Sunday Morning

How sweet it is to be able to sleep in till the sun rises! Well, Nerfa woke me up at 5am and continued to annoy me till I finally threw off the covers and left the warm nest of bed at 7:30. But at least nobody else is awake yet, and I can enjoy my cup of 8 O'clock Coffee in peace. As a bonus, Rat Dog stayed in bed with Keith.

Yesterday after I went to work, Delia apparently decided to make herself a special breakfast. Earlier this week she made herself waffles in our broken toaster... the thing doesn't pop up on it's own, you have to watch it carefully, anyway I guess she didn't know that and the waffles burned all up - when I came home Wednesday afternoon I could still smell it. She apparently took the charred remnants of waffle upstairs and woke her Dad, saying "Here's the proof that you need to get up and make me breakfast." Anyhow, yesterday, Delia made a batch of popcorn for breakfast. Normal people might not make too much of that, because most people make microwave popcorn - but not us. My Sister convinced me that microwave popcorn was very evil, I can't remember why exactly, something about plastic and chemicals burning yadda yadda yadda. So we just don't buy microwave popcorn at all, we get Orville Reddenbacher in a big ole tub. (Or sometimes we get Jiffy Pop, but that stuff is getting very hard to find for some reason.) So Friday night, Keith and Delia made popcorn together for Movie Night. We're all about engaging and including her in cooking. And he does it every time he makes popcorn, a step by step tutorial, how much corn, how much oil, how to tell when to begin shaking the pan, how to know when the popping is complete. She pays attention, and yesterday she decided to put that knowledge into use. Apparently, she popped a flawless batch of corn, and ate most of it before Keith woke up. And now it makes sense why there was a chair in the middle of the kitchen... She had to climb to reach the big BBQ lighter we use to light the stove burners.
They picked me up from Work Saturday, and Keith told me about her breakfast. I launched into the same admonishment Keith had already given her, about how she's only 8 and that's not old enough to use the stove unsupervised, she could get burned very badly, it might start a fire.... and she nodded her head and rolled her eyes and said "I know, Mom, I know." about a dozen times. Secretly though I was proud of her for learning how to make popcorn and not being afraid of the stove.

Kind of like how I was proud of her on Thursday, after Thanksgiving Dinner, when we were visiting with Carson and Maria. She got bored with the show that was on TV so she pulled out her binder and started practicing her multiplication. She told me Naomi showed her how to do it, that's what they do in the third grade, she said, and she just wanted to get a head start. I was impressed! I remember the Third Grade... My teacher was Mister Williams, he had a huge class ring and I remember the idea of it making a cracking sound when he would slap a desk or table top. I remember him bonking people on the head with it too, but I probably made that up. We had to go up to the front of the room and recite the series of times tables we were supposed to be memorizing. I didn't work very hard on them and having to recite them made me sweaty and nauseous. I still to this day do not know all the multiplication tables. Maybe I'll finally learn them once and for all when Delia does.

On a final sad note, my digital camera finally gave up the ghost. So this blog will only have pictures if I recycle some or my Mom figures out how to get the photos off her camera and send them to me. Hi Mom!