How’s this for a Mother’s Day card – hand made by Jonah and with a heartfelt message inside. Nicely printed, I might add….his teacher told the kids in class to “use their best handwriting”. Here is what it says:
“Happy Mother’s Day Mommy. I like when you do the things I want . Love Jonah”
This kid has a future writing cards for Hallmark! 
Last night was our entree into the International Dinner Project (for more information on this awesome idea, check out this post from my friend Brendon… this whole thing was his idea). The first nation on our global culinary tour would be China.
After a little research, the boys opted for egg fried rice, chicken stir fry, and fortune cookies. Far and away, their favorite part was fortune cookies. While we were hanging out at Bubbie’s house, the kids wrote up a dozen or so fortunes. Later in the day, we worked together on the fortune cookie batter. The rest of the dinner prep fell to me and Susannah this time, though in future weeks, I’m sure the kids will help out with that part also.
So how did it go? Well, most importantly, they both ate the whole dinner. Mostly, anyway. Jonah petered out halfway through the chicken dish, but at least he tried it. Danny gave all three courses 5 stars. When asked to describe the chicken stir fry, Danny gave the unquestionably accurate description, “It’s brown and yummy Chinese food.”
Jonah gave the fried rice 5 stars, the chicken 4 stars, and the fortune cookie 5 stars.
Since the goal of the project is to get them to try new foods and to introduce them to new cuisines, I’d say we’re off to about the best start we could hope for. Thanks again, Brendon, for this awesome idea!
Just like big races have time trials, and the Olympics have qualifying events, the spelling bee at Jonah’s school has a “pre-test”. Only the top 3 kids from first grade get to participate in the school-wide Spelling Bee, which will be held in January. So yesterday the teacher gave all the kids 24 words – and Jonah won first place by spelling 20 correctly! The second and third place finishers correctly spelled 19 and 16 words, respectively. The list of words is attached. We are very proud of Jonah. If you need us, we’ll be in training for the next few weeks so we can take the 4th and 5th graders in the Spelling Bee in January!
It has been months since we have posted anything…I know, I’m sorry! We have been busy just keeping up with the kids. Anyway, here are a couple of funny recent exchanges.
While Jonah was getting into the car and looking around at all the miscellaneous stuff – toys, crayons, books, etc. – in the back seat, he says to me, “Mommy, your car is a mess!” I pointed out to him that none of the items were MINE, but then he says “well, it’s your car.”
After Danny was on my last nerve one night (doing who knows what – probably just not cooperating) I said to Ethan, “can you take over, I can’t deal with this anymore”. Ethan went in Danny’s room and tried to help but Danny started crying. Ethan asked him what was wrong and Danny said “I want mommy to deal with this.”
There is no winning with these little stinkers!
Those of you who know me know that I am definitely a “glass half empty” kind of person. I’ve even been called a “pessimist” – imagine that! Well, just like I didn’t fall far from the tree, neither did Jonah. There was a fly in the car the other day and Jonah said “I don’t like this fly…I wish he would leave!”. So I told him to roll down his window and the fly would probably fly out. He replied in a somewhat dejected tone, “no, another one will probably just fly in.” Yep, that’s my child.
My heart aches for non-nerd parents of nerd children. I don’t know how you’d manage.
Tonight, as Jonah was drifting off to sleep he asked the following:
1) At the end of Star Wars Episode 3, Luke is a baby. Why is he a grown up in already at the beginning of Episode 4?
2) At the end of Episode 6, why is Anakin’s “Force Ghost” a grown up, and not a kid, or an old man?
3) Did Yoda live on Dagobah before Episode 3?
4) If Darth Mail came back as a “Force Ghost”, would he be in one piece or two?
I was torn; I really needed him to get some sleep, but it was a really good discussion. I only felt qualified to answer because I’d spent my childhood (and adulthood, for that matter) considering these very questions, or similar ones. Like I said, I don’t know how the non-nerdy parents would navigate these waters.
Happy mom’s day to all the mothers out there! Hopefully you had a conversation with your children similar to this one that I had.
Jonah:Â “Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy.”
Me:Â “Thanks, Jonah.”
Jonah:Â “Can we do something special with you today?”
Me: (feeling slightly misty at this sweet comment…)Â “Sure, that sounds great!”
Jonah:Â (after thinking for a minute…)Â “Hey, I know – let’s go get a new Lego set!!!” Â Ha.Â
We did not get a new Lego set but the boys and I did end up going out for frozen yogurt and all in all it was indeed a good mother’s day.
Jonah and Danny have decided to try their hands at transporting audiences to a galaxy far far away. They’ve been working on making their very own movie of Star Wars: Episode VII. This sequel to the Star Wars franchise sees a new Sith Lord (for the uninitiated, Darth Vader and the Emperor were the two famous Sith Lords in the previous movies). Because all the best Sith characters were killed off in the other installments of the Star Wars franchise, this film requires a new set of villains. Without spoiling the movie too much, the new Sith Lords are Darth Fett and Darth Panaka. These characters, apparently, are the evolution of two other characters from the series – Boba Fett was a bounty hunter and a very popular character. Panaka was a captain in the queen’s royal guard, and despite being a virtually unknown and unremarkable character, is Danny’s favorite character in all the movies.
I’d like to point out that beyond camera operating duties, I’ve done very little in creating this piece of movie magic. The story, the dialogue, the costumes, everything has come from the heads of the two adorable little droids in our house.
Without further ado, let me present a scene from the upcoming masterpiece. In this scene, C3P0 (played by Jonah) tells R2-D2 (Danny) about the new threat of which Master Luke has just learned. R2 responds appropriately.
So we have this new card game – called Top Trumps Superheroes – and basically each card has a picture of a superhero and contains a list of various attributes (agility, intelligence, speed, etc) and numerical data. You play a card against your opponent and see who has the highest value in whatever attribute you select – highest number wins both cards. So for instance, if I have the Hulk card, I will likely choose to play “strength” and if I have the Jean Gray card, I will likely choose to play “intelligence”.  Anyway, last night we were all playing and Jonah had the “Beast” card and he choose “strength”….but it turns out Beast is smarter than he is strong. Even though his name doesn’t suggest it, and he is a furry blue dude, he is actually incredibly intelligent (if you can believe what Marvel tells us anyway). This led us to a conversation about not judging a book by its cover….so Ethan and I started giving real life examples of how we shouldn’t assume based on how someone looks that he/she is not very good at something. Jonah pipes up and says, “yeah I know, it’s like how I am the smallest one in my class but I am the smartest!”   Ha!  I’m thinking Jonah might actually be one of the X-men…
Jonah came home the other day wearing a sticker that read, “star student”. Ethan and I asked him how he got that sticker and he said, “oh, I just knew the answer to a question.” So, of course, we asked what the question was. The teacher had asked if anyone knew how many quarts were in one gallon. Jonah raised his hand and correctly answered four. Hence the sticker. So we asked him how he knew there were four quarts in a gallon (figuring it was either a lucky guess or that since they had been introduced to fractions a few weeks ago, maybe he remembered that a quarter is a fourth and extrapolated from that)…..nope, nothing like that. Jonah looked at us and said, “the teacher had just told us there were two quarts in a half-gallon and then she asked how many were in a gallon!” And he had this exasperated look (and tone) that basically said, “jeez, she just gave us the answer!” Still, he enjoyed the sticker!