The Volcano in the Kitchen

Today was our day to do nothing.  No school for him.  No work for me.  No important errands to run.  No play-dates to be on time for.  So we were busy.

He was up early talking with more questions about God.  To which I did my best, but c'mon, who's that great at that kind of thing @ 7am?  Breakfast of bagles and cream cheese and then second breakfast of Oaty Bites.

Then it's time to grab the key and go feed Albert.  Albert is a female cat who lives around the corner.  Her family is out of town so we agreed to feed her in their absence.  He ran while I shuffled blearily behind him.  Feeding Albert.  Perhaps this sounds easy enough but the cat in question used to be feral.  Used to be.  As in, she still presents as a feral cat, but now she lives inside.  Adding to poor Alberts' apparent dis-ease is my enthusiastic four year old "assistant" who has recently decided cats are awesome.  He just wants to love her!  Albert has other ideas.  Lucky for me the cat is driven by it's stomach so if I can get the little man to sit quietly toward the interior of the house, said cat does agree to come in, if I stand outside shaking the dish long enough...  Lessons in patience everywhere.

When we got home, we had set out our materials for playing with baking soda and vinegar.  Being new at this, we used a small cup placed in a large bowl.  It foamed and frothed and we had lots of fun but shortly thereafter we went down to Racines and bought some bake-in-the-oven modeling clay with which to build a proper volcano.  I showed him how to wedge the "clay".  Properly softened, we sculpted our volcano and set it to bake.

While it was baking, I put some red dye in the vinegar.  Once baked and cooled, he put some baking soda in the crater and poured the vinegar liberally.  It was awesome.

After playing with this for an hour, we went for a bike ride.  We played with Lincoln Logs.  We ate dinner.  We skipped the bath tonight.  We brushed teeth, I read him three stories, we sang three songs and had our chat with God.  It was earlier than usual but he rolled right over and went night nights.

PS.  I also voted today and though Lintott had that pretty wagon in the parade, she did not get my vote.