Alice and Ella
This could be a Hannah Anderson advertisement. I think the girls look alike, especially from the back.
One of the things Charles got for Christmas was a new chess set which turned out to be a favorite of Alice because one of the bishops is the Mushroom Princess of whom Alice had demanded pictures scoured from the InterTubes. So far Charles and Alice have used it only a action figures, not for actual chess playing. We’re hopeful that will change once school and chess club starts up again.
While Mom was cleaning out the boys’ room to re-arrange some furniture she found a couple of book store gift cards that Corwin had received some unknown time in the past. She decided that we should make a run out to the book store to cash them in and because we hadn’t been out there for a while.
Mom ordered the children to prepare for departure but our venture was delayed because Corwin lost the gift cards. He picked them up off his dresser but by the time he had put his socks and shoes on and went to wait on the couch he no longer had the cards. He had also lost all memory of the time between picking them up and Mom checking to see if he had them. The entire family spent about 15-20 minutes looking for them. I eventually found them — in Corwin’s ear! Mom thought Corwin should pay me a finder’s fee but I offered to let him agree with me that I had found them in his ear. So that trick still works on Corwin.
Mom has been enjoying our little noise makers. Mom has been cleaning stuff out of her office over the last day or two and one thing she found was an battery powered clock radio I had given her many moons ago (which she had put away on a shelf despite it being a wonderful gift from a loving husband). Charles thought this was a great thing and he has been playing it around the house lately. It’s tuned to a classical music station so occasionally I think that Corwin has spontaneously decided to practice his violin. Alice has taken to turning it on as well.
In addition to this, Charles and Alice got a whistle of some sort from the Christmas crackers. Charles also got some plastic pan flutes from Josie’s party. Charles and Alice enjoy getting both of these and the radio going at the same time, filling our house with their joyful noise.
Alice: [slurping noises]
Corwin: Alice, stop slurping!
Alice: [slurping noises]
Corwin: Alice, don’t make so much noise!
Alice: [slurping noises]
Corwin: Alice! Stop slurping!
Alice: [slurping noises]
Dad: Gosh, that was effective.
Alice: [evil laugh]
Corwin: That’s a pretty good evil laugh.
Dad: Well, at least I taught her one thing. I will have to count that as my success as a parent.
Mom (and I, apparently) got an Amazon Kindle for Christmas. Mom quite likes it and has been downloading various things. Her basic plan was to use it for formerly print media such as newspapers and magazines. You can buy issues via the Kindle and have it download in less than a minute. I thought Mom was going to use it for reading during exercise but she hasn’t done that. Instead she uses it to put off going to exercise because she just has to finish the chapter.
It is a nice little object and reading on it is fine. The display is persistent without power. When shipped, the set up instructions are left on the screen instead of using a separate piece of paper. The kindle charges from USB and the shipped version includes an AC to USB converter so either a computer or a standard outlet suffices to recharge.
Mom has found only two downsides. One is the book selection is still a bit limited. Mom has found a number of books she would like to download but are not available. The other is that you can’t transfer books to other people as you can with a physical book. This is an issue for books you only want to read once but if the price is low enough that’s probably not a big problem.
Uncle Evil brought some rocks up from Texas (because we don’t have rocks here). For some reason Alice decided the rocks needed to be washed rather frequently. Perhaps she realized something about Uncle Evil. Hopefully Alice’s efforts sufficiently decontaminated the rocks because Uncle Evil left them behind.
While we were in Chicago we stopped at the Apple store. Alice enjoyed looking at the iPod Touch. It took her only a few minutes to figure out to how access YouTube on the iPod. Our little geekette!
Alice enjoyed her Zhu Zhu Pet that she got for Christmas. At least this one doesn’t poop as much. Although Alice managed to get her hair stuck in the wheels in the first few minutes. Luckily Uncle Evil was able to extract the protein strands and bring the Zhu Zhu back to full health.
The entire family hit the slopes today. We had planned to get out in the morning but because of the hard core late night partying to which we are prone we didn’t make it out of bed until about 10. Alice was the only one who was enthused about the outing. Corwin had already gone out the day before with Keith after a sleep over and Charles, well he was just a double bumper grumper boy.
Alice had a good time with her first solo runs on a sled. She was a little scared the first time but rapidly changed to excited. She especially liked riding down with Dad because Dad would let her be in the sled while he pulled it back up to the top (and Dad is really feeling that now as he is typing this).
There were very few people out, which I thought odd. Corwin said that he and Keith had been the only ones out sledding yesterday as well. This meant lots of good runs without the snow being worn down (despite the long snow there was very minimal cover).
I also was able to try out one of my Christmas presents, an action video camera designed to be worn on a helmet. It is supposed to record audio as well but I don’t seem to have that figured out yet.
It’s been snowing here since yesterday afternoon albeit lightly so there’s only about 2-3 inches of accumulation. It broke late afternoon today and Mom organized a family outing to shovel the driveway. Everyone except Alice was out there working. I am sure Alice was intensely jealous but at least the boys didn’t taunt Alice about it later.
Other than that we had a slow day except for couch shopping. Uncle Evil and Aunt Nong left yesterday early afternoon and it’s been quiet ever since. I am catching up on pictures so expect a long stream of gratuitious pictures without much content.
Hi, this is Corwin. I didn’t get a good feedback on what I should name the blog names so I’ll ask again, Should my blog be called corblog, corwins blog, or other? Anyway, I’m writing about the last couple days.
Friday was a normal day, but on Saturday I had a recital at Smith Hall. It lasted (including rehearsal time) three or four hours. When we got home we messed with the animation thing, and you can see the results on the kidlog. We did that until 11ish and then went to bed. On Sunday we prepared for Charles’s party. Charles invited five people but only two could show up, Mason and Josie. Charles played mainly with Joesy and made Mason play Wii with Alice. Charles got two lego kits, a flight simulator, custom straws, and a spy robot thing (which he broke already). When we woke up, Uncle Evil was here along with Aunt Nong. We spent the morning either running or hiding from him. I got wrapped up in duct tape so that I couldn’t move and I had a shirt wrapped around my face so I couldn’t see. I was like that for ten mimutes. I also got my braces on today. They’re orange and annoying.We went to Chicago yesterday. We all had to fit into the van and every seat was taken. We first went to the Museum of Science and Industry. We to the you experience exhibit and then Uncle Evil, my Dad, Charles, and me went to the airplane stuff. While looking at the Wright flyer, Uncle Evil got into a debate about the Bernoulli principle. The debate lasted until the end of lunch when me, my Aunt Nong, and Uncle Evil went to see a movie about the Great Lakes. After that we left to go shopping. While we went shopping alice got a doll, Charles got a LEGO fire boat, and Uncle Evil and Aunt Nong got a lot glass cups.For dinner we went to Big Bowl. Then we went home and got there around 11.
That was my recap of Friday through Wensday. I’m still hiding in terror from Uncle Evil, but I’ll have a break when I babysit my brother and sister, and two of my mom’s friends kids. Oh boy.
Editor’s note: due to the crush of the Christmas season, this posting was delayed a few days
Charles: Can I have a chocolate?
Mom: OK, one chocolate.
Charles: Can you open this for me?
Mom: Maybe,.
Charles: Please, non-heart warming Mom?
Mom: [aghast] Charles!
Charles: [laughs]
Mom: You are a weird little boy.
Charles: OK, non-heart warming Mom who thinks I am a weird little boy, can you unwrap this?
Dad: So Charles thinks that he can be mean and still get his chocolate unwrapped because you’re such a soft touch.
Charles: [laughs]
Mom: Apparently. [finishes unwrapping chocolate]
Dad: I would say that he sits there vindicated.
The presents are opened. Even the debris from the flurry has been cleaned up. The kids got many presents, some of which they even liked. Uncle Evil and I were up till 2AM this morning putting together a foosball table for the boys. As I went to bed, Mom got up to take care of the stockings. This was quite a production because she had misplaced one of her bags of stocking stuffers. Grandma and GrandPa came down last night to hear Corwin read at church. Now they, we, Uncle Evil and Aunt Nong are recovering from our late nights while the kids enjoy their new toys.
We went off to Christmas eve services this evening. Corwin was a reader for the ceremony along with another girl. Mom has had him practicing this week and he did a fine job. Now we are getting ready for Christmas eve dinner, a Thai extravaganza prepared by Aunt Nong with some trivial help from Uncle Evil.
Some Vivaldi for Christmas Eve. This was Corwin’s last recital with his current violin instructor. He has been with her for four years or so and Mom thought we might try a bit of change because it’s long drive out to her house for lessons (about 45 minutes travel for a 30 minute lesson1) and because Corwin still, after almost five years, won’t make eye contact. Mom and I think she’s very nice but apparently she frightens Corwin.
1 This wasn’t so bad when Charles was playing violin because Mom scheduled the lessons together. Now that it’s just Corwin it is a bit more of a problem.
In honor of Uncle Evil’s visit, Charles and Josie made this chart to help all of our readers understand the situation
Uncle Evil and Aunt Nong are visiting us this week. This is Nong’s first trip to Illinois which, as we all know, is one of the most exiciting and tourist friendly states in the USA, if not the world. Despite that, Mom decided we should take them on a whirlwind tour of Chicago.
Therefore we all got up at 6 AM yesterday and were on the road by 7:15. We spent the morning and early afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry and then went out to do some shopping. One of the very few advantages to having Uncle Evil around is dealing with boredom. Corwin announced before the trip that he was bored. I noted that Uncle Evil had an excellent cure for boredom called “sheer terror”. Corwin immediately became not bored at all, not one little bit. He and Charles in fact made sure to mention this to Uncle Evil as soon as they saw him.
The kids had a reasonable time although the evening of shopping wore the boys down.
Charles’ only goal was to hit the Lego™ store. He received two new Lego™ kits for his birthday just a few days prior but that wasn’t enough as he picked out yet another kit on which to spend his birthday money. He even picked up a little something for Mom. Earlier, though, we had gone to the space exhibit at the Museum to hang out while Uncle Evil, Nong and Corwin went to see the Omnimax movie on the Great Lakes. I asked Charles just before this if he wanted to go and he indicated that he wanted to go to the Idea Factory. Of course, just as everyone else had their tickets and were heading off to be seated Charles asked why he wasn’t going with them. Unfortunately it was already too late before had finished lunch becaue the line for tickets was huge (Mom purchased our tickets the night before over the InterTubes).
I explained this to Charles and he seemed abnormally accepting. But about 20 minutes later after looking at the space exhibit for a while Charles turns to me and says “when does the movie start?”. Oh, the sad look on his face when I brutalized him with the harsh facts of scheduling.
For Alice we dropped by the American Girl store which made quite an impression on Uncle Evil and Nong. A two story doll store is apparently not common in Thailand.
At one point during UncleEvils’ visit he was using masking tape as a restraint. Unfortunately it turns out that even young children can break out of masking tape with some effort. Uncle Evil then lamented that fact that he had no duct tape. Corwin immediately piped up with “Dad has a lot of it in his office”. Uncle Evil and I had to call a time out to recover. Uncle Evil then gave Corwin a demonstration of why his helpful suggestion might have been the best possible response.
We got a new monitor recently which has a nice white back which was protected by a peelable plastic sheet. I started taking it off and before I even finished there was dog hair on the back. It was if it’s in the very air.
Polynomial loves snow. She gets tired of it fairly quickly but, being a dog, her boredom meter resets every ten minutes which means snow is fresh and new several times a day.
The boys have rediscovered Spore(game) which we got for them about a year ago. Corwin played for a bit and then put it away. But now both boys have been playing it almost continuously. Of course, now that I have written this I expect it’s passé
Corwin tried to start a fire in the fireplace and did not remember about the flew. Mom had to rush over and pop it open. There were some spider webs that hadn’t been visible but after the soot they really stood out. Mom wasn’t amused and the spider webs suffered a catastrophic collision with the vacuum cleaner.
Corwin got his first braces today, on his four upper front teeth. He chose to have orange rubber bands.
We survived Charles’ birthday. It was a sleep over but although Charles invited five other boys only two of them (Mason and Josie) were able to make it. Mason, as usual, spent most of his time on the Wii. This time he wasn’t alone — Alice played Lego Star Wars with him. Eventually it got late and when I checked on Charles and Josie and found them just laying on the couch in the basement with a blanket I said “it’s time for bed”.
They had some more fun in the morning as they didn’t sleep as late we had hoped. Uncle Evil had arrived early in the morning (surprising Corwin in the couch bed with some snow). They all had some fun with him until the computers called out too strongly. They had spent time at supper the night before trading “Fun Facts about Uncle Evil”. In the end, though, their parents relented and took Charles’ guests back.
Aunt Nong: So you want to be a dancer?
Alice: Yes.
Aunt Nong: And a singer?
Alice: Yes. And an artist.
Mom: What kind of art do you want to do?
Dad: Monkey sculptures?
Alice: Beautiful art!
Charles is nine years old today. He opened many presents this morning, but we let him play with one present last night. Everyone except Alice stayed up late, Mom stuffing envelopes and the rest of us using Charles’ present to make what you see below.
Corwin had a recital today. Mom was off helping with that and I was charged with getting Charles and Alice lunch and then bringing them over to the event. We went out to grab some lunch and the entire way back Charles was curled up in a fetal position whimpering because Alice was reciting the alphabet. I couldn’t get an explanation out of Charles for the whimpering so I can’t tell you why it was an issue.
On the way over to Corwin’s recital Alice was asking about birthdays and getting confused. Charles, in his condescending big brother voice, tried to explain and this drove Alice completely bonkers. I pointed out to Charles the essential symmetry of the situations but he maintained that because he wasn’t repeating himself. I don’t think the learning experience “took”.
I did manage to deliver two fed if grumpy and sullen kids in time for Corwin’s music.
Corwin practices before the big day
Our little angel.
She told me that for Christmas, I should buy Mom “a pretty rock”.
The car was in for service and for various reasons Alice and I had to pick it up which meant walking from her ballet place to the car place. Alice made it despite the cold although she complained of the distance the entire way. On the other hand Mom had a similar issue a few days before and had to offer gummy treats at the end to get Alice to proceed, a promise that turned sullen disdain to peppy steps. I only needed to mention that the alternative to stopping was freezing to death.
I am not sure when Charles drew this. I discovered it recently so it probably wasn’t all that long ago. What I like is the reification of the descriptive text — it is visible to the people in the picture. The people in the plane are saying “Get the words out of the sky!” and calling for “anti-word spray”. This dances on the edge of self-reference but in keeping with Charles’ restrained style doesn’t quite make the close. Charles frrequently bases his works on the forms of others but puts his own twist on it to show his independent creativity. Of the artist himself, he will only say “the work explains itself”.
Corwin and Charles had a dentist appointment this week and for Corwin it was bad news — he is going to need braces as well. Mom took him to the orthodonist the next day and we’re now on the hook for Corwin fix up as well as Charles. Corwin doesn’t seem too thrilled about it but this at least is one situation in which his general ennui is a feature, not a bug. He whines a lot more about having to practice the violin than he has about getting braces.
The big news around here is that Mom bought a new paper shredder. We had one a while back but it burned out. Mom has missed it ever since. Last weekend she got around to replacing it and the kids love it! There was much jostling to see who would be the first to put some paper in it. Fortunately for the kids we had accumulated a good pile of things to be shredded (which was part of Mom’s motivation) so they could have some real fun for once shredding our now longer needed paper with personal information on it. They filled up the box a couple of times at least. It’s good to know that our children (besides Charles) can still be entertained by things you can buy at an office supply store.
[We are trying to leave an event and Charles is climbing on Dad]
Dad: You want me to take you to McDonald’s and you’re doing this?
Charles: Yes.
Dad: You think I am that soft a touch?
Charles: Yes.
Dad: Oh is that right?
Charles: Yes. Could you lean over this way so I can climb easier?
Dad: This isn’t over, Charles!
Todays big event was the annual children’s Christmas skit at the church. The kids have been practicing this for weeks. They even had a special practice yesterday and another during Sunday school time right before the actual event. I think it paid off as it seemed to go well. Alice was an angel and Charles a donkey. They tried to get Charles to be something not mute but Charles refused to speak in public.
Alice was enthralled with being an angel until the actual event at which point she rapidly became bored at standing around while others talked. She did face the audience most of the time. Charles, in his opinion luckily, was able to hide behind other children for almost the entire time.
Afterwards there was to be a spaghetti lunch but Alice had a complete melt down so we headed home instead and put Alice to bed while the boys helped with some cleaning as Mom prepped the tree. It took most of the rest of the day, especially with another string band outing1 in the middle but the tree is looking very nice.
1 It turned out to be two sets with the second consisting mostly of songs neither of the boys knew. Mom wished she had know so she could have bailed in the middle. I think this may be Corwin’s last performance with the string band as he has been pining to leave since he started.
We went off to a party and while I was attempting to converse with other guests Charles kept trying to mess with me. I retaliated with some well deserved knuckling and tickling but after several rounds Charles continued to say that it wasn’t enough to make him regret messing with me. So I did what I had to do — I grabbed him tightly, locked down his arms and legs, and had Mom give him a smoochie. I told the other people there I was sorry they had to see that, but sometimes a Dad just has to take a firm hand. Or lips, as the case may be.
Alice spent some time cutting out apart a toy advertisement so that she could have little cards to indicate what presents she wanted. Her big thing, though has been a Zhu Zhu pets although Alice calls them “Susan pets”. This drives Charles bonkers which doesn’t encourage her to say it correctly.
This is Corwin once again being forced to write (even though Dad already wrote about it). If I keep writing on the Kidlog I should get my own spot. It could be called Corwin’s Blog, Corwin the awesome person blog, or even the Corblog.1 Or not… Anyway I’m not writing about that. I’m writing about a Church trip to Carlinville. I left last week Friday and I got back on Sunday. I didn’t have to write last week because of this, but I’m not if sure it was worth it.
My mom drove some high schoolers and me there. I didn’t talk to them, but I had control of the DVD player so I was fine. The trip took about four hours and was pretty uneventful. By the time we got there it was six or seven. We had three rooms. One for the high school girls, one for the other girls2, and one for our youth leader and me. The room consisted of a bathroom, a shower, and five bunks. We shared it with two other people. I hated the first night3. I hated it because my door was locked and I didn’t have the key, so I didn’t have money or books. They did have some free racquetball courts, but I had nobody to play with. My youth leader went to a long meeting so I couldn’t get the key. I pretty much sat or walked around for two hours. When the service started I thought I’m might not be bored any longer, but there was a lot of really loud music. I might have enjoyed it if I felt happier but no. That took about an hour then we went to a small group meeting for another hour, then we went to a large group activity for another hour. During that time my youth leader handed me the keys so the night wasn’t bad.
The next day wasn’t bad except it was still kind of boring, but now I had books!4 At the end of the day, they showed the new Star Trek movie, and it was a pretty good movie. After that I went to sleep. The next day we packed and got ready to leave. We were one of the last groups there. The trip back was uneventful, and I didn’t feel like reading a book, so I napped the whole way back. We got back around 3:30. I had to stay at the the church for another hour because my mom and dad were helping to set up the nativity walk. I got home around 5 o’clock and that was the end of my weekend.
THE END
1 If you think these names are awesome please comment, also comment if you think these are the stuipidest names ever.
2 Did I forget to mention that I was the only boy in our group? Well I was.
3 Not because I was homesick. No I’m not in denial about being homesick because I wasn’t homesick.
4 If you think I’m addicted to books please comment.
[Dad is using a combination of conversation and wrestling to persuade Charles to help him out]
Dad: Will you do a favor for me, Charles?
Charles: Depends.
Dad: Come on, Dad helps you out with stuff.
Charles: I will do it if I can have some fudge.
Dad: [pondering this reasonableness, lets go of Charles] I don’t think we have any fudge.
Charles: [fleeing] I know!
Dad: This isn’t over, Charles!
At lunch, Alice asked “do grown ups have friends?”.
I tried to convince Charles that he should consider buying Mom a present for Christmas but he didn’t see why. After some further discussion he decided that it would be OK and that what Mom really wanted was a new Wii game or a Lego™ kit.
On Wednesday a hawk slammed in to our window. I first I thought my computer power supply had exploded again it was so loud. But everything seemed running so I checked for a bird strike and there on the back porch was a small hawk, laying on its back and twitching. I thought it was dead but when I went out to clean up the body 20 minutes later or so it was gone. It must have been just stunned. My initial thought was “dang, I should have gotten a picture right away!”.
Mom bought Alice some ruby slippers.
Charles was feeling badly enough from his dental work to stay home from school today. Mom told him he couldn’t go electronic and he still wanted to stay home. I did relent and let him fire up the Wii at 2 but he spent the rest of the day laying on the couch, except for lunch. I tried to get him to out because it was such a beautiful day (25°F, overcast, snow flurries, and wind gusts up to 53 MPH, i.e. wonderfully brisk — does it get any better?) but he was a slug.
This morning we took Charles in to get fully wired. Well, Mom mostly. I turned out to have a dentist appointment myself at the same time.
It was a moderately painful experience for Charles. It wasn’t the joy we older types got to experience with the hammering of those little rings but there is still the slowly growing pain of your teeth getting shoved around by the hardware.
Mom tried to give Charles some analgesics afterward but Charles found it very difficult to swallow the pills even with a bottle of water. He eventually had to chew them down which he found preferable. He should be OK in a few days as his teeth settle down.
It is always interesting to see how different boys and girls are. Today’s issue is marriage. Thoughts about marriage rarely occur with to the boys and when they do they are either processed for personal advantage or discarded. Alice, though, has thought marriage to be interesting of itself since she was very young, probably around 3 or so. Well, maybe not marriage but rather getting married especially the ceremony and the associated clothing.
Alice ended up on this topic today and I helped her clarify her views. Basically, as Alice sees it, marriage is something girls do. The boy involved is simply told who he is going to marry and when. I am not sure Alice views his presence at the ceremony as required. Certainly he has nothing to do with it before then. This is not to say that only the bride gets to make the decision! No, the boy’s sister has to agree as well. Alice will naturally be working out who her brothers marry. They need not concern themselves with that. Alice was quite delighted with herself when she realized this. I didn’t bring up what happens to those boys without sisters. Maybe they just get selected by the first girl who takes a fancy to them.
We got Corwin back today. He was sent off on Friday afternoon to a church retreat in a far place down state. Unfortunately for Corwin, all of the other kids from his church were girls, a fact Mom … neglected to mention to him before departure. Mom had tried to recruit Jack but Corwin wouldn’t put in any effort at persuasion so that fell through.
I am not sure how much Corwin enjoyed the experience but I am sure that the worst part of it was being interrogated grilled asked many questions by Mom upon his return. Corwin did say that he thought there was too much music. Even Mom noted that the music for services was a bit loud.
While Corwin was returned by another parent, Mom helped out by driving him and some other kids down. This meant Corwin and three high school aged girls who, according to Mom, spent almost the entire trip in electronic communication with unknown parties (possibly each other). Corwin ended up in his least favorite spot, one of the middle seats. The back was right out because there were girls in it and he was too slow to grab the front seat. On the way back it was the same grouping even though one of the drivers was the mother of one of the high school girls. I guess Corwin was too cute. It certainly couldn’t have been his smooth conversational skills.
Poor abused Charles. He was able to play a little bit on the computer this morning but by 9 Mom was rousting him to go off to a recital. We were there until about 11:30 and then went to lunch even though Charles wanted to go home1. After this abuse we finally made it home but Charles only got to game for about 15 minutes before it was time to go off to a Cub Scout swim. When Charles got back from that Mom took us all out to get a Christmas tree2. After that it was supper time. Finally, though, Charles managed to get some good gaming time.
1 Even though yesterday, coming home, when I asked “So do you guys want to go home and have some made by Dad with looooooove turkey sandwiches?”, Charles and Alice said “McDonalds!”.
2 Mom had a hard time choosing between a tall skinny fir tree as we normally get or a really fat big boned pine tree. Alice and Charles were originally for the rotund tree but for no apparent reason switched over to the taller tree.
[Driving to and from a Charles’ recital with Charles and Alice]
Alice: Ow! Ow! Why is this seat squeezing out all my space so hard?
Dad: Well, we’re unlikely to get a replacement tonight. Mom and I will look at getting a new one at some point.
Alice: I don’t like it but I must say it is a sweeeeeeet ride.
Charles: That means no new seat for you.
Alice: Yes, but it is a sweeeeeeeet ride.
[later, after Alice has gone grumpy and we’re passing a house with a major league set of Christmas lights]
Dad: Look, Alice, at all those lights on that house1!
Charles: They are going to have one major electric bill.
Mom bought Alice some extra comfy socks recently, which came in a set of three. Alice has a love / hate relationship with them. The socks are very soft and comfortable but also very warm which results in Alice feet that are cosseted but overheated. Alice will peel them off, complaining of her sweaty feet, but a day or two later will be sad because the socks are in the laundry. In any case, Alice wants you all to know about the socks.
Corwin took out the old pumpkin from Halloween away last week. It was quite thoroughly rotted. Corwin tried to haul it off using a snow shovel but it was too heavy for him. He dropped it and had to haul it back in several trips. He then vented his frustrations on it and was so enthused he asked me to take a picture of his gourdly victory.
Charles became fully cranked a few weeks back but I forgot to mention it. I can see how his incisors have come from behind his front teeth and rotated almost to the correct position. Charles now has a busy couple of weeks of appointments now that the widening has “set” for the next steps.
We frequently mock Corwin for his lack of attention where we can talk about him right in front of him then ask him about it and he’ll reply “what?”.
Mom: So, Corwin, what do you think?
Corwin: What?
Dad: Huh?
Charles: Squirrel!
I almost hit a coyote coming home the other week. It was just trotting across the road from one field to another, in the same country block as our neighborhood.
Corwin was being annoying so I grabbed him and
Dad: So, would you rather have me punch on you, or get some hugs and a kiss from Mom?
Corwin: How hard would you punch?
