My boy is a kindergartener.

I'm just saying. How did that happen? He's so clever, too...

"Mom, why did the chicken cross the road?"

We worked through this one. He wouldn't tell me; I had to guess. I made guesses. "To get his keys out of the freezer." No! "To buy shoelaces?" No! This went on for some time. Finally he acquiesced to tell me: "To get to the other side." Ba-ding!

Then a few quiet moments later, he says: "Mom, why did the chicken go into the farmhouse?"

"Why, honey?"

"To get his keys out of the freezer!"

Clever, clever, clever. Nice work. So proud.

Stage debut

Noah is having his stage debut in a 5- and 6-year-old production of The Rainbow Fish. Such a proud and nervous Mama!

Testing remote blogging

Well, now I'm a cow with an iPhone. Checking out an app for posting to blog from phone.

Well, another milestone achieved.

Son tonight uttered the pivotal words:

Mom! You're such an embarrassment!

He also hit me with this doozie:

If you don't come help me right now, you're out of a job.

So much for Mommy's most favored nation status....

The joke of the day, Noah-style

Him: "Hey, Mom, you know how to make an elephant float?"

Me (gullibly): "No, honey, how?"

Him: "You take one scoop of ice cream, two squirts of soda, and three scoops of elephant!"

Dissolves into hysterical laughter

At his 5-year-old checkup, the doctor commented that he had a very well developed sense of humor. She had NO IDEA. God, I love this kid.

I taught my son the interrupting cow joke.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting cow.

Interrupting cow wh...

MOOO!

Okay, it's stupid, but it's my favorite knock-knock joke. So I taught it to my 5-y-o. It took two days to get the timing right, but he's been very creative with it since then. Interrupting cow. Interrupting goat. Interrupting sheep. Interrupting dog. Interrupting chicken. Interrupting rooster.

Yesterday morning, he climbed into bed with us in the morning. "Knock knock!" Who can resist? "Who's there?" "Interrupting tushie!" Interrupting tush..."

FART!

He actually timed it so that he farted to interrupt me responding to the knock-knock joke. I can't decide whether to be insanely proud or horrified.

Moogbiel

A certain young man I know is very interested in recipes now. He came home with one for chocolate oatmeal fudgies from school, and periodically tells me about "secret ingredients." The best invented recipe, though, is for something he called Moogbiel.

Ingredients:

20 cups of boiling water
1 moose
3 cups of sugar

It didn't get much further than that, but I think it involved boiling the moose, and then adding sugar to taste.

Not just a kindergartner, but a white belt too!

The little guy had his last day of school yesterday, the last day of preschool, the day he turned into a kindergartner. We celebrated with a trip to the Smithsonian to see the Ocean exhibit, the dinosaur hall, and the Imax Dinosaurs in 3D movie.

This morning after his karate class, Noah tested for his white belt.

I'm so proud!

Sometimes, it works too well.

It's been a fun week. Last week of Noah's school -- funny hat day, crazy hair day, wear your pajamas to school day, that kind of thing. And today was the last day of preschool. I'm the mother of a kindergartner now. We had a fun morning, had pancakes, and headed in the rain to school. I was focused on driving because of the traffic and the relentless rain, and not paying much attention to the little grunts I heard in the back seat, until they were followed by a heavy sigh.

"Mom, I'm not magic."

"What on earth are you talking about, son? You're completely magic. You're the most magic thing I know. Why wouldn't you be magic?"

"I'm not magic, Mom. I can't pull off my thumb."

"What?"

"Well, you can pull off your thumb, and Daddy pulled of his thumb at dinner last night, but I can't pull off my thumb, see?"

I look in the rear view mirror to see him determinedly tugging at his thumb, and then dissolve into hysterical laughter.

"Oh, Noah, it's okay -- you have to be MUCH older to be able to pull off your thumb. You have to be really old, like 20."

Another heavy sigh from the back seat. I continued to giggle the rest of the way to school. Tonight, I decided that kindergarten was old enough, and showed him the trick.

Spell, smell, who's counting?

We were driving to a friend's house for dinner last night, and debating genetic differences. Things like tongue curling. "Everyone can do it," Noah tells me. "Some people can't," I explained. "Just like some people can't smell it when a skunk sprays. Can you smell skunk?" I asked.

"S - N - I - C - K," he says. "Yep."

You know, it's hard to argue with that.

Well here's something new....

Noah went to Sunday school this morning, and I stayed home and worked on cleaning up my home office, doing laundry, and other assorted household chores. I didn't ever eat, and when he got home, we decided to have a picnic in his room. Peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. Got out the bread, put on the peanutbutter. Got out the jelly -- we debated between types and picked the purple kind.

"Grape jelly, Noah," I told him.

"WHAT?" His response was piercing.

"It's made from grapes" I explained.

"I don't believe you" he replied.

You know, it's hard to argue with that. "How can I convince you that it's true?" I asked.

"You're a freak, Mom."

His father came in a minute later. I repeated the discussion for my husband's benefit. "I don't believe you, Mom," he said. "I only believe Daddy."

His father informed him that it was grape jelly.

"Okay, I don't believe you either."

Clearly we're in cahoots.

Well THAT was creative....

A few nights ago, we were playing "ski jump" on the wii in the basement. Ski jump is hard -- you have to get your weight juuuust right, and stand up but not actually jump at JUUUUST the right moment. And when you weigh just 42 pounds, there's not a lot of weight to shift around to control the Wii Fit device.

So Noah became a "meatball," which is how he refers to the condition of falling off the slope and turning into a snowball with skis and poles sticking out of it. And then again. And again. The charm of "being a meatball" wore off as his frustration increased over not being able to get off the jump. He began to hurl himself at the ground and kick each time he "meatballed" to the bottom of the hill. For a kid who never threw a tantrum as a 2-year-old, it was a pretty good try.

Eventually we changed to a game that was less challenging, he pulled himself together, and we bowled a couple of games and then went upstairs to get ready for bed. And as we curled up on the bed, I asked him about it. "Oh, Mommy, my brain was taken over by aliens. I'm fine now" he explained.

Well, okay. I'm going to have a hard time arguing with that one. Frankly, it was what I thought at the time.

Wingpits?

This comes from a correspondence with my 4th grade teacher; that scenario is a whole topic by itself.

We were driving to school, and Noah was looking out of the window.

Him: "Look, Mom, that bird is going to the playground!"

Me: "It is? What do you think it's going to do when it gets there?"

Him: "Go down the slide!"

Me: "That sounds like fun!"

Pause

Him: "He might get hurt. Maybe he'll go swing on the monkeybars."

Me: "He doesn't have hands, does he? How will he swing?"

Him: "With his feet!"

I'm not quite sure how this transmogrified into the rest of it, but soon the conversation was going like this:

Me: "So the bird is going to hang by his armpits?"

Him: "Yes. No. Birds don't have armpits."

Me: "Why?"

Him: "They have wings!"

Me: "Then what do they have?"

Him: "Wingpits!"

Me: "Excellent! What does Lucy (our dog) have?"

Him: "Nothing."

Me: "Well, she doesn't have arms, but she does have front legs... does she have legpits?"

He loved this concept, and debated strenuously with me about what animals have "legpits" for most of the ride. Tonight when we went to cuddle up in bed, the dog was there, and we investigated her "legpits." And then he tossed his legs in the air over his head and said "Hey, do I have legpits down there?" and I had to tickle him, it was so cute. He seems to agree that the cat has them, but he isnt so sure about the dog.

Further evidence....

Last night was kids' night at the local Silver Diner, complete with pony rides. We had a pony ride, dinner at the diner, and then another pony ride. It was the best dinner out EVER.

When I was just out of college, I dated a man who thought I wasn't serious enough about important things like biking long distances, hiking, or rock climbing. I recall a weekend when he wanted to go out to the mountains, and I objected that it didn't sound like fun to me. Somehow my irritation at being forced into an outing that I wasn't interested in became known as my "search through the state park for a carousel." I wasn't really looking for a carousel -- I just wasn't interested in sitting quietly for hours while he attempted to scale every vertical face of rock we found. This was before it dawned on me that I could actually ALSO learn to rock climb -- a phase in my life that was very short, and ended when I turned out to be innately better at it than my first husband, but I digress.

In retrospect, that trip would have been a lot more fun, if there'd been a carousel. Or a 4-y-o to hang out with.

My secret is out....

Over lunch the other day, a girlfriend pointed out that I needed to have a child so that I'd have someone to hang out with who shared my interests. I stand guilty as accused.

We had the most fun I can imagine yesterday. A leisurely morning, but then a trip to the Smithsonian's Ripley Center to see Jim Henson's Fantastic World. A small exhibit, overall, and crowded on its final weekend, it let me briefly worship at the shrine of a 1970's-era Kermit the Frog, along with Bert and Ernie, Gobo Fraggle, and a variety of characters and props from movies such as The Dark Crystal.

There was a great resource room with books of material for the adults while children could draw storyboards, add features to velcro faces, and play with puppets on a real puppet theater where they could see through a glass panel to a monitor that showed them what the scene looked like on camera, and which was televised to 1970's era tvs in other parts of the exhibit.

I came away inspired to start making puppets, something I've always wanted to do, but hey! Now I have a partner in crime who will work on it with me! My girlfriend is proven correct in her assessment of my reasons for having children....

We left there and went to the Natural History Museum for a quick bite to eat in the Fossil Cafe ("Don't go extinct!") and a quick trip around the dinosaur exhibit, then a quick romp into the new Sant Ocean Hall, and a trip to the gift shop resulting in two more members for the ever-growing dinosaur collection.

What trip to the Mall is complete without a spin on the Carousel? Someone beat us to it on our first trip, but we were able to cleverly wait out an entire cycle so we could pick FIRST and ride the "dragon" -- and there was much rejoicing.

I carried a very tired 4-y-o and his two new friends through the Ripley Garden on the way back to the car, and a very sleepy boy conked out during the ride home. We were just too tired to do anything else for the rest of the day, and it was a quiet evening.

It'll be a tough act to follow, but I think maybe the zoo is juuuust the thing!

Struggling.

I am struggling to write about the death of my much-beloved father-in-law. There is so much to say, and I'm not ready.

In my search for the text of El Male Rachamim, though, I came across a new blog, Velveteen Rabbi, that I immediately wanted to add to my links; I've done that.

Jews take care of business quickly after a death, and the logistics and details of my father-in-law's burial are complex and taking forever. I begin to understand that the healing process of actual mourning simply can't begin until the logistics of returning the body to the earth is complete; all the more reason that I pray that when the time comes, I'm buried where I fall. If it's abroad, so be it.

I dusted off my copy of my book of Psalms, bought before the funeral of a congregational friend years ago, used again at the funeral of a close friend of my stepmother's. I wonder if it's morbid to keep a list of the funerals that this small blue book has attended.

So two weeks after our loss, I feel like we've been waiting, hovering slightly above the ground, waiting for our next intake of breath, before we can begin to move forward. I wait for the crashing impact of our loss when we finally get to take in that breath, realize what's happened, and move forward.

It is still too hard to fathom.

There's a WHAT in the yard?

Our morning routine is pretty predicable. I get up, I shower, I wake Noah, we go downstairs, I make breakfast, he eats breakfast and watches a cartoon while I eat breakfast and check my email before leaving, and take care of a little bit of home business, including cleaning up the kitchen. Occasionally, Noah wakes up early and blows the plan slightly -- this was one of those mornings. So he prods me awake by dragging his Coca-Cola polarbear clock into the bed with me to tell me "the hand is on the 4, so it's time to wake up." The FOUR? Oops, forgot to move the clock forward, and yes, it is in fact between 5 and 6 -- but "time to wake up?"

I cajole him into watching BETWEEN THE LIONS for 20 minutes while I get a little more sleep -- after all, the adrenaline rush I experience after fencing on Thursday nights normally means that I don't get to sleep until unnaturally late; being awakened before 6 is just cruel. He acquiesces. I snooze. BETWEEN THE LIONS is over, it's 6:20. I'm up. We go downstairs. I make breakfast.

Now I have to do the "leave child alone downstairs while I go up and shower" fandango, which is a little stressful. Noah hasn't ever been an escape-from-the-house-unsupervised artist, but that doesn't mean he won't TRY it one morning. I set up WALKING WITH DINOSAURS for him to watch; he likes the disc where the man goes back in time and is chased by dinosaurs, in particular the episode where he goes down in a diving cage and is attacked by a protoshark. I sneak upstairs to get cleaned up and ready for work.

A few minutes later, I'm just about to get into the shower, and I hear not just noise, but actual crying screaming downstairs. I throw clothes back on and dash madly downstairs. "I have to show you something!" he wails, and drags me by the arm urgently to the window. "There's a DINOSAUR in the front yard!"

I look out the window. Now, perhaps I failed to mention that after fencing last night, I arrived home to the big fuscia notice at the entrance to our pipestem that "they" would be repaving the road starting at 7am, and so ended up parking 4 blocks away on the main road, schlepping my equipment, bag with clothes, briefcase, take-out dinner, and purse back to the house at 9:30, muttering about what a pain in the butt this was going to be. Now it's 7:10. An lo, here are the guys with the big machines, tearing up the road. And I had not considered it until I saw it with my son's eyes, but one of the pieces of equipment looks shockingly like a brontosaurus. Another looks amazingly like a tyranosaurus rex. It's true. And when you're four, and you've never seen this before, and it's right in front of your house, well, I guess it's pretty darned shocking. Because unlike the ones at the museum, these are MOVING AROUND. DOING THINGS. TO OUR ROAD. LIKE TEARING IT UP. DINOSAURS! ARE EATING! OUR ROAD!

Eventually I got him to calm down. Can't wait to hear what he tells his class today at school! "Really? Dinosaurs ATE YOUR ROAD?"

I love seeing the world through his eyes.

The perfect gift for a 4-year-old boy....

I saw myself type this to a girlfriend asking for suggestions for her 3-year-old son's birthday, and thought it deserved to be saved for posterity:

The highlight of our trip to the Natural History museum a couple of weeks ago was seeing fossilized dinosaur poo. He was beside himself. So if anyone asks what I think they should give Noah, I tell them "a coprolite." They just stare at me like I'm nuts. "You want me to give your kid dino dung?" Yeah, really, I do.

Mommy Superpowers!

I just tripped over the Mommy Superpowers test.

I have the power of Unstoppable Creativity:

Fun, inventive moms like you know that life is what you make it — and you make it as colorful as you can. Whether you're sewing your kids' one-of-a-kind Halloween costumes, helping them write school book reports, or planning an off-beat weekend outing for the family, you are always full of big ideas and a bright energy that keep your brood smiling broadly.



Your unique approach to the world around you probably carries into other aspects of your mothering as well, and you're likely known for coming up with great solutions to your kids' problems. You're definitely not like the other moms — and your kids may sometimes wish you didn't stand out so much — but really, they like the adventure that comes with living with such a creative force, and the way you always encourage them to be themselves.

I'm pretty happy with that superpower. Though I wouldn't mind the ability to be in two places at one time.

You want me to draw WHAT?

My son is dinosaur-happy. I'm pretty sure it's not my brother's fault, because he hasn't spent nearly enough time with his nephew for me to be able to blame him for this obsession. Perhaps it's genetic. Maybe we are a family of dinosaur-obsessives.

Last night, we were on the driveway playing with the chalk, and he asked me to draw dinosaurs. "Draw me a stegasaurus!" I did. "Draw me a triceratops!" I did. "Draw me a pachycephalosaurus!"

There was a long pause.

Me: "Honey, a what?"

Him: "A pachycephalosaurus!"

Me: "Hang on."

I went inside, grabbed the phone, and called my paleontologist brother. He was not available. I left a message. "Just calling to make sure I"m drawing the right thing. Pachycephalosaurus -- that's the one that looks like it's part Benadictine monk, part Jean Luc Picard, right?"

I went back outside. He started trying to explain. "You know, it walks up right, and has a round head with a ridge around it, and it goes BANG BANG BANG with its head..." (he's running into my thigh with the top of his head to demonstrate) "...and it can RUN..." and he runs off.

Whew! Dodged that bullet. But not for long. Back inside, he informs me that he IS a pachycephalosaurus. I found a book about the physiology of prehistoric animals, no kidding, that I read when I was on a business trip in Utah, years ago. One page of line drawings of dinosaurs. Yep, I was right -- it looks like Jean Luc. Noah pronounces this "his favorite page" of the book, and carries the book off.

I wish I had this much gusto, when I take on a subject. When he gets excited about something, I swear, he just rolls in it.