uh, yeah. nothing like announcing that you are going to get the kids off sugar and then waking up to fresh donuts from the grocery store. and yogurt smoothies. guess 11 pm is not a good time to initiate that discussion.

so, that question about bees hibernating? well, it is complicated. honeybees overwinter, basically huddling together in a football-sized clump (shudder...), keeping each other warm. this, apparently, is the reason they make so much honey--they need to eat in the winter too. i knew this at some point--like when i was 10 and a die-hard Ranger Rick fan, but had forgotten. however, yellowjackets and bumblebees do not overwinter--they all die, save for the queen, who does hibernate. upon waking, she lays a ton of eggs and gets a whole new colony. we looked al this up and had a very long, very engaged discussion about bees--so engaged that i let the dinner hour completely pass us by. get this: bees have a little notch on their front legs that cleans their antennae. AND bees sleep! is that not the cutest thing ever?

it was really nice--after so many days of skiing and skating and this-ing and that-ing, including this morning, it was so pleasant to sit down at the dining room table with 2 huge pads of paper and the computer and talk about bees. carter was also somewhat interested. he loved having his pen and paper, and he declared happily that he drew a 2! and a 4! and an N! -- i had to practically leap across the table to get ava to stop telling him that, no, he really did not draw a 2--i kept loudly talking over her, saying "wow, carter, that is GREAT! isn't that GREAT AVA?" as if she would get the subtext. he is suddenly very very interested in numbers and letters. he always has been quietly interested, but now he wants to talk about them. a lot.

he is also asking really perceptive questions, and carries on a running dialogue about all of his favorite characters--mary poppins, snow white, cinderella are all people who need routine rescuing, and he absolutely insists upon being called Diego, and that Ava is Alicia. This is after watching 'GO Diego GO' perhaps 5 times. Diego is Dora's cousin, and he is an animal rescuer--as is his sister Alicia, and his parents are animal scientists. Carter is constantly off to rescue a baby humpback whale or a baby chinchilla or perhaps some baby condors. To the uninitiated, it is very disconcerting to have a 2.5 year-old suddenly talk about chinchillas.

but once you know the story, and are prepared to have it embellished with all the other stories he is reading/watching, you can sort of piece together the narrative.

2 days ago, ava, carter and i all went out to The BarkEater for a pony ride on Precious, the cutest pony in the universe. ava loved it, carter enjoyed the mud puddles. he jumped in one paticularly deep one and then "fell" in it, and then came running at me yelling "here comes dirty man!"

ava was completely engrossed in her pony, and was very pleased that carter preferred the puddles to the horses. i assume we will be returning.