Jobs

Overheard while the kids were coloring and discussing what jobs they could have to earn money.

Thing One: I'd pay you money to put out fires. Or to fix a roof when it gets damaged by hail. (Then a pause for some coloring and, apparently, thinking) Can you believe Dad gets money just for reading peoples' stories and fixing them?

Pac-Man (part 1)

Day 1: Thing One wanted to make a Pan-Man board out of paper, so Nana helped him cut out thin blue strips for the edges, yellow pellets, and of course Pac-Man, Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Sue. We play a lot of paper Pac-Man on the coffee table.

Day 2: One level of Pac-Man is not enough for Thing One. He needs to do a pink level (2) and a yellow level (3). He also needs Dapper Dad to scout out the level beyond the yellow level on the video game to see what the proper color is, should we make a fourth level. He has not been able to do this yet. Meanwhile, I regret not buying a paper punch at Target earlier in the day as I cut lots of tiny pellets for each board. We all play more paper Pac-Man, a game where the speeds of the manually operated characters are highly irregular with three-year-old and five-year-old operators. I told Thing One my idea of making a Pac-Man birthday cake for Dapper Dad's brother-in-law. Now he wants the Pac-Man cake for his birthday party. "I'm really into Pac-Man right now," he said.

Day 3: Since the boards are made of strips of paper, I had the idea that we could draw them on a bigger piece of paper, eliminating the need to rebuild the board several times during a single game. Thing One liked the idea and wanted to use my special black art board so that the levels look more like the TV version with the black background. I suggested that he work on sketches of the boards so that he is happy with the final board we make on the (relatively pricey) black board. He made five sketches that get progressively better before finishing two more final sketches of the final board. This took much of the afternoon. And of course, one board isn't enough. We must do three in the right colors, so we need to analyze and rank the boards according to difficulty so that we can color code them properly (blue, then pink, then yellow). Also, we still play a lot of paper Pac-Man.

Our Star Wars diorama

We entered a Hasbro Star Wars diorama contest (had to use only the 3-3/4" Hasbro figures and a terrain of our own making). The prize is $1,000 in Star Wars toys, but we aren't holding our breath. Here is the result:

Doing his best

While painting with water, Thing Two rubbed a hole in his half-painted but locally waterlogged paper, got frustrated and pushed the paper away.
Me: You didn't paint the butterfly. It will be a pretty purple butterfly when you paint it. Do you want to finish the picture?
Thing One: Let him paint how he wants. He's doing his best.

Surprise art

Thing One (at the end of the evening after making secretive art during the afternoon): Oh! I forgot to make the word on my surprise. On my art project. My surprise, but you can't look at it.

Me: You can go ahead a write your word.

Thing One: I don't know how. How do you write "Happy Birthday, Mom"?

We spell it out in letter stickers because I'm not allowed to look at the artwork to help him.

Thing One: I'm all done with my card-- my surprise.

Trying to cheer up

After Great-Grandpa died last Tuesday, I was trying to explain death to Thing One.
Thing One: Why you have tears coming out your eyes?
Me: I liked Great-Grandpa a lot. I thought he was real swell. And I'm sad I can't talk to him anymore. And Great-Grandma is sad because Great-Grandpa was her husband. And Grandpa is sad because Great-Grandpa was his daddy.
Thing One (after a pause, as if to process that): I'm going to make cards for Great-Grandma and Grandpa.
Then he ran off to his art table to get started right away.