Pollen Dusting

The craft we started yesterday afternoon and finished this morning was to make two washable (fleece) Swiffer duster covers. The very best part of this family craft was that Cale felt invested in dusting. He helped to make the duster, so he wanted to try it out! He asked me where he could dust (yes, a six-year-old asked to dust!), and I showed him all the pollen on my sewing desk next to the window I always open when the weather is warm enough. The duster cover is now distinctly yellow (but hey, I can wash it!). He also dusted the bookshelves in his bedroom.

Cale was enjoying cleaning, so he also swept the stairs (leaves blew in from the garage the last time I opened up the whole house for an unseasonably warm day - I love fresh air!) with the broom that's too short for me to use, and then emptied the dustpan outside. Wow!

Barbecued Iguana

Saturday, I had some friends and family over informally. One, who was leaving as I was polling the boys for what they wanted to eat for dinner, suggested barbecued iguana. Karston of course refused it because it sounded like a new food. Cale on the other hand came over to tap on my arm: "Mommy, Mommy, for dinner I want ... that thing that was just said." What a great attitude about food! Cale has no idea what it is, but he would like to try that new food. This left me in an amusing quandary, but luckily Cale was very happy with pork roast and zucchini, especially the zucchini, fresh from the crockpot.

Need More Monkeys

Karston's school suggested a game website (the boys especially like this close variant), so when homework is done and it's not nice outside, they can play online games. Occasionally Karston will exclaim to the game, "Need more monkeys!" sometimes with a wondering tone. I tend to laugh to myself about needing more monkeys. Well, he said that today, followed by, "Oh, wait, it says MONEY not MONKEY."

I liked the monkey version better!

Cucumber!

This afternoon, my mom made s'mores with Karston and Cale. Karston, who loves chocolate, ate s'mores. Cale, on the other hand, looked at all of that chocolate and announced, "Mimi, I want to fill my tummy with CSA cucumber!" Cale loves cucumbers, and I have to agree with him, these cucumbers from the CSA taste great! We think he knows that just chocolate for his afternoon snack would give him a tummy ache, so he wanted some healthy food first. I'm so impressed with a five-year-old child who turns down chocolate for cucumbers!

Two Heads

This morning, Karston was busy building robots from Legos. He explained to me that he built a spare head for his robot because "two heads are better than one. That's what they say, you know." I thought his use of that aphorism was hilarious!

Hungry

Bedtime was delayed quite a bit last night because Cale said he was hungry, and he proceeded to eat. And eat. And eat. We let him eat even though he said that when it was time to get ready for bed.

So I was a bit surprised when Cale woke me up at 4 AM saying, "Mommy, I'm hungry." I groggily gave him some juice and convinced him to go back to sleep for just a little while longer.

What's in Your Future?

This is Karston's contribution to his school's newsletter:

When I grow up, I want to be a Human Resources Manager. They teach and hire new people. It is important because everyone has to work at some place.

As long as he has LEGOs in his office too, he might enjoy that!

Sixth Tooth

I think Karston was winding up for another round of tooth anxiety (what if I drop my tooth? what if I swallow my tooth?), but he bumped his face and the sixth tooth promptly fell out!

Email

Karston has been begging me for email on his computer for almost a week, so it was time to do my research on kid email with parental controls. My short list included KIDO'Z and ZooBuh, but I settled on KOL for the sheer simplicity.

Now Karston wants to know why the emails aren't pouring in, and I didn't want to mention that his email is heavily filtered (to receive from whitelist only).

But now I know that 6-year-olds need email, and now I can describe what I do at work ("I make the networks that send email").

Crudities

Yesterday we celebrated my paternal grandfather's 94th birthday at my uncle Shannon's house! The party was wonderful, with good company and delightful stories about my grandad! Cale kept asking silly questions, like Mommy, may I eat this broccoli? Mommy, may I eat this carrot? I was, in fact, starting to suspect that Cale's favorite part of the party was having the platter of crudities within his easy reach. (Karston ate some crackers, and thought about the noodles.)

Tonight when we asked Cale what he wanted for dinner, he said, I want to go back to the house with broccoli and carrots. I couldn't convince him that our broccoli and carrots were good enough to eat, or that my uncle might be a bit surprised to see us the following night (since he knows restaurants are generally open when we want to eat).

Fifth Tooth

With so much less anxiety than the previous tooth, Karston's fifth tooth fell out today, somewhat uneventfully.

Bouncing Tooth

After interminable weeks of anxiety from Karston (what if my tooth comes out when ___?), his fourth tooth finally fell out. I was ready to cheer when it finally came out! His tooth just fell out of his mouth while we were walking away from his elementary school's winter carnival, and it bounced several times down the sidewalk. Espen, one of Karston's classmates, saw it falling and was watching it bounce. Espen and Karston found the bouncing, runaway tooth very quickly, despite a crowd.

Third Tooth

Karston's third tooth came out! He forgot he had a loose tooth because he was so excited about Christmas preparations, so when he bit into his cheese-and-cracker, his tooth stuck in the cheese! Yes, a tooth stuck in cheese that barely has tooth marks all around is looks as comical as it sounds!

We are hoping that The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus don't collide on their ways to our house tonight.

The Cocoa Shoppe

Karston's first grade class held a holiday Cocoa Shoppe, and read letters to parents. Karston's letter ...

Dear Mom and Dad,
I love it when you play chess with me. Mom, my favorite thing about you is you are sweet. Dad, my favorite thing about you is you are strong. It is so much fun when we go on Opa's motor boat because it is so fast.
I love you,
Karston

Meatloaf

I made meatloaf (with lots of veggies made mostly invisible through the food processor) for dinner for the adults. Since Cale is often willing to try what we're eating, I put a slice of meatloaf on his plate. Cale asked, What's that? I said, It's meatloaf. Cale put up his hands to block me from handing him a plate of meatloaf. Since I didn't want to give up easily, I said, Daddy and Mommy want to eat meatloaf for dinner. Cale switched to "gimmee" hands, and started eating meatloaf. Yes folks, the magic phrase for Cale appears to be telling him that's what the adults are eating! If only it were that easy to get his older brother to eat!

Zachary

Today we got our bike rentals delivered (eventually - they had to build one for me) and pedaled over to Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park just in time for lunch. The boys played on the beach, then we ate lunch, then we explored the historic fort. Each time I read out the full name of the park, Karston said "Zachary?!" because one of his friends since preschool is Zach.

3V's

We left the house early this morning to catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale. After an interminable line at the car rental counter, we hopped in a minivan to drive to Key West. Although we were hungry, we also wanted to get away from the airport before eating.

At the first exit, the best choice was Burger King, so we went on. The second exit had a Subway, so we followed the signs there. However, as we were walking up to the Subway, I saw the adjacent restaurant, 3V's Organic Cafe, had a special on a cuban mix sandwich. I couldn't resist! The restauranteur pulled out all of the stops (who cares what's listed on the menu?) to try to coax Karston to eat a reasonable amount of food, but he learned what we already know: Karston is pickier about food than you think. To his credit, he's sincerely interested in serving tasty food that's as healthy as possible.

Along the way, we stopped at Bahia Honda State Park so the kids could play in the sand.

We made sure to have an early dinner so we could watch the Key West Holiday Parade starting at 7 pm. The parade went on until 9 pm! Key West may be small, but you wouldn't know that from the number of floats. many of the floats tossed candy to the kids. Since this is the second time we've watched this parade, we knew to bring a bag for all of the candy! Karston wants to bring the candy to school for his class' gingerbread house decoration. When we left the parade, Karston said, "I'm tired of getting candy now."

C-a-l-e

This afternoon, Cale said, My name is spelled C-a-l-e, picked up a marker, and wrote his name on the whiteboard. He's three!

Games

Karston has been playing Angry Birds at Mimi's house after school, and Dig Dug at home after school. Three nights ago, before falling asleep, Karston explained his Dig Dug strategies to Daddy so he's getting more sophisticated quickly. He was very proud yesterday that he finally made it to level 5 in Dig Dug! About a week ago, he picked up checkers quickly. And this evening, he started to learn chess.

I think game play has clicked for him. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to find games for this kid to play ...

Matching

This morning when I dropped Karston off in his first-grade classroom, the girl who sits next to him stared at my shoes. Finally Keely said, I think your shoelaces don't match. For a few weeks, my shoelaces have been one polka-dotted and one striped, so my shoelaces definitely don't match. So I asked, Are you sure? and she stared at my shoes again before answering I think so. The subtleties of "I think so" must not be apparent to first-graders! So I told her, my shoelaces definitely do not match, but we agreed the bright colors were pretty.