Spring

Once there was a snowman...

In the sun, he melted...

It was always broccoli for me

Caleb: I want a cookie.
Neesha: You can have a cookie after you eat your pizza.

In our defense, we realize how bad this sounds [is].

mw

Laptop + water = humility

Saturday afternoon. Neesha is finishing up dinner for a party that is supposed to begin in the next hour or so. I'm in charge of making sure the kids don't climb into the oven when it is open. Or closed. To that end, The Boy is playing with his cars on the counter, The Queen is sitting in her Bumbo throne next to him, and I'm sitting between the two. To my side is the open laptop, deliberately placed out of The Queen's reach. Neesha asks me to bring something upstairs from our cold storage. I set down a glass of water between The Queen and the laptop, pick up The Boy (he has an abnormal fascination with our cold storage, despite all I've told him about the monsters and what they do to little boys' toy cars) and head downstairs.

When I get to the basement I hear Neesha yell. My first thought is that she has fallen into the oven, despite all the training films. I run upstairs to see her holding the laptop over the counter, water raining from the keyboard. My glass is laying on the counter at the foot of the Bumbo, conspicuously empty. The Queen, brow furrowed in curiosity, is watching her mother frantically trying to dry the laptop with some paper towels.

I understand that water and laptops do not play well together, so I started to think about all the critical content we stood to lose.

• A talk on humility Neesha had spent two weeks preparing for the following day
• All of our finances
  
• Eight years worth of personal study
  
• 75GB of music
• Eight years of pictures
• The next great American novel
• Conclusive evidence of the government's culpability in the cattle mutilations of the 1950s and their covering up Mothman
  

We quickly turned off the laptop, tipped it upside down so the water could drain out through the keyboard, and left it that way for the length of the dinner party. That night, we turned it on and everything worked just fine, except we lost the novel (Melville and Hemingway never had to work under these deplorable conditions) and the conspiracy theory (I now suspect The Queen of being a government agent, and probably a Republican). We breathed easier and learned that we have to think tactically to at least two levels when keeping objects out of The Queen's Radius of Destruction.

Monday night. I sit down in the same chair at the counter after dinner. The Boy is playing with his cars on the counter. Next to him, The Queen is sitting in her Bumbo throne. To my side is the open laptop, deliberately placed out of The Queen's reach. I set a glass of milk down in front of me, coincidentally between The Queen and the laptop, unaware that she is carefully watching. The moment I let go of the glass, she lunges for it, tipping it toward the laptop.

Gratefully, she did not bring her A game. The glass teeters momentarily before settling upright on the counter. I move the glass before she can lunge again, having just learned that I need to think tactically to at least two levels when keeping objects out of the The Queen's Radius of Destruction.

mw

Silly question, silly answer.

Me: If you were a ballpark, what would your name be?
Caleb: I would be Fillmore.

How on topic was your Family Home Evening?

mw

Leo Kottke he is not, but neither am I

Tonight we had one of those random, wonderful moments that you try to hold on to because, despite how silly you know it was, it was great and you know it will never happen again. It’s the kind of thing that can only happen when your son is at a certain age. He's young enough to think playing with daddy while mommy is gone is cool, uninhibited enough to try new things without being self-conscious, and old enough to learn how to play air guitar.

mw

Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

With Prince Caspian, the sequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, director Andrew Adamson takes C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia in a darker direction with, ironically, a greater sense of humor. The result is a film that is more morally nuanced and that much more engaging than its predecessor.

A year has passed in the lives of the Pevensie children since their return to England. However, more than 1,300 years have passed in Narnia, none of them good. Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) left Narnia shortly after the Pevensie's, and the human Telmarines have waged a war against Narnia's magical inhabitants, driving them close to extinction. The Pevensies are summoned back to Narnia by Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), and together they fight against the evil Lord Miraz (Sergio Castellito) to restore the Narnians to their rightful society, Caspian to his father's throne, and Narnia to civility.

The time span between the two movies lays a solid groundwork for the sequel. Since the first movie had a happy ending with all the loose ends tied up, it would have been unfortunate to attempt a "let's pick up directly where the last film left off" sequel (admittedly, this has more to do with Lewis' quality as a writer as opposed to Disney/Walden's abilities as movie makers). In fact, this convention allowed the storyline to introduce a greater sense of danger surrounding the film's heroes than existed in the first book, vesting the audience deeper into their adventure.

The performances delivered by the leading characters are improved from the first movie, but only Castellitto's portrayal of Lord Miraz deserves a 'good' rating. His menace is palpable, his ascent to power believable (think Claudius from Hamlet), and his presence exudes corrupt aristocracy.

While its darker tone and improved performances lend credibility and urgency to the story, the forced Disney/Walden-style pandering makes for a rather schizophrenic experience. The movie moves from scenes of children playing with talking animals to themes of assassination, fratricide, and war freely and the 143 minute run time simply isn't long enough to explore the juxtaposition thoroughly. Because of this, the movie often has the feel of a child attempting to find a seat at the grown-ups table.

Rating:

• Buy it now
• Worth $10 at Costco
• Happy we rented it, but also happy we only rented it
  
• No good at any price
• That numb feeling at the top of your head? That's your cerebral cortex closing up shop

m&n

Crusts

In an attempt to not waste food, my grandpa used to tell me that eating my crusts would make my hair shiny (I usually preferred to go without shiny hair). I've never known a child who did like to eat the crusts of a sandwich.

I'm all about not wasting food (now that I'm a responsible grown up and now that I do eat my crusts -- even though it appears to have had no effect on my hair), so what do I do with my little boy who eats ONLY his crusts?

Gyms crack me up

Since their industry typically falls under discretionary spending, gyms and fitness clubs must be hurting in this economy. This past week we received a notice from some local gym offering us a $0 initiation fee with only an $80 processing fee and a $40 activation fee. Those sort of savings make it an attractive deal, to be sure, but I think I'll hold out for the $0 initiation fee, $0 processing fee, $0 activation fee, with only a $120 we're-hoping-you-can't-do-the-math fee.

mw