I believe this book needs to be read with a good dose of time-capsule-awaredness. While there is certainly timeless knowledge within the book, there is also a sense of the good old days for what you can allow children to do safely.

Yes, you should learn to treat children as individuals, apart from siblings and any pre-conceived notions of age that you might have. But the world is a much scarier place than it was in 1964. The use of natural consequences when it comes to strangers is too great of a risk for me to allow with my children.

That said, I do believe that other natural consequences can do wonders for a child. Teaching a child that the world has order, and that learning the order can lead to happiness and that ignorance of the order can lead to dispair is something I think every person needs to learn. Unfortunately, I think that too many people today haven’t yet learned this lesson, be their age 30 or 5.

Here are some of the highlights so far from spring including Gabe’s first trip to the zoo and Hayden’s newfound love of soccer. See if you can notice some themes in Hayden’s wardrobe choices.

Click for Slideshow

Not much setup involved here. We had a paper bag and Hayden asked me to cut some holes in it.

Yesterday during bath time Hayden was talking smack to his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Leonardo, if you care.)

I’m not entirely sure how it started, but I’m sure it was the result of an earlier altercation in which Hayden fell on Leonardo and suffered a small boo boo.

All I know is that Hayden was holding Leonardo and stood up in the bath to say “I’m taller than you are and you don’t even have a pe-nis” (syllable emphasizing his for extra mockery).

Then he argued with me that the ninja turtle was a person in a suit and not a turtle because turtles have four legs and this ninja turtle clearly had two arms and two legs. I guess 3 year’s old is a little early to undestand genetic mutations

This is the first time I have ever gone to a movie theater by myself, but I have to admit, I liked it.

Going to the 11:10 showing on a Sunday probably helped. I wasn’t competing for seats with massive amounts of couples or teens.

Thank you, Kris, for my escape from the home and the boys to Narnia for two and a half hours.

The movie was beautifully shot and well paced. (Not so much for the younger crowd, but for fans of the books and the overall arch of the story it was perfect.)

I loved Reepicheep (perhaps my favorite Narnian character in the series) as much as I loved Lucy (a very close second).

There is some debate about one of the primary characters (Susan) of which I was unaware until Kris and I discussed it a few days ago. It seems that Susan is absent from the final book of the series, and there is talk of this being a sign that Lewis is a sexist. ( I am hugely generalizing my understanding of Kris’ understanding of this debate… I haven’t done my own research yet.) I argued (unsucessfully) that Lewis’ inclusion of the knowledge of her absence as well as the lack of other details regarding her absence was not a downfall of the arch (and rather it was a strong element of themes of adherence to faith).

In the movie, there were moments I felt as though Susan was being set up to be completely absent from The Last Battle. I appreciated them and realized they didn’t feel out of place as snips like this often do when they don’t come from the original story.

I can’t wait to start reading the series again, to see if those clues are also in Lewis’ original works.

As a mother of two boys, I felt that I should read this classic. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it very much. It wasn’t that women aren’t present. It wasn’t the language (though I did have some issues with getting into the style). It was the pace.

For what is heralded as a boys’ pirate life book, this had very little action. It felt as though the prelude was given all the pages; the story I would have been interested to read was given only a breath.

Now, I love character development. I will argue that knowing the character is generally more important that knowing the plot of any given book, but Treasure Island seems to max out on this theory for me.

That said, does a tale of Ben Gunn exist anywhere?

On our first “official” date (not couting the coffee as friends outing we had), Kris and I proved that we had a pretty similar state of mind. We were discussing the romatic connections of the improv troupe we were in. Someone said the phrase “love triangles,” and Kris and I both corrected, “more like love octagons.”

We looked at each other, and I can only imagine what my face was expressing. (I did not want a relationship in this stage of new-found college life freedom.) Over the next few months, Kris pursued, played it right and aloof, I pursued and we finalized our linear relationship. Octagons (as well as blue monkeys and the perfection of ears- I’ll explain those another time) became a key descriptive piece of our love.

Today, we were discussing a grocery list with Hayden in the room. Hayden wanted attention, and Kris told him that we had to talk about our dinners for the week. “No, daddy, let’s talk about… shapes!”

So, Kris, being the ever-wonderful parent that he is, took a few moments to discuss shapes with our eldest. Circle, triangle, square, rectangle, star, oval were drawn by Kris and labeled by Hayden. There was a pause, and I looked over and said, “Draw a parallelogram, daddy!”

Kris looked up at me, with much the same look I remember on his face from the Feast of Friendship dinner conversation. His pen movement tappered off.

“Seriously?”

He smiled, nodded, told Hayden that the newest shape on the paper was a parallelogram and then proceeded to draw him an octagon, too.

So it turns out that a big contributer to the economic downturn was a coding error.

Certainly not the only factor, but I’m guessing the programmer in question is going to be having a rough week.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to quadruple check my exception handling.

Item #238 my insurance won’t allow me to participate in.

Power Tool Drag Racing

In future years look forward to hearing about these on the news with the lead in of “Tragedy struck today…”

I am a Monkee fan. Not a die-hard, by any means, but I can belt out Last Train to Clarksville on RockBand and get a 99% most of the time on an expert level. I watched the shows growing up (the reruns on MTV… I’m not that old) and I had an LP (I am however, that old) that I would play over and over in my room.

I’ve watched the movie, Head though (like most fans my age) it wasn’t my cuppa tea.

And I have one of the best co-workers ever! I mentioned that Last Train is my favorite song on RockBand, and he proceeded to bring in the book, lay it on my desk and say, “I had it in my library. I don’t remember it well, but I held on to it, so I must have enjoyed it. It’s yours now.”

Damn!

While it isn’t the best memoir I’ve ever read (that would be Have you Found Her) it did make me want to track down a copy of the Monkees series, and maybe even Circus Boy (Micky Dolenz’s childhood show). It made me want to watch it all over again, paying attention this time to see if I can pick up on the rampant improvisation that Dolenz implies is there. It made me want to watch the show to see if I can see hints of the real people behind each of the characters.

For the Monkee fans, check it out. For the I need an easy read with a (sometimes overdone) sense of humor, check it out.