A Couple of Yo-yos

Last week Ben started playing with a yo-yo that has been sitting idle in the toy box for a while.  He asked me for some help with it. One thing led to another, and before long I had one of my own yo-yos out, showing him some of the tricks I thought I'd forgotten.  For the next couple days, he was imitating those tricks - mostly swinging a dead yo-yo around on the string, but he's got a pretty good "drag the dog" going.

Coincidentally, some professional yo-yo players were out at Learning Express yesterday doing a demo (yes, there is such a thing as a pro yo-yoer, and if I had an ounce of their skill, I'd consider a career change).  Ben and I went there to watch.  I thought he would get a kick out of it, and he did.  But what surprised me is how much I enjoyed it too.

I was not prepared.  I thought we were going to see some guys doing all the string tricks that I was never able to master, maybe they'd do some fast looping stuff with two yo-yos, go under the legs, around the back, etc.  Then we'd be on our merry way, and the yo-yo fad would pass in a week.  

But somewhere in the time between the last yo-yo I purchased and now, technology and ingenuity caught up with this toy and I was caught unawares.  Free-spinning, ball-bearing axles were installed. Now you can sleep a yo-yo for several minutes instead of several seconds.  Someone decided to detach the finger end, and add a counterweight.  Now there's a thing to swing on both ends of the string.  Someone else decided that the yo-yo didn't need to be attached to the string at all.  Yes, really... Google "yo yo 4A".

The result is this spinning, twisting, bouncing, gravity-defying spindle of awesomeness. At least in the right hands.  I doubt I have the right hands for it, but I am inspired enough that I'm going to invest in a Flying Squirrel or an FH Zero and play some more.  Ben was inspired too.  Now his "tricks" involve two yo-yos and lots of interesting string pictures.  I fear a little for the walls, the light fixtures, and the younger sibling, but I think we'll be ok.

The Hot Dog Man

Bovine Anatomy 101

Ben's art continues to entertain, and sometimes even educate.  These are from a couple months ago, but I'm just now getting them posted.

Literally

Penelope's language skills seem to be improving every day.  Her speech is getting clearer.  She's putting together sentences and figuring out how to say a lot of things that she couldn't before.  I love this phase.. seeing them make these giant leaps of linguistic logic.  I say "them" because even though Ben is in a different place altogether, he is still doing his fair share of learning the language too.

Even though they are in totally different worlds, one thing they have in common - and I'm sure most little kids are the same - is that they can be incredibly literal.  Ben has started reading all the street signs in the car again, now that we're living in a new neighborhood and all the signs are different.  He read a sign in the car a few days ago, "Shoulder Dropoff... Mommy!  How do you take your shoulders off?  I can't even get my arms off!"

And then there's Penelope at a restaurant last weekend.  She had two plates near her: the one we had put her dinner on, and a plate full of rice.  She'd finished most of the food on her plate, and was taking rice from the rice plate and putting it on her own. Then she would take that same rice off her plate and eat it.  She was also spilling some of it on the table in the process, and making her standard two-year-old-in-a-restaurant mess. Stephanie told her "Oh Penelope - don't worry about putting that on your plate.  You can just eat the rice right from this plate."  Within a second, she was face down, eating rice directly from the plate.