Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails...

It's been a testosterony week.  My father-in-law is here acting as the world's greatest handyman - the labor is free and he throws in child care and children's carpentry lessons, too.  He let David and Jacob use his staplegun, drill and nailgun.  I don't know if life will be the same for them.

They made Celtic battle axes.  David drew war paint on everyone and spiked their hair with gel (which still hasn't quite washed out).

They made a train using their riding toys, bungee cords and rope. 

Here are some games they've invented and played a lot this week:

1.  Pancake - Someone is the pancake.  Just as the other two begin to eat him, the pancake runs away screaming.  The other two catch him, tickle him and bring him back.

2.  Run tag - It's a spin off of hide and seek.  The seeker carries a ball.  The hiders run out of their spots screaming about 10 seconds into the game, and the seeker tries to hit them with the ball.

3.  Bollyball football - Here are the rules as stated by Jacob:

• You throw the ball to nobody.
• If you catch it, you lose 5 points.
• If you miss it you get a point.
• If you're older than 5, you have to go easy on the little guys.

From my observations of bollyball football, I've gathered that you should also scream a lot, and if you're three, you get to throw in a little baseball action with your battle axe.   

Just a shot of tequila helps the medicine go down...

So we had such a great time at the Kennedy Center last week, I decided to take the boys again Monday to see

"The cast of the national tour of Mary Poppins strut their high belting, energized, tap dancing stuff in an evening of song."

What comes to mind when you read that - a couple of songs from Mary Poppins, right?  Perhaps even a song from the original Supernanny herself?  Unfortunately, the description should have read:

"The minor cast of Mary Poppins, including four Jane Banks and zero Mary Poppins, sing random Broadway tunes, plus one guy tap dances."

They falsely advertised it so effectively that we were packed in there like cattle.  Have you experienced infant claustrophobia - where you are stuck with no escape in a public setting with a child who is about to lose it?  The worst case I've heard of involved my sister-in-law and her two oldest children.  They were flying on an old-school Southwest airplane with a row of rear facing seats at the front of the plane.  This was the only available row on the plane.  The boys were little, and the 13 month old had already missed his nap.  He was horrible on this flight - screaming, throwing his sippy cup (which hit another passenger), throwing his toys,...  My very sweet, very shy sister-in-law had to sit facing her irate fellow passengers through all of these shenanigans.  She swore she'd rather make the 700 mile drive by herself than ever do that again.

Well, my plan for this concert hinged on my ability to walk, or at least stand and bounce, with Rand on my back.  I brought a bagel and a bottle merely as a DEFCON 1 option.  Ten minutes into this show (that sucked) he had just about polished off the bagel, and I looked around and realized there was no escape.  There were people crammed in all around us.  I was stuck at this stupid concert with a child who was going to implode.

Well, he made it through the concert with only a few isolated screams.  A shot of tequila to help the stress go down would have been nice, though.

Positive reinforcement and the telephone...

Do you remember that experiment from Psych 101 where mice were trained to push a button?  One group is given no reward, and one group is given a consistent reward every time they push the button.  The last group is rewarded randomly.  On occasion they will receive a reward for pressing the button, but it is unpredictable.  When the rewards are removed, the button pushing habit persists the longest in the randomly rewarded group.

This phenomenon occurs in my house almost every time I am on the phone.  Suddenly everyone has an urgent request, and despite my frantic hand motions and stern looks, they are relentless.  The other day as I was asking them, "Why are you asking me that when you can see I'm on the phone?" The obvious answer occurred to me - because sometimes it works.  If they ask for something that normally is a low probability yes but isn't too unreasonable (i.e., 'Can I have some gum?' or 'Can I get the Play Doh out?') I will say yes just so I can finish my conversation in temporary peace.  It's a crapshoot, though.  If they get too ambitious ('Can I slide down the stairs in a pillowcase?' or 'Can we go to Chuck-E-Cheese?') or if I'm irritable, then they'll end up sitting in time out until I'm off the phone.

"Mommy can I go out to the car and get a magseen rite a yes or no in thees linse      |  |"  I love the detail of the instructions.

David developed a new tactic a few weeks ago.  At the time I thought, "Great - this is much less annoying.", but I remember my mom getting irritated with us "shoving notes in her face" while she was on the phone , so my guess is that this will eventually get annoying, too.

War and peace and theoretical mathematics...

I'm still making my way through War and Peace.  This week I came across a character named Pfuel who brought me back to my math department days.  He is a Russian military theorist who has devoted his life to developing his own brand of military theory and has no patience for barbarians who want to taint his theory with practical applications and concerns.  The Russian army is attempting to apply his theory in their defense against Napoleon and the French.

There is often underlying tension between pure and applied math departments.  As someone from the applied side of the aisle, this cracked me up:

"Pfuel was one of those theorists who love their theory so dearly they lose sight of the aim of all theory, which is to work out in practice.  He was so much in love with theory that he hated all practice and didn't want to know about it.  He positively rejoiced in failure, because failure was due to practical infringements of his theory, which went to show how right the theory was."

"Pfuel seemed uniquely capable of treating even Napoleon like a barbarian, on a par with everyone else who opposed his theory."

This is what I love about Tolstoy.  Even for a minor, fringe character, in a few words he paints a vivid and true picture of human nature.

*All of the War and Peace quotes are from the Anthony Briggs translation here.

Art, music, a thunderstorm and boys...

When I decided to take the boys into D.C. today for a museum and a concert, I knew it would be an unforgettable day.  It remained to be seen why it would be unforgettable.  At the end of the day, would my inner monologue be this:

"Why, why, why do I have to learn the hard way.  Four small children in the city - what was I thinking???"

or this:

"I'm so glad I didn't stay home and catch up on laundry."

Well, the stars were perfectly aligned and it was a magical day.  After a pretty spastic search for parking, in which the cheapskate in me was relieved not to be tantalized by a metered parallel spot I had no hope of utilizing, we visited the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  One of our favorites was the pair  above, The Departure and The Return by Thomas Cole.  It shows a lord departing for battle with his knights and returning on his deathbed with a riderless horse.

The Chuck Close exhibit was the showstopper for us, though.  This is not the style of art that I naturally gravitate toward, but the boys were intrigued.  I took a closer than usual look and loved it.  His work is amazing - truly.  It's difficult to see here, but the black and white portrait is done in fingerprints.  Can you believe that level of detail using only fingerprints?  Another portrait was woven in a rug.  One was made from rolled cardboard and another from layered paper.

After the museum, we bought lunch at a hot dog stand and ate here during a thunderstorm.  We read one of our medieval tales and the boys played tag and soldiers.

Next we took the subway to the Kennedy Center.  Bryan fell asleep and was thoroughly unconscious for the entire experience, so we had to ride the subway one stop on the way back to the car because he needed to.

There is a free concert every night on the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center.  Tonight was the Navy band's jazz ensemble.  The boys' attention spans decreased at rates inversely proportional to their ages, but for a time, they were each enthralled.  I loved it - both the music and the spirit of the Millenium Stage project.  It feels like a bit of a miracle to walk up to a free concert with people who have all decided to listen to something beautiful today.

Things That Made Today Awesome:

• I didn't pay attention to how long it took to get to the Kennedy Center (stroller + subway + shuttle + rain + rush hour = a long time).  The boys didn't care how long it took because the subway is magical for them in the way the Millenium Stage is for me.
• Drizzle alone would have been annoying, but an all out thunderstorm 1) was cool and 2) gave us perspective.
• No one broke anything in the museum store even though I stayed at least ten minutes beyond the dictates of Wisdom.
• There is no reasonable explanation for it, but Rand had only two short naps and no major meltdown.
• I brought cameras for the boys to use at the art museum.  You are guaranteed approximately twenty minutes of intense interest in the arts when you bring cameras.  I now have about 200 blurry art photos on my phone.  This one came out well, though.  How does someone sculpt marble to look like a finely draped veil?
• There were a handful of older women who stopped me and said something kind about my children.  In each case, they could have chosen to notice something less praiseworthy, but instead they saw what was good and encouraged me.  I want to be like that when I grow up.

Truly, one of my favorite things in life is when I do something that's at a minimum ill-advised, and often more completely delusional, and it works - like taking the boys to a cabin for a week each summer by myself.  It does bite me in the butt sometimes, though.  Taking 3 children, two of whom must be carried, on a strenuous hike an hour and a half from home SUCKS!

Daddies and dragons...

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."  G.K. Chesterton

I love fairy tales and my boys are blood-thirsty little guys when it comes to stories, so we have really enjoyed the fairy tales we've read lately.

The Light Princess is one I never encountered as a child.  The illustrations in this version are fabulous (by Maurice Sendak).  George MacDonald tells the tale of a princess who is cursed as an infant with the repudiation of her gravity.  It has a detrimental effect on her personality as well.  She takes nothing seriously.  As princesses in these stories are wont to do, she gets into a predicament that requires a volunteer to freely sacrifice himself for her...

"Death alone from death can save.
Love is death, and so is brave-
Love can fill the deepest grave.
Love loves on beneath the wave."

After we read this part...

Me:  Who do you think is going to volunteer to die for the Light Princess?
David:  (with unwavering confidence) The king because he's the dad, and that's what dads do.

I love that he has no hesitation in assuming the dad will save the day.

This is another book we love right now - Favorite Medieval Tales by Mary Pope Osborne, author of the wildly popular, at least in my house, Magic Treehouse series.  Warriors fight valiantly, monsters lose their appendages, a boy defeats a pack of ravenous griffins,...  My guys can't get enough.  The stories include Beowulf, The Sword in the Stone and The Island of the Lost Children among others.  The illustrations are fantastic and the length is perfect for my second grader and kindergartner.

Lines written for my family and friends (real and imaginary) on the event of my birthday in which I went to Barnes and Noble and a concert...

Chris took me to Baltimore for my birthday last weekend.  We had fancy Italian food, browsed at Barnes and Noble and went to a Willie Nelson concert.  A couple of things...

We came across this building.  The words "Sewage Pumping Station" are displayed above the windows.  It's such a beautiful building for such a purpose.  I'm not sure if I admire it or am disturbed by it.  "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean."* or  "Yes, I am a sewage pumping station.  Laugh if you must, but at least I'm not pretending to be something I'm not."

Someone actually did a lot of work to publish these two gems.  No, it wasn't just a funny joke over cocktails.  Someone actually spent days and weeks of their life on these.  Very Bad Poetry is amusing, though.  One of the poems is entitled "Lines Written for a Friend on the Death of His Brother, Caused by a Railway Train Running over Him Whilst He Was in a State of Inebriation."  That's enough.  You really don't need to read the poem.

 I love the summer teen reading tables and either 1) find something intriguing I've missed or 2) feel smug that I've read everything interesting there (I know, it doesn't take much).  I found this monstrosity among the summer reading tables.  Really - this is what we want our teenagers to read?

Once we endured the opening act, the concert was great.  To the performers of the world:  1) Just because you can play your guitar with your face does not mean that you should.  2) If the crowd is, generally speaking, significantly older than you, they will clap for you in the way they clap for small children who do spastic cartwheels - more because they don't want to disappoint you and it is somewhat amusing than because it's a wise move, musically.

This is what we should have been watching instead of the opening act.

Willie Nelson was awesome - Whiskey River, Good-Hearted Woman, Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, I'll Fly Away, ...

*Matthew 23:27