Milestone Minutiae

We drove a couple hours last night to try to see the aurora (no luck), so the kids were all sleeping in the car. Emmett woke up, agitated and almost frantically looking for something. I kept asking him what he was looking for - he had a drink and a kindle, but it was neither of those. I didn't think he had anything else with him. In the end, all he could say was he'd lost something, but he couldn't remember what. David and I let him in on how strange dreams can be sometimes.

Watching Man On Wire, there were some French speakers with subtitles, and some with French accents who were somewhat hard to understand. Henry now thinks he knows French, because he understood the ones talking with a French accent. At dinner, I told David about the part where the NYPD were threatening to bring in a helicopter to pluck him off the wire. After an accomplice on the roof talked to the police, he yelled something in French out to the wirewalker and he came in without much further delay.  Henry said, "I can probably translate it! What did he say?" (as if I would be able to reproduce the French I heard earlier in the documentary)

Henry's been going into "Puppy Mode" lately. He'll crouch down and start panting. Sometimes he tells me he's in puppy mode, sometimes I have to figure that out for myself. He wants me to scratch behind his ears. So far he hasn't licked me much. He's gone into "Monkey Mode" once or twice, making monkey sounds, but that's much less frequent.

Today the kids tried out a martial arts class. Then I was showing Henry a music video where the musicians were wearing super-hero masks. He said, "In martial arts, will we get ninja masks?" He was somewhat disappointed by my answer. The kids have been playing with some long bits of PVC pipe in the backyard. Today, Henry decided he would try pole vaulting with it. He just ran inside and asked, "Mom, can we get pole vaulting sticks?" I said that he should just keep pole vaulting with the PVC. "But it's not flexible enough," he responded. He's probably got a point there...

At the Natural History Museum today, we were looking at a display of American Indian stuff - lots of it was contemporary, but there were old pieces in there as well. I started searching for the oldest and found something c.1900. I told Henry that it was over 100 years old. He said, "Wait, were you even born then?"

I was talking about weddings with Henry and Luke today (there was a wedding in a TV show we were watching). I told them that the wedding is a big celebration of the fact that the people are now married and will be forever. Which I felt I had to follow with the bad news that sometimes people undo marriage with a divorce, but they never need to worry about that. They know a couple kids with divorced parents, so this was no shock to them (whew!). So then I said, "You want to know the secret to make sure your marriage will last forever? Pick the right person to marry!" They smiled, and Henry raised his hand and said, "I know who!" I said (a little confused), "You know who to marry?" He replied, "Yes! Lily!" (that's the 5 year old girl who lives next door - they're buddies)

We recently visited Timpanogos Cave. I wanted to be sure I could see all the cave formations, so I brought my glasses to wear on the cave tour. During the tour, Emmett told me that I look different with my glasses on. I said, "I probably look like me, but with glasses, right?" Henry said, "You look like mathematics!" Huh? I said, "I look like I'm a mathematician?" He repeated, "You look like mathematics!" On the hike down, Emmett schooled Henry on the difference between "mathematics" and "mathematicians."