Going to Chicago

As many of you know, I'm leaving dad in charge of the kids and taking off for Chicago for a few days for a conference. This will be the first time ever that I've been away from them overnight; David will think he's in 7th Heaven to have dad that long; Lauren will probably be slightly sad, but I doubt she'll be awful about it. Her worst frustrations will probably be in the morning since she likes to wake up early and come crawl into bed with me. Dad will just have to do instead.

I told Doug that if it were ME, I would take the kids out of their normal environment to get them distracted from the fact that mom is gone. And, say...go to grandma's house. Not only do you have a new environment there, but you also have an extra pair of eyes to watch the kids, and they love going to grandma's house! It's summer, they'll be restless, grandma has a swimming pool...this has the potential to be great fun (assuming, of course, that dad remembers to put a double layer of sunscreen on the kids (including noses and tops of ears!) and doesn't get distracted and let them drown).

Today we did NOT go to the free movie, though we tried. I told David we would go if/when he cleaned up his room, and while he was cleaning he sort of forgot about his mission and started playing instead, and we missed the beginning of the movie and couldn't go. This upset him, but hey. That was the rule. On the way we saw that Chesterfield is mowing down more trees in favor of building G-d-Knows-What on the land. This made David even more upset. "But that's the deer's home! Where will the deer live?" Well, they'll have to settle further back into the woods, I guess. Then he decided that all the bulldozers and landmovers would stop ripping up the bushes and pushing trees over if we simply spoke to them. "But Mom, if we just tell them the deer live there, maybe they'll stop!" He's half in tears by this point. I felt terrible for him, but still told him that they wouldn't stop. They don't care if the deer live there, honestly. I did say that there are some places set aside where development can't happen, and those places are called conservation areas. I drove a little out of the way on the trek back home and took him to the August A. Busch Conservation Nature Center. I turned off the road and parked by a small lake.
"Why are you stopping here?" asks David.
"Because I want to show you something. Hop out."
All three of us walked to the lake and I simply stood there.
"Now what?" asked David.
"Just listen. And watch." A long stretch of silence ensued, with a background of a great number of bugs and frogs chirping. "Can you hear the bugs?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Look...see the dragonflies?"
"Oh yeah...hey! I see a blue one!"
"I bet if we sit here quietly, we'll see more."
We sat and watched. More dragonflies buzzed over the water. Big, black ones hovered rather unsteadily, while the little bright blue ones zipped around over the rushes. Some big ones with white stripes on their wings came diving towards us, buzzing loudly past our heads as they tried to decide what kind of animals we were.
"Want to go for a little walk?" I asked. The kids agreed happily, and we dusted off and followed a little path around the lake.
"Does this look like a good place for animals to live?" I asked them. They thought so, and we talked about what kinds of animals might live here, and why. "This is called a conservation area," I told them. "It's land which is specifically set aside as a place for animals to live without having to worry about building or development." We did nothing more than walk around the lake, pick up sticks, brush our hands over the tops of the weeds, smell the wildflowers and listen to the birds, the frogs and the bugs. We put our hands in the lake water ("Will it hurt the fish?" asks David) to feel the temperature, and examined a green bug with big eyes that decided to land on the knee of my pants for a moment. We decided it would be cool to have a boat, and to paddle around the lake, and potentially go fishing, though I'm not sure David could go through with the actual cleaning and cooking of a fish. We saw a big splash at the edge of the water and surmised that it was probably a frog jumping in.

But what with it being Missouri and about 95 degrees, we didn't stay much longer than 45 minutes. We headed home and I noted that David was much happier and calmer than before. But he still wants more conservation areas.

So do I.

Water parks and dinosaurs

By necessity this needs to be a short post...it's late and this is officially crunch time for my almost-kinda-sorta-steady gig, job-wise.

Today was a homeschool playgroup day, and we met at a water park several miles away. I wasn't sure what "water park" meant, but quickly learned that it's a regular park with a large, concrete paddock in the middle, with various fountains spewing cold water for the kids to run through. We got there at the allotted time, and nobody showed up for an hour. I was ready to write it off before someone finally arrived, and then everyone seemed to show up. So the kids got a 2 and a half hour recess, running and shrieking through the water and climbing the jungle gyms with 5 or 6 families worth of kids while I talked to the moms of the group. They had interesting tales to tell:

One of them used to be an elementary school teacher just a few months ago in another state. When she moved, she pulled all of her kids out of school and started homeschooling them. Why on earth? "School is nothing like you and I remember it," she reports. "We used to color, we used to fingerpaint, the lower grades used to be a gentle introduction to school. Now they have to teach to the test all the time, and there's no time at all for any of the fun stuff. It's just gone." Another mom agreed, citing that her kindergartner used to come home with piles of homework. Learning to read is now a requirement for passing Kindergarten.

Another related her experience: "This isn't kindergarten anymore, at least not in our neighborhood," she says. "He (the son) went for 3/4 of a year and I helped in the classroom. The entire day in the classroom was structured, including who you could sit with during snack time and who you walked to the playground with. There was a lot of pressure to accomplish reading goals, almost no time for art, and the teacher was SUPER stressed."

Another says her 3rd-grade nieces at school were told that the teachers "didn't have time to teach the multiplication tables," and that the parents would need to teach their children their multiplication. The teachers needed to focus on testing.

Pardon my French, but what the hell is going on out there?

And finally, I saw an ad for this and thought of a certain young man who might explode to go see it: Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience

Latest project at left. The client provided the stationery, I needed to provide the layout for a bullet-point list which was supposed to look like something other than a bullet-point list.

Tidbits:

The font from the stationery is modified from stock; therefore the header had to be done by hand.

The dividing lines fade as they get closer to the drawing of the building, so that they won't interfere with it.

The squares are copies of the windows in the building.

The space between each set of bullet points is equal to three "windows" in height.

Spacing for the squares wasn't apparent until the client added a huge amount of text and forced the list into two columns. The layout fell into place nicely after that. :-)

I managed to get through some laundry today, mow the lawn (oh, the joy!), stock up with stuff from Costco (more joy) and leverage David into more school. Interestingly, he actually asked to "do some Language Arts," which is almost unheard of. He picked out Reader #8 (narcolepsy!) and to my surprise he's pretty fluently reading stuff like, "Gus hisses at the rat. Gus jabs at the rat, but misses," and "Pam wishes that the ducks have boxes to sit in. The boxes can be duck huts!" Hmmm. As far as he's concerned, most of the attraction of reading comes in the fact that he can cuddle on the couch with mom under a blanket. For some reason, this is terribly cozy and safe; all other cuddling is out of the question with him. He's far more into baring his teeth and getting into tickle wars and rough-housing with his daddy. (Boy Love can be painful.)

For math we used connecting cubes to demonstrate the beginning concepts of place value; a rod of 10 cubes connected together is called a "ten-cube," and the individual cubes are called "one-cubes." Using these two props, you figure out how you'd demonstrate the number 13. I also discovered a math website, The Math Worksheet Site. You get to generate worksheets in .pdf format. I made an addition sheet for him with 20 problems and he diligently worked through all of them riding in the car. He had two computational errors and we discovered that he's having a HORRID time making 8's, and all his 9's are backwards.

And our most exciting news is probably the new purchase of a Mac Mini.

I haven't gotten it set up yet (this should take all of 10 minutes), but I'll report on it when I do.

Hot dogs and sand

School:

We've been REALLY lax about school since coming back from Colorado, so we've been playing catch-up for a couple of days. We finished up the entire science unit on seasons (units are generally broken down into a week or two worth of individual lessons, meant for one lesson per day) and started on what amounts to Earth Sciences. While trying to remember local land formations, we hopped onto Google Earth (mostly to check out lakes and rivers) and then spent a bit too much time playing with the sightseeing feature, looking at Antarctica and finding volcanoes.

We seem to have made it to the other side of the hill on math, too. David tested directly into 2nd grade math at the beginning of the year, but there were concepts in the earlier grades that I wanted him to get: fractions, geometric shapes, counting money, telling time. All of a sudden we find ourselves introducing the concept of addition, and about the only new thing for him was vertical addition. We completed another entire unit in math this morning. (I should have skipped directly to the unit test. He got irritated at doing what he felt was repetitive work.)

This afternoon we went to the second BBQ, and the kids had a blast...there was lots of swimming, friends, hot dogs, playing in sand, and fireworks. We didn't leave until 11:30 p.m. and the kids both collapsed in the car on the way home, of course. We put them into diapers before we left and when we got home we tucked them into bed fully dressed, shoeless, covered in sunscreen and bug repellent and with sand-dusted hair.

Science & Civics

So David is studying Seasons in Science. The concepts for the kindergarten curriculum:

• The four seasons, and order in which they fall. The major characteristics of each.
• New vocabulary: Deciduous, hibernation, migration

I was impressed.

Oh, and if anyone wants to make David's day (week/month), he is deeply enamored of the Math Shark. It quizzes you on math problems, at varying levels of difficulty, and with time limitations. It also functions as a calculator. I would call it Satan's Little Helper, personally, but that's because math...well...isn't my thing. It's at the teacher supply store, and every time we go David plants himself on the floor with the sample Math Shark for a nice long numbers session. ::shiver::

And for today's Civics lesson we met the Governor and shook his hand.

See, we've been working...rather accidentally...on Civics for awhile. I was going to drag the kids up to the state Capitol in order to lobby for a particular bill that I'm interested in, but that fell through. But we did have a conversation about laws and the basic structure of our government. I couldn't think of a way to make fiscal or public policy interesting to a kindergartner, but I had the luck of having read about a "hot topic" in Sauce Magazine. About dogs.

Sauce is a foodie magazine, and there's currently a bit of a debate in the downtown area as to whether or not patrons of various restaurants and cafes should be allowed to bring their dogs out on the patios to sit with them. Some restaurants have actually been busted by the Health Department for allowing dogs into the facility, which is what brought this all up. Now THAT is interesting to a five-year-old! "Should people be allowed to bring their dogs to restaurants to eat outside with them?" Of course he says, "Sure!" Ah, but there's opposition...some people don't think so. And if you make a law, it will affect everyone, so how would you solve it? The city is considering allowing the sales of licenses to restaurants that want to offer the Doggie Dining; nobody's decided anything yet. So here was a topic he could relate to, and it meshed very well with the Civics concept.

Today the Governor happened to be signing a new bill over at one of the high schools, and one of the grassroots political groups I belong to was urging anyone from the area to go to the signing and tell the Governor "thanks" for signing a different bill that we really wanted. (They say this kind of stuff really sticks. Go figure.) So I packed up the kids and we went.

It was a small signing. There were marketing-type handlers at the door to get everyone greeted and pointed towards the library. Once inside, there were some suits milling around, but none of them paid much attention to me...after all, who's going to pay much attention to a 30-something housewife with a couple of little kids in tow? One of the suits, however, stared hard at me and offered a somewhat cold "Hello." He had an eerie look to him, and I took an instant dislike to him. He had the same kind of eyes as Dan Quayle. Yes, really, Dan Quayle. I met him once, up close in my reporting life, and let me say that there may have been lots of jokes about him being stupid and such, but that man just emanated bad stuff. He was slightly frightening. And so was this guy...VERY similar gut-reaction to him.

We sat behind the rows of chairs at a table (in case we had to leave, so we wouldn't disturb anyone else. You never know what will happen with kids in tow), and I saw one other person there that I knew. After awhile I saw our State Representative (who is not scary), but that was it as far as people I knew. I took David up to the table they had all set up, and pointed to the two flags flanking it. "What's that flag over there for?" "The United States Flag," he answered. "And do you recognize this one here?" I sort of held it out a little so he could see the state seal. He shook his head. "This is the state flag. Remember the two bears?" "Oh YEAH!" I explained who the Governor was ("kind of the like the President of the State") and that he was signing a bill into law. This was pretty interesting, he thought. After a bit a little girl appeared and came over to talk to Lauren. David was thrilled and interjected himself in the middle of the whole thing. The little girl was about seven years old and she was quite happy to have found another kid to hang out with. I turned my back towards them and pretended not to notice them. After a bit she says, "...yeah, because my mom's a State Representative." Ah. David was quite surprised and then said, "Well, not MY mom. Sometimes she goes downstairs and does the newsletter. And when she does work, we get to play Club Penguin!"

Eventually the room really started to fill up with Suits and my companion expressed surprise that the Governor wasn't there yet. HA! You'll notice the media didn't show up until the last minute? Typical. Government wanks are always late.

Soon enough people started standing and applauding, which meant the obvious: Elvis Was In The Building. Many handshakes. Much smiling. Much schmoozing. I had the kids stand in front of the table, prepared to shake the Governor's hand if he came by. "Why?" asks David. "To be polite," I answered.

Eerie Man started off the commentaries. Turns out he's Superintendent of schools!! That was really disquieting! Nobody else set off alarms in my gut, however. (Whew!) We had a short spiel by the bill's sponsor (or one of them, anyway), and then the Gov spoke. We had a spiel by the Senator and a State Rep while the Gov sat and signed the bills. "See, he's signing the bill," I whispered to David. "He's writing his name on it, and that's what officially makes it a law. Until that exact moment, it really isn't a new law. The Governor makes it so by putting his name on it; it's his approval." (Yeah, I know. There are other ways it can become law. Still.) They also passed around a copy of the bill with the signature scrawled across the top. David was less impressed by that, but I found it interesting. We all applauded, and everyone attempted to mob the Governor. Sigh. That's ok, we had time to burn. I got a handshake from the Senator, and he made a big deal about getting us up to see the Governor. I shook his hand, I told him thank you, I introduced David and David got a handshake, too. We hung out for a short while longer, and the Rep's daughter wasn't eager to see us leave.

Finally we left, and David said that he'd gotten a personal invitation from the daughter to come up to the Capitol for a tour and "to see the really neat museum" once the legislature is back in session. Her other big lure was that perhaps they could watch Veggie Tales on the TV at the Capitol, too. (I also learned that her family doesn't allow any of the kids to watch or read Harry Potter on ethical principles. They also own chickens (who lay green eggs) and honeybees.)

That really wasn't too bad of a civics lesson, I think.

Parental Fireworks

We went to the city's 4th of the July celebration. Of course the kids are too little for most of the fair rides, which is fine with us, anyway. So we hung out (again) in the kid's area, which is full of church booths and free bounce houses, obstacles courses, slides, etc.

Part of the joy of being in this section is that it's packed full of little kids. Little kids are not yet fully-developed creatures, and they are often bumbling, accidental, rude, inconsiderate or immodest. Most of them need to practice the finer points of civility, such as lack of unwanted physical contact, waiting for one's own turn, etc.

Today it seemed that everyone needed to practice How To Stand In A Line. My kids tend to be inattentive, and they allow more aggressive kids to push in ahead of them even when they are paying attention.

Things got mildly ugly at the bounce house.

Many kids, long line. Many parents to the side of line, coaching Junior that no, he cannot run up to the front of the line simply because he's wired on cotton candy and REALLY wants to go next. Attendant asks which kids in the line are together...he needs six. Four in front are friends. A couple of singletons. My two. And then the little Blonde Terror behind them. The terror is about five or six years old. He sports a classic buzz-cut, a red Cardinals shirt, and the swaggering smirk of a bully.

The Terror is desperate to go next, and will do whatever it takes. He immediately raises his hand and claims that the four in the front are all his friends, his very bestest buddies, and he should therefore skip from 10th place in line to first. The four in front look at each other in confusion. Who is this jerk? they wonder. Terror is denied. The front six are counted out. This leaves us with Terror and my kids being in the next group to go, plus one in front and two more behind them.

Terror is dissatisfied with the status quo, and apparently doesn't possess the mental acuity to figure out that he, indeed, is going in the next group. He removes himself from the line in order to harass the bounce house attendant, again telling him that he SHOULD be in that bounce house NOW, because those kids were all his friends. Can he go in? He's denied again. So he comes back to the line and promptly cuts in ahead of David and Lauren. Now Terror is second in line, and rather pleased with himself. Grandpa (?) is standing nearby and does absolutely nothing. Terror is precious. Terror is his. Terror is allowed whatever Terror can get.

I can't simply stand there. This tells both my kids that you should allow the Terrors of the world to get their way. If you have been wronged, that's OK. Just stand and take it, for the sake of never making waves. This trains them to be the victims of bullies.

Well, if you won't parent your kid, I will. Stand aside.

I grab David by the arm. I speak loudly. "Now see, you've let this kid here get in front of you. That's not right, because he's cutting in line. Go ahead and get in front of him, that's where you were before." The kids shuffle, and Terror looks neither surprised nor guilty. I address Terror next. "And you need to follow the rules and not get in front of people." Terror grins. It's the smart-alecky, "What're YOU gonna do about it? Watch me do it again!" sort of look which I've become accustomed to from the kid across the street. (You know...the one I have literally lifted off the ground by the lapels and busted several times for lying and damaging property. The one who hates and yet grudgingly respects me.) Oh. You're one of those. "Don't grin at me. Don't give me that look." Terror is surprised and doesn't know what what to do. The grin disappears and the eyebrows go up. "I've tangled with kids a lot older than you, and you need to behave yourself or trust me...you and I are going to have words." Terror glances sideways, mentally reviewing his options. He decides to stand in line quietly and watch the other kids in the bounce house.

Which is when Grandpa steps in.

"Now he just went up there to talk to him," he says, gesturing at the Attendant. "And he came and got back in line here. So don't you be getting on his case, or you and I are going to have words."

"That's fair," I said, looking Grandpa in the eye. "I'll have words with you. But you need to teach him to get back in line where he was and not get in front of others." (Let's not mention WHY he was getting out of line in the first place...to lie and try to swindle to get his own way. Are you blind, old man? Or don't you give a shit?)

"He was coming back here and stood by me, that's all," says Grandpa, getting more irritated still. "He wasn't--he didn't--" he flaps his hand at the line of kids.

"So you're saying that he was gauging his place in line in relation to you, versus in relation to the line of kids?"

Yup, Grandpa reckoned this was so. I wondered if we should debate the shade of the rose-colored glasses that Grandpa must be viewing Terror with. Or whether or not Terror was old enough to figure out his own surroundings. Or if Terror should be taught to do so. Or if Terror's past behaviors really warranted giving him the benefit of the doubt. Grandpa didn't seem to think there was anything wrong...he'll be in for a rude awakening in several years. The police aren't going to take his word for it. They won't view Terror as the cute little thing that Grandpa does, they won't mind taking witness statement and locking Terror up. Grandpa is failing himself, and society, and especially little Terror. It's now, when kids are very young, that you lay the foundations for acceptable behavior. So far, Terror seems to have no trouble with lying, deception or cheating. In ten more years that will translate into lying, tricking and cheating, especially in school. Ten more years after that it will be called perjury, collusion and embezzlement.

While the actual event is a tiny and really insignificant thing, it shows a pattern of thinking on the part of the kid. It shows how he's learning to get through the world; apparently at the cost of others.

But Grandpa wants to protect him. After all, he was just excited. It was just a special event. Isn't he cute? And what does it matter where he gets back in line? The same kids would get in on the next turn, so what? Jeeze, Lady, lighten up and leave my kiddo alone. I'm here. It's not like he killed anybody. (Ever notice that's the hew and cry of people who get in trouble with the police and think they're being unfairly singled out? "OK, so I sort of borrowed a car and accidentally ran it into a telephone pole. But it's not like I killed anybody!")

I raised an eyebrow at Grandpa, who didn't react.

Stalemate.

I shook my head and looked forward again. Doug came around shortly after that, and contact with Grandpa wasn't made again.

I watched all the kids very carefully while they were in the bounce house, and Terror, by and large, seemed to behave himself. (I was looking for shoving and hitting, specifically.) I thought about pulling the kid aside after his turn was up and telling him that I'd watched him, and he'd behaved very well, good job, etc. The Attendant tried to usher the kids out, and Terror then started begging and pleading..."But I never got a chance to shoot a basket," he said, (lie!) holding a Nerf ball. All the kids stop, waiting and watching to see what will happen. The Attendant is reluctant, but says, "Ok, take a last shot, but then it's time to get out." Terror grins widely and then proceeds to throw the ball as high and as long as he possibly can, out of the top of the bounce house and towards one of the church booths. He laughs, obviously pleased with himself.

Marvel-ous

I bought David his first comic book.

We went to the AMC Theater for the free summer movie on Wednesday. They showed Happy Feet. I'd heard some reviews on the movie that said it was pretty bad...that the singing/dancing got in the way of the storyline. I didn't think it was quite that bad; of course, since I didn't shell out any cash to see it, that probably helped considerably!

It was a mob scene...scores of little kids everywhere, lots of piercing little voices (mostly whining for popcorn) and some baby cries here and there. I gave our tickets to the teenaged usher and said, "Boy, you've gotta be just loving your life right now!" He gave me a surprised and haggard look, but quickly pasted a smile over the top of it. "Nah, it's not bad," he said. Yeah. Riiiiight.

So anyway. The story wasn't too bad, and on the contrary, I thought some of the music was really cool. Granted, some audiences aren't going to catch the pop cultures references through song. I get that. But I really thought the combination of the almost-Gregorian chants with Stomp-like rhythm and the hip-hop music took a lot of talent to put together. Those aren't easy styles to blend, and they did a good job with it. (Of course the kids aren't going to appreciate that, either. But I also think their brains benefit from the exposure.)

After the movie I dragged the kids into Borders. "Can we go to the kids' area?" asks David immediately. "Not today, I'm here for a particular magazine, it should be really quick." He was somewhat put out, but he saw a magazine with a photo of Darth Vader on the cover, and he plunked himself down on the floor to flip through it. Fine with me!

I could NOT find my magazine. I checked in Art. I checked in Computing. I checked several times. I got frustrated and finally admitted defeat and asked. "It's called Layers, like 'many layers of rock.' Although in this case it happens to be Layers as in 'many layers in Photoshop.'" She looked it up and she couldn't find it, either. It eventually emerged, buried behind some other titles. I LOVE this magazine. (I don't have a subscription...yet!) So I have the kids put their finds back, and a sudden thought strikes me. I once read an article about teaching kids to read; it was written by a long-time teacher who was often given the classes of the poorest-performing students. It was her job to more or less babysit them during the time they were supposed to be reading. They were in high school, and many of them were barely literate. Not content to just make sure they didn't get into trouble, she took it upon herself to really teach them how to read. Her "secret" was to make her classroom into a veritable library. Many of the students would refuse to read a book of any kind, but they didn't mind going through a comic book. She bought boxes and crates of comics from garage sales, and brought them in. She snapped up romance novels and "bodice rippers." Parents and administrators were aghast...these were NOT educational materials!

She asserted that reading fluency was gained through practice. If kids absolutely hate what they're reading, they read less. Less reading = less practice = lack of fluency. Her theory was that it didn't matter WHAT the kid read, as long as he kept using his head to decode letters into words, words into thought. Her success rate was quite high; kids that were deemed "too dumb" to learn to read went from reading comics to graphic novels to short stories to books. One girl had fabulously literate and educated parents, and she wouldn't touch a book with a 10-foot pole. The teacher handed her a particularly over-the-top romance novel and the girl came back a week later with wide eyes. "I had no idea books could be like that!" she exclaimed. It turns out that the parents were trying to get her to read Chaucer, and wouldn't let her read anything that wasn't of the same caliber! Soon after that she started absolutely consuming books by the truckload, and went on to get into college and major in...literature!

David's material for reading practice isn't Chaucer, but it also isn't terribly inspiring. How far can you get with "The dog and the rat ran." ?? The readers geared towards the beginner also aren't exactly thrilling story lines...and David is pretty reluctant to read, and even more reluctant to spell and write. If you want him to add up the price of a couple of items and sort out the coins to pay for it, he's eager to do so. If you want him to use a ruler or a scale or a thermometer to measure something, that's fine, too. He'll make you a bar graph, he LOVES to cook, and he always chooses to do History first thing. But reading? Meh. He's pretty lukewarm to almost-cold on it. So, knowing full-well that he's sort of into this Superhero thing at the moment, I wondered if there were any comic books among the magazines.

And surprise! There was Spiderman. Of course there were many more, but this one looked particularly geared towards David's type. Apparently there are so many flavors of the various superheroes...I just happened to stumble across the right line.

I read the comic to him, pointing out what the word balloons were supposed to show, what the words showing sound effects look like, how to follow the story from panel to panel. (Of course, if you put that into edu-speak, you say that you introduced the student to new literacy media, focusing on storyline continuity, character development, and plot comprehension.) He's been dragging the comic around now for a couple of days, reading it in the car when we go places. I don't think he's reading a LOT of it, but I sometimes hear him mumble things like, "Pop!" and "What?!?!" and "Bam! Bam! Bam!"

This coincides nicely with the Marvel Comics Superheroes Exhibit at the Science Center. We've been trying to get this going since it opened, and we finally got David together with his buddy down the street.

I have to admit, I really DID go over the top. I started it, I admit it. I bought the kids costumes. I figured they'd love it, and they could reuse them for Halloween. David decided to be Flash, and Lauren wanted the Supergirl costume. (She would NOT consider Wonder Woman. Don't know why.) God bless the internet...where else can you get obscure superhero costumes for little kids in May/June? Turns out that the kids down the street were Wolverine and Spiderman for Halloween last year, so they dug out those costumes and we had four, real-life Superheroes on our hands.
There was fun galore to be had...we checked out the medical advances in artificial joints with Wolverine, DNA sequencing with Professor X, magnetism and polarity with Magneto, thermal imaging with...uh...I forget. Who turns into a ball of fire? Temperature and matter with The Ice Man.

That was actually rather funny...The Ice Man exhibit has a big drawing on the wall, but with actual metal hands. They run liquid nitrogen or something through the metal, so the hands are covered in an extremely thick layer of frost. The point here is to touch the hands and see how cold they are, and to observe whether or not your body temperature is enough to melt the ice.

So David does this, and I catch sight of the poster on the wall, which has a quick rundown of how molecules move in different states of matter. "David," I said, "this exhibit has to do with matter. Do you remember the three different states of matter?" He stops. He blinks. "Uh....air? Oh, wait! I know! Air, liquid and solid!"
"Very good," I tell him. "Gas, liquid and solid. And what is ice?"
"A solid!"
"Yup. And when your hand melts it?"
"A liquid!"
Neighbor mom drops her jaw. "Ok," she says. "Now I'm really impressed!"
"Don't be," I tell her, "We happen to have just covered that in science. It's just really good timing!"

The next exhibit is DNA and sequence. To show this, they have several blocks on a string that make up a sentence. Spinning the blocks will change the letters, which obviously changes the sentence. Now neighbor mom starts in on her kid. (Uh-oh.) "What does this say? What's this word here?"
"I don't know."
"THE!" shouts David.
"Ok, now it's his turn. What is the next word?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do. What is this word? C-C-C...."
David is jumping up and down with his hand in the air, shouting, "I know! I know!" Finally he can take no more and shouts out "CAT!" I have been pretending to be sidetracked by this stage, and step in to usher him away. "Come look at this cool camera," I tell him, steering him out. "It shows your picture in temperatures." There's something else we'll have to work on.

We counted out seconds between lightening strikes and the sound of thunder with Storm, we tried to dispel a bad guy using high decibels (think lots of kids screaming into an enclosed space to make an animated super-villain explode), we climbed a rock wall with Spiderman, we tried to break a thread (super-duper-high-tension stuff which is the closest synthetic thing we have to spider silk. It's no thicker than a jump rope and holds 3,200 pounds. If it were spider silk (same size), it would hold....ready? It would hold 37,000 pounds. Holy spinners, Batman!) Oh yeah, and we went through a semi-dark "cave" using "sonar" (you click your tongue, listening for it to bounce back off the walls/obstacles). We lifted a car with our bare hands (um...ok, and some hydraulics) with Iron Man. We also got to color pictures of super heroes with lots of crayons, and played with some toy superheroes, too.

Afterwards we went to the Planetarium, which would have run us some obscene amount of money, but since we're members, we can get those tickets FREE. (Ya-hoo!) We saw a star show (David, having just gone through the Solar System homeschool class, thought this was SO cool) and went to the "space station." He fell in love with operating the robotic arm (again!) and by that time everyone was pretty worn out.

Still, the four of them were a major hit. A few people asked us if they could take pictures. Many ventured to guess which exhibit we'd just visited. One volunteer (I remembered him from Pi Day) said he was thrilled to share a glass elevator with four Superheroes.

The BBQ

It's scary but true...we've been invited to a BBQ by some of the neighbors.

We're all supposed to bring a side dish or a dessert or something in order to help out...I'm leaning towards going very, very basic. Part of me wants to bring a dessert, but I think I know how that will go: tons of work for too little in return. I'd have to bake four pies in order to feed everyone.

If I go basic, all I have to do is scoop up a few bags of really, really in-season veggies and I'll be good to go. Right now I'm thinking of corn on the cob (but how do you keep it warm for a long time?), and The Most Amazing Salsa on the Planet.

Have you ever tried the Most Amazing Salsa on the Planet? You should. See, I hate salsa. Most of it tastes like tinny tomato mush, badly covered up by tobasco.

Try this instead, but be warned: it won't be worth much if you don't have good veggies. If you grow your own tomatoes (heirloom especially!), or have a neighbor who does, so much the better. Go to a Farmer's Market, go to Whole Foods. Make sure your veggies are ripe and fresh.

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Serves 4

• 1 ripe avocado (it should be soft, but not mushy. Haas is good.)
• 1 luscious ripe red tomato (local is probably best)
• 1 ear fresh sweet corn, husked (make sure the kernels POP if you sink a fingernail into them)
• 1 scallion, trimmed and finely chopped or 3 tablespoons diced sweet onion
• 1 to 2 jalapeno or Serrano chilies, seeded and minced (for a spicier salsa leave the seeds in)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground black pepper

You can grill the veggies if you want to, but I don't bother. It's REALLY good either way.

Cut the avocado in half lengthwise to the stone. Twist the halves in opposite directions to separate them. Sink the knife into the exposed pit and twist to remove and discard the seed.

Cut a crosshatch into each avocado half, through the flesh, to but not through the skin. Scoop out the avocado with a spoon into a mixing bowl-it should fall apart into a neat 1/4 inch dice. Dice the tomato into 1/4 inch dice. Cut the kernels off the corn. The easiest way to do this is to lay the cobs flat on a cutting board. Remove the kernels with lengthwise slices of a chefs knife. Add them to the avocado and tomato. The salsa can be prepared ahead several hours to this stage.

Just before serving, add the chili, cilantro and lime juice to the salsa ingredients and gently toss to mix. Add salt, pepper, and additional lime juice if needed-the salsa should be highly seasoned.

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This comes from Barbecue University...a PBS show from a man who was a Fulbright Scholar and has a degree in French literature and formally studied cooking in Paris, but who looks vaguely like a cross between a mountain man and John Lennon.

It's a side dish to his Grilled Quesadillas, which are equally as good.

Ratatouille: Foodie Rattie

Yup, it's good.

We saw this Saturday morning instead of cartoons. Worth it! (Besides, the first showing of the day is always one of the cheapest times to go to the movies!)

Remy (pictured left) is a rattie with a highly-developed sense of taste and smell. Which leads him to appreciate food more than other rats might. He is in constant conflict with his father, and by circumstance he finds himself in Paris ("De Eiffel Tower!" shrieks David. "Dey in FANCE!") surrounded by the tastes and smells which he can't resist.

This is a Pixar film, though slightly less innovative than the standard Pixar fare. Perhaps there are too many cooks in the kitchen, now that Disney is Pixar and Pixar is Disney?

Still, this ranks right up there. I can see why the movie critic for Sauce Magazine liked it so much! (See "A rat cooking in a great Paris kitchen? Pixar pulls it off with panache.") The artists' visual representation of the sense of taste is fun, and what happens to the food critic at the (obvious) critical juncture packs a thundering blow of raw truth.

This is a fun one...go see it!