Yesterday we dropped Corwin off with the Boy Scouts to do some winter camping. They ended up sleeping in cabins instead of tents but the cabins were unheated (some of them with just wire mesh doors) so it was a bit on the cool side, with the temperature going under 0°F. Corwin slept in thermal underwear and socks in a down sleeping bag rated to -10°F. Despite that he claims two of his toes were numb when he woke up. In a mockery of real scouting he was able to warm them up in a heated bathroom.
After that brisk sleeping experience the boys spent the day doing outdoor activities. It was a nice day, just a few clouds and temperatures up to around 30°F. At one point Corwin successfully made a fire with steel, flint, and a knife to make wood shavings. One of the boys was run over by a sled but Corwin was very insistent on noting that he was not that boy.
I, sadly, had to remain indoors while Corwin experienced the glorious weather and snow cover. But I didn’t let him know how jealous I was.
As you can tell, Alice’s birthday party was the de facto center of our lives this month. Here’s another picture of some of the aftermath. As one of the activities, we had a set of canvas backpack bags along with fabric markers and glitter glue. Our plan was to let the kids decorate them and then use them to take home their parting gifts. It was not nearly as interesting to the kids as I had hoped, but a few of them enjoyed it. Charles insisted on participating and this is the result.
From: Mr. Glue Stick
To: Mr. S
Being a glue stick with a[n] unusual talent is fun. I still get to glue people to the walls. I’m also a great builder.
When I want something I get something. Here’s a[n] example glue my teacher to the wall so we can have recess as long as we want. Well at least the students like it.
Oh yes I should tell you my tallent[sic] (It’s) jumping out of a plane; with a 2,000,000,000 lb weight; with a snowboard; above a snowy mountain.
[Paragraphs formatted as in original]
Charles has been suffering from some dry skin on the back of his hands this winter, much worse than we have seen before. Mom went out and bought some moisturizer and I have been trying to convince Charles to apply it. Charles’ excuses were that (1) Mom hadn’t put it on him (2) It wasn’t in the upstairs bathroom and (3) I hadn’t specifically told him to use it. I had naively presumed that since Charles was the one suffering, he might be somewhat motivated to act on his own. Silly Daddy!
The center decoration on Alice’s birthday cake was a Barbie ballerina. There is a magnet in her head and at the top of the arch over her dancing platform so that she hovers oh so gracefully. Alice liked it as a toy almost as much as an icing delivery mechanism. She did have an issue with the ballerina vibrating when set on the dinner table. I suggested that perhaps it might be less of a problem if Alice stopped shaking the table but that sort of dreary logic didn’t make it past her filters.
We had baked salmon for dinner this evening.
Alice: What is this fish called?
Mom: Salmon.
Alice: [insistently] No, what is the name of this fish?
Mom: [patiently] Salmon.
Alice: [stridently] NO! What is the name of this fish!?!
Mom: “Fred”.
Alice: OK.
Ah, I forgot to note that the satellite TV people sent out a new crew last week who were a little more experienced, Mom having confounded the last set with her techo-wizardry. We are now back online with the global village but we ended up losing our high definition local video feed. Mom is still plotting a work around for that because while we had it the reception was very good.
Today was Alice’s big birthday party. She ended up wanting to invite so many kids from her class that Mom eventually just issued a blanket invitation. We ended up with 16 kids aged 3-5 running around, plus Corwin, Charles, and Zina. Fortunately a few of the parents stayed which prevented a total catastrophe.
Mom made the three older kids help out. One of the things we got for the party were some dinosaur temporary tattoos. The boyen helped put those one, Corwin doing the actual deed while Charles made up a sign with “Temporary Tattoos Available — Limited Time Only!”. Zina spent most of her time dealing with little girl emotional traumas.
Alice had a few meltdowns but nothing permanent.
We used literally every fork and normal plate in the house (Mom decided against using our wedding dishes). Mom put in every leaf for the big table and it still wasn’t quite big enough.
The piñata was fun. We let the little kids have whacks at it until they started to get tired and then let Corwin have his turn. He took it out on his second swing and the candy gathering hordes descended. Alice, however, wanted one particular type of plastic toy that was in the mix and had a melt down when she couldn’t find another one, despite the huge pile of presents waiting for her upstairs. A couple of the kids tried to give her extra candy but she wouldn’t take it. Naturally once I got her to stop screaming about the toy she started crying because she didn’t have any candy.
Charles and Corwin have taken to playing Supreme Commander quite a bit lately. I can tell that Charles is really enjoying the game because he has shifted his Lego™ building from HomeWorld ships to Supreme Commander units.
Here is a missile launcher. Not that the actual launcher is on a hinge and can be raised and lowered as needed.
This one is more interesting. It was originally a transport unit and consisted of only the bottom part with a flat top. Charles decided that wasn’t “cool” enough so he upgraded it to the destroyed you see in the picture.
Alice wet her bed again last night, fortunately this time after I had moved her to her own bed. I suspect that Mom has been asking Alice if she went potty before bed time and Alice has been saying “yes” even though she hadn’t. Alice has long had a bit of difficulty in understanding that such questions are for information, not form. I have caught her numerous times claiming to have done something when asked when I know she didn’t. When pressed, she claims “I forgot!”.
So we’ll be back to watching Alice go potty for a while. Mom has also forbidden the bed time sippy cup of milk, which is fine with me. The normal procedure is Mom and Alice to go to bed, Mom falls asleep, and then Alice comes downstairs to ask for milk in a sippy cup. Perhaps Alice is now old enough that this temporary prohibition will turn permanent.
Last night I went to haul Alice out of our bed as usual. As I pulled her up, I noticed a bit of dampness. It turned out that Alice had emptied her bladder without waking her or Mom. I hauled Alice off to be washed down while Mom changed the bed. As Mom got up, she realized that her night shirt was also soaked. It’s good to share with a daughter but I think that was going a bit far.
Mom’s latest project is rationalizing our spending on electronic communication systems. She has been looking at various options and packages from various providers and making plans. Many, many, plans, most of which require extensive consultation with her husband, even (not having looked at the various options and providers) can only nod ambiguously while making sage but non-committal “hmmmm” sounds.
As part of this effort, Mom has upgraded our mass media box to high definition because we have had the old box so long that support personnel just laugh at the very idea. And there’s something else you can only get with the new box, but I missed it while nodding a bit too vigorously.
But that, of course, would not be enough. Mom also got a secondary antenna to attach to the satellite receiver dish to pull in local broadcast channels (since we are now fully high definition ready). Emplacing it required Mom scuttling about on a snowy and icy roof but she’s insured so I wasn’t too worried. She did make sure Corwin knew how to dial 911 on his cellphone before having him come out to spot her.
Sadly, after hooking up the antenna and multiple trips to Radio Shack to get the right connectors, she was unable to achieve full functionality. We could get the local channels, or the satellite, but not both. The new hardware was supposed to combine the signals on the one cable we have, then split them inside the house, but that didn’t work out. Eventually we settled for the status quo ante but Mom is still plotting to achieve her electronic dreams.
Mom has been planning Alice’s birthday party. One thing Alice wanted was to have it at the local “Ants in Their Pants” so Mom made arrangements for that.
Today Mom was reading the news paper and there was an article stating that the place was closing the weekend before Alice’s party. This required an emergency re-location to our basement along with ordering more party favors to replace the ones that would have been supplied by AiTP. Best of all, Mom had been generous with the invitations because it was going to be someplace else. So it should be fun this next Saturday.
Mom had a bad morning with Alice. Alice has developed the Princess style sensitivity to any faults in her clothing. Many a morning is filled with the sound of Alice saying “this doesn’t feel right!” about some article of clothing. This morning it was Alice’s underwear and her pants. Mom eventually gave Alice the choice of being naked in bed all day or suffering the cactus and pine needles Mom had sown on the inside of her clothing. Alice responded with complaints about how Corwin had all sorts of nice pants and Mom was just so much nicer to Corwin, buying him new and better clothes all the time. Of all the ways Mom might favor Corwin, that is one that would never have occurred to me.
P.S. Mom’s a bit brusque when brushing Alice’s hair, at least to listen to Alice scream about how much it hurts. She doesn’t do that when I brush her hair, but given the choice Alice always prefers to suffer with Mom.
Charles dropped his Lego™ Assault Shuttle recently, smashing it to moderately sized pieces. He was very distraught. Mom later tried to get him to rebuild it but that stressed him out so much Mom had to send him to bed to get him to calm down. Apparently it was no problem to build the kit from scratch, but repairing it is “too hard”. I suggested that what he could do is break back down to individual Lego™ pieces.
Dad: Why not just break the Assault Shuttle down to single pieces?
Charles: Why would I want to do that?
Dad: Because you said it was too hard to rebuild in its current state.
Charles: I must have misspoken.
Dad: OK. Why don’t you fix it then?
Charles: It’s too hard.
We had to stop Alice from playing with her brothers today. First Corwin scratched her foot (not even bad enough to ooze) and we had to set her aside until she stopped crying. Then she went down to play with the brothers who were enjoying the beating sticks. She was fine until Charles hit her with his hand or arm or elbow (nobody could give us a clear story) and gave Alice a bloody nose. At least this time there was an actual injury, but we figured that perhaps the boys had moved to a level of interaction that was a bit much for one of Alice’s tender years.
New friends who showed up on Alice’s birthday.
Mom wouldn’t let me post the picture of Alice with these friends and her wad ‘o cash.
Charles had a bad Friday last week because he forgot his homework folder at school. He was very distraught, even though it meant he didn’t have to do the homework until he got back to school on Monday. Naturally he forgot his folder again Monday after school and had a meltdown when he discovered this. Just as I was wondering if we were in for an entire evening of sad Charles, Olivia rang the doorbell bearing Charles’ folder. Charles refused to speak to her (presumably because it while not at school, it was sort of school related). I did force him to thank Olivia for his rescue.
Corwin has been upset that despite his not causing any riots or setting a single thing on fire at school, he has not been selected “Student of the Week”. Luckily, before Corwin could come up with some sort of blackmail scheme to get his way, he finally had his moment in the sun when he was the Student of the Week last week, announced on Friday. Sadly, the glow seemed to have faded by Saturday. But still, it’s a moment that should be immortalized.
Charles’ siege tower. Olivia, Matt, and Claire came over to visit on Sunday and they all played with it. They cranked up the catapult strings on top very tightly and got a very good throw from it. I tested in the basement later and it could fling a clay ball from a table at one end and hit the wall at the other, which is about 35’. That’s quite a range.
Charles did his first mail order last week. He used his Christmas money to order a toy which, I am sure you will all be surprised to learn, was a stuffed “animal”. It was actually a giant microbe representing mad cow disease. It was basically the same thing as Cowie except three times as big. It arrived on Alice’s birthday which meant that Charles got presents along with Alice, leaving only Corwin unfufilled.Charles is still working on a good name. He didn’t like my “Super Ultra Mega Cowie” so we could say “that’s SUM Cowie!”.
Two of the kids in Alice’s class have birthdays within a week of hers. Andrew is one of them and his birthday party was today. Alice was very excited about it, especially buying a present for Andrew. It was some sort of Pokemon thing along with a Pokemon themed card that play music. Mom tells me this was a big hit with Andrew, who basically stopped opening presents once he found that. By the end, though, Andrew was in near catatonia from the onslaught and had to be rescued from the crowd.
Alice is 5 years old today.
UPDATES: We had pork chops and ramen for dinner because Alice insisted on ramen. Cupcakes for celebration because Alice wanted that too.
The cupcakes were after Corwin and Charles had their musical practice. As I was trying to get the table clear enough to eat I discovered one of Alice’s new dolls (Jasmin) laying on a chair with no bottom. I asked why that was and Alice replied “we were going to do butt practice!”. I didn’t ask what exactly that entailed, I figured it was some Mom thing to do after running the boys through their practice.
Mom was grilling Corwin on his disaster preparedness. She asked various questions about tornadoes, each time after the first “but what if you don’t have a basement / etc.”. Finally she arrived at the flat plane with no trees, walls, hills, or ditches. I then suggested that the correct approach was to assume the standard nuclear attack defense position — put your head between your legs and kiss your behind goodbye. Alice, of course, tried it and announced “you can’t do that, Daddy!”.
The big project since the weekend has been Charles’ siege tower kit for which we had high hopes. While paging through a catalog, having already decided to get one, Charles saw it and said “gosh, that would be cool!”. Charles has been distracted by other toys but last Sunday he persuaded Mom to help him start the construction.
The next few days consisted of Mom and I trading off on helping Charles, who was reasonably patient as the tower slowly took shape. I think he enjoyed clamping things while glue dried most of all.
Finally we finished it up today with Charles made pennants flying proudly from the top. The catapult did a reasonable job of firig and Charles spent a good amount of time creeping around on the floor pushing the tower along.
I don’t have a picture yet — I figured I could take that later and fill another day’s post with it.
All the kids were sent off to school today. They were a very tired lot, having become accustomed to staying up late and sleeping until 10 or 11.
One day before Christmas Alice was in a grumpy mood. We had the usual panic about finding something to sleep with at nap time. I just picked out whatever was at hand. One of them was a small stuffed fairy. This drove Alice in to a fury. I told her she could sleep with something else as I packed her in her seat. She refused to even have the faerie in the van and threw it on the ground. I put it in the van anyway, because I didn’t want to leave it there. Alice cried and complained most of the way to school, eventually settling on “I hate faeries — faeries are ugly and yucky and stupid!”.
Well, that was kind of a disappointment as we had purchased the Mariposa Barbie for a Christmas present. It was, of course, a faerie.
However, while Alice persisted in her new found despite for faeries she apparently didn’t consider Mariposa Barbie to be one. Corwin, however, spent his time reminding Alice of her declaration and trying to convince her that various toys fit under the ban. I am not sure where the original faerie that so violated Alice’s serenity has gone.
While out walking Polynomial today, I saw my first fox in the neighborhood. I was at our corner and saw it down the street about 3 houses, just trotting along in broad daylight going deeper in to the neighborhood. Poly and I went over to see it closer but by the time we got there it had disappeared.
I am pretty sure we did something today, but dang if I can remember it. Just totally tuckered out by the excitement of the new year. So here’s a picture of the kids with Dinosaur Sue.
Because things were so slow around here, Mom decided that we would have an open house on New Year’s Day and invite various neighbors and families of the kids friends over. So yesterday and the morning of today were spent desperately cleaning and tidying, plus preparing food.
I think it went well, there weren’t many child meltdowns (the main one was when Charles noticed a piece missing from his crane). The turnout was good and many people enjoyed the Wii and Wii Fit, even Mara. Nobody could beat Alice’s ski jump record, though.
The 