Friday night kinda got screwed up for me. I had decided I wanted to see City of Ember with the boy. I was kind of leary of this decision, but there was nothing else on for a kid here other than High School Musical 3, which I absolutely did not want to see at all. Going back as far as Grease
Yup, High School Musical 3
When I got home, I was welcomed by a scene something like this:
Taking the boy to see High School Musical 3 didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
School teaches children many wonderful things. Sometimes, however, they teach small impressionable children things that parents really don’t need them to know. In this case, that pumpkin pie comes from real live pumpkins. This caused me issues.
Moonlet came home from school with a tiny pumpkin they got to pick out of a local pumpkin patch. He informed me it was too little to be a jack o’lantern, we would make a pumpkin pie. No problem for the average person maybe. However, I am quite handicapped in a kitchen environment. This caused me anguish. I couldn’t let the boy down. But, I was quite certain I could not make a pumpkin pie from scratch. So, I browsed the internet for a very simple “Pumpkin Pie for Dummies”. It doesn’t exist. The reason it doesn’t exist is there are about 25 steps to making a pumpkin pie. I have the patience for two. So, in my usual way, I came up with a bad plan.
We executed step one. That involved cutting the pumpkin in half. We did this. We then gutted the innards, which was quite fun for Moonlet. We then placed the two halves in a large pot to let it prepare. We then left. We went to the same local pumpkin patch and rode tractor rides, ran through the forest, watched them shoot pumpkins about a half mile out of a punkin chuckin machine. We had all kinds of fun. Figuring he was worn out, but realizing I was for sure, we left. On the way home we stopped by the grocery store to get “some stuff”. That stuff was a pumpkin pie. I sent him to the Halloween stuff to get some lights and I hid the pie. When we got home, he chose to hang out in the van to watch a movie. I went inside and stuck that pie in the oven and tossed all the stuff we had done in the morning. A little while later he came in and asked about fixing the pie. I told him it was about done. He checked out the oven and sure enough there was a pumpkin pie “almost finished”. He was so pleased with this he took a picture of it:
As I type this, he is downstairs eating that pumpkin pie that he is so proud of.
Moonlet started kindergarten this year. I was kinda worried that he would suddenly become retarded or something. Very quickly my concerns were soothed. He spells constantly now. I mean, as in non-stop, all-day. Nothing is beyond spelling. When there is nothing to spell, we make up words and spell them. This has even spilled over into bigger issues in the world.
Younger people are lower-case, then, they become upper-case.
I am SO PROUD!
Moonlet and I went to see an Elvis impersonator for an American Cancer Society fundraiser last night. This guy was a blast. Looked kinda like Elvis, sounded a LOT like Elvis, and bantered very well with the audience. Totally enraptured by the presentation, my boy decided to park right in front of the stage. “Elvis” asked him his name pretty close to the beginning of the show, and then would occasionally ask him if he liked a particular song for the rest of the evening. It was a hoot. Given the advent of the Iphone camera having absolutely no settings whatsoever or a flash, it makes for some unusual effects. I really liked this one:
We went to see The Dark Knight last night. I’ll tell you what. I’ve not been a fan of the Batman movie series at all. I’ve seen most of them, but even with all the big booms and fights, they bore me. Everything’s grey, everyone talks in monotone, everthing’s serious. Now, I grew up with the Adam West Batman, so I liked the campy Batman a lot more. Which I think is a big part of the appeal of Heath Ledger’s Joker. For folks like me, he’s the teaser that maybe, just maybe, this comic book encarnation of Batman might just go back to what WE loved most. I doubt that will happen, but using Mike Myers as the next Batman should be an idea. My commission rate is minimal.
The movies itself is a roller-coaster ride that I will admit took a lot more turns than I expected. All but one of the turns made sense and kept the movie moving at an almost chaotic pace. The characters that survive evolve in ways you see coming ( especially Aaron Eckhart’s ), and some you don’t. In other words, there is nothing predictable about the end of the movie. It’s an excellent plot sans one jumping of the shark that kind of let me down because the rest of the plot was so well developed.
We took our five year old boy with us given our experience with previous Batman movies. That really wasn’t a good idea for the most part. Now, it didn’t really have anyhing that would leave him scarred for life, but it did make me as a parent squirm a little bit. That’s a distraction I don’t like to have to deal with when I watch a movie. It’s rated PG-13, I suggest following that advice. ( At the very least, PG-10 or so. )
Bottom line, I was pleasantly surprised how much I did enjoy The Dark Knight. It is hugely better than the previous installments. All thumbs up on this one!
Yesterday Moonlet reached an important milestone in my book. Always loving the water, it was sort of a key point to me that he learn how to swim and enjoy the water as much as I have. For several years we took all the baby steps to getting there. Playing in baby pools, playing in wave pools, throwing him in the lake ( hush y’all, he had a life jacket on ). He had been swimming under water in very shallow pools, but pretty much refused to get in deep water. So, yesterday we decided to go hang out with some friends, who have a pool. Imagine my shock and awe when we got there, he ran straight to the diving board and did this:
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Now, it’s not so much that he did it once or so, he did this non-stop for hours. He jumped off the board, he swam under water, he even swam above water a little. He just basically did everything there was to do.
Now today, my back is hurting so bad I can’t hardly stand up. However, I am one proud papa!
I guess from having my first kid at a somewhat advanced age, therefore knowing that as soon as possible, I’ll need him carting me around, I started teaching him how to drive appropriate transportation at probably too young of an age. First it was small boats, then it was small aircraft. Today, we moved on to something a little bigger:
A GP model deisel train. It went pretty well I thought:
We hooked up to about 400 tons of sand and moved it to a different track to be picked up by a “real” train. I think he’s ready for about anything but the highway!
Last night, the step-Moon girl couldn’t eat food at the dinner table without noise. So, she turned on the tv to a channel that was showing nothing anyone wanted to watch and proceeded to consume her meal. After eating, she did what all teens do, got up and left. I did as well as Moonlet and me decided to play loud music for a while. After jamming for thirty minutes or so, I decided I needed a breather and hid out on my computer, which has its own room. After just a little bit, like thirty minutes or so, I heard this horrid screaming coming from the living room. So, I had to check it out. Well, when I got there, my five year old boy, thanks to the total neglect and abject carelessness of the step-Moon, was perched comfortably on the couch with some munchies taking in Snakes on a Plane 
“I want to see it again.”
