Who Is That Unmasked Man?

And why are Larkin and Finn kissing him?

Last week, Emile was called down to Irvine for one of his very occasional work trips. Apparently, one of his co-workers was trying to convince him to shave off his beard. When he offered $10 as motivation Emile demured, pointing out that Larkin and Finn had already been asked if they wanted to see what Emile looked like without a beard and declined. So co-worker proposed to give the kids the $10. Emile called us to see what they thought. Larkin and Finn decided that, as long as they could split the reward money, the plan was a go.

Amusingly, when we dropped Emile off at the airport, Larkin had mused that if Emile returned with no beard we might not recognize him.

24 hours after his return, we all still do a bit of a double-take when looking at him (as does he when presented with a reflective surface). The general consensus is that we are all ready for the beard to come back. Here is the 5-second-later follow-up to the above photo:

Not big fans of the stubble.

A Very Harry Halloween

We recently finished our mad dash through the Harry Potter series of books. I think it took about 3 months to read all seven. Phew. We watched the associated movie as we completed each book. The movies would have absolutely been too scary for Finn (and maybe Larkin), but because he knew what was going to happen it was not a problem.

I was not expecting the experience to be a lesson in literary critique and film analysis, but it did seem to work out that way. Every movie was paused and discussed exhaustively, comparing the movie's treatment to the book form and arguing the relative merits of each. I was amazed at the details Larkin and Finn remembered as we watched the movies... there were countless times that I was thinking, "wow, they really followed the book exactly in this section" and one of them would point out a subtle difference in the phrasing of a particular piece of dialogue.

Naturally, when Halloween rolled around, Finn decided to dress up as Harry Potter and Larkin as Hermione. I attempted to dress as the strict professor McGonagall, but Larkin informed me that even with a bun and cloak I failed in the stern department.

Emile figured he was already a pretty hairy potter so he didn't need to dress up at all.

In related news, our local co-op carried Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer this summer (very similar to cream soda). Pretty much as close as you can get to the Harry Potter Butterbeer without infringing on copyright issues. Finn, who normally doesn't like carbonated beverages, drank a whole bottle rather quickly, although he decided halfway through that it was actually the other Harry Potter beverage: Fire Whiskey.

Finn had been talking about wanting to pierce his ears for several months, so just before Halloween we took him to the good ol' Piercing Pagoda at the mall. He chose dolphins jumping over sparkly stones. After getting the first one done, he decided that one earring would be enough for now. A few hours later he was ready to turn around and get the other one done, but we haven't actually gone back yet. He had a brief moment of panic when he realized that Harry Potter didn't have a pierced ear, but we convinced him that since earrings were never mentioned in the books in any capacity it was entirely possible that he did. Otherwise, he has been *thrilled* with his new accessory. So now, in the spirit of '80s punk:

Larkin was super excited to design and carve a jack-o-lantern All By Herself this year. She was nervous about carving any curves, so she created an all-straight lines design. Finn designed his own and drew the lines on the pumpkin, but wanted me to make the actual cuts. Larkin's is on the left, Finn's on the right:

Their costumes were a success, although they heard a lot of things like "Hey! It's Harry Potter! And... that girl one!" One house had a party of teenage girls who were big Harry Potter fans and they all had to come out and hug Finn and Larkin. We left to pointed fingers and shouts of "Expelliarmus!" and "Avada Kedavra!"

All that, AND I got to stick my head in their bags of candy and inhale the scent of Halloweens past. Aaaaah, bliss.

Wyoming

This is a long overdue post on our trip to Wyoming this August, courtesy of the last of Jim's frequent flier miles. The trip was inspired by one of the best Dinosaur museums in North America, but Larkin and Finn were at least as excited about their first plane trip. With three flights on the way there and two on the way home, I'd say that cup was pretty well filled.

Day one was all about dinosaurs. Here is Finn, reverently stroking *real* dinosaur eggs:

I was quite impressed by how many species Larkin and Finn could accurately identify based on skeletons. We divided to conquer the museum so unfortunately I have more pictures of Finn. Another favorite of his was the nest of baby Maiasauras:

We had a bit of a disappointment when we discovered that we would not be able to participate in a dig (especially since I had called to make sure our timing would correspond with one of their dig programs!), but we were able to go on a tour of one of their active dig sites. We got to see half exposed bones and some footprints. Here are Emile and the kids at the dig site, up close and personal with a bone that we were allowed to paw because it had been compromised somehow.

The town we stayed in was called Thermopolis. Yes, there were hot springs. Day two was mainly hot springs, water slides and ice cream, plus a short decompression period for Finn and I in our cabin. After dinner, we took a half hour drive through the high prairie sagebrush that is most of Wyoming to a site with petroglyphs. It turned out we arrived after hours but the kind staff let us in for a low donation of $10 and we locked the gate behind us when we left. The petroglyphs were super cool. We made up some of our own names. Man walking a stone:

Surprised dog:

Upside-down demonic gnome:

Sledding rabbits:

Ancient ancestor of Mr. Peanut, and possibly Spongebob:

On our drive back to the highway from the petroglyph site, we counted 79 antelope.

Day three was a leisurely drive back to the airport, stopping for a long swim at a high desert reservoir.

We also stopped to see "Hell's Half Acre," Wyoming's self-proclaimed answer to the Grand Canyon. While I thought that claim was a little too grand, there were some pretty interesting rock formations and colors.

I think Larkin and Finn were most impressed by eating out for Every Meal and the most anticipated Plane Rides, but we all definitely learned a lot and were exposed to some new and interesting country. Fun stuff.

Bead Bug Larkin's Grand Opening

Larkin's Etsy shop is now active at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BeadBugLarkin

She's always making more creatures, so I'm sure the listings will change regularly. She's excited to create a listing for custom critters which will allow customers to choose their own combination of bead colors.

Entrepreneurial Drive

One day last year, I innocently brought home a book from the Book Exchange on how to make tiny animals out of very fine gauge wire and seed beads. Larkin was all over it. She has also been very interested in the idea of making her own money (it's clearly a hardship to be dependent on such unreliable adults).

Talent has an outdoor market every Friday over the summer at which kids are allowed to peddle their goods without paying the usual vendor fee. We didn't have it together until the last market of the summer, but she set out that evening with these beauties and some serious determination to make sales.

In a few short hours she returned home a very satisfying $54 richer after having sold most of them. Here she is chatting with one of her first potential customers:

Apparently, sales picked up considerably once she abandoned her stationary location and instead prowled the crowd on foot, trolling for hapless jewelry-less marks.

While we are not yet planning Emile's retirement, we are setting up an Etsy storefront for Larkin which she is very excited about. Should her enthusiasm wane, it will be easy to take down listings, but I think as long as the money rolls in there will be quite a few bead creatures in our future.

After her initial success, Larkin took her wares to one other local crafty event and once again depleted her stores. On the agenda for this week is a trip to the bank to open a bank account... this is necessary for opening an Etsy account, but Larkin also now has more cash than she is comfortable carrying around in her money purse.

More photos of Larkin's creations are on her Picasa Web site.

Grammar Police

Emile just got me in trouble for correcting Finn's grammar. Finn and I were playing Uno and he said, "I ain't have anything." I explained that the proper construction was, "I ain't got nothin'."

Defending The Perimeter

Larkin and Finn recently watched some math lessons, cleverly disguised as the PBS cartoon CyberChase. They were *really* fascinated by the distinction between perimeter and area and were immediately inspired to break out the ol' blocks.

They counted out 9 square blocks to play with and it didn't take long for them to figure out that the optimum configuration for minimum perimeter with their fixed number of blocks was a square:

They quickly made the leap to maximum perimeter being a straight line:

I then totally blew their math-addled minds by claiming that the perimeter of a stair-case was the same as the line:

They both predicted, quite definitively, that the staircase would have a perimeter somewhere between the minimum and maximum and were shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when they counted the edges to reveal that my claim was true. I was declared a Math Fiend when I convinced them that perimeter was determined solely by the number of shared sides so they could make any crazy pattern as long as they kept that constant. This was proven, rather exhaustively, by construction.

Finn's Renaissance

In the last three months, Finn has developed an intense interest in all things artistic. This is a marked change since previously he never picked up a pen or pencil unless it was to write his name on a card or do a dot-to-dot... he has never been interested in drawing, writing, coloring, etc. He would occasionally paint, but always abstract designs and he would lose interest after a few minutes.

It all started when, totally out of the blue, he brought me this:

Yes, that's me. He was pleased as punch with his creation and we stood admiring it for several minutes before he looked suddenly alarmed, grabbed it, and ran off with a cry of "You need an Emile!"

Phew. much better. Note we're holding hands. Cuz we like each other. Once again, panic soon ensued with this result:

Yep, Finn added himself to the line-up. It wasn't long before his first family portrait was complete:

I like Larkin's long hair. Okay, hairs. There are two.

Finn started writing the same day. Mainly, he writes love notes. Larkin had a note reading, "I [heart] U Larkin" taped to the wall over her bed for a very long time. Before my kayaking trip in Alaska, he hung this up so he wouldn't forget me:

He was particularly proud of my fuzzy red tummy. I have found love notes taped all over the house and tripped over them written on empty toilet paper tubes.

All of a sudden, this kid who loved video games and picture books and never put pen to paper had to have drawing instruments nearby At All Times. His first response when checking out the 1,000-year-old petroglyphs in Wyoming? "I need pen and paper!" (More on Wyoming later, I hope.)

Larkin and I used to bribe and beg Finn to read long form books with us. His new favorite way to spend his time? Working on craft projects while listening to Harry Potter as long as my voice lasts. We're nearing the end of book 6... phew. He colors, cuts, draws, writes, beads, paints, sculpts for hours on end. This has been one wild ride of a developmental leap.

Larkin, meanwhile, is super pleased to have a crafty partner. News on the grand opening of her etsy shop soon!

Guess What We're Reading!

Larkin, on Tom Waits

Pausing her play when one of his songs came on: What an interesting voice. It sounds gruff and angry... and so serious. I love it!

She's heard him many times before... I'm not sure why this time made such an impression.

Dot to Descartes

Larkin and Finn have both very much enjoyed dot to dots in the past. Finn, especially, seemed to really like them, and (partly because they were the first thing to really inspire him to put pencil to paper) I printed out quite a few for him. However, once they had fully mastered the whole counting thing, connect the dots slowly lost its appeal. I did find a few really challenging ones (hundreds of small dots, different series with gaps you were supposed to leave disconnected, etc.) but we had eventually worn the interest out of the concept.

Then I remembered when I was introduced to the Cartesian coordinate system in junior high school Algebra. Several problem sets consisted of sets of points to plot that, when connected in the proper order, would form a picture. Clearly, this is the logical next step for kids who adore connect the dots!

With the help of some Facebook friends, I found a couple of websites that had the sort of thing I was after. One had some simple pictures, and the other let you enter your own secret message which it would encode into x,y-coordinates.

Finn LOVED this and sat for about an hour plotting out his secret message. He almost fell off his chair when he realized part of the message was his name (I may have neglected to mention that I encoded the message-- I think he assumed it was just a random print-out I found on the internet). He sometimes needed help remembering which dot he had drawn last so he knew where to draw the lines, but otherwise it was all him.

Yep, Jenny loves Finn. Deep stuff. Larkin enjoyed the exercise too, although hers was completed over several days rather than a single frenetic hour.  Discussions of positive and negative integers, not to mention math history and Descartes, were also had, although (and I'm not sure how) I think the conversation somehow morphed into a google search for images of crop circles.

I have yet to have my fantasy conversation with a random person on the street in which I get to say, "Why, yes, my five year old does enjoy plotting Cartesian coordinates."

Confucius Say

Yesterday's 5 hour power outage resulted in Chinese take-out. Larkin asked Emile to read the fortune from her cookie.

Emile: You will be rewarded for your excellent listening skills this week.
Larkin (totally *not* joking): What?

What's Up, Doc?

Larkin and Finn have been attending a series of doctor appointments with me (I'm having a wart removed from my heel... uncomfortable and gross, but nothing too dire). It's a family practice office and we often get placed in a room with a Disney theme.

Today, the nurse was chatting with the kids about Disney movies and characters. She asked them if they could name all the dwarves. Oh! how my heart swelled with pride when Finn started with, "Well, there's Oin, Gloin... Bifur, Bofur and Bombur..."

Bamboozled

Last week, Emile went down to San Francisco to attend one of Bamboo Bike Studio's bike building workshops. Look what he made!

He has definitely caught the bike building bug and has spent some quality time testing his highly scientific, sophisticated design innovations. Why, just this morning, I found this on the table:

Since he flew down for the workshop, he had to ship the bike home. You can imagine that those two bike-less days were quite tortuous.

This morning, the bike arrived! And guess what! It came in a Very Large Box! I bet you can guess what Larkin and Finn were most excited about. Here, they are both inside said box:

They asked us to tape up the lid to seal them in as they played games. As I walked by, I heard this exchange:

Finn: I spy with my little eye, something that is... black.
Larkin: Uh... the whole box?

Braaaaaaiiiins!

Totally without warning, my (previously noted, rather inept) treatment of the religious significance of holidays has come back to us. Once again, the best conversations happen in the car.

Finn: Easter is when some people believe Jesus came back to life after being persecuted to death, right?
Me (barely concealing a snort over "persecuted to death"): Right.
Finn: So... god's son is... a zombie?!

A Hard Grain's A-Gonna Fall...

Long ago in China, there lived an emperor who had a daughter that he loved above all else. When his daughter fell sick and seemed unlikely to recover, the emperor was inconsolable. He called upon all the healers and shamans in the land, but none of their tinctures or arcane rituals improved her condition.

As a last resort, the emperor had the wise old woman who lived in the hills brought in. The wise woman brought an herb from the mountains that was unfamiliar to the valley dwellers, and ground it into the sick girl's gruel every morning for a week. At the end of this time, it was clear that the girl's condition was improving and the wise woman packed her bags for the long trip back to her mountain home.

The emperor was beside himself with joy at his daughter's return to health and presented the wise woman with a large basket and invited her into the royal treasury to fill it with any precious metals or stones she wished.

The wise woman returned the basket, insisting that she had no use for such worldly riches. The emperor was unwilling to allow her to leave empty-handed and asked her what she thought would be a suitable reward.

The wise woman told him that what she could use more than anything else was a month of grain. He was to deliver a single grain of rice on the first day of the month, and each day thereafter would double the amount of grain delivered until the end of the month.

Now, the emperor was feeling very magnanimous after winning back both the life of his daughter and a small fortune in precious gems. He thought a few handfuls of rice was small thanks for all the wise woman had done, and declared that he would deliver grain through the end of the year, about four months away.

The wise woman smiled and nodded her silent assent before leaving the emperor's palace for her humble home in the hills.

The emperor kept his promise and on the sixth day delivered a scant quarter teaspoon full of rice to the wise old woman.

On the twelfth day, he delivered a scant cup of rice-- still not enough grain to feed the old woman for a single day.

On the eighteenth day, he delivered less than a gallon of rice, and was still feeling slightly guilty about his agreement with the old wise woman.

The next week, as he began loading horse-drawn carts with rice to deliver, he began to understand that he had underestimated the wise old woman. At the end of the month, the wise old woman's grain storage shed was over-flowing. She told the emperor on the last day of the month that she would not expect him to keep his word and continue payments until the end of the year if he agreed to fill her shed once a year for the remainder of her life.

The emperor readily agreed, and that is for the best since this is what would have happened had he continued:

[Many thanks to Jim for his project inspiration. We worked with long grain brown rice... I'd imagine variety could skew results significantly.]

On Splatter Art, Sneetches and Suicide

Before Christmas, we decided to make some wrapping paper. I spread out some butcher paper on the deck, got small jars of paints and old toothbrushes, and we engaged in some splendiferous splatter art. Here's our small test-canvas, used to see if we wanted to embark on a larger project:

Well, of course we did! Here is Finn demonstrating his Mad Ninja Paint Flinging Skillz:

This was the most excited Finn has been about an art project in a long time-- he spent at least an hour happily flinging paint. Larkin flung for quite a while, but then started drawing more distinct images, the numbers from 1 to 14, and made a splatter pattern around a leaf. Consensus is that the results were quite striking. I'm on a mission to find more physical art projects to work on with Finn.

Larkin's recent fascination with Zinn's U.S. history book (geared toward young teenagers) has led me to wonder a bit about how much the kids are actually absorbing from the various things we do with them. I know a lot of the language and concepts in the book are going over Larkin's head and doubtless she will get a lot more out of it if she chooses to read it again in a few years, but I'm often amazed at how much information is making a lasting impression.

A few days after reading Zinn's chapter on civil rights, Larkin and Finn and I were cuddled up on the couch with the good Dr. Seuss (whose political biases, I realize, are no more subtle than Zinn's... Really! We're not trying to brainwash our children!). We were reading a long-time favorite, The Sneetches (in which, in case it's been awhile for some of you, the star-bellied Sneetches are under the impression that they are superior to the Sneetches with no stars upon thars). A light bulb clearly went off for Larkin a few pages in: "Hey! This is just like when there was [insert word that should be segregation but had a few extra syllables] in our society!"

Another recent, very popular, topic of conversation has been suicide. I believe this started after reading about what happened to the native Americans when Columbus and his cronies showed up. There were some pretty gruesome stories about natives having their hands severed if they failed to show up with an acceptable amount of gold, and mothers killing themselves and their children rather than face persecution.

Heavy stuff, and it obviously made a big impression on Larkin. For some reason, these conversations always seem to come up in the car. She wants Emile and I to name all the famous suicides we can think of and tell her how they killed themselves and why. It's pretty disturbing, but we comply. If this fascination lasts, we'll probably have to find some relevant books or web sites. I can only imagine where that search might lead.

When we were on our way to a Christmas Eve/Birthday dinner, I did let Larkin know that Grandpa Don and Grandma Vicki probably wouldn't think that suicide was a suitable conversation over a festive meal. She was happy to postpone the discussion.

Roxy Ann

We've been having a spate of unseasonably warm, sunny weather. Yesterday, Larkin, Finn and I decided to hike Roxy Ann loop. They were pretty excited, partly because Roxy Ann is visible from our living room and they thought it was pretty cool to be able to just get up and go there.

It's a bit hard to figure out, but using Crazy Google Technology, I think we walked about 3.5 miles. I think that's about as far as the kids want to go at the moment, but I only piggybacked Finn a few times so I think it's a pretty reasonable limit to put on my future hike searches.

A big bonus of this particular hike is that there are LOTS of geocaches in the area. We managed to locate six during our outing-- which is some kind of record for us. This awesome old madrone had one hidden among its roots:

Naturally, we had to spend at least 20 minutes playing here before moving on.

Closer to the peak, we spotted a spectacular oak. The way it was positioned, the bank was falling away from its roots, leaving some exposed. Finn decided he needed to visit them.

It was quite a climb. Here's a shot of the tree and roots so you can better appreciate Finn's admiration:

Larkin and Finn were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the car-- but, of course, a couple of hours later you certainly couldn't tell by their energy levels that they'd done anything strenuous that day. I'm thrilled that the kids can manage longer walks these days... there are definitely more in our near future.

Let There Be Light!

One of our recent impulse purchases was a science kit on light. Larkin and Finn have loved doing the various experiments, including things like using a prism to separate sunlight into rainbows.

I always wonder how much they're absorbing (ha! light humor!) from these sorts of things, but I know something is getting through. An unsuspecting clerk at the grocery store asked Larkin what her favorite color was and Larkin replied, "Well, I don't really have a favorite color because I like so many, but if you're talking about light then I'd have to say white because it has all the colors of the rainbow in it."

Another big hit was coloring circles of paper with different colored crayons and attaching the disks to a small motor to see how they combined. So you take a disk like this:

And it becomes:

And one like this:

Becomes this:

They made lots of disks:

In other optical news, the recent lunar eclipse was visible out of the window at the top of our stairs. Emile managed to roust both kids from their sound early morning sleep and they sat and watched for about half an hour as the moon went from three quarters occluded to entirely gone and then waited long enough to make sure it would return.

The visuals are a little less spectacular on this one:

Larkin and Finn very excitedly made the eclipse connection to the "day of the black sun" in Avatar: The Last Airbender when the Fire Nation lost their power during a solar eclipse.

Culinary Adventures

Larkin has been very excited about cooking lately. She makes Emile and Finn sandwiches and loves baking. Finn fell in love with a stainless steel lunchbox set at the co-op and Larkin bought it for him for Christmas. She has since packed him several lunches for hikes. It's very sweet.

Larkin has recently helped with everything from peanut butter cookies:

To lasagna:

As a side note, I made a red sauce for the lasagna that was so yummy both Larkin and Finn ate a full bowl straight.

And, of course, she helped with the holiday chocolates:

Yeah, I have no delusions regarding why my family likes to visit at Christmas.

Meanwhile, Finn has been occasionally surprising me with his gastronomical requests. Up until recently, he has mostly chosen from options I present to him, but lately he has been coming up with his own, sometimes rather bizarre, food combinations. I wish I remembered more of his requests, but one was a cheese and hot dog sandwich. I mean, *just* cheese and hot dog-- no bread.

So far, he has eaten all of his odd requests.