divided, who Mikhail Gorbachev was, why there was a wall, and how it was torn down. Dinner ended with looking up maps of Europe after the Warsaw Pact and finding a video of Peter Jennings in Berlin in 1989 when the wall came down. The kids were really interested and it was a great discussion. It would have been nice to actually study history past World War II when I was in school and I hope the boys end up with a better understanding of our modern world and relationships than I have. Luckily I have a second chance to learn it all again!

Sorry fishies

David and I just spent the last 20 minutes cleaning fish food out of the bottom bunks. Yesterday we completely moved the boys room around and now the two sets of bunk beds are next to each other, opening up a great window space for an air conditioner. We thought there was a chance it was summer now with the two days of 90 degree weather but we're back to 50s-60s and rain.

The moving of the bunk beds opens up an exciting space for Mr. 2 who would rather not waste any time sleeping in this bed. There's been no nap all weekend and last night he went to bed at 10:30pm. Tonight we got everyone to be a bit early and the big brothers promptly fell asleep. Mr. 2 has been found in the playroom twice (perhaps the secret passage was not such a great idea) and then brought out an empty fish food container to us. Unlike last time when the entire container went into the fish tank, this time the entire container went into the bottom bunks. And very efficiently spread across two beds. We had to strip both beds and then use the dust buster to try to get up the rest (the brothers in the two top bunks slept through the whole thing) using only Mr. 2's reading light. I told Mr. 2 that he had made a bad choice and he should say he's sorry to the fishies. So he went the the tank and said "I sorry fishes" and then proceeded to make fish sounds at the tank as if to tell them in their own language. While I cleaned up he asked if Mommy was sad he made a bad choice. "Yes, Mommy is sad." "And Daddy sad?" "Yes, Daddy is sad too." "And Harry is sad?" "Is Harry sad?" "No Harry not sad." I should say not - this is the most exciting bedtime that little dinosaur has ever had.

Luckily both David and I had more than 6 hours of sleep last night so we were able to respond as patient, loving parents rather than cranky parents. After all was cleaned up I got Mr. 2 back to bed and told him that even when he makes bad choices we still love him. I hope Micah is a good sleeper because he has quite a roomful of brothers to sleep through.