I love lattes

Finished a huge chunk of the work for my online class that I am developing, and I am so relieved!  There's still a ton of work to do, and then I have to do a quick redesign of the online class I built for the career college where we adjunct, but still! Latte-fueled progress today, and I am basking in its glow and using the last 10 minutes this coffee shop is open to blog about it.  (Even though there are weeks of work ahead before I can read the excellent novels burning a hole on my bookshelf.)

Yesterday, I volunteered in Harry's class for a morning of pumpkin math.  The kids brought in pumpkins last week and spent some time eyeballing them so they could come up with estimations of weight, circumference, and number of seeds.  Then yesterday, they weighed, measured, and gutted their gourds and did math to compare their guesses and their actual numbers and then painted their pumpkins.  It was slimy and adorable.  Harry was the first kid done and even completed his bonus pumpkin worksheet in record time, meaning he got to pass out snack.  I watched him do it and commented that he was giving some kids more than he gave others.  Three second graders turned on me "It's a handful!" They shouted.  "Sometimes a handful is a little bit bigger, and sometimes it's a little bit smaller!"  Clearly that was a discussion that had happened a few times in the second grade.  OK, then.  I volunteered to take all the seeds home and bake them for snack today, and I also sent in (gluten and nut-free) pumpkin chip muffins made from the adorable sugar pie pumpkin on my counter.  Bonus!

Today, I made sweet Dorothy a batch of baby food from all the leftover, too-ripe stuff attracting fruit flies on my counter.  Hope she likes pears/plums/apples with a side of apples/carrots.  4th baby: not as special of a snowflake as the other babies.

Um.  That's all I got.  Boring and lovely around here.  Pictures?  You have probably already seen them on Facebook.

(OMG-- the passive-aggressive barista  TURNED OFF THE WI-FI 5 minutes before the coffee shop closed to encourage stragglers to leave which pissed me off.  If you want to close at 4:25, then PUT THAT ON YOUR SIGN.  SO I am typing this from my front porch.)

Before school baby meeting:

 He got out the bagel, PB, knife, and stool all by himself apropos of nothing (well, he was probably hungry, but we were hanging out in his room, and he just got up and made a snack).

 He helps himself to everything

 I LOVE THIS HAT.  And her giant Northface bunting.  We debated forever but ended up going with the huge 12-18 month size hoping she can wear it in March and April still

 Minecraft.  I am not sure how many more conversations I can have about that game.