Small Thoughts for Small Minds

I guess it was inevitable - I’ve become a curmudgeon. I’ve started the whole, "It wasn’t like this when I was a kid!" bit…

A little example, from about a year ago…

Dyson walked up to me, making very odd vocalizations. Choppy, curt, abrupt sounds. Something like, "Eeet <pause> k’ck <pause> ch’t." Weird stuff like that. After a bit, I asked him what he was doing.

He said, "I’m a scratched DVD."

Upon reflection, he was doing a very accurate representation…

Even superhero/adventurers need a break some times…

(Robin shirt and cape, Zorro mask. I took the Indiana Jones hat off when he feel asleep…)

Kinda tough to play timed Sudoku with just one hand….

(With apologies to Darby Conley…)

Apparently Dyson decided he was a baby. Of course, this was a perfect opportunity for Keira to "help" him…

At one point, Keira came down stairs and asked, "Is it this hard to take care of a baby?"

I laughed and told her, "It’s much harder. You just walked away and did something different for half an hour, ignoring your baby. In real life, you can’t do that."

Yesterday we got The Three Musketeers.

And, as you might guess, it was a huge hit with the boy. Ching ching! (His sword fighting sound…)

So, the first thing this morning, he wanted a musketeer costume. He (or Keira) had selected a couple of cheap plastic lace place-mats that he wanted me to hook together (one in front and one in back) to simulate the tunic. Of course, I thought that there must be a better way to do it…

I went looking through Keira’s old t-shirts for a royal blue shirt. Or close enough.

Then, I brought out the old reliable duct tape to create the cross and borders. While it certainly isn’t precise, it was still time consuming, so I only did one side of the "tunic" and just straight crosses on the sleeves.

Dyson had been using one of Keira’s silky shirts as a pirate shirt. That seemed perfect for under the tunic.

Then Kel suggested that he use his snow boots (since they wear boots…) Keira helped by taping a feather to Dyson’s Zorro hat. And Dyson topped it off with his samurai sword.

A typical Sunday morning…

Watching TV tonight and I hear "100% breast meat boneless wings".

Umm….

Okay….

Dyson’s getting to be quite the swimmer. Today, he showed me how he could swim from the ladder in the deep end to the shallow end. About 18 feet. He held his breath the whole way.

He also can swim down and touch the bottom of the shallow end with his fingers. (About 3′ deep.)

After I went back in (too sick to stand more than a couple of minutes at a time), apparently he did an underwater flip on his own, as well as swimming underwater through Kel’s legs.

And before we opened the pool, he was terrified of the idea of swimming without his water wings. I’m not sure when he last wore them…

(Oh yeah, Kel & Dyson were skinny dipping. Keira said that she thought her swimsuit was VERY comfortable…)

One of the characters in Dyson’s rotation is Superman.

As you can see, he takes it quite seriously. Sometimes improvisation is just as good as the store-bought costumes. (He actually requested that I use electrical tape to make the Superman symbol. It started when I was working on my brewing equipment while he was "helping" me. I used some of the tape on his chest - random patterns - and he really liked it.)

Superman costumes help you swim better, too. Dyson has been getting better at swimming - he’s currently swimming underwater with and without his mask. He is also jumping in from the side, but only with flotation assistance…

In addition to the two turtles, we have two cats and a dog. One of the cats, Oliver, appears to have some Maine coon cat in him. The dog, Barley, is a Golden Retriever. Both of them are major shedders. (And they really like each other…)

Oliver grooms himself (unlike the other cat, Seamus) quite well, which means that we frequently encounter 4 - 6" long fur turds.

Barley is a full time indoor dog. She only stays out for long enough to "take care of business". As such, she doesn’t have winter/summer coat, and doesn’t "blow" her coat in the spring and fall. Instead, she continuously sheds.

So, I tried using the mat buster rake and ended up with a pile bigger than the cat:

The measuring tape is showing 12".

One week later, I did it again. I only got about half the fur the second time.

Doesn’t seem to have any impact on the fur bunnies wandering about the hardwood floors…

Her fur does look much better, though…

While I was typing the previous post, Dyson walked up and told me, "I threw your present in the trash. Will you ever forgive me?" Well, of course, I agreed to forgive him.

Then he turned on the light and dug through the trash. He walked over and gave me the straw wrapper from his juice box.

"Never, ever throw that gift away!"

Alrighty….

When he finished the juice, he came back into the room and told me that he had another gift for me. He gave me the empty juice box.

He told me, "Never throw the gifts away. We love each other now. Never throw them away. Promise? Promise?"

Even though I promised, I still threw the stuff away when he wasn’t looking…

I like to set a good example…

Michelle took the kids back to Richmond for a few days last week. (And Kel & I got to spend the day together on Saturday. Doing adult stuff. Without kids….)

While there, Dyson watched the classic Disney version of Robin Hood. So, of course, he’s BEEN Robin Hood. He told Michelle that he wanted a bow and arrow. Michelle responded that, when he got home, his daddy could make one for him. He answered, "No. Mommy will do it. She’s the smart one."

Aren’t I the one that has spent cumulative months building the playground for him?

Sigh…

By the way, before I heard about this, I did make a bow for him….