And The Award Goes To...

Scene: the car driving to pick up M. J has been interrogating A about the day's school events.

A (from the back seat): "J, J; you'll never guess! Elizabeth from the Mayflower came to our class today!"

J (recalling that the class is studying the Mayflower for Thanksgiving): "Oh, that's right, P and D told us about she would be visiting. What did she tell you?"

A: "Her husband fell overboard on the Mayflower and had to pulled up by ropes."

J (dodging traffic): "Oh."

A: "But J, there's something that's not quite right."

J: "What's that?"

A: "Well (pronounced "Weh-ell") how can she be visiting us if she was on the Mayflower? She must have been four hundred years old."

J (impressed and amused at kindergartner math and logic): "Well, I don't think she was four hundred years old. What do you think. (Trying another tactic) How old was she, did look older than Grandma J?"

A: "She looked old!"

J: "Did she look older than (great) grandma A?"

A (considering): "I think she must have been a ghost or a robot."

J: "So, um, bud; when we go to the renaissance faire, and I dress up and we see Queen Elizabeth, we're acting! Right?"

A (slowly): "Yes..."

J: "So Elizabeth was an actress."

A: "But... how did she know all that stuff about the Mayflower?"

Exciting and New...

Scene: The Living Room.

A (rushing in): "Aaargh! I'm a pirate!"

J: "Why are you a pirate?"

A: "Because I'm mean."

J: "Don't be be mean; love."

A (rolling eyes): "Ugh. No. No love!"

J (singing): "...the Love Boat, soon will be making another run ..."

A (holding hands like pistols): "Pshew! pshew! Pirates are shooting the Love Boat!"

J (indignant): "You can't shoot the Love Boat!"

Holiday Avarice

Scene: Pre-Bed Time, Pre-Shopping Season Catalog Frenzy.

A (from the couch, a catalog in lap): (squeals) "Awesome! I'll have that!" (writes an A next to Haunted Thomas's Laser Crook Lock-Up.)

M (muttering to J in another room): "Don't make me angry with Santa."

A (autographing more war toys): "Awesome!"

J: "A, you remember how Jack Skellington didn't get quite understand what Christmas was about...?"

Fashion Lessons

Scene: Saturday Morning. M has found some blankets in the loft and has laundered them. J, folding the blankets has found "The Cow Robe", a sheet of polar fleece with a cow print on it, slit up the middle to make into a kind of poncho.

A (emerges from his room after retreating from the vacuum cleaner, stops, looks at J, turns head sideways): "Why are you wearing that?"

J (sitting down and beckoning A closer; clasps his hands): "Oh. A, there are going to be several times during your life when you come out of your room, I'm going to be wearing something, and you're going to ask, 'Why are you wearing that?'"

A (nodding dubiously): "Uh huh."

J: "And my answer is going to almost always be, 'Because it's fun.'"

M (at the kitchen sink): "And what exactly do you mean by 'fun'?"

October 2010 Slideshow

The elementary school sickness hit us. And then it was Halloween. And then it was post-Halloween. So here are the pictures we should have put up a while back:

Making Christmas

Okay... in what possibly might be Tactical Video Error Number Three, we just let A see the first half of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. A is now vowing to create hand-made Christmas presents with fangs.

I am secretly pleased that NBC is getting such a good reception, although A) it's probably for the wrong reasons (monsters! making scary gifts!) and B) I expect we might be hearing about it at the next parent-teacher conference.