Great Moments in Literature

To steal an idea from a blogging friend, I present Great Moments in Literature, children's category.

From the book, If You Were Kermit:

"Hi! I'm Kermit the Frog, and I enjoy being me. Can you imagine what it's like to be me?

To begin with, if you were me, you would be green. This means sometimes you might be mistaken for a large pickle."

(At which point Kermit points to a diagram of him and a pickle, where he clearly is the same color. Luckily, the drawings are labeled Frog and Pickle, or I might have continued to be confused.)

Now, I just have to ask, where was this line in It's Not Easy Being Green? Did the pickle lobby stifle such slander?! One can't help but wonder...

All About Owen

So, a couple weeks back, Owen was the "special person of the week" in his class. And here is the questionnaire that we filled out, to be displayed with his photos, artwork and such. I'll call it, Snapshot of Owen at Age Almost 5.

My favorite color is: red.
My favorite book is: The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. (And yes, that's the title of one book.)
My favorite TV program is: SpongeBob Squarepants.
My favorite sport is: baseball.
When I grow up, I want to be: work on a computer. (His original answer was to work at McDonald's, but I talked him out of it by explaining he could do that when he's a teenager before he grows up. He seemed disappointed.)
I'm special because: I can count to 100, I can jump really high and I have red hair.
The place I'd most like to visit is: home. (OK, that one tugged at my heartstrings.)
My favorite food is: macaroni and cheese.
One thing I really want to learn is: how to make rainbows.
The best thing about me is: I know my numbers.
The people in my family are: Mommy, Daddy and Nora.
I have a pet: two cats.
My best friend is: Matthew (another heartstring-tugger...his first answer was Mommy.)
The person I most admire is: Daddy.
My favorite subject in school is: learning letters.

So there you have it, a peek into the psyche of Owen, the almost 5-year-old. A couple of these questions were a little above him, I think. I mean, how many of us could quickly answer the question, "I'm special because..."? So, there was a little baiting involved for those.

A Thousand Words

Yes, I was at that Packers game on Saturday. The playoff one, where the Packers trounced their opponents, and it snowed...a lot. But don't take my delay in writing about it as a lack of enthusiasm. I've just been racking my brain to come up with a way to describe the experience that would do it justice.

You've probably heard the "snow globe" comparison by now. And it was, I suppose, Iike being in a snow globe that had just been shaken up (minus the motion sickness, thank goodness). So I wanted to find a different way to describe it -- you know, since I'm in the writing profession and all. What I've come up with so far is this:

Remember how in Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon jumps to hyperspace, the stars would move toward you against the blackness of space? Well, the snow was kinda like that. Looking up into it, the flakes looked like thousands of little stars against the dark sky. But instead of becoming a faster-than-light blur, they slowly ambled down. And the sky was just full of 'em. A single streetlight does a fair job accentuating falling snowflakes; a stadium's worth of lights makes the mass affect absolutely incredible.

Now, you may ask, where are the photos of said amazing event? Well, back in Plover, in our memory card that we accidentally left in my parents' photo printer. Although really, I think it was one of those things where the visuals are only part of it. The other part was the feeling in the air. It was a magical game, and everyone there knew it. That all became clear sometime during the third quarter.

By then, the Packers were well ahead, so everyone in the crowd was feeling good. It had been snowing steady for awhile, but midway through the third quarter, the sky just opened up and the snow started coming in huge flakes and FAST. You could no longer see the other side of the stadium and the field was a blur of white. It was piling up on people's shoulders and hats. And the towel that was supposed to be keeping my seat dry while I stood up was covered in wet snow. But in the middle of it all, everyone in the stands was just looking around themselves and grinning. Those can't-help-yourself kind of grins. Those I-can't-believe-I'm-here sort of grins. And I was grinning, too. I didn't even mind that much when the cheering fan in front of me knocked some of my ice-cold Guinness down my neck (and on a side note, it's the only time I've ever had my beer get colder in the cup).

One of my favorite things about football is that they play in mud, snow, freezing rain, you name it, and I always thought those games looked so cool. Well, Saturday, I got to experience one of those games firsthand, and it was perfect, just perfect.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

I thought I'd share a scene from our house tonight.

I walked past our playroom just now and here is what I saw:

Owen was playing Wii...while standing on a step stool. And he wasn't even playing a game, he's editing his sister's "person" and giggling ("look at how fat she is, mommy!")
Nora, wearing one of her brother's shirts around her waist (like she pulled the neck over her head and kept right on going), was trying on a Santa hat, pulling it over her eyes and then stumbling around.

Oh, and now she's also clomping around in her winter boots.

The joys.

Fight the Power

My daughter's fight for independence has begun.

We hear a lot of "noooo" or "mine" or "I, I, I" these days. All of which, I believe, loosely translate to "stop what you are doing, parental figure, and hand over that shoe, diaper, knife or whatever else it is that you a trying in vain to help me with."

Although I'm not a fan of fighting her over trying to get dressed, because really, that struggle just results in a process that takes three. times. longer. AND is accompanied by delightful kicking and screaming. But, I sometimes wonder if I regard her assertions of independence differently than I did with Owen. Because while witnessing these outbursts, part of me secretly thinks, you go, girl.

Now, maybe this is also because she's my second...and this whole attitude thing is just starting...or maybe even because I had a boy first, but I feel much more calm about her trying to do things for herself, because, well, I want her to grow into an independent-minded woman. It also helps that she is -- so far -- easily redirected to forget, for instance, that she really, really wanted to eat that purple marker. (Oh ya, another fun part about the second child -- you can't keep things like markers under wraps until they're old enough. If big brother has them, so does little sister. Thank you to the nice people at Crayola for washable markers.)

And, with that, I'll sign off with a photo from earlier this evening. Nora found and inexpensive alternative to lipstick while Jon and I were talking in the other room. Pretty good at staying within the lines, don't you think?

Then One Foggy Winter Day

Since it was 40-some degrees out today (and the Packers weren't playing), we decided to load the kids up for a trip to the zoo.

It was fun to be there on an off-season day. Some of the animals were out in the weather -- elephants, zebras, camels, and, not surprisingly, the polar bear -- while the rest we had to go indoors to see. And, on a side note, I gotta tell ya, I KNOW those lions and cheetahs can't get out, but when they're pacing on the other side of a 1-inch piece of glass from where your son has his face pressed, I still get a little nervous and just want to pack up and get out of there. I guess that's one more thing to add to my list of irrational fears, right next to getting trapped in a vehicle underwater.

Anyway, part of the reason we went, other than a little cabin fever, was to have something interesting to write about for Owen's class book. You see, this was his weekend with Fuzzy Bear, a black, stuffed bear that each child in his class takes home for a few days and then writes and shows pictures of what they did in the scrapbook that travels with the bear. Since I dreaded documenting our typical weekend activities -- you know, trips to the grocery store, watching SpongeBob, eating lunch, not that thrilling -- I thought a zoo trip would be fun. And hey, you don't waste a foggy January day in Wisconsin by spending it entirely indoors.

One of the highlights of our zoo trips usually is a train ride, but since the train doesn't run in the winter, Owen discovered a suitable alternative -- playing on the train tracks. He does love his "cross-its." Nora, on the other hand, amassed a handful of wet leaves.

Then we came home and commenced with the boring stuff.