Entries Tagged 'Family' ↓

So I got a new Buddha statue the other day, my in-laws brought it back from Hawaii as a gift. And like my Shakespeare toys, this gets the kids curious. "You like Buddha and Shakespeare," they'll tell me.

The 5yr old understands a bit better and asks things like, "Now, who was Buddha? What did he do?" I do my best to explain that a long time ago this man lived who figured out how to be happy, and everybody said they wanted to be happy to, and wanted to know how he did it. So he told them the rules, and said that if you follow those rules, then you would be happy. So people try to follow his rules.

My 3yr old, on the other hand, goes Zen almost from the word go. What she asked was, and I quote, "Daddy, what does Buddha say when he gets to the end of Buddha Land?"

I would have said "moo", but I don't think anybody in the room at the time would have gotten it. Except my son, who would promptly have assumed that I was talking about a cow.

Yesterday I took my 5yr old to a birthday party and watched her play a game with her friends where one of the girls would just go stand behind a boy until he realized she was there, then he'd scream "A girl!" and run away. On the drive home I explained to her the concept of what he used to call "cooties", as in "ahhh! girl cooties! Run!!!"

"Oh," she said. "We don't really play that game, Daddy."

"You don't play the cooties game?" I asked.

"No," she said. "We just pretend to marry them."

"Same thing."

This morning over breakfast, my wife informs me that our daughter (this same 5yr old) has a boyfriend. "Is that the same one I saw yesterday, who ran away whenever you came near him?" I ask.

"Yes," she says.

"That's ok then."

Both my girls have the exact same "Leapster" videogame. One of them is in my car. Over dinner I decided to mess with the 5yr old's head. They are the exact same.

"One of your Leapsters is in my car."

"Is it the one with Finding Nemo?"

"I don't know, I didn't turn it on. It was the pink one."
They are both identical, you see.

"But did it have the Finding Nemo cartridge?"

"I didn't notice, sweetie. I just know it was the pink one. Which one of you has the pink one?" I'm waiting for it to dawn on her that they are both pink, and that saying the pink one isn't really a clue.

"Daddy, neither one of them is pink, they're more purple. But that's ok, I know what you meanted."

Yes, she really did say "meant-ed".

"Know what we haven't had for dinner in a long time, Mommy?"

"What's that, sweetie?"

"Steak. Can we have steak for dinner tonight?"

That's daddy's girl!

Today at church, the 3yr old says, "Daddy, look what they did!" pointing to the main altar.

"What did they do?" I ask.

"They put purple on that girl doing gymnastics!"

I follow the pointing finger to the giant Christ on the cross hanging over the altar, which has been draped in the traditional Easter purple. "That's Jesus," I tell her.

"That's not Jesus," she corrects me, "That's a girl doing gymnastics."

I have completely misunderstood Catholicism, apparently.

And by that I'm talking about the sandwich. Have you ever had one of these bad boys? Let me explain.

Start with your somewhat basic ham, turkey and swiss sandwich. So far so good, nothing fancy.

But wait! White, wheat or toast, you ask? Wrong – how about making it with slices of french toast? Mmmmmmm.

It gets better. Now just go ahead and deep fry that sucker. I'm not kidding. It's a fried sandwich.

I'm not done.

When serving, sprinkle liberally with powdered sugar. It's a lunch, *and* a dessert.

If your arteries aren't screaming at you yet, go ahead and serve with a side of strawberry preserves for dunking.

This is the kind of sandwich – very rare in my neck of the woods, I know of only two restaurants where you can get one – where you order it and then just tell the waitress "You know what? Just pack up 3/4ths of this for me to take home, because if I eat it all in one sitting, I think I'll die."

Highly recommended. Everything in this sandwich screams of deliciousness. It could only be made better by adding bacon, something that the restaurant this weekend offered to do in their "breakfast" version of the classic sandwich.

My 3yr old is very much into what, as far as I can tell, are "bunnysums." I have no idea what these are. One day she was calling her slippers bunnysums. Today after bath she pointed to a bathtoy in the shape of a rabbit and said, "That bunny has very long sums." But when I try to understand what she's saying I get conversations like this:

"Bunny sums, are you saying?"

"No, bunny *zums*." It's like a lispy "th" sound.

"Bunny thums?" I'm wondering if she's making some sort of Bambi / Thumper connection to the rabbit's big back legs.

"No, bunny *sums*!"

"Well, how do you spell it?"

"K H R R Y."

That didn't work.

Took the kids to see "High School Musical On Ice" today. And everything was all fine and dandy, except for one thing. There's a song, "Fabulous", which is a favorite at my house. During the number, they're flashing the chorus words up on a big tv screen.

Except….they're spelling it "fabulus". Actually, FAB-U-LUS. Many times. That's just not right. I gotta think that there are gonna be kids walking out of that theatre thinking "Oh, ok, that's how you spell fabulous, now I know."

Ok, children's movies need to be better. This was incredibly stupid. The following post contains spoilers, but really, if you're old enough to read this blog, are you really interested in the plot?

Think "Three Amigos", with gourds. You've got your three lovable losers who work in a pirate-themed restaurant. They have the love, but not the respect, of their family and friends. Enter a magical "help finder" device that mistakes them for real heros, and presto they're sent back in time where the princess thinks they are real heroes. And the rest writes itself, they confess that they're not real heroes, then they discover the true strength inside themselves blah blah blah save the day.

Well, except for the weird bits. Now, I'm cool with the vegetables not having arms or legs. That's fine. But I'm not sure I realized that stuff just sort of floats in front of them, as if they were carrying it, with no explanation. This makes sword fights very unusual. And then there's the bad guy, who apparently has made himself this weird exoskeleton that gives him arms and legs. But yet…if we're supposed to believe that they all have invisible arms and legs, why would he need that? And then one character mentions his arms like we're supposed to accept that they exist, but another character even says "That's impossible, and that's coming from someone who just swam 92 nautical miles with no arms or legs!" So which is it?

And then there's the cheese curls. Imagine, if you will, a ball pit. You know, the kind of thing you see at a Chuck E Cheese, you jump in, you swim around. Only instead of balls, there are cheese curls. Ok, ready? Now imagine that suddenly all the balls/curls have teeth and are trying to eat you. And worse, when you escape, all the balls start rolling out of the pit and chasing you, no matter what you do. You fall down a hole, they come down the hole after you. You start climbing a mountain, they climb it. You swim away, they swim with you. Sounds like the stuff of nightmares, no? Except, it's a major portion of the movie. I was waiting for my kids to freak out. There's never an explanation of what the creatures are, they're just freakishly scary.

And then, well, there's God. I knew that Veggie Tales had a christian theme, but what with this being a regular movie theatre release I wasn't really sure whether it would come in. Yeah, it does. The whole plot involves saving the prince and princess, both of whom regularly say that the king will save them, once he returns. And let's just say that he does, that's fine, that's part of the plot. Where it gets weird is when the hero tells the king that "your help seeker" (the king apparently invented it) was broken because they weren't real heroes. "No, it did what I wanted it to do," says the king. "I was with you through your whole adventure. When you thought you couldn't go on, I helped you. I was there when you doubted yourself, and I was there when you didn't think you could go on…" and so on. If you don't know that the king is supposed to be god there you should be going "Wait, huh? What? How were you there? You're the king, what do you mean you put a crab on a rock with a clue? That makes no sense!" At one point, the "help seeker" offers to let the heroes go home, clearly before the adventure is complete. "That was a test!" says the god king. "A test that you passed." God's insecurity never fails to amaze and amuse me. An omniscient creature who feels the need to test his creations, when he certainly knows the answer to the test before it begins. Silliness.

Overall, a horrible movie and I am sorry I wasted my time and money taking my kids to see it.

The other day I had to stop by the local Rite Aid to pick up a prescription for the kids. Right on the front door, though, there is a handwritten sign that says "Pharmacy closed until 2pm, sorry for any inconvenence." Inside door I notice the same sign, "Closed until 2pm, sorry for any inconvience."

A lady has just come out of the store and sees me reading. "Their branch across town is filling orders," she tells me. "In case you need something in an emergency they said you can go over there."

"No, it's not that," I tell her, "I'm just trying to decide if I should be worried that I buy drugs from people who don't know how to spell inconvenience."