The past few weeks have been rather eventful around here, so I’ll try to catch up all of you readers.

A New Hope

Malin attended a “Girl’s Night Out” event the other Saturday evening. It was doubling as a surprise birthday celebration for one of her good friends. While out, Will and I watched Star Wars – the original movie (i.e. Episode IV). Malin was a little upset because we had talked about waiting before letting him watch any of them. But when she had proposed waiting until he was seven, I really thought she was kidding (after all, the first movie is pretty tame in content – especially compared to the most recent chapter). As expected, Will enjoyed it. He has inherited his mother’s observation and hearing skills and has already discovered that there are more movies in the series (ones which actually feature his favorite characters, Boba Fett and General Grievous). However, we will be waiting awhile before he can see the next one – perhaps one episode per year (but with a longer delay after Episode II since Episode III is rated PG-13).

Luckily he has been good since seeing it. He hasn’t gone crazy with Star Wars-itis (at least no crazier than before). He has asked to see the movie again, but I was able to divert his attention by showing him Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which he enjoyed nearly as much and has already watched five times since…

Also related to Star Wars-itis: Now that the weather has been warm (at least before today), Willem and I have been playing in the yard in the evening. It used to consist mainly of us hitting whiffleballs with NERF bats. Lately, Will has wanted to play “Lego Man” – pretending the bats are light sabers and pretending to duel all across the yard. I’m sure it must be a ridiculous and amusing site for our neighbors…

I’m a Nut!

Last Thursday Will joined his classmates in an evening performance at his school. We didn’t even know it was in the works until we got an invite to the performance from his teacher on Tuesday. The whole class (ages 3 to 6) sang several songs, and then the “afternoon kids” (those 5 and older) put on a play – their own, personalized version of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. We got some video of the event both on our digital camcorder and on Malin’s phone; but, because of the low light, both turned out pretty poor.

In addition to learning two French songs – Allouette and Where Is Thumbkin (en Français) – Will also learned another song, the performance of which was quite amusing. All of the kids sang and clucked along to that amusing song, which is about an acorn and is called I’m a Nut:

Verse
I’m an acorn, small and round
Lying on the cold, cold ground.
Everybody steps on me.
That is why I’m cracked, you see.

Chorus
I’m a nut! (cluck, cluck)
I’m a nut! (cluck, cluck)
I’m a nut! I’m a nut! I’m a nut! (cluck, cluck)

Damnable Dogs

Last week, Malin made a big batch of blueberry muffins. We left Friday to take Will to school, and, upon our return, we were witness to Miles’ and Marla’s criminal act: they had dragged the Ziploc bag of muffins off of the counter, torn it open, eaten every single last muffin, snuck into the pantry, and eaten numerous milkbones from their bag o’ breakfast food.

Our dogs are usually quite well-behaved, but this is the second time they’ve turned to crime in the recent past (the other time they just got into their milkbones and ate them all – no human food was destroyed).

Needless to say, they have not been getting breakfast for the past couple of days. In fact, today was their first breakfast since then (so they went only three days without… it doesn’t make sense to punish them any longer since their memory and comprehension skills aren’t good enough for them to really understand why the food was withheld…)

Will was quite upset over the tragedy since he really loved the muffins. On Sunday we made blueberry pancakes as a way to staunch his blueberry muffin cravings.

Wedding Season

This past weekend, we attended a wedding. Malin’s friend since seventh grade, Melissa, was a bridesmaid when Malin and I were married. This past weekend the favor was returned. Malin got to dress up in what Will called a “princess dress.” Since Malin was in the wedding, she wasn’t able to take pictures of the event for this blog. The wedding photographer took a picture of us though, so maybe we’ll be able to get a picture of all of us from that. At the least, we’ll be able to get pictures of Malin (since she was in the wedding party) in her “princess dress” with her hair and makeup all done up, fancy-like!

Also this past Saturday, you may have noticed that this website was down briefly. Thunder storms and scattered showers, moving through the Atlanta area, temporarily thwarted the upgrade of the server. My friend John, one of the other residents on this server, was upgrading some software and storms interrupted his home’s power, which interrupted and contaminated the upgrade process. Luckily he was able to get everything back up in short order.

Pink Eye

Today, Will has fallen victim to the rapid contagion that is Bacterial Conjunctivitis – commonly known as Pink Eye. His eyes are still a little red, but the most disturbing symptom is in the wads and wads of icky mucus dispelled from his tear ducts (which apparently is known as “goop” and “eye crust” in addition to the technical name “mucopurulent discharge”).

The doctor was able to see him this afternoon, and they said he mustn’t go back to school tomorrow because the first 24 hours is when he is most contagious. She prescribed some eye drops and an antibiotic. Now we get to wait and hope that he’ll be better and back in school Thursday.