A quote for Friday

(Sam, singing)

"...St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go, I sold my soul to the BAKERY store."

The Spider Web Holiday

This weekend we got ready for a California trip for Tim and a week of single parenting for Susan.

Which meant enjoying the sunshine a doing some house cleaning.

Part of the cleaning meant re-arranging Sam's room, and putting up a hallowe'en decoration, shown here. Sam's gotten caught in it, but having never seen the giant-spider-in-a-cave episode of Gilligan's Island, he isn't at all nervous.

Minnesota!

Following SD we drove to Minneapolis and stayed with our good friends of many years, Dean and Jodi--and got to see their wonderful kids, Kip and Johanna.

It is hard to overstate how much more relaxing a trip is where there are smart, friends kids Sam's age for him to spend all day playing with! Sam got on with them like a house a'fire--alternately sitting and doing crafts with Johanna, then discussing superheroes at length with Kip. K&J could not have been friendlier.

Nor could Dean and Jodi. Jodi was often ferrying Susan around from one media blitz to another while Dean and I shepherded the kids. We spent one afternoon at a local apple farm, where the kids got to mess around in a bin filled with corn kernels, got to feed goats and marvel at calves and cows (where Dean and I learned to our dismay that cows can stick their tongues up their own nostils--ew!), pet kitties and chicks (the latter being of no interest to Sam for some reason), climb on tractors, pop in and out of old tires, and generally enjoy all the fun a tourist farm has to offer.

Dean and Jodi have great house which, in winter, has a nice view of one of the lakes on the West side of Minneapolis--the same lake which is home to the owner of Target, and various other rich and famous residents. In their back yard Dean has built a two-storey playhouse with slide and swings, also shown here.

What else? What else is necessary? It was good just to catch up, and so much fun to watch the kids play together. :-)

The cities trip had, for Susan, two very successful book signings, plus a professional events involving local book sellers and librarians with the engaging name "The Movable Feast". And we got to visit Xochitl and Joel. Sam knows their names well from our prayers, so it was particularly good for him to put faces to those names.

At long last, South Dakota

Two weeks ago we went on the 2010 SfS Prairie Book Tour. Susan started it early, and Sam and I joined her a couple of days later, after she'd had some very successful events at the South Dakota Festival of Books.

Sam has logged enough hours flying with us that I expect soon he'll get a free ticket. And he's seasoned--it couldn't be easier.

The same could be said of the first leg of the trip, and the longest, in Mitchell, SD. We stayed with Ruth and Paul and cousins Jon and Katie and had a whale of a time. The high point might have been when Sam announced to Katie that he loved her. :-) Both Jon and Katie were great with Sam, and took time out of their busy school schedules to hang out with him, which was so much fun to see. Katie continued the tradition of teaching him different high-five sequences. Last time the most sophisticated was "in the middle/cut the pickle". This time various other body parts got involved, with a non-deceptively simplistic rhyming scheme which I am pretty sure was original. "Up high/down low/in the shmarm pit/in the arm pit" was a probably everyone's favorite.

Aunt Ruth taught Sam a fun game. It is for the purpose of deceiving passersby, and goes like this:
Aunt Ruth: Guess what I am thinking of ?
Sam: A train?
A.R.: That's right! How did you guess?
Sam: Guess what I am thinking of!
A.R.: The sky?
Sam: Yes! Amazing!
...

Of course, they just agree with what the other says. Amazingly, it fools people for up to several minutes. :-)

While in Mitchell, birthplace of Susan, we took a trip to the nearby Alexandria, where Susan spent the first seven (?) years of her life, a tiny town with many good memories for her. This time we got to see Lake Hanson, an oblong lake outside of town with a little beach where Susan took swimming lessons. It being almost October, the beach was closed, but given the beautiful warm weather it was pleasant to visit. We also made the annual trip to the Corn Palace. In the off season it's really the Corn Gymnasium With Unusually Large Husk Wall Art, which turned out to be good--Sam was delighted to have a huge space in which to roam for a while.

And no trip is complete without a new Dinosaur pillow case from Aunt Ruth. Thanks, Aunt Ruth!

Following Mitchell we went to Brookings and stayed with Grandpa Gene overnight before heading to Minneapolis. While in Mitchell Gene took Susan and Sam to the new South Dakota Children's Museum. While it is somewhat smaller than the Strong Museum of Play, it is of the same high quality, and has some amazing exhibits, including huge animatronic dinosaurs, a giant Light Bright, an training machine for young milkers, a watery ball tracker, and many other amazing things.

It was great to see the SD family. Hopefully it won't be so long before the next visit!

Marble painting

Long week for Sam and the mother of Sam. He was out most of the week with a head cold delivered to him during a recent playdate.

Yesterday he was fine, but it hadn't yet been 24 hrs since his temperature had spiked to 100 degrees, so he was forced to stay home. Susan, rising to the occasion and responding to Sam's sudden urge to paint, suggested marble painting.

In this method you tape a piece of paper to a cardboard box after putting some splotches of paint on it. You then drop some marbles in and move it around, allowing the marbles to Pollack up the paper.

As you can see, it was a real success. :-)

He's back in at school today. This morning he asked me on the way in, "Is there mini gold courses in Egypt?" I said I didn't know but could check (google says: Yes!), but Sam said he guessed not.

Miniature golf has taken up residence in the same part of his brain previously reserved for the board game Mousetrap.

Sam had a hard time going to school this morning. Played various delay tactics, and admitted in the car that he was worried about lunch and afraid he would eat alone, without friends. He said this with parentheses around his eyes, trying not to cry. I think he still remembers well the times when he was forced to sit alone at lunch to avoid peanut contamination.

Nothing harder than seeing your kid worry like this--even though I knew he'd be fine.

Right now Susan's on her way to pick him up from Montessori, and thence back to Juli Elliots', where Sam will enjoy his first ever cookie made with peanut-free dark-chocolate M&Ms (actually, Skippers, which are far superior) and almond butter. Yum! The day ends better than it begins, which is probably the way it should be.

Have a good weekend!

Maize Maze! (&c.)

I'd like to start with an excerpt from More Tales of Oliver Pig. It shows Mother Pig having the porcine equivalent of a very mild nervous breakdown, in which she ends up sitting in a tree. Good book. I found it inspiring. This is an author who has spent time with children.

In other news, Sam now can eat almonds. (Visit Susan's blog to learn more and win valuable prizes!)

Good weekend, too. Friday we went out on a date. We are now swapping babysitting time with friends, and used an Olive Garden gift card we got from points earned with our credit card. Happily, the company was top-notch.

Saturday Sam and I went to the nearby Wickham Farm, where we wandered through a corn maze. The husks were taller than I am, so we had the real experience. Early on out Sam wanted to know which way to go, so I told him the foolproof way of getting through a maze [*]--always turn left (or really, keep your left hand on a wall). I didn't realize it until later, but I thereby robbed Sam of the fun of wandering around a maze and taking some chances. [**] At least he remembered the secret of solving mazes and proudly told it to Mommy later. Learning is fun, right?

While we were there we also played miniature golf, which Sam is wild about. It may not be Pirate Island, but has many motorized obstructions, which he enjoys.

When it was time to leave--meaning, after Sam had milked Wickham's for all it was worth, doing everything but bounce on the big bouncy thing for $6 (puhlease), we made one last stop into their store. I was interested in some cherry preserves, which I have a weakness for. While I was looking Sam fell deeply in love with a jar of mint jelly. I tried to explain that he wouldn't like it. People put it on pork, I said. I chewed mint leaves as a kid, and it's the sort of thing you do when there's really nothing else to do. Still, the green jiggly mass mesmerized him, and he just couldn't believe I was right about it. We only escaped unjellied because the clerk couldn't guarantee it was peanut safe.

One day maybe I can use his allergy to keep him from getting into drugs (or other perils of youth). "Don't smoke pot--it might not be peanut safe!" Might just do the trick.

Sam's been framing hypotheses, and sometimes testing them. Today he was also happy to spot some homophones.

In other news, over homemade pizza tonight, Sam asked when he could go inside the earth. We've talked to him a little about the structure of the interior of the earth, since reading the comic book version of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. So I think when we are in Columbus next we'll have to see about visiting Old Man's Cave.

This afternoon we went to the Y to let Sam run around. He still does the charming thing young kids do where they feel the need to check in every so often. So he came over at one point and, inspired by my shirt, we played some Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. This evolved into Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock-Noun, where Noun can be about anything. Sometimes it's obvious who won--like, volcano beats flower. Sometimes there are ties when it's unclear. (I think we decided rain clouds beat river.) At any rate, fun.

Church may be rubbing off on Sam a little. At dinner when it came out that mommy was the one who'd thought of buying cones to use for ice cream, Sam declared her the best mommy he knows. (Earlier for other reasons I was the best daddy. Sam says he knows two daddies, which I suppose still could be worse.) Sam then paused, and said, "But God's my favorite person." Really, we don't feed him these lines. (On the other hand: It's now Monday morning. This morning I dropped Sam off for his first day of kindergarten. When I offered in the car on the way in to pray for his first day, he responded, "BOORRING!")

Sam's brain has grown the wrinkles relevant to building complex Lego structures. He's made half a dozen large 2D mazes recently, and this afternoon we made a big multilevel fort with a maze at its base. Playing with Sam gets better and better!

A final note of trivia: Susan has now claimed the mantle of Queen of Small Mammal Medication. Each day she delivers two pills to one cat, 1 ml of fluid to another, mixes Metamucil into the cat food, gives a tsp of medicine to Sam, and gives Sam a dose of the inhaler. And we are thinking of adding on four nostril squirts daily with Nasonex. I do help out a little. The last few nights I've been soaking Alex the cat's injured paw--last night I even squeezed some pus out! We all get to contribute.

[*] Isn't guaranteed to work if (a) the end of the maze is interior to the maze, or (b) there is a bridge within the maze. Or if there are multiple exits and you have the find the right one. Otherwise, it's sure to work.

[**] My mom was right when she said that the one rule of parenting is that the parents are always wrong. Not that Sam complained.

Spent the weekend at camp. It was cold and off-and-on rainy enough to scare away our neighbors, the Dorans. They are a hearty, sporting, up-at-dawn family (their camp has invited comparison to the Kennedy compound), and they headed south early Sunday, not even returning after church--so that gives you some idea what the weather was like.

We Collins-Gilbert-Collinses are not so easily deterred.

Arrived for dinner at the Hideaway Saturday, and enjoyed smores and a roaring fire before bedtime. Sunday we went on what Susan referred to as a "forced march" to MacEwen's point (sp?) to work up an appetite for lunch (BLTs!). The afternoon saw a rambling visit to the nearby Lampson Falls near Russell (where I amused a store clerk greatly by asking the whereabouts of the "Russell Falls" and was told to drive back the way had come, only turning right upon reaching the poorly signed relic of the old "Turnpike" night club--vintage upstate New York!).

Sam was thrilled to clamber over the rocks, and Susan experienced a more maternal type of thrill cautioning him not to fall to a grisly death.

Spaghetti carbonara for dinner--Italian charcoal workers never had it so good--then another fire to ward off the cold.

Sunday the sun came out long enough for a canoe ride to what is known locally (very locally) as Makeout Island (which has even been painted by a local artist!). Two soaked sneakers and a couple of hours later and, filled with more Hideaway food, we were heading south again.

A good weekend. Sam kept wondering where Nana and Grandad were and wanting to play with them--always a good sign!

Also shown here: Sam enjoying a plate of purple Jell-o at dinner last week (notice the cool shapes); Susan reading a tragic Doris Lessing novel in front of the fire; Sam coloring and cutting at camp; and a brief movie taken on M.O.I.--a movie so enthralling one of the two subjects can't suppress a yawn during it.

And now, since you've read this far, your reward, two jokes from Sam:

Sam: Why did the elephant cross the road?
Susan: Why?
Sam? To stomp on all the houses and buildings on the other side.
Susan: Why did the dog cross the road?
Sam: Why?
Susan: To get away from this elephant that was stomping everything.
Sam: Ha ha ha ha ha ha! [more quietly] That makes sense, actually.

* * *

Sam: Why did the alien cross the road?
Susan: I have no idea; why?
Sam: Blorglovgoqorq