I had tried to remember so much this week. I should have posted as they happened, but I didn’t. I went for a walk in the late evening with the kids and we looked up at the stars. About a block from us there is sufficient darkness to be able to see some. Cait immediately spotted the Big Dipper, so I showed her how to find the Little Dipper, the North Star, and how to find your direction at night. We also identified Cassiopeia, but that was about all. Cait inquired after Orion, and I explained that we can only see Orion in the winter.

Sometimes Cait astounds me. She gets bitten by the reading bug a couple times a week, and she will read an entire book in one sitting. The Secrets of Droon by Tony Abbott is her favorite series right now. She read another one yesterday in mere hours.

She is also getting interested in playing D&D. She wants me to help her make up a character and teach her how to game. I am happy that she wants to join us, but she can’t seem to stay awake late enough. We game on alternate Saturdays from after dinner to about midnight, and she usually conks out around 9 or 10. Moira wants to game, too, so maybe I will start a campaign just for the two of them.

We borrowed Van Helsing from the library last week, and the girls watched it almost every day. We looked up where Romania is, and Transylvania, and we talked a little about who the Gypsies are. Cait now wants to be a vampire for Halloween. Her tastes in entertainment are growing up more rapidly than I would have thought. She is obsessed with the X-Men. It seems like only yesterday that The Big Comfy Couch was her favorite show.

I borrowed a book called The Explosive Child by Ross Greene to try to figure out how to deal with Lauren and her random fits of violence. I started crying on the second page. I had started to think that I was the only one with a child like that and that I was a terrible mother for raising such a difficult child. I’m about half-way through it now, and if Terry and I can successfully implement the suggestions in the book, I think we will end up with a much happier home life. Having a three-year-old get so mad over not being allowed to have soda at bedtime or the fact that she outgrew last year’s clothes that she throws everything she can see, including a sit-and-spin, is not a fun way to live. But then she turns around and brings me flowers and draws me pictures and says I am the best mommy in the whole world.

On another note, Terry and I have been fantasizing about our dream home. It will be like a hobbit hole. It started when I saw a house in Mother Earth News that had a sod roof. We thought we would extend that to include the walls, too, and soon we had our very own hobbit hole. Someday.

I will try to remember to update as things happen rather than trying to remember it after a week.