This weekend we are torturing Corwin with his application to the university high school. Mom is in her unstoppable mode and poor Corwin is suffering accordingly (Mom and I take turns making him cry). The worst part for him has been the “character building” essays in which he has to describe an experience that helped him grow as a person. At one point he had the sentence “living with my family has caused me to become accustomed to some things and not accustomed to others”. I thought that was perhaps a bit too much information but thought it inadequate detailed for some reason. We did learn, as parents, that Corwin seemed to think we didn’t ground him often enough. I told him that I would work on improving myself in that regard which did not seem to provide him much cheer.
Corwin also discovered, independently, the font trick. His first typed draft was in 24 point text. I adjusted it back to 11pt (my preferred size — I am not so fond of 10pt) but Mom, the softy, let him get away with 12pt (technically acceptable). Corwin then complained that his text looked really short at that size. I did offer to discuss the various technical merits of the fonts he had available, having noticed that he had used the boring “Times New Roman” default font (not even Garamond or Palatino? How staid! I tend to be daring and use Old Century Schoolbook but I am not sure Corwin is ready for that kind of serific excitement).
It marks a key transition in a boy’s life when he stops watching Dad play computer games because it looks cool and he likes to hang with Dad to watching Dad play computer games so he can mock Dad when Dad messes up.
As expected, not so long after Alice got a new swim suit for her swim lessons her old Hello Kitty™ swim suit returned. Alice claims she found it under some of her underwear in her closet.
[Dad picks Charles up from Chess Club]
Dad: So, how was Chess Club?
Charles: [despairingly] Oh, great, now you’re asking questions too!
Dad: “too”?
Charles: Just like Mommy!
Mom and I are constantly receiving suggestions / support / hints for how to get our children to read. We boggle at the idea because what we struggle with is getting the kids (especially Corwin) to do things other than read. We have already forbidden him from taking reading material in to the bathroom or he would have “ring butt” from sitting too long. Corwin spends more time reading in the morning then he does actually getting ready for school which makes him chronically on the edge of late. The only thing that saves him now is that with school orchestra Mom has to drive him in most of the time. But I am working him. This morning I snuck in to his room while he was allegedly getting dressed to find him sitting on his bed in his underwear, his pants around his ankles, reading. I just yelled “CORWIN!” as loud as I could at him and was rewarded with seeing him so startled he literally hurled the book part way across the room. A definite two-fer, putting a stop to the reading and providing him with an adrenaline boost to keep him moving quickly.
The boys have a rather casual approach to money. This is brought to my attention again today when Mom came in to my office with wads of crushed dollars bills, which she apparently pulled from Corwin’s recently washed pants. She noted that she does this on most laundry runs that involve Corwin pants and was puzzled as to the origin of all of this cash. Personally I think it’s the back end of the sock disappearance mechanism which converts the socks in to dollar bills in Corwin’s pockets during the laundry cycle. So if you notice some socks missing, it means that we’re getting the extra cash we need. Thanks!
The family had a big adventure today, heading out to a nearby city for a music contest / recital / competition (I am not very clear on what exactly it was). Corwin went to play his violin along with an accompanist on the piano (who, I heard in a rumour, had complained of Corwin’s penchant for playing to his own temporally wandering metronome). Corwin did very well, getting a “1”.
Afterwards the crew headed over to visit Aunt Evelyn. They got home late in the evening with Charles complaining that he had been bored the entire day and did not have a good time, something I realized the moment I saw him come in the door without a new plush sea creature.
On the other hand, Corwin was able to watch Time Bandits which he had not theretofore experienced. He claimed to have liked it, although not quite as much as his parents did. Next step — The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
It has come to pass that Corwin is now old enough that Mom is no longer willing to spend money on child care when we (on those very very rare occasions) go out sans spawn. We did that this evening, trying out the Great Impasta at its new location. We left Corwin home to watch after his siblings and all of them survived, apparently without further psychological trauma. Pure luck is what I think.
Alice has been taking swimming lessons at the local indoor pool because we did not have enough child related activities scheduled. The lessons are Tuesdays and Thursdays and we had to move a few things around to accommodate that but Alice seems to enjoy it. More than the swim lessons, though, was the fact that we misplaced her old swim suit and Mom had to buy her a new one. The selection in mid-winter was a bit limited so Alice ended up with a two piece bikini which is far more annoying for dressing and undressing. But the shopping experience was such that Mom has vetoed any wearability upgrades.
As part of the scheduling I have to take Charles along to the lessons because otherwise he can’t make his next activity (Cub Scouts). I suggest that he take along a book or his Nintendo DS but he doesn’t for reasons he avoids explaining.
As it turns out, Kirsten and Zina do swimming of some sort there at roughly the same time. I have been offering to yell out to them “Hey, Zina, your boyfriend is here!” while holding up Charles but all I get in response is Charles trying to burrow in to the bleachers.
Alice went over her stack of valentines from school this evening and sorted out all the ones from boys so she could throw them away. Mom, however, persuaded her to not do it, mainly on the basis that Andrew is a boy.
The kids went outside recently to try out the beating sticks. Some of them are starting to decay so Corwin’s spring project will be repair and safety checking all of them before any large scale military action.
One of the things we got out of Mom’s satellite TV upgrade was a fancy new DVR and remote. We have to use that because we can’t reprogram our fancy universal remote because one of the kids knocked the USB connector out and it won’t physically connect anymore.
Corwin likes the new remote especially now that he has found the “side by side” feature. This lets him use our large display TV to display two different channels at the same time, each taking half the screen. He can only hear one of them but really, with modern television, he’s not missing much. Naturally, being a child of his mother, he flips the sound back and forth as his evanescent interest flits from one show to the other. On the other hand, at least this way when he is flipping around to avoid advertisements he can flip back just once as soon as they are over rather than checking out the progress every 10 seconds.
Or I can just hide in my office and keep my supper down.
Alice is not much of a neat freak. I frequently have to remind her that if she can’t make it from the door of her room to her bed without walking on a solid carpet of dirty clothes, then she should probably pick them up and put them in the hamper. Alice is also not bothered by large drifts of toys in the basement either.
So it was with some amount of resignation that I asked Alice to clean up her room this afternoon. However, when she came down to ask if it was sufficiently clean for her release from servitude, I was stunned to find a room with not a single out of place thing on the floor. I called Mom up to look at it so we would have a least one memory of Alice achieving order.
Mom took our monkeys off north today to see what normal people call monkeys, plus some other animals. I was left home to catch up on some work. I had to rest up a bit from the effort of helping to get everyone out the door. Mom, fortunately, had the children with her to keep her spirits up.
Mom tells me that the primary thing the children learned is that monkeys can be very loud. The kids also liked the lemurs.That’s about all I could get out of them, as Mom headed for bed right after they got home and the kids were as communicative as expected.
I do know that Charles thought it was a good trip because he came home with yet another plush sea creature, this time a nurse shark which he named “Nursey”.
Alice showed me this specifically because she drew pants on the figure. She was very proud of mastering that technique.
Charles was complaining at dinner the other night that it wasn’t fair that Corwin had freckles and he didn’t. We told him that, what with his big blue marbles, it wouldn’t be fair for him to have freckles too. It make me note that his Mii had freckles. I made sure to take the time that evening to fix that for him. No sense in putting him in to depression and self-loathing by parading an unrealizable body image in front of him.
POset has acquired the habit of expecting Mom or I to run a little bit of water in the sink when we’re in our bathroom. POset will lap at it for a while and then demand out (scratching at the door frantically if it’s closed). I used to think it was just to get better quality water, but if Mom goes in and gets water for POset and then I use the bathroom immediately afterwards, POset will demand water from me as well, even though she just had her fill. I now think it’s just POset’s way of demonstrating her control of her humans. I don’t mind all that much, except that she sneezes in the sink leaving globs that are really not the best thing to encounter close up while washing first thing in the morning.
Corwin lost another tooth at school today. He had been going on about how loose it was over the weekend. I suggested that if Josh were a true friend, he’d give Corwin a good whack and save him from the annoyance of a wiggly tooth. Corwin, rudely, denied Josh this chance to help out. Or maybe he was saving it so one of his prospective girl friends would have an excuse to touch him.
In any case, something got it out and Corwin brought it home to show us and use as a toy for a good part of the evening, bouncing it around on the floor while watching TV. I hope the Tooth Fairy doesn’t deduct for excessive wear and tear.
Josh left his cell phone here after his visit, next to the computer of course. I was very tempted to send some incriminating text messages to Corwin’s phone that I could then “find”. Things like a nasty reply about which one of them was really Mara’s boyfriend, or bragging about which one had gone the longest without bathing (although it’s not clear I could exceed reality enough in that case to be incriminating). In the end, though, I figured that if the boys should learn how to do that kind of thing on their own and they won’t if I do every little thing for them.
Corwin had a busy day today, heading off for tests in the morning and then some Boy Scout orienteering immediately afterwards, then a sleep over with Josh in the evening.
The interesting bit, though, is that Mom headed off in the wrong direction to go to the testing location and … really, honestly, this happened … Corwin noticed that Mom had gone wrong before Mom did. Seriously. Note only was Corwin aware that he was going off to the test location, not only did he have some idea where it was, but he actually noticed Mom was in the wrong part of town. Wow! Just when you’ve almost given up hope your child can live a normal life…
Charles has definitely taken to the Internet shopping experience in a big way. Mom let him order some sort of Lego™ rescue helicopter kit on Sunday and he’s been checking the door every day when he gets home to see if it has arrived. Finally, today, it arrived and Charles had it put together before he went to bed.
Alice can now type her name on a computer keyboard. This is truly wonderful news because it means that she is now fully capable of playing at Nick Jr with no parental support. I used to get interrupted every few minutes with “can you type in my name?” but now I can just get down to working hard for the family. ‘Cause that’s what I do when I am at the computer, never a moment wasted.
Aunt Sonja sent me a birthday card and in it requested more birthday pictures. Here you are, served with the freshest bits on the InterTubes!
Alice G.
Here’s even more birthday pictures.
While I was drying Alice off after her bath she started giggling because (allegedly!) I had tickled her arm pits. This caused her to reach down and touch the back of her knee and ask “is this a knee pit?”. Alas, I was forced to destroy her illusions that we speak a linguistically consistent language. It’s always tough to break things like that to children.
Charles on the test range.
In case it wasn’t completely clear, Charles is test firing a new weapon of his own design, the M-249 SAW MG Dolphin. As you can see, Charles took the base Assault Dolphin and added a chain fed ammunition belt and enhanced audio performance feedback to create a much improved weapon system.
