We're up to Greece now

Since we talked about the Iliad and the Odyssey today, I was browsing some illustrations for them. I showed Meg a gorgeous one of the one-eyed monster (Cyclops?) that tried to eat Odysseus.

"Why do giants try to eat people?" asked Meg.

I considered. "They ought not to do so. It is evil."

Meg accepted that. "Well, in Heaven if there are giants, they'll be a lot less pesky."

Sick days

I gave her a cup of peppermint tea.

"Mom! You just gave me dyed water!" Meg

Shopping

"Mommy, my birthday is in three days! Maybe you should go out tonight and buy me presents. ...Mommy, why are you giggling?" Meg

Laundry

"It's okay," I told Jonathan. "I line up all your socks in rows for you."

I'm sure he really appreciates that.

Watch out for those supper Pharisees

"What are you making for dinner?" Meg asked me.
"I'm making rellenos and fajitas, but you're something of a Pharisee about rellenos, so you may not get any," I informed her.
"A Pharisee?" Jonathan asked.
I considered. "I think I meant Philistine."
"How much legalism can you fit into a relleno?" he demanded.

Little sisters

Meg: "Kate, you're in the way!"
"Have you finished your soup?" I asked Meg.
"No. And Kate's peering at it!" Meg said.
I turned to Kate. "Are you peering at Meg's soup?"
She grinned. "Yeah!"

Kate talks!

Kate's vocabulary is just taking off. I think today is the first time she's been able to say the names of our whole family, and she also keeps coming out with new words. We were looking at pictures on my computer and she named "froggie" and "river." She also saw a lot of "baby."

Her favorite words right now are "yeah," "no" (I love that she can actually answer a yes or no question!), "syoo" for shoe, "me" for her lambie pacifier, "dog," and "juice."

Poisonous plants

"Leaves of three, let it be," said Meg. I was so proud of her for knowing that.
"And do you remember what plant that is?" I asked.
"Poison ivy," she said matter-of-factly. "And dragons-bane."

Patricia Wrede is a great storyteller, but she's not doing much for my botany lessons.

Empty like a worm

I spent the day packing and cleaning.

"I want you to admire the vast emptiness that is in the craft room," I informed Jonathan.
Meg piped up, "It's empty like a worm!"

Jonathan and I looked at each other, nonplussed.

"I don't know what to say to that," I said.
Jonathan asserted, "No, it's empty in a way that worm is not."
"Then how IS a worm empty?" said Meg.

"I know very little about how a worm is empty. My knowledge of worm emptiness is purely that of the via negativa. 'I thought it best to warn you, my dear Theophilous, not to empty your soul in the way that a worm is empty.'" said Jonathan.

Meg decided that made sense, or possibly no sense, and took a different tack. "You're right. A worm doesn't have scraps of paper or a door in it. Or a lamp or Bismarck in it. Also, the worm is not empty forever!"

Sending a spider to a better place

"Well, I don't blame the spider for wanting to live in our nice house, but I'm not going to let him." Me
"That's right! Go find a haunted house to live in! Or, a broken-up tower with bats and --- and creatures of the night. Creatures of the night INCLUUUUUUDING insects! That way they'll be eaten up and won't be a bother." Meg

Cultural reference

Me: "Yes, you may drink with that straw, if you take the paper off first."
Meg, indignantly: "I always take the paper off. Every day when I drink with a straw."
Jonathan: "I don't always drink with a straw, but when I do, I take the paper off first. Stay thirsty, my friends."
Meg: "Uh-uh-uh! I'm not telling my friends that!"

Jonathan: "You have a very mild abrasion on the tip of your elbow."
Meg: "I WANNA LOOK!" Pause. "I'll go look in the mirror!"

Pleased to report the rum is not gone

The cocktail shaker was hiding this evening.
"It's there, behind the Winnie the Pooh cup. ...I did not do that on purpose. And the rum is behind the graham crackers."

The moral of the story: call the Gungans for your underwater battle needs

Jonathan was reading one of those beginner-reader Star Wars books with Meg. The scenario was an underwater battle on Mon Calamari, and the plot... well, it pained him. We in our house do not suffer quietly. So I started liveblogging.

"If you're fighting underwater, USE BOMBS. Carolyn, they're using blasters and spears! Sometimes that's fine, for close quarters. But when you're not fighting hand-to-hand, you should break out the artillery and have fun. I'M JUST SAYING. ...I'm sorry kids, not only did you get flanked by 3 mph jellyfish, you're being surprised from above. By mining rigs. Have you heard of sonar? 'But it gets worse!' Really?"

"So apparently the big bad guy has these cyborg jellyfish. Electrified cyborg jellyfish. But the electrified cyborg jellyfish are too powerful, so they have to ask advice from Yoda and Mace Windu. These are the tactical golden boys behind such tactical maneuvers as, oh look, it's a giant plain filled with robots. Let's land and fight them with hand to hand combat, instead of, say, shooting them from space with our armada.

"So they come up with a plan. Let's call the Gungans! The Gungans are in fact an aquatic species, so this is actually good advice. And surprisingly the Gungans, unlike the elite Mon Calamari, actually have weapons that can make the jellyfish explode. And they use them. I am professionally chagrined."

"But apparently they can't fight as well as the Gungans, so I don't know what they're doing with their lives."

"'But Padme gets a crack in her helmet! Anakin tries to use the force to keep water from dribbling in.' Good luck, you're up against another force: PSI. 'But the electric eels keep jostling him and he loses concentration!'"

"Okay, there's TWO SPECIES on Mon Calamari. How did they not check the bite marks and say, "The king was killed by a shark. A giant shark." What, do they not do marine biology? So he throws a grenade at him that doesn't explode. ON PURPOSE. Wait, where did he get explosives? Did he borrow them from the Gungans? Did Jar-Jar teach you how to fight??"

"'But he couldn't have done it without Captain Ackbar,' -- who didn't do much -- 'the Jedi,' -- who also didn't do much -- 'and the Gungans' -- who did basically everything!"

Upon which Meg asked for something, possibly another book. "No, Daddy just finished reading you a book with more commentary--"
"Than text," I added helpfully.
"No," Jonathan said, "I was going to say more commentary than you get usually."

Technically happy

Lilacs. In macro.

Awhile back, a family at church was getting rid of their old DSLR camera and they gave it, well, to ME. I was thrilled because it's much nicer than my point-and-shoot, and I've spent the last couple of months trying to get it up and running. It takes an XD card, which used to be more common than it is now, but it didn't come with an XD card, so I actually had to order one.

Today it came! Oh joy of joys! I put Kate down for her afternoon nap and played with my new toy. It's pretty cool. :-)

The last piece still missing is the USB download cable for the camera. Considering just how many cables we have in the house, I was thinking we might have a spare. I dug through the boxes in the basement, and none of them were quite the right size - it's one of the mid-sized USB ends, smaller than a normal USB plug but not the teensy one, and also not the one with stepped sides. (We have lots of that kind.) It's the one with angled-in sides. I know we used to have one like this because I remember the drama about angled vs. stepped before, but we must have gotten rid of it when we got rid of that tech -- you know, probably it was for one of my old cameras that took an XD card, too, which I thriftily recycled because I refuse to keep deceased cameras lying around. Just NO.

(Meg, yesterday: "What does deceased mean?"
Me: "Dead. Where did you hear that word?"
Meg: "Dad used it to describe an insect outside.")

I found something much better in the basement than a USB cable. I found a multi-card reader.

It reads XD, SD, and micro-SD cards, and a couple of other types, too. I didn't even know we had a multi-card reader. This is super fabulous because my DSLR uses XD, my point-and-shoot uses SD, and my cell phone camera uses micro-SD. I can leave the multi-adapter plugged in to my computer all the time, and download whatever camera I happened to use, and not have to hunt for cords at all. I feel like God sent me such a great present.

Potted plants

"That planter is EVIL. It drips rust all over," I told Jonathan. Emphatically.
"As you have expressed before."
"And I will KEEP expressing it until I do something about it!"

Destiny

Meg: "Here's the loose thread I was telling you about."
Me: "Is that like the loose thread of destiny?"
Meg: "Yeah."

Surprised by unicorns

I keep forgetting we even have a unicorn. It's much less common than dragons, around here. Twice now in the last two days Jonathan has totally boggled me - I was concentrating on other things and suddenly, bam! A unicorn enters the conversation!

Jonathan to Meg: "Go. Go quickly. Without unicorns."

Jonathan: "Gahh. I just tripped on a unicorn."

It's not even a whole unicorn. It's a stick unicorn, like a stick horse. And it has felt leaves in its mane. We got it from Ikea.

All the great stories, part B

So here's the lineup. Vader came first, and he's sitting back there, all caped and Vaderly. Luke is kind of falling over, going, "Awkward!" Hawkeye has his elbows out to maximize personal space. "Not too close, bro." And Frodo's down there at the end, going all, "I'm really happy to be over here far away from Vader. I'd scoot further, but there's a sword in my way."

Shakespeare is standing at the end looking supercilious. I don't know why he won't sit, either. Probably his pantaloons get in the way.

All the great stories

We have an eclectic group of action figures, which is my own fault. But it makes me extremely happy when Meg plays with them all together.

"Okay, Vader comes first cause he's the lord. Then comes his son Luke, and then Hawkeye, 'cause he's Luke's friend. Then Frodo. Then comes the gear. Shakespeare, you know where he's gonna stand? At the end! How come this Shakespeare doesn't sit down?" Meg

Overheard at our house:

"Where's the Phantom Tollbooth? It was hiding under Tim Keller!" Jonathan