Category: Family & Home

Came home to one of Miles’ excellent “projects” tonight. His description:

“The ghost took the princess’ hat and then she waked up in the morning and she was going to feed her cat but she had no cat because the ghost took it and he took it to a blue mountain and then all the knights hurried to the mountain and then they climbed up it and this knight stabbed the ghost and then one of the ghosts put the kitty in his hat and the kitty had arrived in his hat to the princess’ home and then they all had a celebration for saving her cat.”

Flickr set

Miles:

If King Kong was as big as a crystal, he would use an ant for a telephone and his best friend would be a banana slug and a beetle and a ant and he would use a banana slug for a car and he would be able to carry a ant and he would read a banana slug.

Amy and Miles at the nursery, picking up some plants. Miles picked out one of his own to grow. An attendant putting a bag of soil into our car: “Should I put something down first?” Amy: “No, it’s OK, just throw it in – the rubber mat takes care of the dirt.” Miles, hearing this, takes a step back, cocks his arm, and throws his young plant into the back of the car from six feet away.

Walked into Miles’ play area this morning and found a big aquamarine rectangle scribbled in marking pen on the bamboo rug. And an aquamarine ghost drawn on his play table. Uh-oh. But where is Miles? Door to his room closed, a sign. Open it and find him sitting on his bed, evidence grasped firmly in hand. A big fat aquamarine polka dot scribbled on his bedspread. Aquamarine smudges all over his hands, neck, pants and shirt. “Miles, we need to talk about something.” He comes out to the play area and tells us “This isn’t really naughty Daddy, because see, it’s an invention for measuring your feet, like at the shoe store, see?” And he plops his foot down over the rectangle to show me that it fits, so proud. No need recounting the rest of our conversation here.

Spent the morning with Oxy-Clean and Murphy’s Oil Soap, scrubbing. Fortunately kids’ markers do come off with good detergent and a lot of elbow grease.

Miles: Daddy, did you know that knights are brave and strong?

Me: Yes, I did know that.

Miles: Yes, but the most important thing is that knights are borrriiiinnnng.

Me: Where did you hear that knights are boring?

Miles: I heard a dragon say it.

A few minutes later he started bring me O’Reilly books (one on bash and another on XML) and asking me to read them to him. Strangely, he didn’t become bored immediately. Then we tried out a few bash commands. Miles can now do arrow-up, and can cat the root crontab and can type du -h all by himself. I told him he was a Unix Weenie and he went running around the house singing gleefully: “I’m a Unix Weenie! I’m a Unix Weenie!”

We’re engaged in pitched battle with a double invasion — raccoons and gophers. Discovered last weekend that the roof of our metal shed was blanketed in raccoon crap, though we have garden hose fights with them a couple times a week now.

As for the gophers, we heard recently that, as vegetarians, they hate the smell of meat, as well as that of feces. So stuffed cat poop and old hamburger into some of their holes. The technique has been amazingly effective (more so than the vibrating gopher stakes we’ve traditionally used), but the neighbors look at us funny. And we’re still seeing some new evidence of their presence. I had thought Amy felt squeamish about the idea of killing them, but that “delicate flower” of mine is full of surprises. From an email I got from her yesterday:

I saw the ground moving in the backyard today, something pulling on the grass from down below. Gophers. First, I clobbered the thing with shovel when the ground moved, but it came up again in a new spot, so the second time, I stabbed it with a pitchfork, and the pitchfork went right into the ground! I think I may have killed it. A very Bill Murray moment for me, minus the explosives.

Maybe nuclear deterrents aren’t off the list after all.

Attended a camp-out with our pre-school a couple weekends ago – Miles’ first night in a tent, marshmallow roasts, hikes, lovely time. Bedtime was interesting — watching and hearing other families’ bedtime rituals in nearby tents. One little guy was melting down for one of those unfathomable reasons only other three-year-olds could possibly understand, and I overheard his father talking him down:

“Hey. Life is easy.”

It struck me as the most elegant, understandable introduction to The Tao you could possibly give a child.