Photo Drop: April 2009

Lengthy Silence

Things have been pretty busy lately, and we haven't had a chance to post in a while. Where to begin? My parents came up last weekend and took us to Zoo Zoo, which we were looking forward to quite a bit. It combined some pieces of Biglittlethings - which we enjoyed a lot this past winter - with a couple pieces from Frogz, which we haven't seen. Oh, and as you can see from the photo, Elias also spent part of the afternoon dying eggs.

On Sunday, most of our morning was taken up by holiday-related activities. Elias tracked down his basket of gifts not long after waking up, and later hunted around in the backyard for eggs. After that, we enjoyed an enormous meal - even with myself, Cara, Elias, my folks, and Patrick, we barely made a dent in it.

Cara's dad made a very welcome visit for most of this week, which also happened to overlap with Elias catching impetigo, which, uh, isn't pretty. Luckily, I was able to stay home with him for a couple days, and get him to the doctor on Monday, so he's almost fully recovered. Anyway, Elias was thrilled to see his papa, and I imagine the feeling was mutual. They went to the zoo, hiked in the Gorge, watched some glassblowing at Edgefield, picked up some books at Powell's... it sounded like a pretty decent week.

Bullet people

Last night we were all eating dinner when Elias warned us that this world was dangerous. There were "bullet people" with "shooters" that could put holes in our bodies and break our skin, and we could even die.

"What should we do about that?" Cara asked. "Should we take their shooters away?"

"No," Elias replied. "We should fight for justice, because even if we take their shooters away they would still have their arms and legs, and they can still hurt people."

The democratic process

Ever since Elias got sick, he has been taking advantage of our sympathies and sleeping in bed with us. Usually I am pretty strict about him sleeping in his own bed, too, though I have been much more lax about it since I've been so busy with school and see him less often. Tonight I got home around 9pm after student teaching all day and then going to class. It was past Elias' bedtime so I sat with him while Harry read "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" (yes, we are still working on the Oz books) and then it was time to go to bed. It was Harry's turn to put him to sleep, but Elias asked me where I thought he should go to bed. I told him he should go to bed in his own bed and Harry agreed. Elias wasn't happy with that answer so he decided to put it to a vote: "Whoever thinks I should sleep in my bed, raise your hand. Whoever thinks I should sleep in mommy's bed, squeeze your nose." Harry and I raised our hands and Elias squeezed his nose. Harry pointed out that Elias was outvoted but Elias said, "Actually the person with one vote wins." At this point I was so charmed and was feeling guilty for not having seen Elias all day that I asked for a re-vote; after all, how often do you get to vote by squeezing your nose? So we voted again and this time I squeezed my nose and Harry raised his hand. Elias looked confused at this point, especially after his insistence on only one vote winning, but then he looked at Harry and said, "Oh. Well, it looks like mommy and me win!" Right now he's sleeping in our bed.