Benson's Friends

This has been quite a week for Benson.  He has found the baby possums and they are as interested in him as he is in them.  They are about 8 inches long or so and seem fully functional in that I don't see them with their mother anymore. He is constantly sniffing around the bottom of our backyard shed where they make their home.  I've gone over to make sure he cannot get under the shed or dig under it (he cannot), but as I was looking around I saw a baby possum nose peeking out from under it.  They just sniff at each other and he barks.  A lot.

Another day, it was 6:00 a.m. and I was out in the back with Benson again.  It had started to rain so I went back inside.  A few minutes later, he started barking very aggressively.  I went out to investigate and he was barking at the garden area.  I looked and saw a baby opossum on the other side of the wire fence.  It was quietly staring back at us.  I tried to catch Benson by his collar, but he was having none of that.  In the process of trying to get Benson, I noticed another baby possum just a few feet away from me curled up dead (in the backyard area, not the protected garden area).  In the chaos of trying to get Benson, I really thought the baby was dead.  It was curled up and very dirty (whereas the one behind the fence observing all of this was 'clean').  I totally forgot that they 'play possum.'  Finally I was able to get Benson inside.  I kept checking outside and when the sun finally came out I noticed that both babies were gone.  

On Friday, Benson got his possum friend.  Literally.  I was sitting out back, enjoying the day while Benson did his usual sniffing around the shed.  And then Benson took off, knocked over the gate that was blocking the back of the shed and in seconds he had a baby possum in his mouth.  I ran over yelling at him.  Drop it!  Drop it!  Drop it!  He let go of the possum, then ran further behind the shed and sniffed at another specific spot.  He came tearing back and picked up the same baby possum that he had before.  I was yelling at him, kind of freaking out.  He dropped the possum, picked it up again, dropped it.  The possum was, of course, playing dead, but it was still freakish looking.  It was curled up and had its eyes closed, but it kept its mouth open showing its teeth.  He finally dropped the possum for the final time, but then I couldn't catch Benson to get him inside.  I couldn't move the gate to cover up the back of the shed, because if I did, Benson would get the possum again (because he had moved it closer into the yard).  Finally Todd came outside.  Help!  Benson kept darting back and forth so we couldn't catch him.  Finally, I let Todd focus on Benson while I moved the gate back to block the shed.  When I moved the gate, the baby possum sat up and calmly walked under the shed.  The gate now has a huge cement block pushing against it to keep it in place.  It was a lot of chaos for a few minutes.  

The two baby squirrels have resurfaced as well.  This time they came with skills.  They climb all over the tree limbs while Benson watches their every move.  They definitely try to play with and instigate Benson.  At one point, one of the babies fell from the limb onto the ground.  Before Benson could even get to him, his sibling was on the ground as well running every which way.  They both darted back up the tree which excited Benson even more.  He was barking up a storm at them and chasing their every move from the ground.  They've messed with him over several days now.  Benson now spends a good portion of his days staring up at the tree limbs or sniffing under the shed.  

My car hit 100,000  miles this week.  It took slightly over eight years because we got the van the week before Caroline was born.  We were happy to 'catch' it.  It's been a really good car, very low maintenance save the ridiculous number of tires we've worn through in the south Texas heat.  Caroline calculated that she would be 16 years old when we hit 200,000 miles, 24 when we hit 300,000, and 32 when we hit 400,000.  I don't know if she's still planning to live at home at 32, but we'll see.  

Josiah is doing long division and multiplying five digit numbers in his math now.  Basically that means his math takes 100 hours a day and we go through a lot of graph paper to keep all our columns straight.  I try to do all the problems with him, so that if he gets an error we can compare all our rows and find the miscalculation.  (Instead of having to redo the entire problem which adds another 50 hours with grumbling and complaining.)  

While Josiah and I do his ridiculously long math problems, Caroline often takes the iPad and announces that she's going to do DuoLingo.  One day this week she did just that.  Oh how wonderful that she's learning a different language.  Time passed.  A lot of time passed and she hadn't resurfaced from her language lessons.  I went looking for her and she was curled up in bed, sucking her thumb, and watching Netflix.  Uh, uh little girl.  

Henry has two speeds.  Full-on energy, cannot stop moving, running, jumping, throwing a ball, wrestling, throwing his body on the couch, etc.  And his second speed.  Lying on the floor with the dog.  This kid smells like dog every day.  

Probability Pizza Toppings

CC was a bit rough for one child this week (not necessarily the child pictured).  For their presentation, they were going to read a funny poem.  However, when they got up to read it, they decided the funny one was too short, so they flipped the page over and read a longer one about the months.  It wasn't funny.  It wasn't exciting, and so they read it as fast as possible.  Then at the end of each presentation, the kids are supposed to say, "Thank you for listening to my presentation.  Any questions?"  But this child of ours said those closing words and then promptly slid under the table to get back to their seat.  As they were doing so, they said, "I don't take any more questions."  To which the tutor replied, "Oh yes, you do." and made said child come back to the front of the room.  Then this child crossed their arms and was quite angry for the remainder of CC.  I don't know what got into them, but we had a nice long conversation at lunch about it.  It was actually a really good productive conversation.  They were mad that they were not being challenged in class and were not being called on as often as they preferred.  We also talked a lot about showing respect.  And humbling ourselves and apologizing for our behavior.  We both walked away from that conversation feeling much better.  And then said child went out to recess where they got in a fight with their brother over the game of tag.  They swung their jackets at each other and smacked each other's neck/head at which point I gave each of them a broom and they helped me sweep a classroom and the hallway.

Since CC was April Fool's Day and CC days are very long and tiring, Todd and I didn't plan anything for that day.  When I put Caroline to bed that night she said it was the worst April Fool's Day ever.  But she didn't know we had something planned.  The next morning, Todd and I left to drop his car off for an inspection.  On the way back we picked up breakfast tacos at Taco Cabana.  But the kids didn't know that we had filled up an old Taco Cabana box with socks wrapped in foil to look like the tortillas.  Breakfast Sock-os.  So when we came home, left the real food in the car, and brought in our fake box. We got a lot of grouchy "Come on!" from them as they opened them all.  I thought it was funny that they still opened them all.  Like they had a glimmer of hope. They did clue into the fact that Todd had a bag of fresh pico de gallo that we had gotten that morning with the real food.  To get me back Josiah insisted of making my coffee.  He not-so-subtly put a packet of hot chocolate where the coffee grounds go, but he mistakenly used two filters so the water just got stuck and didn't brew.  When I told him I had to dump it because it wasn't brewing, he said in not uncertain terms that he was going to make my coffee.  I watched him put heaping spoonfuls of coffee into the basket.  He tried to make it crazy strong.  Little does he know my penchant for caffeine.  You can't beat me at the coffee game.   

The kids tried to get Todd by putting lemon juice in one of his tea bottles.  But they were too obvious that they had done something because they kept hanging around to see if he would drink it.  He grew suspicious that they had done something to his food, so he stopped eating and drinking.  I told them that they just have to let the joke play out.  Next year...

Todd did a good deed this week.  One of our neighbors was driving around asking anyone she saw to help her.  She had no hot water in her house.  She was thinking her pilot light had gone out in her hot water heater.  Todd climbed in her attic and got it lit for her.  Four Stars. 

And today was Easter.  We watched church from the couch again this morning.  It was a very good service.  Caroline asked if they were going to sing the whole time because there were so many songs.  Do you have a problem praising the Lord?  Other than church, it was a very light Easter celebration.  We didn't even dress up.  Egg hunts don't count as 'celebrating Easter' in my book, but boy we had a lot of them this year.  They can either be light-hearted and fun, or a slightly greedy 'how many eggs can I get before the next person finds them.'  First, there was an egg hunt at Awana.  Then on Saturday, Josiah and Caroline went over to a neighbor's house because they had an egg hunt.  On Sunday afternoon, Josiah went to a different neighbor's house for their egg hunt.  (Henry did not want to participate in either of those.)  And we had an egg hunt at our house.  We literally just finished our Halloween/Christmas/Valentine's candy.  I was trying to stay away from so much candy by getting the kids non-candy gifts.  (We got Josiah an Etch-a-Sketch, Henry some water balls, and Caroline a doll outfit.) But somehow the candy crept back in.   

April is a tough school month.  We have a lot of final projects that have to get done by the end of the month.  So the next four weeks are going to be very intense.