The Dewy Leavs Oath and Wishful Thinking

subtitle: Stuff my kid wrote #1 and 2

A couple weeks ago I was sifting through pictures and realized that I take a lot of pictures of things that my kids write. I thought I'd begin to share some of them here every so often, even if they're years old. Then I promptly forgot about that plan. But I got a reminder this morning!

I was heading out for a run and Penelope was chalking something down on the sidewalk, which she didn't want me to see. So I honored her request and left without looking. When I came back she was gone (off to a dentist appointment), and since her message was now public-domain graffiti...

I realize that is nearly impossible to read from that picture, so I will translate.

"I Penelope
Durbin
on
December
23 will
get my molers
celed
at 10:00 AM"

And then off to the side, there's:

"Dewy
Leavs"

It looks innocent enough, but I believe this is an elaborate cipher meant for the neighborhood spy network. Clever of her to put it out there in plain view where nobody would suspect a thing...

---

In other semi-timely news, Penelope has been working on a Christmas wish list. It's 17 pages long (yes, seventeen). She got ahold of some random toy catalog that came in the mail and wrote down everything in it. And then when that catalog ended up in the recycle bin, she found a Current catalog, and started copying that.

Down at the bottom of the list - the end of page 17, and the last two items - It looks like she finally ran out of catalog and wrote down what she really wishes for.

Self-Documenting Child

Ben told me the other day that he wanted "a web page" for himself. I thought.. "Hmm.. ok. We can do that." After showing him a few examples of different types of web pages and some discussion about what he wanted to do, we figured out that what he was *really* looking for was a blog. So we set one up for him.

Then, he went to make his first post and things were a little confusing. We had a little more discussion, and came to the understanding that what he *really* wanted was a web page. But he's got a blog, and for now, he's just going to have to live with that.

Anyhow, he made his first post,which is a video of one of the piano songs he's been working on recently.

Knowing the way things go, and the genes he inherited from me, that may be his only post. But who knows, he might put up a few poems about flatulent aliens or something as time marches on.

For now, if you are so inclined, go check it out:

http://bnogsplace.blogspot.com/2015/09/scotch-poem.html

P.S. He doesn't have access to Facebook, and if I do my job right, he probably won't until he's in his mid-30's. If you want to send him comments that he can read, please do so right there on his post.

Dinner Jeopardy

So Ben gets the idea that we should play Jeopardy at dinner tonight. Not that he has ever seen the show (we'll correct that soon), but he read about it in some book somewhere.

Anyway, jumping into the conversation right in the middle, after we had to question 6,076 feet (what is a nautical mile?)...


Ben: Ok.  The answer is: two thousand two hundred and forty pounds.

Mommy: What is a ton?!

Ben: No.

Daddy: What is a metric ton?!

Ben: No.

Daddy: Oh! What is a nautical ton?!

Ben: No.

Penelope: What does the fox say?!


Kids are awesome.

...Finally!

Penelope has been waiting for this day with eager anticipation for over half a year. First, she imagined that she had a wiggly tooth. Then it really started to wiggle (perhaps because she was pressing the matter). Then a couple months ago, a replacement tooth showed up, lurking in the shadows and waiting. Still, the tooth wiggled. And then on Friday night, it finally came out!

It is hard to describe how excited she was. She does get excited about a lot of things, but this was a whole new level of giddy (even with the profuse bleeding). I'll let her tell you all about it, in the note she wrote immediately after dinner (hover for text if needed):

So far, no signs of any new wiggly teeth, so it might be a while before the next one.

Typical Father-Son Waiting-in-the-Parking-Lot Conversation

Son (rattling off one Pokemon name after another for some reason unknown to Father): "...Horsea, Seadra, Goldeen, Seaking, Staryu, Starmie,"

Father (singing, poorly and out of tune): "Star you, Star me. Star it for always... That's the way it should be."

Son: "Dad!"

Father: "Star you, Star me. Star it together..."

Son: "Dad, Stop!"

Father: "... naturally."

...Pause...

Son: "...Mr. Mime, Scyther,"

Father (louder than before): "I had a dream, I had an awesome dreeeeaaheeeahheeeem! People in the park..."

Son: "DAD!!!"

...Longer pause...

Son (prefaced with a heavy sigh): "Jynx... Electabuzz... Magmar..."

So, about that dog

Family at the dinner table, some of them eating their dinner, and others... not:

Ben: "If we had a dog, it would be so happy, because Penelope would be feeding it pork chops under the table."

Mommy: "Hmmm.. if we had a dog, it would be morbidly obese from eating all the crumbs under the table."

Ben: "Haha! Yeah!......Wait!"

-Silence-

-One beat-

-Silence-

-Two beats-

Ben: "Was that a shot?"

Sign of the Times

Ben: "What's Tetris?"

Daddy: "It's a video game. Back when Mommy and I were in school, Tetris was like Angry Birds. And before that, Pac-Man was the thing. And way in the beginning it was Pong."

Ben: "Oh! On Cool Math Games they have Pong! But I can't play it because our Java needs to be updated. I think it needs to be updated twice."