Cold Spaghetti

Will’s book, “What I Like About Fall.”  Order emphasized by Will, who reads each picture.

Page One.  TRICK or TREATING.

Page Two.  Carving a JACK O LANTERN.

Page Three.  TAKING a NAP.

Page Four.  Wearing JACKETS.

—–

Will’s drawings of THINGS IMPORTANT IN HALLOWEEN.  (Drawn on Will and Kate’s daily chore chart.  The strange fairy on the first picture and the X-wing on the second picture were done by me.  Will decided to seasonally enhance them.)

Of note.

Ghosts.  “They say BOO.”

Skeletons.

Pumpkins. Jack o’Lanterns. “That’s what they’re called when they have faces.”

Witches.  “They ride brooms.”

And Zombies. “They go ‘uuuuuuuhhhhhhh uuuuuhhhh.'”   (Sound notated by “W W W W.”)

“Will, what is falling off of the Zombies?”

“They are wet and they drip when they walk.”

“Why are their arms out in front of them?”

“Because they need to feel where they go or they’ll fall.”

Happy Fall!

Photos.

With a few notes.

I drew a face, Will and Paul carved a pumpkin.  (I don’t dig out pumpkins because the uncooked innards of squash and pumpkin make my hands swell up like big red mitts.)  Our pumpkin is the one beside the kids on the stairs in the picture below.  I drew the left eye over too far because I didn’t think enough about the curve of the pumpkin.

We ate veggie chili, pumpkin seeds (my first time making), and lentil soup with friends over seasonal colored lights.  And tricked or treated.  At one point, the group of kids and adults went into the range of 50+ people… “candy locusts” according to Paul.

Will finished first with a house and ran ahead the group.  We saw him climbing around the big base of an oak tree near the sidewalk.  At least we thought.  Conversations about appropriate bathroom spots for men followed.

Kate had to be rushed back for a potty break.

A house ran out of candy and started to give out books.  Will spent the rest of the night “reading” his book, page by page, while I held his candy bag.  The book?  MADAME BOVARY.

Happy Halloween!

(The very last picture is my favorite.)

Will had his second ear surgery on Friday.  It was a blow to miss his Halloween festivities at school — and with that, the opportunity to wear Luke Skywalker clothes — so Paul and I tried to make the morning as special as we could.  He watched a Transformers cartoon Movie, one that Paul and I kept remembering and forgetting (Wait, what? Optimus Prime dies? A machine that eats planets?)  We were very supportive and did not make fun of him on the Goofy Juice.  Even when he turned to me and said, “Mommy, I have to say something.  You have two heads.”

He did great.  Both ears were full of fluid.  Instantly after surgery his hearing improved.  Our instructions are to use Cipro drops, which are like liquid gold, to keep his ears clear.  Since it took 3 weeks for one of his last tubes to fall out and 5 months for the other to completely clog, we are looking at daily drops for a long, long time.  Have we put in the drops today? Is the new household mantra.  Please feel free to ask us, because we are likely to forget by tomorrow.

When he left the hospital at 2pm with a sleepy, sleepy kid, we were sure he wasn’t going to make a 6pm party.

HA.

Cookie making with friends trumps ear surgery.

Thank goodness.  We needed the night out, too.

I know it’s six months away, but who can resist the hat?

Brushing teeth and combing hair is a total drag to kids.  I know this because it seems doing each regularly involves resistance.

Which is why, when Will screamed ‘nooooooo, noooooo, NOOOOOOOOO!!’ as I brushed his teeth last night, I assumed he was fighting my brushing.

“Will!  What is WRONG?”

“Mommmmmm!  You’ve stopped the concert and now everyone is LEAVING!”

Apparently, my brushing had interrupted his ROCKSTAR mirror concert.  Brought to the mirror by the ROCKSTAR hair I’d given him prior to the toothbrush interruption.

Naturally, we had to remedy the situation by having a full-blown post-toothbrushing ROCKSTAR concert.

Kate, too.

When I was a kid and my Grandparents worked for Disney, we were incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to spend summers with them.  In the many, many times I’ve visited the parks, I had never been there for the fall and winter holidays.

When we went last spring during Mardi Gras, we decided to try to go during the kids’ fall break.  Lucky for us, the break coordinated with the Magic Kingdom’s Halloween celebration.  The park was beautifully decorated.  Even cast member costumes held subtle changes to reflect the fall season.

The party is after-hours — and features special parade, fireworks, character greetings, dance parties, and trick-or-treating.  Costumes are encouraged.

Like we could say no to that!

Take a moment of pause at my 5-year old sweetheart above, who DRESSED AS A WHITE RABBIT to support his sister’s costume.  Also?  He made his own clock.  And?  Let me draw a nose and whiskers.  I couldn’t stop looking at him all night, thinking that this is probably the last time he’ll willing put ears on his head.

Kate was over the moon.

It took a few seconds for folks in the crowd to take in our whole ensemble.  But when they did, we heard many, many compliments.  The kids were thrilled.

We took a prime spot in the front of Cinderella’s castle for the Villian’s show (they take over the night) parade (featuring the Villians taking over Main Street) and then the Fireworks!

See Paul and the kids below?

For the record, Disney parades are truly a spectacle.

The fireworks, too, are amazing.  Some of the best (if not the best) I’ve ever seen.  (Including the 4th of July fireworks on the Mall in DC.)  I thought that this display was outstanding.  I loved the images flying up the castle, the music, and surprises of fireworks not only behind the castle, but coming up around Main Street — lighting up the entire park for a few seconds.

We rode a few rides, too — including Alice’s Tea Cups (of course).  When we stumbled off the tea cups (the kids went crazy on that spinning), we ran smack into our dopplegangers!

The Tweedles spent quite a bit of time playing with our caps, spinning the propellers, and straightening our ties before insisting on several different posed shots with us.  Cute, very very cute.

What a fantastic time to visit the Magic Kingdom!

Happy Halloween!

As if we couldn’t find enough to do with the bazillion jobs, conferences, deadlines, dissertation drafts, broken bones, lingering illnesses, and all the rest… we decided to hold true to our intents from last spring and go to THE WORLD for the kids fall break (6 school days off).

We are having such a fantastic time that we may never come back. Maybe I’m spending too much time with princesses, but I’m beginning to believe reality is over-rated.

Just ask Will. He is SOOOO not ready for reality.

Twenty bucks says that by the time we go home, this 25 second encounter with Darth Vader will have morphed into 3 hours of non-stop battling, include a few hundred more storm troopers, and occur in some remote frozen land. But really, who can blame him?

On the can.  Reading…

(want to take a guess??)

THE ECONOMIST.

Once you open a loaf of bread in New Orleans, you have approximately 15 minutes to devour it completely before the humidity sucks out all the soft goodness and turns it into a wheat rock.  What a loss of good bread.  Our solution?  Throw it into the freezer at minute 14 — just in the nick of time — and save it for the animals in the park.

Like this guy, who I think just heard us tell Kate not to eat the moldy bread because it was for the squirrels.

Today’s high was 81.  In September, a high of 81 means it was an absolutely perfect fall day.

Way too beautiful to spend the afternoon inside.  So we picked the kids up from school and brought them straight to the park for a picnic.

Is this squirrel sticking is tongue out at us?

If you’ve spent time in Audubon Park, you recognize these three.  They are the park social committee.  We like to think of them as Agnes, Edna, and Beatrice.  They squawk with British accents.

The wood ducks are back (my favorites).  Will referred to the swan that followed him around as “big guy,” as in, “I need more bread to feed the Big Guy.”

Will also played around with the Photovoice camera and asked if I could set it on a timed release “so that we can get some family pictures.”  Okay, Will.  He set the camera on the cooler and got to work.

He was very serious.  So serious that we had to capture the intensity.  For the record, Kate totally and completely listened to every darn word the kid said.

Paul and I are barely holding it together, just seconds away from exploding into hysterics.  The Kid is directing us to put our heads together.

See?  I wasn’t listening.  I was suppose to move closer.  Okay, Will.

What unfortunately isn’t easily seen in this picture is the underside of Will’s cast.  He took a marker and wrote “DAD MOM KATE” in a line on the inside of the cast.  Underneath he wrote WILL, except that he made the W upside-down.  So really, he wrote “MILL”.  When he realized the mistake (“Will, who’s ‘Mill?'”  “What?”  “Mill.  M-I-L-L.  On your arm.”) he laughed like a loon and then simply wrote his name (complete with W) underneath.  DAD MOM KATE MILL WILL.

If that doesn’t sum up the age of 5, I just can’t think of much more that can.  Awesomeness.

I humbly requested a photo of Kate and Will.  This is the only one where one of them isn’t lifting the other, picking a nose, or bent upside.  It also showed that I am the only photographer no one listens to.  Not that this was ever in doubt.

Happy fall day, New Orleans! So good to be home.

Paul has been taking the kids on lots of fun adventures.  Here are some photos.

Formatting is still a disaster with the upgrade.  As with everything else in my life, it’ll have to remain crummy a little longer until we know we’ve lived through the next few weeks…

“Will told me last night that Dumbledore dies in The Half-Blood Prince.”

“WHA?”

“C. told him at school.”

“You are kidding. His parents must have brought him to the movie. HOW DARE THEY.”

“I asked Will if C. said anything about Santa Claus.”

“That would have been much better. I think I want to kick that kid’s ass.”