Is it bedtime yet?

The smoke alarm in the girls' room went off this morning. It beeped loudly (more like a siren or a screech) three times. Then it stopped. Then it beeped twice, and stopped again. Then it beeped three times. The third time it was joined by a loud shriek from the alarm down the hall. Then nothing.

We had gathered the kids and our shoes and were ready to evacuate, but nothing seemed amiss. After checking over the house, feeling the walls, smelling the air, etc. we still couldn't figure out what caused the alarm to go off. Strange.

I noted that the 3-2-3 beeps seemed eerily like Morse Code. DH said maybe aliens were trying to contact us using the frequency of our smoke detectors.

Sorry, little green guys. If you want us to do something, you're going to have to be more clear and specific.


Our second day of official homeschooling was, um, less than stellar. The girls are extremely tired and grouchy, and all 4 of us are getting sick (yes, the baby too) with some kind of cold thing. Lots of sniffling and sneezing going on here today.

I made a labor-intensive breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs. The girls threw a tantrum because they wanted cold cereal (they didn't get it, BTW). Well, I enjoyed the pancakes anyway. Actually, the girls did too.

AJ and MM weren't really all that interested in school today. They just wanted to play with each other (and argue, whine and throw tantrums). They liked doing workbooks but just wanted to color in them and hated following the instructions (especially MM), and got bored fairly quickly.

I was so tired that letting them play by themselves or just watch a video sounded awfully good, but I pushed through. I'm not sure what exactly we accomplished, but MM got some practice with letters and writing and AJ identified some rhyming words and completed the missing parts of some pictures. And they both colored. I wasn't a very exciting teacher today. All I can think about is a nice soft pillow.

We cut lunch short because, after being told at least 3 times to sit still and eat, and stop playing with their food, the girls knocked MM's glass over with their feet. Yes, their feet. The glass was on the table. Both kids each had a foot on the table, doing something to MM's glass with it or foot-wrestling; I'm not sure which. I had looked away for a moment.

So they are in bed now. We'll probably do a little math and read some books after quiet time.

I'm going to try to get a nap while the girls are having quiet time if Baby E will let me. She's not napping or nursing well due to a stuffy nose (and probably a headache and sore throat, like the rest of us). Hopefully we'll all get a good nap and that, along with the Airborne we took, will help fend off this illness.

(Warning: annoying website--but Airborne is really great stuff for helping prevent and minimize colds and flu. It even did the impossible: convinced DH that it actually works well enough to be worth spending money on.)