Excuses, excuses . . . .

This is a story about Daniel.
Last night, while Joe and David and our guest Daniel Williams were playing Settlers of Catan, Daniel decided he wanted to "play" too, so they gave him an unused set of roads and houses and cities (you Catan players out there know what this means).
Well, his idea of playing with them was to strew them about the floor, creating highways and byways and cities among the feet of the guys playing at the table.
Before putting him to bed, I looked at the lovely pastoral spread out all over the floor and said, "Okay, time to clean up now. Let's pick these things up and put them away," as any good mother would.
It seemed like a reasonable request.
Daniel walked over to the mess, looked at it, sighed a big sigh and put on a pained face, and said, as he stretched his hands out to me, "I can't. My hands are busy!!" He looked really sad about it, as if to say, "I'd really like to help you, but it's out of my control . . . "
Yeah, right.
"What do you mean?" I asked. When Josiah used to say this, it meant that he had pins and needles, you know, that his appendage had fallen asleep, and he described that irritating feeling as his hand or foot being "busy". I wanted to clarify. (This goes on a lot when you have a two year old. Clarifying, I mean.)
"I can't pick up! My hands are too busy!" he said again, exasperated that I did not see the enormity of his predicament.
So it starts. Excuses, excuses.
So, I got down on the floor with him and I made a game of it, and in the end he was upset that I put the last game piece in the baggie. (He had to take it back out and put it in himself, of course!)
Huh. Two-year-olds!
They're so fickle!! : )
Look at that face!!
And by the way, he looks way too old in these pictures.

Some other things about yesterday . . . Josiah and his class read Stone Soup, and then, his very creative and talented teacher had the class make it!!
Of course, a bunch of seven-year-olds just can't appreciate a good stone soup, so the faculty and staff ate most of it at lunchtime.
Yum, yum! Delicious.
I need to hit Mrs. Harrison up for the recipe, and the next time we have guests over, I think I'll serve it, just to see what they say.
It won't be very much, because they'll be too busy slurping down delicious soup to say much of anything.
Josiah assured me that he liked it very much (in case you were not aware, Jo is our pickiest eater), but couldn't eat it because it was too hot for him to eat.
Yes.
It is soup.
More excuses, anyone? We have plenty! : )
And . . . I was happy to see the word lachrymose on Isaac's spelling/vocab list. He's learning lots of great words this year. Now, to convince him that an arsenal of words is the best kind of arsenal to have!
Actually, I am regularly quite impressed with him.
Yesterday, on the way home from school, he talked to me about Martin Van Buren's presidency and economic stance, and how it compares to the present administration, and what that means, projection wise, for a chance at re-election.
What?
Is he still 11?
We then talked about the presidency being a very difficult position to hold, because sometimes, people who love you and vote you in one day, hate all your policies and want you out the next. People are so fickle (there's that word again). We discussed that it was like that with Jesus, too. Jesus was hailed as king and his arrival was celebrated one week, but when the people found out he wasn't going to overthrow and change the govenrment the way they wanted him to, they were yelling for him to be crucified the next week.
I love conversations like this.
They let me know what my children know about the world we live in, what they think about it and how they are processing it.
It's such and big world.
And there is so much to know.