Costumes!

About two months ago, we began talking about Halloween costumes with the boys.  They both love to dress up, so we knew this year the holiday would be a big deal at our house.  Sam wanted to be a superhero, and thinking that this might be the last year we could dress them alike or in tandem, we suggested that Sam be Batman and Noah could be Robin.  Sam was thrilled at the idea.  Noah was at first.  But soon, he realized that Robin is a pretty sorry costume.

"I want to be Batman!" he soon declared.

We tried to convince him that being Robin wouldn't be that bad.  "He drives a cool motorcycle," I championed.  "He's just like Batman, only younger," Joy cajoled.  But Noah wouldn't hear our pleas.  Like Dick Grayson, he realized that being Robin was for suckers, and he was ready to be a headliner.  So Joy and I caved and agreed that we would have two Batmans - Batmen, if you will.

Sam, however, had other ideas.

"If Noah's Batman, I want to be a Ninja!" he decided, throwing our plans further out of whack.  And you can imagine Noah's reaction to this development: "I want to be a Ninja too.  And Batman!"  We pacified Noah with the sure knowledge that Batman is both Batman and a Ninja, and set about looking for costumes that would please them both. 

We found them, as with most things, at Target:

As you can see, there is no passive standing as Batman and Ninja, only ACTION!  That and wondering who would win in a fight, Batman or Ninja. We'll see if we can keep up with them tonight.

Hat Parade!

Sam is loving Kindergarten, and I think one of the reasons rests on the community his school works so hard to build.

Friday was one of the prime examples of this trend at his elementary school.  All of the Kindergarteners participated in the Hat Parade -  each student decorated a hat that was supposed to in some way symbolize who they are or things that excite them.  Then, they lined up with their classes and paraded through each classroom, from the 6th graders to the 1st, waving like beauty queens and basking in the love of their fans.

Sam's hat, you may ask?

 

 It was a racecar hat.

Joy and Sam and Noah went to buy hats and as soon as the boys saw the racecar helmets, everything was decided.  They bought racecar stickers to put all over it and, most importantly, googly eyes.  Sam cleverly put six googly eyes on the back of his helmet so you couldn't tell which way he was looking (if you, I suppose, considered him an alien with six eyes in front and back).  Most exciting was that another friend in class got the same hat and hot glued Hot Wheels cars all over it, so they got to parade together and have fun talking cars.

And don't worry - Noah wasn't left out of the fun.  His good friend Micah was there to watch Cole, Sam's good friend, in the parade, so the two of them set up for tailgating in the hallway, just waiting for the parade to pass by.

All they needed was a cooler to put their feet on.

Best. Facepaint. Ever.

Last week one of Joy's Kindermusik families wrote her with an offer of tickets to the Kansas City Zoo's annual Kids Jazzoo.  She had extra and thought that we might enjoy the event.  Joy mentioned the offer to me, I said "sure," not quite knowing what the event encompassed, and she accepted on our behalf.

On Friday evening, we began digging around online to see what Kids Jazzoo was and quickly discovered that we had been invited to bring our children to their idea of heaven - there were up-close opportunities with the animals for Noah (including handling reptiles and getting to touch fur and skin from various animals), crafts of all shapes and sizes for Sam, and all-you-can-ride passes for the carousel and train for them both.

On Saturday afternoon, we zipped the boys into their dinosaur raincoats to protect against the bit of drizzle falling and headed to the zoo.  Jazzoo was every bit as fun as we imagined and perhaps a bit more.  Sam, who often gets bored at the zoo, was entranced by having a booth with something new to do or eat every three feet.  Noah stared in wonder at the animals (which, frankly, is his steady state at the zoo).  Joy and I ate and wandered and took it all in.

By far the best part of the evening was the facepainting.  Sam loves to have his face painted, but generally you get a small design on your cheek and away you go. 

Not at the zoo.

The facepainting booths were doing painting called "jungle eye designs" where the kid's own eyes are incorporated as the eyes of the animals.  Since both Sam and Noah are obsessed with Cheetahs right now for their speed and looks, they both declared they wanted to become cheetahs.

As you can see, the face painters acquiesced to their demands.

 Unfortunately, Sam go an itchy mouth with his black lips and wiped his face on his arm, which is why it smeared a bit.  Still, the boys had fun playing at being cheetahs, and running fast, and growling at each other like prey the entire night.

Sam First Day of Kindergarten

This morning we dropped Sam off for his first day of Kindergarten.  Actually, I shouldn't say that we dropped him off, it was more like we were dropped as Sam ran into his classroom, announced himself with a "Hello, Mrs. Flatley," and immediately went to work surrounded by new friends and experiences.  Joy and I went down to the "cry coffee" hosted by the PTA and tried to distract ourselves from the momentousness of the occasion. 

It didn't work.

Sam will flourish in Kindergarten - he has a wonderful teacher, a school that works to build community, and an unquenchable thirst for learning.  Our hope is that he's able to drink his fill and then come home every day to share with us.  That's he's allowed to follow his creativity while acquiring the discipline to shape it.  And that we can let him go while giving him a safe place to which he can always return.

The Champaign Gang

Two weeks ago I had to run to Champaign to do a bit of clean-up research for a presentation and article I'm writing.  And while it might seem strange to speak of running a 400 mile trip, we did just that - there and back again in three days.  Although I spent most of my time in Harry Partch's archives there, Joy and the boys came along to visit dear friends from grad school that we manage to see at least once a year.

On the last day, we grabbed lunch with them all before heading out and snagged this picture on the benches outside:

Look at that line of deviousness.  I love how they all are sitting with their feet in different positions, clearly showing their personalities.  In a few years we won't be able to get together without them taking over our plans with plans of their own (and yes, Sam has a pair of chopsticks from lunch).

Sam in Disguise

You may remember that Sam loves to dress up.  Every day he's either a dinosaur or a super guy or a bad guy or an Electro-Sam or something else from his imagination.  Noah loves to follow suit, so we end up with these hilarious combinations of mismatched cast off clothes, bought dress up clothes, and bits of paper taped to belts, glasses, and vests.

So you can imagine Sam's excitement when, at the egg hunt last Saturday, he won Groucho glasses in a bean bag toss.  Added to his bunny face paint, he was completely in disguise:

Now, he'll regularly run upstairs, put on his glasses, and creep back to the table.  We rightly exclaim, "Where's Sam, and where did this man come from at our table?"  It's currently the most hilarious game in our house.

Easter Weekend

We've had quite the weekend, one that zapped our energy so much that the entire family (including Sam!) took a nap yesterday afternoon after church.

It started Thursday night, when I played the organ for our church's Maundy Thursday Service.  Then, Friday night, we went to hear Liszt's Via Crucis at a Good Friday service, and then Saturday night UMKC put on one of Joy's favorite pieces, Poulenc's Gloria.  The boys went Thursday and Friday nights and then had a sitter on Saturday, but were so wound up by then that they didn't go to sleep until almost 10:00.

They were also a bit wound up because Saturday afternoon we went to the Easter Eggstravaganza that Prairie Baptist puts on each year.  Since Noah is only 2 months from 3, he was among the oldest in his age group (1-2 years) and so got plenty of loot in the egg hunt:

Sam, on the other hand, had to fight it out with the bigger kids and so ended up with fewer eggs, but his eggs had cooler stuff, like a compass, stick-on earrings (which he promptly used to decorate his Crocs), and little popper toys (that Noah calls blow-pops):

All in all a good weekend (at this point in life, any weekend with a nap is a good weekend).  I even managed to get a few good pictures of the boys in their matching Easter shirts, but when you take 79 pictures, a few are bound to come out right.

Happy Easter!

Sam's Life Lessons

Recently, Sam has experienced an enormous outpouring of spelling and writing. He wants to know how any word he's never encountered before is constructed. He wants to understand the finer points of sentence structure. And he's even started writing, so every project that comes home from school bears the stamp: "To Mom, from Sam." (yes, I never get the love in these scenarios)

I attribute this outpouring to a late Christmas gift of the LeapFrog Word Whammer, a jet-shaped magnet for your refrigerator that allows you to create 3-letter words and have them spelled and said back to you. While Noah loves the toy because it plays the Alphabet song and he can sing along (though he tends to get stuck at E and just hold the vowel for a very long time), Sam loves that it has upper- and lowercase letters and allows him to create massive sentences in our kitchen. One night a few weeks ago, I came downstairs after putting Sam to bed and found this on our fridge:
I pondered over the meaning for quite some time, trying to figure out if Sam was thinking of a recent time we went out to eat or if he had a more existential meaning, some important life lesson he needed to share but was interrupted by bath time. My curiosity only grew the next morning when I was making breakfast and Sam marched over to his letters and added three more:
(in this one you can see the Word Whammer itself) Evidently, whatever his tip was, it shrunk in the night. Any guesses as to Sam's obscure meanings?

Christmas Photos - Finally

At long last I've gotten the photos from the past month off my camera and onto my new external hard drive (I knew I'd eventually get around to changing my computer with all the new toys I got for it). So here is Christmas 2008. Click on the picture to enjoy the set!