Timothy's latest mathematics, out of nowhere: "two one-two-threes makes 12!" (upon query, he indeed meant that 2 x (1+2+3) = 12)! He's really enjoying going to the first grade classroom 2 half-days each week, and it seems to make him happier in his pre-K class as well, to have a bit of challenge elsewhere in his schedule.

We still have 8" of snow in some spots, and had a snowstorm a week ago today, dropping 6" or so, but we've had quite mild weather several of the recent days (including Easter weekend), and half of the yard is bare now. We're getting a taste of mud season, on our dirt road, but there's not as much snow as some winters, so it shouldn't be too bad.

In Burlington, we joined the other Project Harmony hosts to say good-bye to our guests from Omsk. Our guests sang us songs as part of their farewell. We were very sorry to see Oksana leave.

Tonight we went to the Cabot School's China Night. The whole school has been focusing on China the past few weeks and they showed off the fruits of their labors tonight, including traditional crafts, food, and dancing. We were given play Chinese money along with instructions about how to haggle with the vendors. Wish we'd gotten pictures of the huge Chinese dragons.

Just saw our first sharp-shinned hawk -- unless it was our first Cooper's hawk. Size was kind of right in-between, so it could've been a small male Cooper's or a large female sharp-shinned. Didn't manage to get Peterson's out until right when he flew away, so didn't know to check the tail for a notch.... It was eating a starling, I think. It took its lunch with it when it flew away. Thrilling, whichever it was. It'd be nice to know which, though. Audubon says that even experienced birders have a hard time telling one from the other.

One morning last week at about 4:00 we woke up and saw a pair of deer out in our back field, sometimes walking delicately on the snow and sometimes lumbering through it. There was a bit of moon left, shining on the snow, so we were seeing the deer in silhouette. Magical!

I wish you could hear the roar of what must be many hundreds of individuals of various species of frogs we've had here the last couple of nights. With one window half open in the play room (on the front side of the cape), I can hear them loudly and clearly in my study (on the back end of the cape). They're actually not that close to the house, but are rather in the little swampy area across the road about 50 yards east of here. I can still hear them even when the clock chimes....

It is most emphatically spring here. We've had something on the order of 2" of rain in the last two nights, though the afternoons have been mostly sunny. The last six or so nights have all been in the 40s, and the days in the 50s or 60s. Tomorrow's supposed to be in the mid to upper 70s, so I suppose the last bits of lingering snow will finally melt away.

After a couple of months of not saying any words (she had had five or six words late last fall), Clara has begun again saying "kitty." She understands huge amounts, though. "Here, Clara, could you take this sippy cup and put it on the table by your chair?" She does. "Clara, where's Mama? She points to another room. "Clara, could you go get your boots and bring them here?" She does. Oh, and she now knows not to cry when we say we're coming "right back." She also uses ASL pretty consistently to ask for more food, to say she's all done, and to ask to nurse.

The pre-school last month had the kids' parents write down on cards any books that they read to their children. Every child who brought in at least one card (i.e., who had been read at least one book) got a coupon for a free personal pizza at Pizza Hut. The eight kids in Timothy's pre-school accounted for 80-some cards. 28 of those cards were Timothy's -- and he'd read most of the books himself. The longest, I think, was Charlotte's Web (which I read in fourth grade), but there were several other shorter chapter books, and whole issues of My Big Backyard and Cricket magazines. The other night I didn't have much voice left for reading aloud his bedtime story, so I asked Timothy to read to us instead. He proceeded to read two pages of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach almost flawlessly. He didn't pause at the end of lines. He inflected dialogue pretty much perfectly. There was one long sentence which was nearly as long as this whole paragraph is -- complete with a clause set off by em-dashes rather like this one -- and he read it nearly perfectly: only the em-dash clause confused him. He even read the word "automatically" correctly, even though it was divided at the end of a line. Not bad.

We've settled down to a routine at Timothy's school. He goes to all of the pre-school days (Tuesday through Thursday mornings). On Monday and Friday mornings, he goes to first grade. The variety agrees with him. We'll be meeting with his pre-K and 1st-grade teachers in May, along with the Kindergarten teacher, to decide what to do with him next year. Probably it'll be along the same lines: Kindergarten and either 1st or 2nd grade. He gets along very well with this year's 1st graders.

A newt.

Spring has finally sprung here this week -- I'm off to continue raking fall's debris off the baby flowers emerging into our record-breaking warm days!

Woke up this morning with a bit of a jolt and quite a long rumble. Tuned in to our very local and very wonderful WDEV, where they were saying, "Well, how about that?" and describing how their studio had just been moving around....

Purely based on anecdotal evidence by callers-in and the prior experiences of a couple of transplanted Californians, within a half-hour the announcers theorized that it was about a 4.5 or a 5.0 earthquake centered in extreme northern Vermont or southern Quebec.

They weren't so far off, either. Preliminary "official" reports are of a 5.1 earthquake centered 15 miles SW of Plattsburg, N.Y. (i.e., about 70 miles NNW of here).

The quake was felt as far away as Pennsylvania; NYC; Rhode Island; Scituate, Mass.; Cape Cod; and points in Maine. Don't know how far north it was felt, though it was quite strong in Montreal.

No reports of damage locally; some wall hangings and plates knocked down in Burlington, Vt., though. Many people talked about how loud it was ("freight train," etc.); we didn't hear anything here.

It was about the same feeling as the one we felt in South Hampton (based in Haverhill, Mass., I think?) a couple of years ago. That one started with a huge "boom."

This morning, our giant mother-in-law's tongue plant in a large clay pot was on its side when I came downstairs this morning, but I think that's because of the ferocious gales of wind that were blasting through the window we accidentally left open last night, not the earthquake.

Neighbors from down the road, Gage and Eli, visited for a couple of hours today. Gage is five or six months younger than Clara; Eli is about a year and a half younger than Timothy. They show every sign of becoming good friends.

More snow. Timothy waits for the bus.

Until a week ago, I was madly raking and working in the garden in my T-shirt and shorts, to uncover things buried by dead leaves from the fall, when we were too busy with the house stuff to deal with the garden. The past week, it's been snowing, so I've been trying to finish painting the walls and trim in our bedroom so we can put our bookshelves in their permanent spots and actually unpack (many of) the books onto them.

Erik's been busy with the online community calendar (take a peek at http://www.cabotvt.org/ to see how beautiful it is!) and has found a source of at least a little funding for it, from a group which is applying for a grant to do community outreach. And he's auditioning for Ruddigore this Saturday with a local group -- based on his credentials, they've more or less promised him a lead, but will make their final determinations after hearing him. I might end up doing some choreography or something for them, too.

Timothy is busy reading Homer Price and the like, and doing stuff on his computer. He was enjoying playing outside when the ground was bare, but hasn't wanted to go out in the 1" of snow -- I think he's had enough winter. We're planning to get him a bike this spring.

Clara's the busiest of all, carrying toys, shells, bits of paper from the trash, and so forth to different locations around the house. She seems to have a purpose in mind but has not shared it with us. She continues to speak Gaelic (we think) plus yesterday started saying "mama" which brings her English vocab up to 3 words, matching her ASL vocab.