I love Halloween. I think it’s my favorite holiday of the year (actually, I think it’s tied with Thanksgiving, but for the purposes of this blog post, let’s just say it’s my favorite for now). I’m not, however, one of those ambitious Halloween maniacs – the folks who come up with elaborate spooking devices they put on their lawns, or who go all out with the spider webs and jack-o-lanterns. I wish I were. Really, I do. But Halloween has a way of sneaking up on me and I’m never quite prepared for it.
This year was going to be different. Alden had been claiming since the spring that she wanted to be a princess fairy, and wear her Tinkerbell dress-up dress for it. Costume #1: done. It’s been done since May. Check. Kato has said all along that he’d like to be an airplane. Actually, specifically, a jet. So we have spent the last month or so discussing what we would need to make a jet. He’s been quite thoughtful about it. Well, all this discussion went nowhere until the 29th, when our Yankee Candle school fundraiser order arrived in just the right sized box to make a jet plane out of. We sprang into action.
I cut a hole in the top of the box for Kato’s head, and some small holes on the sides for his arms. We fashioned a tail out of a triangle of cardboard, and Kato advised me on the proper aerodynamics of the tail fins (I originally had much too long of a top fin, making the jet look more like a sideways rocket). It was such a flurry of jet-making that I forgot to take pictures. After ransacking our storage area for big pieces of cardboard that might work as wings, I found a bolt of cloth, and voila! Cut it in half and you’ve got two pre-fab wings.
Kato very carefully placed them into the slots I cut out for them.
We used the styrofoam packaging for a Yankee Candle jar to make the nose of the plane, and added the propellor from an old balsa wood wind-up plane that had been long broken. Again, I forgot to take pictures.
I also forgot to look after August, who announced that he had taken off his diaper and pooped on the floor. In the flurry of excitement following his announcement, I kneeled on my exacto knife, ruined a favorite pair of pants, and suffered a not-really-mortal flesh wound.
Because of the poop debacle, I only had time for a packing tape and paper towel bandage, but it seemed to do the trick.
Once we were back on track, Alden helped out with the taping.
We had decided to put duct tape over the entire cardboard construction to make it look more shiny, like a real plane.
We did not realize at the time how long this would take, given how impossible it is to keep duct tape from sticking to itself.
After a run to the store for more duct tape and several hours of dedicated service, the plane was finished.
Kato put it on, and immediately said, “I don’t like this.” And then took it off. Resisting the urge to scream, I asked what was wrong with it. He said that it smelled funny and didn’t have any wheels.
Well, wheels would have to wait. Not 100% enthusiastic, but bleeding from one knee and smelling of duct tape, we headed to bed, with a whole day to spare before Halloween.
After getting back from school the following day (Halloween Eve), we added some wheels, using the bolts for Iggy’s travel crate, so that they could be retractable.
Kato agreed that they were pretty cool. But he still wasn’t fully on board (no pun intended). A little more rummaging around produced a pair of work earmuffs that I converted to a pilot headset with the addition of a bendy-straw and ball-of-tape microphone. Instantly, Kato was sold.
Apparently being able to speak into a microphone and say, “Pilot to co-pilot, we’re ready for blast-off” cures all ills, including the funky smell of duct tape.
So, while Kato took his plane on a short test flight,
Alden began to fret. Her costume didn’t feel like much of a costume anymore. We had spent all this time on Kato’s costume, and she was just going to pull hers out of a drawer the next morning. I appreciated her sudden desire for craftiness, but couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at the timing. She still wanted to be a princess, but wanted to have a new dress. With about an hour to go before bedtime, we raided my closet. We came up with a few options, but they didn’t look quite princess-y enough (too cottony, perhaps, not enough polyestery). And then I remembered a piece of fabric I had – regal red with a gold herringbone pattern. And I discovered the most amazing thing (necessity really IS the mother of invention!) – you can make a fantastic princess dress out of a single piece of fabric and a ribbon – no sewing required.
And here are some vague-ish directions on how to do this, which you can skip over if you don’t care about princesses or princess dresses or how awesome it is to not have to sew a dress at the last minute when you can’t really sew:
So, these directions probably don’t make any sense, but it’s super easy. You cut a hole big enough for the head in the center of one side of the fabric, kind of close to the edge – that’s the neck hole. Put the fabric on, with the short part of the fabric towards the back. Bunch up the fabric that’s hanging on the back and drape it back forward over the neck (so it looks like a halter top). Then take the corner of the fabric that you just folded over to the front and pull it towards the back (under the arm) and up through the neck hole. Pull it tight until it tightens around the arm, making a kind of a sleeve. Do the same for the other side. The fabric that is pulled through in the back will make a bustle-looking thing, and you just tie the ribbon around the waist to keep everything in place. Note that relative to the kid, the fabric is actually a little bigger – for Alden it dragged on the ground in the front a little bit, because she wanted it to be long and princessy.
Again, I have no photographic evidence, because we were down to the proverbial wire. We cut a crown out of paper, added a wand with a paper diamond on top, made up a name for our princess (Princess Juliana!), and called it a day.
And then, it was Halloween! We were invited to a Halloween party after school. Once again, I decided to put together a costume for myself in the hour that we had after school before leaving for the party. I found two bags of indian corn under the stairs that the kids had brought back from a field trip two weeks ago and I had forgotten about. I decided to put it to use. With the help of a trusty construction stapler, some foam core and saran wrap, I made myself into a corn flake.
Get it?
August stuck with the old standby chicken hat:
(while Matthew stuck with the old standby “Exhausted Dad”).
I adjusted Alden’s ribbon:
And we were ready to party:
There were several great things about the party. One of them was lounging on the Adirondack chairs next to the fire pit:
And the other was getting away with forbidden love between man and cornstalk:
Oh, and of course, I forgot about all the pizza and candy we consumed.
And, perhaps best of all, the fake fangs that were in the goody-bags:
There’s nothing scarier than an off-duty pilot who’s turned into a vampire, unless of course it’s Princess Juliana come to suck your blood:
After the party we rushed back to our house to grab some candy and head over to our neighbors’ porch – ours is small and hardly noticeable, so it isn’t great for candy distribution. Donald and Ann have generously hosted us since Alden was a wee one – and we have so far successfully tricked the kids into thinking that giving candy out to trick-or-treaters is more fun than actually trick-or-treating.
We had a wonderful time and saw lots of great costumes.
Did I tell you how much I love Halloween? A LOT. I just can’t stop talking about it (no kidding!).
Hope you all had a happy, fun, and gratifying Halloween. Until next time,
Yesterday Alden called for an impromptu costume party. She had gotten a rainbow flag from Matthew’s mom, and thought it made a fab skirt. She wanted me to dress up as a princess, but I declined, arguing that a costume party ought to demand a little more creativity. After going through a list of things that she thought I should dress up as (princess, queen, mermaid, Merida, fairy, fairy princess, jewelled fairy princess) and being repeatedly rejected, she started, in despair, on a list of things she saw around the room (baseball, baseball bat, hat, socks, chair, a slice of pizza). Yes! A slice of pizza it would be!
We discussed what I would need to dress up like pizza. Something cheese-colored. We looked through my drawers and found a yellow-ish shirt, turned inside out so the logo didn’t show. We cut out a brown-ish piece of paper for the crust, and taped it to my forehead.
Pepperoni pizza is a favorite around here, so I cut out the first pepperoni to tape to my shirt. Alden found circle-cutting to be too slow and laborious, so started getting creative with the shapes.
We decided I would be a canadian bacon pizza, since canadian bacon comes in more irregular shapes. Really, quite irregular shapes:
Many pieces of canadian bacon were carefully applied to my shirt:
They aren’t kidding when they say that bacon sticks to the ribs:
While heading to the kitchen for our photo shoot, my pepperoni fell off. Apparently, pepperoni doesn’t stick to the ribs like bacon does. Alden did her last-minute fix:
We gave it the old thumbs up:
And were ready to pose for our beauty shots (notice the classy paper-clipped-to-my-crotch tip of the pizza):
Matthew, still under the weather, was not feeling as ambitious as I about his costume (I’d like to point out that my sinus headache and runny nose did not stop me. I mean, it’s a COSTUME PARTY!):
He and Kato both dressed as baseball players.
Opening ceremonies involved some loud declarations from Alden about how things were going to proceed:
Apparently, costume parties begin with marching. Kato took the lead.
One person marching was not enough, so we all had to head to the living room for some group marching (this was starting to feel less like a costume party and more like militant indoctrination):
After the marching was over, a game of Fly the Airplane From the Drawing Table to the TV Stand was in order.
I did not follow the rules.
And though things started out well for August’s flight…
…things went terribly awry when his co-pilot took over the controls, much to his consternation:
That was enough to ruin the game for everyone.
Alden announced the third (and final) event – Spinning the Blanket Over Your Head (Two Times):
Her demonstration was slightly misleading, as it appeared you were also supposed to spin yourself around…
… two times:
Matthew got the hang of it immediately:
I would include more photos from the rest of the party, but at that point Kato lost his pants, and all the photos after that are ruined.
But frankly, a party where nobody loses his pants isn’t much of a party after all. This was one for the ages. Wish you all could have been there –
Because it was Father’s Day, I got to sleep in until the luxurious hour of 7:05am. At that moment I was roused by a noise of some sort. Perhaps it was a squeal of joy or a cry of protest. I may never know. By the time I staggered into the other room, the moment had passed and a new one had begun. My entrance triggered a chorus of obviously rehearsed (though clearly heartfelt), “Happy Father’s Day, Papa!” from the two small people who know how to say such things, and a waddling, smile-infested sort of half hug from the one who doesn’t.
Shortly thereafter, I was presented with three cards, which I’m happy to share with you now.
This lovely composition is from Alden.
This, of course, is our family, with the addition of my mom (known to Alden as “Baba,” who arrived for a visit today. In addition to the obvious love bursting from the hearts of those pictured, the sky is literally raining down Father’s Day treats for me: according to Alden, there are “candy hearts, candy flowers, candy diamonds, and presents.” Apparently, the presents are not candy. They’re just presents. I clarify in case you are tempted to eat them.
And here’s my card from Kato.
It is another family portrait, of course. I am on the left. Robbi is on the right. It may surprise you to learn that the rather large figure to the left of Robbi is Baby August. I’m assuming that Kato is playing with depth and perspective. The oddly splayed figure to the left of August is, apparently, “Iggy lying on her back.” The strange thing is, that’s almost exactly what Iggy looks like when she lies on her back.
And here is my favorite card (don’t tell the kids), from the person most responsible for making me a father in the first place.
I don’t think you need my help deciphering this one. Here, Iggy gets to look a bit more dignified, Baby August is appropriately proportioned (yes, he’s almost as big as Kato now), and Lily makes a visit from the grave to wish me a happy Father’s Day.
It’s so nice to see us all there together. As many of you know, it’s pretty great to be a dad. I think I’ll sign on for another year.
About a year ago now, our friend Jiho Sohn came to Chestertown for a daylong photoshoot. On one hand, we wanted to get new pics for our press kit and the soon-to-be-launched Bobbledy web site. But on the other hand, we just wanted some nice shots of our family.
As it turned out, we got both. Jiho’s beautiful shots of our family have already appeared in our Bobbledy brochure, Chesapeake Taste magazine, and WIRED.com’s Geek Mom blog. One of them will also appear in the back of our upcoming book by Chronicle, Ten Thousand Stories.
What we did not expect from the shoot was a movie. But just last week, Jiho cobbled together the bulk of the photos from the shoot into a 90-second stop motion film of sorts. The result is enchanting.
Jiho is an incredibly talented photographer and a truly wonderful guy. I’d suggest you hire him if he wasn’t on the verge of leaving for an extended stay in Germany. Still, check out his site JihoNation.com if you love gorgeous images.
And if you love great music, you’re probably already humming the background tune from the video to yourself. The song is The New South from the album of the same name by the one and only Drew Bunting, our dear friend and resident rock star. You can get a copy of The New South via the Idiots’Books web site. As for Drew’s upcoming children’s album, all you Bobbledy kids will be getting your copy around the first of June.
And if you’re not already in the club, get to it, already!.
It was quite a weekend in the barn. Our first full weekend together as a family for quite some time. So we decided to make the most of it.
Up first on Saturday morning was Robbi’s Tang Soo Do test. In case you do not know, Robbi has decided that merely dominating me with superior intellect and better looks is not enough. She also has to be able to dominate my physically with various kicks, punches, and blocks. Though she is currently a white belt, Saturday was her opportunity to prove that she is worthy of promotion to a yellow.
The kids and I watched as Robbi took her place on the mat. Notice that her fellow white belts are both somewhat younger.
The students listened as the instructor walked them through the testing protocol. In lockstep, they executed a series of moves, each one more complex than the last.
This move had a rather complex Korean name. My best translation is “kick with punishing authority.”
Part of the testing involved a sparring session. It was somewhat alarming to see someone trying to kick Robbi. Someone other than myself, I mean.
I needn’t have been concerned. As is the case at home, Robbi was more than capable of fending off unwanted overtures.
At a certain point in the testing, it became clear that Robbi was going to have to break a board. With her foot! Apparently, she had not known that this was going to happen, and had no time to prepare for it, mentally or otherwise.
The kids and I looked on as others broke their boards.
They were riveted, and somewhat worried.
Would their mother be able to best the piece of inch-thick white pine? Or would our family name be darkened by her failure?
When her turn came, Robbi lined up, summoned her fortitude, lifted her foot, and…
…CRACK…broke through the board as if it were a mere twig.
Energized by her triumph, Robbi bowed to the instructors.
Let’s just say, if I’ve given up all hope of winning future arguments with Robbi. Though, to be fair, I reached this conclusion years ago.
After we got home from Tang Soo Do, we decided to go for a run/bike ride. How this works is I push the baby in the jogging stroller with one hand while holding Iggy’s leash with the other. Alden, Robbi, and Kato all pile onto a single bike (Alden rides a little half-bike that trails behind), and we all go out together looking like an ad for the kind of people you’d like to ban from your community).
When we got back, the kids wanted to garden, so we took out the trowel and went out to the tiny strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the street.
I’m not sure if you know, but Kato is a staunch believer in “gardening with attitude.”
Where Alden hails from the school of “gardening with good cheer.”
It creates a certain tension when they work together, Kato sitting around scowling while Alden compliments the plants.
And lovingly places them in the ground.
Eventually, inevitably, Kato gets swept up in the sheer joy of gardening and finds some smiles of his own.
Baby August, who can’t be trusted not to eat the plants, watches from the peanut gallery, where his contributions consist of incoherent commentary.
Just as we were about to go inside to make dinner, Doug the Baker showed up with a tray of cold pizza. Evergrain has started making amazing, delicious, belief-defying pizza every Friday night. Which is to say, our bank account and waistline are both about to move in opposite directions. But we’ll be happy indeed as we slip into decline.
Did I mention that when the pizza was done, Doug went back inside and brought out a bin of Sun Buns?
And that we were allowed to eat as many as we wanted?
Eventually we all fell into a profound sugar coma. When we awoke, it was morning. And so we headed to Washington, D.C. to visit the National Zoo. Apparently, a lot of other people had the same idea, because when we got to the zoo, there was no parking to be had anywhere. We eventually found a spot in a neighborhood about a half a mile away. And so we marched.
And marched.
But eventually we got there. Of course, the first thing we did was line up for the obligatory photo by the ZOO sign. Two of the three children were willing to cooperate.
Swift surgical removal of the offending child led to a slightly less populated but significantly more cheerful photo.
Our dear friend Bren came to join us at the zoo. Just as she got there, we were having an impromptu picnic of juice boxes and rice crackers. I asked Bren if she wanted a juice box. She said yes. It was not until I had taken Bren’s straw out of its plastic and inserted it into the juice box that I remembered that Bren, being a fully capable woman in her 30s, did not need my assistance to ready her juice box for drinking. She is not, in fact, one of my children. It is sometimes difficult making swift adjustments between the large people and small people in my life.
Bellies full of juice and crackers, we set off to enjoy the zoo.
The day was perfect. Mid-60s and sunny. We headed to the fishing cat enclosure. The signage was clear.
And yet so many of the onlookers were illiterate.
We visited the (relatively) new elephant enclosure. If I were an elephant, I’d want to live in the National Zoo. Lots of space to roam, a nice pool for frolicking in, and an enormous tire hanging from a rope to bat about, pinata-style.
Baby August? Not impressed.
Of course, the highlight of the zoo had nothing to do with the animal kingdom.
But, let’s be real here: is there anything better than a train?
Even if it’s not on a track and only goes around and around in relatively small circles?
Nope. Nothing better. Nothing at all.
Though alligators are pretty cool, too.
And this thing.
And enormous turtles that live in the water.
And truly gigantic turtles that live on the land.
By the time we left the zoo, Baby August was sawing logs and Kato’s frown was upside down.
It was a great weekend. Robbi broke a board with her foot, I ate a heap of sun buns, and the kids got to ride on a train to nowhere.
Yesterday was Alden’s 5th Birthday. We wanted to do something special that wasn’t just a big gift. And so we told Alden to look under her pillow for a surprise when she woke up on her birthday. She found this:
A red envelope saying “Happy Birthday Alden, 5”. She wasted no time opening it.
And discovered a treasure map inside.
This is a standard treasure map. I drew a map of our living room, and keep the file on my computer and print out a copy whenever we feel like having a treasure hunt. Usually we just mark it up with “X”s, but on this treasure map another red envelope was drawn.
Kato was on hand to assist.
He rightly noted that the envelope was drawn next to the “pretzel pot”. Alden ran over to the “pretzel pot” to have a look.
The pretzel pot is one of mom’s containers – its proper name is a “double ring.” This particular set of double rings was a gift I brought Matthew on our very first quasi-official date.
Alden looked carefully, and at first was distracted by a random white envelope that was placed nearby.
But then she saw the red one.
The excitement was mounting. She gasped in delight when she discovered the contents of the second red envelope.
It was a note of some sort! A note that she couldn’t read! She enlisted Matthew for help.
The note read:
Look in the coldest place in the house and take out what doesn’t belong there. Brrrr!!!
This was a no-brainer. The freezer, of course!
Alden opened the freezer and had a look inside.
Well, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what didn’t belong.
(Though, we have to confess that the first time she opened the door, she didn’t even see the football, and just grabbed the envelope out. We had to tell her to look again and see if there was anything else that didn’t belong.) She handed off the football to her trusty assistant, who was collecting all the old clues and envelopes.
And opened the third envelope.
Inside was another message.
Another message she couldn’t read. And so she asked Matthew for help again.
The assistant got tired of all the dilly-dallying and helped himself to a banana while he waited.
The new message read:
Use this football to score a point in the game that Baba and Papa watch on TV. Go Duke!
Alden was slightly confused. Was she supposed to toss the football to one of us? Kato stepped in and loudly suggested that GO DUKE was basketball. Alden immediately knew what to do. She lined up at the free throw line:
tossed the football:
And missed. But on her second shot (one usually shoots twice at the line, no?):
She totally nailed it!
The football knocked another red envelope out of the basket:
(we had to use a football because the only basketball we had was so light it wouldn’t knock the envelope out). The next message sounds pretty confusing:
“Look under the “M” near the cow in the bottle. Mmmoooo!”
Alden knew right away where the cow in the bottle was. It sits up on our bookshelf, mainly because Alden and Kato are both fascinated by it, and if it sat anywhere else, they would have broken it a long time ago, either by accident or in an attempt to free the cow.
The “M” near it was actually below it on a little side table/cabinet we call “Little Red” – it’s a piece of play fencing that we stood up to make look like an “M.”
Alden fetched the fifth red envelope from below the “M”.
After some more help reading from Matthew, the note was deciphered.
“Find seven black tubes and look in the shortest one.”
We actually thought this was going to be an easy clue. There is a container of mom’s right next to Little Red that is made up of (you guessed it) seven tubes of differing heights. It’s quite large and sits on the floor, and is therefore easily accessible to small people, who apparently love to drop all sorts of small toys and papers and credit cards and balls and chopsticks and dog food and you name it down into them. Every month or so we dump it out and discover that whatever wasn’t, indeed, lost, but rather deposited in the tube bank.
She asked what a tube was, and we said it was a sort of a long hole, shaped like the inside of a roll of toilet paper.
That, apparently, was all the help she needed, and rushed off so quickly she left Kato behind.
She pointed to some holes in the floor over in the living room area.
Because our part of the barn used to be a hayloft, we sort of take things like big holes drilled in the floor for granted. Lately, August has been taking all the pencils and crayons he finds on the floor, under the couch, in the toy bin, etc. and dropping them into those holes. One is full but the other still seems to have room for more.
Kato pointed out to Alden that there were only two holes in the floor, and they were supposed to be looking for seven.
Alden, still not quite willing to trust her caddy, gave us a questioning look.
We affirmed Kato’s assessment. Alden was puzzled. We went through the explanation I just went through with you, the one about small people dropping all kinds of crap in the tubes and having to empty them every now and then.
Alden was immediately back on track.
She reached into the shortest tube:
And came up with a final clue:
With a newfound faith in her caddy, she decided she could rely on him for help.
Her faith was short lived, as it turned out Kato also couldn’t read the note, which said, “Dig in Iggy’s breakfast to find the treasure!!!” (Matthew helped with this part).
Alden looked at Iggy’s bowl, and in a moment of panic worried that Iggy had eaten the treasure with her breakfast.
Kato saw a crisis brewing, and immediately stepped in, pointing out that he could see something inside of Iggy’s food bin.
Alden took a closer look and reported that she, too, could see something inside of Iggy’s food bin. She decided she might need a shovel/trowel to do the excavating, and rushed off to get something that would work.
Remind me not to let this girl near an archaeological sites.
After a [very short] bit of digging in the food, Alden saw the outlines of a present begin to make themselves evident.
The present was largish, but light.
Iggy heard the rumblings in her food bin and came to investigate.
She pretty much knocked everyone else out of the way and started plowing her way through the spillage. Alden and Kato had to retreat to the couch to open the treasure.
And, oh what a treasure it was!
A horrific little tiara and jewelry set that Matthew had bought her at the drugstore in a fit of weakness almost a year ago, saying he would give it to her for her birthday. She has reminded us of it every time we pass the drugstore, which happens quite a bit, so we couldn’t forget it, even though we really wanted to.
For a good chunk of the day, Alden celebrated in style, wearing gaudy fake jewelry to eat breakfast, do some coloring, visit with neighbors and even prepare strawberries for topping her cake.
It was a pretty good treasure hunt. Special thanks goes to Dad, who helped with all of the tricky clues (in particular, the envelope falling out of the basketball hoop and the “M”). Alden happily reported that looking for the treasure was as fun as the treasure itself, and Kato requested we run through all the steps again so that he could find the treasure. We promised that for his birthday next year, he would also have a treasure hunt. He suggested that the tiara wasn’t really his style, though I beg to differ.
Happy Birthday, Alden!
Here’s hoping your fifth year is full of treasures!
