The boy has a point

DS2 and DS3 have pushed the air hockey and foosball tables together and covered them with all manner of blankets to make a fort.  Where they hope to sleep tonight (on the floor… yes, that should go well) and where they begged me to let them do their homework last night.

Anyhoo… they just got home and it was straight to the fort.  Last night I heard them talking about it as a ninja something… I couldn’t remember.  So I ask DS3, who was standing nearby, “it’s your ninja-what?”.  “Ninja Hideout” he says with a conspiratorial grin.

DS2′s voice comes from ‘the hideout’ “Well, it’s not much of a hideout if you tell everyone.”  Right.  Because without him telling me I never would’ve noticed the blanket covered structure that is about 4 ft x 6 ft in the middle of a 10 x 13 room.

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Sometimes homework is hilarious

The second graders get a weekly homework packet for reading / phonics / spelling.  Sometimes, like this week, it includes a poem that they are supposed to read each night.  The poem will include their spelling and vocabulary words to give them practice.

Well, tonight DS2 was just DYING to read me this week’s poem.  The anticipation was twinkling all over his brown eyes.  When he mentioned it, DS3, who was engaged in math and the complexity of turning equations into 10+ equations at the time, wanted to get in on the act of sharing this poem with me also.

DS2 calls me over with “OK, here’s the part I want to read to you” and proceeds with

They do disgraceful things on rugs,
And track mud on the floor
And flop upon your bed at night
And snore their doggy snore.

That blue part?  Hilarious when you’re a 7 y.o. boy who happens to have a beagle who snores almost as prodigiously as Daddy. He nearly couldn’t make it through that last night and by the end of it was rolling on the couch giggling.  DS3, still with the math at the table also burst out in laughter.

But that’s is not all, oh no, that is not all.  He says “wait, wait.  I want to read you the next one – you’ll like this one”. (I liked the last one too – well, mostly, I get a gigantic kick out of watching them giggle like it’s the funniest thing they ever heard).

So, he proceeds but he’s covering the lines past where he’s reading.  Creating a suspense effect and adding a little conspiratorial tone for effect.

Mother doesn’t want a dog.
She’s making a mistake.
(steals a glance at me with mischief all over his face)
Because, more than a dog, I think
(long pause and then he removes his hand from the last line and reads)
She will not want this snake!

More fits of laughter from both boys and DS2 looks at me as if he just put one over on me – as though he actually had brought home a pet snake.

Second grade homework is not always torturous. I’ll refer back to this on nights when I’m tearing out my hair over math concepts that aren’t sinking in or weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over writing assignments and the accompanying whine “but I don’t know what to write” etc.

He has a dream, as well

This week in school the boys were learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. (And be warned, that if you refer to him as Martin Luther King in front of DS1, you will get a disdainful “Junior” from him.)

DS3 had homework last night where he had to first write a sentence about what MLK’s dream was and then to write what their dream is and draw a picture of it, tell what people would do of their dream were reality and what he could do to make his dream come true.

I do hope I get this paper back so that it can go into the Mommy Archives.  Apparently, his dream is for chocolate (or choklit) to fall from the sky.  What would people do?  Well, eat it, of course.  And he could pursue his dream by getting a plane and dropping the chocolate.  Presumably, a raid of a Hershey’s factory somewhere along the way would also be required.

I wouldn’t put chocolate falling from the sky on par with say, equal rights and opportunity for all and peace and harmony between all the peoples of the earth.  It does sound sort of awesome, though, if possibly messy.  I mean, it gets hot here…

A future in the Secret Service?

DS3 brought this artwork home the other day.

This is, as reported, him and his brother and their friend defending the President from air attack and “bad guys” (labeled as such, life should be so clearly defined. ).

The boy says he’s going to be a fireman when he grows up and on his days off he’s going to be a policeman and a veterinarian.  I’m not sure his schedule has room for secret service duties.

Of course, I blame this on DH.  I am pretty sure this is a story line from a military strategy computer game he plays with them.

Hmmm… I’m just noticing that the President is also packing heat.  I guess they’ll clear that up in training.

I’m pretty sure the smartass gene

is dominant.

As I may have mentioned (12 or 20 times) my kids are rather picky about food.  I’m trying to actively combat that so that we can move beyond having Green Eggs and Ham type discussions 14 times / week (x 3 kids).  Part of my strategy involves variety in hopes of expanding their “Acceptable Foods” menu.

My tough part of this is that my kids possess this amazing gift which allows all of them to take one look at food and know whether or not they will like it.  DS3 demonstrated this tonight.  But, to his credit, rather than engaging in the same tired old “Green Eggs and Ham” conversation he let his inner smartass deal with it.

I set his place down in front of him (roast beef and potatoes w/gravy with a little sweet potato just so I can pretend they eat vegetables).

He takes one look and says “yes, 911? Can I get a pizza?”

I know what m.p. means

That means it’s night.

That is what DS3 just told DS1.  Who, of course, promptly corrected him.

And while I’m thinking of funny things he says, at school they routinely use the alcohol gel hand sanitizers before snack and things.  I don’t know if he got this from his teacher or if he made it up himself from “hand sanitizer” but he calls it “hanitizer”.

Last night he says “you know, one time in preschool I got 101″ (as a mark on a test… not sure what that is about because as far as I know they never got marked like that in preschool although they did do developmental type testing.  Anyway, I told him that’s because he’s such a little smartie and he always works hard and does his best.  He replies “so do you think that when I’m big I’ll be smart enough to be the boss?” Me: the boss of what?  He gets a blank look, stares at me for a second and gives me an “I dunno” gesture with the little head shaking thing he does and says ‘you know, the boss of whatever I grow up to be”.

Last I heard he’d been vacillating between fireman and policeman.

Bad day for the itsy bitsy spider

It’s summer in Florida which means plenty of rain and thunderstorms in between blazing hot and steamy weather.  it’s also the season when daddy-long-leg spiders tend to invade the bathtubs after said rain.

Today was the second and final day of the great toy purge (which was sold to the resident toy users as a toy “sorting and organizing” project) which I’ve been procrastinating, successfully, for quite some time now.   During the course of it, we came across some great little spinning tops and the launcher they work with (the ones you sent, Mom – they are still a big hit).  These had been long forgotten, no doubt buried at the bottom of a bin filled with toy and gamepiece shrapnel for who-knows-how-many months, so it was like a new toy again.  Sometime later, I was done enlisting their help with the sorting phase and off they went to play (thus enabling me to engage in the purging phase without the customary weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth).

Before long, I hear them in the bathroom that is just off the bedroom turned tv/playroom/toy warehouse where I’m restoring order.  Since eavesdropping on their play is some of the best entertainment available to me, I’m listening as I go about my wanton discarding of stuff.  I figure out from their chatter that they are launching the top into the bathtub.  I foolishly assume this is because they are heeding my 17 warnings (and that’s only today’s count) that they are all big enough to keep track of their own toys and put them back etc. and *I* won’t be doing this all-weekend job again (i.e. “you keep it sorted and put away because the next time I had to do it I’ll just be putting it all in the garbage”).  Obviously, they’ve taken my words to heart and so are launching the tops in tub where they can’t possibly get lost, right?

Um, no.  Turns out they’re shooting spiders, so to speak. Or a spider – I’m not sure.  This game went on for some time, though, with much discussion as to how each new launch should or should not be recalibrated to increase the probability of a hit.  Apparently, “aiming” a spinning top is more a matter of luck than skill.  Fortunately for them, a spider in a tub isn’t exactly going to make a getaway so they could take all the practice shots they needed.

A little later my presence was requested in the bathroom to “demonstrate our top secret mission”.  Who knew that spiders in tubs were such a security threat?  It’s a shame the spiders don’t have a better intelligence network – they could get the word out to the rest of the arachnid kingdom that the inside of my house is a combat zone and they’d be best to avoid it.  I’d be fine with them passing the word along to the whole of the insect world, actually.

5 y.o. travel plans

We’re driving west coming home tonight and there’s big bank of cloud making the bottom part of the sky dark but it’s lighter above where the last bit of twilight is still in the sky.

DS2 asks what that was ahead of us, I explain it’s just clouds on the horizon making it look like there’s something up there.

DS3 “what is the horizon?”  Me: “it’s where the earth meets the sky.”  DS3 “can we go there.”

I think I might need a 3 dimensional model to explain why the answer to that is always gonna be no.

What tickles their funny bones

DS2 just comes into my office “mommy you have to come see something on the computer”.

So I go with him and DS3 is playing this game where there is a word with a missing letter and then a blank in a sentence that the word fits into. There are falling letters that you have to catch and put in the missing space to spell the word right.

Anyway… we go out and DS2 says to DS3 “OK, do it again, do it again”. Dutifully, DS3 clicks on something and the computer reads the sentence “Do you think mommy dinosaurs _____ (knit)__ baby brontosaurus booties”. Right on cue, all 3 of them collapse in loud, hysterical laughter. Then he clicks it again, and they do it again.

Like their mother, they are easily amused.