Weekend of Fun and Family

I have an award that I should be displaying instead of blabbing all about my weekend, but priorities rule.  I love awards, but I love showing off pics of my kids even more.  So I'll say a huge shout out and thank you to Megan for the award, and I'll get to it in the next day or so, I promise! 

I surprised the kids with trip this weekend.  Oz and I had decided to go down and visit Science Museum Oklahoma, my mother, my sister and brother-in-law, and my grandmother.  And because M2 had been begging to go swimming, we booked a night at a hotel with a kickin' pool.  Oz spends enough nights at various hotels that it was FREEEEEEE... and I like free!

We headed to McDonald's for a pre-trip breakfast on our way out of town.  In-car breakfasts are a tradition with us on long trips, like bringing DVDs to play in the van's DVD system so I don't have to listen to children bickering all the way down or up whichever turnpike we're taking.  Makes life easier.

And I realized how small of a town we live near.  This car was at a dealership next to the McD's.  Very nice-looking vehicle.  The keys looked pretty spiffy, too.

We hopped on the road, and I turned on "Mr. Bean's Holiday."  The kids had never seen it but thorougly enjoyed it.  The best part, though, was when M1 listened to the following bit of dialogue:

French woman:  [speaking French]
Mr. Bean:  Non.
French woman:  [speaking French]
Mr. Bean:  Oui.
French woman:  You speak French very well.
Mr. Bean:  Gracias.

M1 instantly realized the flaw and humor in this conversation, and he was thrilled with himself for knowing what was 'wrong.'  When he realized that he also knew the word 'oui' a few minutes later, he was even happier. 

We made it down to the museum without incident, and M2 was beside herself with excitement when we got there.  We had to wait in line for a little bit, and she was bouncing and twirling and jumping with happiness about getting to go through a turnstile on the way into the museum.  We arrived about 15 minutes before a science show about explosions was supposed to start, and M1 wanted to see the show.  Oz took him there, and M2 and I set off on our own adventures.

She twirled... repeatedly.

She slid down a slide based on an Archimedes screw... repeatedly (and has the bruises all over her arms to prove it).

She climbed up the ladder into a little house, dashed across and out the other side, and swang on the swings that were hung underneath this building.  The swings were all different shapes, and her favorite was the one shaped like a trapezoid.

We then repeated this whole procedure a couple of times before I insisted we move on to see other things.  Then Vanity Girl discovered...

the mirror maze.

It was all I could do to get her out of here.  She twirled and danced and admired herself ad nauseum.  She did whack her face a couple of times in the process but was completely undeterred.  What finally encouraged her to leave was peeking out the door and realizing there were stairs that led up to...

Gymnastics mats.

We spent a good 45 minutes here.  I'd rearrange the mats a little bit, and she'd go up and down and over and around; she'd rearrange the mats and do it all again.  Once a girl, probably about 7, decided to show off on the balance beam, and M2 hopped right up there with her, determined not to be outdone, and mimicked everything.  Thankfully the other girl was kind and patient and enjoyed her little ape.  When I told M2 that Oz and M1 were out of their show, she agreed to leave the mats behind and instantly got sidetracked by the sound of her own voice.

I'm standing at an identical dish about 20 feet away.  She loved that she could whisper or talk into a small ring in the center and hear me reply while facing the other direction.  I sort of explained the mechanism behind it, though I don't think she cared.  She just wanted to sing.

We met back up with Oz and M1 and swapped kids for a little while.  M1 really enjoys thinking about all the science behind things, and even though he was already getting tired (not sure how the show tired him out, but he's a growing boy), he still found enjoyment in the small things.

One of the only photos I got of him is this one, where he's sitting and trying to stump a 20 Questions computer program.  He didn't stay long here because he wanted to explore other areas, and he wandered over to the play area where M2 had started.  He discovered a trebuchet sort of mechanism and tried it out with some (soft) balls designed for that use.  There's a set-up on the ground for the balls to land, and the kids are supposed to get points for aiming right.  I think it's more luck than anything, but M1 took several shots at it.  Mostly he was getting hungry.  He talked M2 into heading to the hotel, with a couple of detours to fire the Tesla coil and admire the Segway driving area, and we headed out, tired and hungry... temporarily, of course.

The hotel and pool and Granny time were in store for later!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Just for fun, here are 10 random things about me to keep you going through this long weekend. Hope everyone stays safe and has a great one!

1. I do not like chocolate milk. I do not like it, Sam I Am. I really don't like chocolate ice cream, either, with the exception of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food which isn't really chocolate ice cream so much as it is a melted 3 Musketeers bar with chunky fish-shaped chocolate bits in it. I realize this makes me weird. Have you read this blog? It shouldn't be a surprise.

2. I would love to have a Savannah cat. I think they're gorgeous. Plus, you can teach them to play fetch and walk on a leash. I'd love to take one to a park just to taunt the dogs. I'm ornery like that.

3. I have decided what I want my third tattoo to be. The problem is it'll take up most of my back, and I haven't quite convinced myself I'm ready to take the ink that far yet. I also have to save the cash and convince Oz it's a good idea. I think if I can talk Oz into getting his first tattoo at the same time, he might go a little easier on me. Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I slay myself.

4. I love hot showers and baths. Not just tepid or slightly-warm-to-almost-maybe-hot but turn-your-skin-red, close-to-scalding hot. The kind of hot where you pour a bath and have to wait for it to cool down a bit so you don't actually poach yourself. When the kids were tiny, I had the water heater thermostat set so that it couldn't get very hot. Now that they are older and know to test the water, I'm slowly cranking it up. Oz likes his water barely warm, and if he climbs into the shower after I've been in there, he wonders how I have skin LEFT for tattoos.

5. I love jigsaw puzzles. I love cats. The two do not mix, but I try anyway. I'm a sucker for the unmanageable.

6. I don't really like homemade sandwiches. I have no idea why. It's not like I ate a ton of them as a child. I just don't like them. Unless there are potato chips on it. A bologna sandwich with potato chips is next to godliness.

7. I cannot watch horror movies. The last one I saw was "Scream 2." I'd say the last one was "The Blair Witch Project," but honestly that wasn't a horror movie. I'm still not sure what it was other than completely boring and not scary at all. Anyway, after that my anxiety flared up, and I haven't been able to watch a horror movie since. That being said, I am fascinated with the paranormal and watch "Ghost Hunters" religiously. I also am quite happy to watch documentaries on Jack the Ripper and other serial killers. I fear the fake and relish the real. Go figure.

8. I don't like carrying a purse. Coach, Prada, and other famous brands hold no fascination for me. I've carried one off and on throughout my teen and adult life, but I always wind up back where I started which is with my wallet in my back pocket, my phone in my front pocket, and my keys attached to my belt loop (or backpack, back in the day). I have a small denim purse that I'm using right now, and I'm keeping it pared down to the bare essentials - the three items already mentioned, M1's inhaler, and a pair of sunglasses. The End. Amen.

9. Every time I watch Star Wars and hear, "May the Force be with you," I automatically think, "And also with you." My liturgical church background runs deep.

10. I am very responsive to smells. I could write a whole blog post on just this topic and probably will one day, but it's why I can go into Yankee Candle and spend oodles of dough. The smells are just heavenly. I think my children have inherited this love. Given my love for baking, it's a good thing.

Notes on being "old"

M1 and I stepped out the back door the other day on our way to run some errands. As I opened the garage door, I saw the mail truck pull up and stop in front of our mailbox. In a moment of sheer inspiration, I pulled out my best male-impersonating voice and proclaimed, "You've Got Mail!"

M1 looked at me and asked, "Mom, why did you do a voice?"

And it hit me again, for about the 100th time this week, that I am in fact a generation apart from my son. Never mind the fact that we're both technically in the same generation, at least according to several sources. He does not and will never understand the deep meaning hidden behind that phrase. He will never know how exciting it was to hear a modem - HEAR a modem - connect to the Internet and that voice, long after you've given up on any sort of connection and wandered back to the television, declare that somebody has taken the time to look up your e-mail address, type you a letter, and send it. And you didn't dare spend too long on the Internet because that tied up the phone!

"You've Got Reality Check!" is what it might as well have said. Yeesh.

Another incident occurred on Sunday. The kids and I were on our own since Oz was out of town, and my mother-in-law had called us up and invited us over for dinner. The red carpet portion of the Emmys was on while we were there, and Claire Danes walked out for her interview.

I didn't recognize her. Neither did the brother-in-law who is my age. She looked, for lack of a better word, OLD. He and I both commented that she was way cuter when she was younger, back when she did "My So-Called Life" and "Romeo and Juliet."

M1 was intrigued.

"Mom, was that a famous person?"

*whimper*

I know there are hundreds - OK, thousands - of things that I'll remember from my youth that the kids will never know about unless I share them. I've tried to hunt down things like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' or Lionel Richie's 'All Night Long' or Bob Marley's classic 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.' But they're seeing these things on YouTube. YOUTUBE. I refer back to the hearing the modem comment. Uploading an entire video onto the Internet was unheard of back in those days.

They'll never remember the original joy of Skip-Its and snap bracelets and hair crimpers that made a girl look somewhere between a poodle and someone touching a Van de Graff generator. They'll never know life without cell phones and laptops and flat-screen TVs. (When Oz and I first got married, we had a CONSOLE TV because it was free from the local community theater.) All this they'll never know, and by today's standards, they're not particularly spoiled!

I could go from here to making social commentary about how materialistic our society is and how dependent upon technology we have become, but I don't think that's the point. I was just as materialistic as a child; the technology just wasn't there. The pinnacles of technology were the neighbor's Nintendo and her Walkman that played cassettes (cassettes - yet another item they'll never know about, like 5-1/4" floppy disks and green-tinted Apple computer screens). So many things will be ancient history to them!

On a more sobering note, they won't have memories of 9/11, either. Like the JFK assassination or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that event (and, if you like, especially around here, the OKC Bombing) defines my generation. Nobody has forgotten where they were on that day, and nobody old enough to clearly remember it likely ever will. Completely mind-altering and completely unforgettable.

I really enjoy sharing the tidbits of my past like old toys, TV shows, and ugly hair. I love coming across all the memorabilia and giggling at the bewilderment of the children when they try to wrap their minds around the 'simpler' times that we lived in. But with knowledge comes power and responsibility, and teaching them a well-rounded perspective is definitely a task I have to face without fear if I'm going to raise children who are aware of their world.

On the other hand, when they call me up someday and whine, "Mom, I'm old. My kids don't know who Hannah Montana is," I might... just MIGHT... giggle a little.

And then I'll tell them about Punky Brewster.

Book of the Week

Davy Crockett: His Own Story by (who else?) David Crockett.

And oh, yes, I did have to hunt down "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" and play (and sing) it for the boy. And he wanted to know what a 'bar' was that Davy supposedly killed when he was 3.

Literal boy strikes again :)

Hibernation

I've gone into voluntary hibernation. I'd prefer that it came with the fringe benefits of nobody poking the mama bear for five months or, better yet, that I lost all my excess body fat and came out on the other end as svelte as I was 10 years ago but without the horrid acne and skinny awkwardness and borderline anorexia. Alas, I am not that lucky. I just needed a break from humanity. No reason. Not even particularly stressed out. Just needed a breather. Ever feel like earth is shrinking every day? I do, and I was getting a tad claustrophobic.

I'm still keeping in touch with my closest friends, of course. Besides anything else, if I disappeared off the face of the earth and none of them had spoken to me in the last 48 hours, they might organize a rescue party. I know they're capable of it. People who know my address have power.

However, yes, my world is shrinking. I got quite a shock when I went into M2's school the other day to turn in the fundraiser money for their annual drive. The PTA-equivalent runs the fundraising, and the woman who took my check looked at me and said, "So I talked to your dad and stepmom last night."

Um... MINE??

My first thought was that she had been into my dad's pawn shop and somehow managed to learn that he had a granddaughter that attended the same school as her munchkins, but her next words were, "Yeah, they left a note in my mailbox."

I just *love* cryptic comments. Please, make me beg for information, because I so very much have time to stand here and drag it out of you. It's another reason I'm not a big fan of talking on the phone. I can be as mundane and pointless and boring as the next person when I'm on IM, but the phone is a different beast to me. When it comes to actually open my fat mouth and speaking words, there's usually a purpose, and I get straight to it. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

Anyway, apparently this woman just bought the giant house that's at the end of my dad's dead-end street in an even-more-rural-than-I-am area. It'd been for sale for a while, and Oz and I would drive out to dad's and joke we should make an offer because by this point, maybe we could afford it. Nyuk nyuk nyuk. My stepmom either mailed or delivered a nice 'Welcome to the Neighborhood' note to their house. Grandparents' Day is coming up, and the Home & School Association (this is the name of the PTA equivalent) does a little thing for grandparents, and they send out invitations. This woman was filling out invitations and looked at the address and went, "Hey, wait a second..." Then she called up my stepmom and asked who went to the school with her kids because, by gosh and by golly, the school may be small, but my world is smaller. Things are colliding.

Stop me from making more Seinfeld references here, please. Apparently I'm all about Costanza family statements this week.

SERENITY NOW!!!

:)

I don't think that little scenario was enough to send me into hibernation, so it must be a culmination of everything. I'll emerge in a few days, as happy and cheerful and psychotic as before, and begin to catch up on everything I've missed.

On the other hand, not having Facebook e-mails filling up my inbox every day has been quite refreshing. Maybe I'll just become a lurker. Nobody will notice THAT, right?

I did it!

If you look on the right-hand side of the page and scroll down a bit, I've finally gotten a blog list posted! Many of these belong to personal friends; others I have just found. With only a few exceptions, these are not blogs with hundreds or thousands of followers. They are just the blogs of people like myself who just want to share tidbits of their lives with all you lovely people. This list will update according to the 10 most recent posts, so continue to check on it occasionally, because you never know what you might find. :)

Enjoy!

The Weekend - A Confession

1. I drank wine straight from the bottle tonight. That's a first for me, mostly because I'm not really a wine person. Now, there was less than a single glass left in the bottle and I didn't feel like getting one out of the cabinet, but I realized as I was sitting on the floor petting the dog with a giant wine bottle in my hand that I was, in fact, pretty pathetic-looking.

2. The reason I drank wine straight from the bottle was because M2 ate sugar straight out of the sugar bowl, got caught red-handed, and STILL lied about it to my face, and M1 'fessed up to some shenanigans he had been up to for the last, oh, 2-3 YEARS that we just found out about. He was a man about it and accepted the responsibility and the subsequent punishment (his behavior lessened the punishment, and he knows that), but all that combined did make for a looooooong afternoon. Oh, and M2 has stuffed her bottom nightstand drawer so full of books that it no longer opens. I'm going to have to try to go through the bottom or take off the back to get them out. I suspect her hairbrush is in there, too, because it's vanished.

3. I wanted to go to the Indian Festival that was going on today, but we didn't make it. My sister was coming up to see the kids, and it sounded like the perfect activity, but when we woke up this morning and started getting ready, M2 decided she wasn't going. And while I can put my foot down about things like school or doctor's appointments, dragging a 5-year-old around a public arena while she shrieks bloody murder is probably a good way to get myself on a DHS visitation list. So I didn't fight it, and we went to the park instead. I am grateful that my sister was just up for the kids and not the festival and enjoyed herself anyway. She's cool like that.

4. I taught my kids to play dominos the RIGHT way this morning. Until I explained the rules (and I didn't get into adding the pips yet because M2 isn't there, but oooohhhh good math game for M1 later, eh??), they honestly thought dominos were only to be used to make rallies a la the movie "Robots." M2 won the first two games and M1 won the third. Nobody cried or threw a fit about losing, and nobody rubbed their winnings in. I almost cried from happiness. It was a huge triumph. Hugs were given.

5. I had people over last night. People! It was the first real, live, adult interaction for longer than five minutes that I'd had since Oz left on Tuesday. It was fantabulous, and I gorged myself on the food that was brought to share. I'm always up for food.

6. I learned today that my core muscle strength, arm strength, and balance is better than I think it is. My sister takes aerial silk lessons when she can, and she was actually impressed by the fact that I could handle some yoga positions that even she has difficulty with and was at least as flexible as she was. She said I was graceful - HA! I have all the grace of a duck out of water, but I'll take what compliments I can get.

7. I am making cinnamon rolls.

8. I had to crawl under Oz's desk yesterday to fix the home network because the firewall wasn't working after the back-up power system officially fried itself. I fixed everything. Oz was suitably impressed.

9. Tomorrow we have a birthday party to attend. I can't believe this little guy is going to be 4. I remember when his big sister was just learning to crawl!

10. Also tomorrow M2's favorite uncle, Uncle D, is probably going to swing by. M2 persuaded him she hadn't seen him in far too long, and he's a good guy like that... or a sucker. Depends how you look at it.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! I'm out to finish the cinnamon rolls, but I'm sure I'll be back again soon!

Rhyming, imagination, and being the squeaky wheel

M2 is sitting next to me right now, rhyming her little heart out and writing the words on her Doodle Board. She comes home with a "reading assignment" each week, and there are activities to do with it. She generally fights me about doing it (and yes, it can get ugly... VERY ugly), but even if she fights the reading part, she loves to rhyme. I should say that she doesn't have to do much reading; I do most of it. And they're nursery rhymes, not random passages or silly made-up stories, so for most kids, they'd be a lot of fun.

Anyway... she loves to rhyme, and when she's in the mood, I encourage it and invent extra activities just for her. I just got asked to read 'dog' and 'hog,' and now she's telling me she intends to write some "tricky" rhymes. Please pray that I can interpret the spelling, because if I can't, Santa Claus is in trouble.

You'd think that those would be unrelated subjects, spelling and handwriting and Santa Claus, but they're not. There's a very relevant correlation, I promise. M2 wrote her Christmas list to Santa already two weeks ago, and I'll be darned if it didn't come up in conversation on the way home from picking her up today. It started with the Tooth Fairy because M1 stated blandly, "I've seen the Tooth Fairy."

I don't mind telling you I had a small heart attack in the driver's seat because he wouldn't hesitate one nanosecond to blurt out, "It's Mom," and not think a thing of it even though M2 has yet to lose a single tooth and I don't want the fun to be ruined for her because she very much admires the letters that the Tooth Fairy sends to M1. So when M2 asked, "What does she look like?" I seriously held my breath.

Luckily, he was just trying to lord his own imagination over his sister, so the description that followed involved copious quantities of pink and glitter. M2's response was, "So next time you lose a tooth, can you catch her and keep her and I can see her?"

Pause.

"No, you can't catch her. She has a pink magic wand with glitter on the end and can escape."

"Well, I'm sure we could trap her with food. What does she eat?"

Another pause.

"Nobody knows because nobody's ever seen her eat."

"But then how does she stay alive? I bet she eats crackers. Maybe if we crumbled one up really tiny, she'd eat it and you could trap her for me."

Authority Boy was having his font of knowledge questioned, and that disturbed him.

"NO, M2. She'd just magic away with her wand, remember?!?"

"Well, I'll write her a letter and she'll just read it and come live with me. She can read my writing just like Santa Claus can. 'Cause Santa Claus CAN read my writing on my Christmas list, right, Mom?"

"Of course, dear... he uses the same magic for reading letters that he does for getting into the house without breaking things."

"SEE, M1?? The Tooth Fairy WILL live with me. So there."

Grunt. Arms cross. Indignant seat flop.

Thank heavens M1 let it drop at that point because I was on the verge of having an audible giggle meltdown. Both of them were so full of righteous indignity it was quite amusing. I love this innocence. Makes me wish I could just go back and be little with them again.

Unfortunately, I can't. I have to do things like deal with doctors and people in scheduling departments who are totally out to ruin my day.

We were supposed to go to the psychiatrist for M2 on Monday. This past Monday, the 23rd. But a couple weeks ago I got a phone call from The Scheduling Queen who is either permanently disgruntled or chronically unhappy, and we rescheduled for the 30th. Next Monday. I can deal with that. I understand things come up, and really, an extra week doesn't make all that much difference in the grand scheme of things.

However, today while M1 and I were browsing through Hobby Lobby, my cell phone buzzed in my purse. I answered.

It was The Scheduling Queen, and she wasn't making a reminder courtesy call. The doctor had taken on a new position at another clinic and would only be in their clinic two days a week starting 'soon,' and could we reschedule?

I politely reminded her that we'd already been rescheduled once, but she's not The Scheduling Queen for nothing. "Oh, I know, and I'm sorry, but his schedule's just been so up in the air lately that we're having to move a lot of people. It looks like the next appointment we have is on a Tuuuesssdaayyyy..."

There was a pause as she looked up the specific date and time.

"September 21."

MY turn to pause. SEPTEMBER 21?!?!?!?!? I finally realized I'd been quiet for quite a while and was supposed to say something. That is how conversations typically work, after all, but holy cow. Holy. Freaking. Cow. I was nearly in tears standing in the clearance aisle of Hobby Lobby, and M1 was giving me a very odd look. I accepted the appointment with less than my usual grace, The Scheduling Queen promised to call me if anything opened up earlier, and I hung up. Then I started shaking, and while that may have had something to do with the two cups of caramel macchiato-laced coffee I'd consumed that morning, I suspect it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was MAD. Angry. Seriously peeved. I do not like being yanked around, and that is precisely how I was feeling. I also knew darn good and well that M2 and I are going to have lots... and lots... of fights between now and then, and the current medication isn't doing much to curb those and I needed that to change and... deeeeeep breath.

Hug the boy. Smile. Feel better.

Of course, now the boy's really curious.

"Mom, why did you just hug me?"

"Because you make me happy, and I love you, and you're special."

He really does, and I do, and he is, and he'll never know how therapeutic that hug was. Off we went, finishing up shopping and going to his swimming lesson, hitting up Sam's for cat litter and pork chops, and finally heading home.

Then I e-mailed the doctor. I was polite and courteous and simply stated the facts of the situation and asked if he had medication recommendations for me to share with our pediatrician or whether he could get us in before the September 21st time slot. I expected it would be tomorrow before I heard anything, but I had a reply within five minutes! In our short back-and-forth correspondence over the next 15 minutes, he explained the situation, told me I wasn't an inconvenience (because even though I was angry and probably justified, I still hate any sort of confrontation, and yes, this counted), and told me he'd have someone call me.

The Scheduling Queen called less than 20 minutes later. An appointment magically opened up next Tuesday, August 31.

Whether it was the Tooth Fairy's wand that made the appointment appear or my own powers of persuasion or simply good luck, I'll never know. I don't think I care, either. I'm just glad we're getting in.

Back to rhyming. Rhyme/time/crime/slime. There. I feel better. :)

Book of the Week

Caddie Woodlawn, the story of a girl who lives in Wisconsin and is irrepressible. She reminds me of Laura Ingalls, whom M1 already loves. I'm curious to see how he takes to this one.

Deconstructing Wha..???

Meet Deconstructing Penguins. Great title, isn't it? It came highly recommended for kids M1's age on a homeschool forum that I frequent, so I bought it.

And then I read it.

Deconstructing Penguins, here on out referred to as DP because that title may only be two words but it's a pain in the backside to type repeatedly, follows the journey of a book club for elementary school students and their parents. In other words, they teach 7-year-olds how to analyze a book!

The literatus inside me peed a little bit from excitement.

I love the idea of being able to teach M1 that there's more going on inside a book than just words on a page. Love it. I had no clue about literature analysis until I was a sophomore in high school. Granted, I had an absolutely astounding English teacher that year and I learned a TON, but it was tough stuff. I still can't read Emily Dickenson without flashbacks, and I strongly suspect that I'll never be able to read "The Crucible" again, either. To be fair, though, both of those might have more to do with the teacher than actual psychological trauma, because she dressed up as Emily Dickenson for some of our readings (she had a particular passion for the woman) and, well, the phrase, "I saw Goody [teacher's surname] with the Devil!" still rings in my ears.

She also had French manicured fingernails, drove a black BMW, and had a disabled son. She was very memorable, and she was very good people and a great teacher.

I digress.

I know for a fact that no matter what age I introduce the idea of symbolism to M1, he will have a tough time with it. He is literal. Sometimes I have to walk out of the room and take a deep breath to deal with the depth of his literal interpretations. If Oz catches me and gives me his quizzical look, I just say, "Literal Boy is being literal again," and he understands. So if I ask M1 what happens in the book Charlotte's Web, he can give me a play-by-play of the entire book, and I'm about 99% sure that he quotes phrases straight out from the text. I know he does when we rehash a history or science lesson. It's a side effect of Asperger's, so I understand where it's coming from, but it just makes my job that much harder because in order to get him to successfully look beyond the black-and-white - in more ways than one - it's going to take a lot of work.

This is where DP steps in. While I don't agree with the book's definitions of protagonist and antagonist, the PROCESS is what's important here. To be able to teach kids terms like setting, character, climax, theme - in other words, to be able to break down a book into its parts from a whole - and have them actually understand what is meant, is huge. Huge, I say.

Is it going to be easy?

Ah, there's the rub.

Heck, no. And I don't intend to pursue this actively or often, either. What I would like to do is pick one book every three or four months and pick one part of it to examine. For example, one of M1's favorite books is My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It's one of my favorites, too, and his copy was actually MY copy from when I was young. So I'll probably start there. And we'll examine the setting, using the detective method from DP, starting with WHERE and ending with WHY.

My fingers are crossed. This may be an Epic Fail plan because I refuse to make him despise reading, and I know literature analysis can do that if it's pushed too hard, so I plan to tread lightly. I just want him to love books as much as I do and be able to understand them, and if DP is able to help me get there, I'm all for giving it a go! Hopefully I'll remember to come back and update with how it all goes; somebody remind me if I don't!