Young McFadden had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

...and on that farm he had a bean plant, E-I-E-I-O.

Last Friday, Eric and I planted some beans in an old chocolate milk carton, and as of this morning, they were already this tall!  They're in a milk carton because, although you can't tell from the picture, we planted them up against the side of the carton where a flap is cut so we can open up and watch them sprout, the roots going down and the shoot coming up; there's plastic wrap taped on to hold the dirt in when you're looking in the "window."

And the kids really do wear other clothes than these flag shirts; it just seems that every time I take a photo of them for the blog happens to be a day they're in them.

Baseball Tonight

Up late watching all the extra-inning games with playoff implications.  And to think, a month ago, all the sportswriters were bemoaning the fact that the playoff races were all but wrapped up and there wouldn't be any drama in September!

Lazy blog posts this week; I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Browncoats vs. speech codes

Take my love, take my land 
Take me where I cannot stand 
I don't care, I'm still free 
You can't take the sky from me 
Take me out to the black 
Tell them I ain't comin' back 
Burn the land and boil the sea 
You can't take the sky from me 
There's no place I can be 
Since I found Serenity 
But you can't take the sky from me...

Wonder why?

Whooo!

Rangers clinch tonight, thanks to the Angels' loss in Oakland!  Going to buy my AL West championship shirt tomorrow, if I can find one.  When you're a fan of a team that's not one of the usual suspects, you have to buy your memorabilia when you can because you never know when you'll get another chance.  I'm very glad to have bought my Wake Forest Orange Bowl T-shirt from 2007 because the Deacons aren't going to be back in a BCS bowl for a long time.

"Person of Interest" (Spoilers!)

We watched the pilot tonight because I have plenty of residual good will for Jim Caviezel after "Frequency" ($7.19 at Amazon at this writing?  If you don't have it, buy it; it rocks.) and "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Bears very little resemblance to the book, which is beyond excellent, yet the movie somehow manages to be excellent on its own terms.).  Tommy almost talked me out of it ("We can just wait for the DVDs!"), but I tuned in anyway.  Honestly, with "24" off the air, we have our weekly viewing pared down to just "Chuck" (which is in its last season itself) and "Castle" (about which a separate blog post soon), and we hate to muddy up our schedule with any more "must-see" shows.

I thought it was pretty good, but I don't much trust my own judgment in situations like this.  I tend to let my affection for an actor bleed into my opinion of a show; it took outside intervention from Leslie to break it to me that, despite my "Frasier"-based loyalty to Kelsey Grammer, "Back to You" wasn't a good show.  Pilots tend to have a weak "A-plot" due to the amount of time they have to spend setting up the premise (My one quibble with "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" was the two-dimensionality of the love interest, but once I got to the end and realized it wasn't an episode but an origin story, it all made sense;  the love interest in an origin story is supposed to be paper-thin.), but I was pleased to see that the supposed victim turned out to be the perp instead of the damsel in distress.  And I got my Jack Bauer fix from the scene where the lackey thinks he's about to kill Jim Caviezel's character and Caviezel laughs and tells him not to worry, he's going to let him live before turning the tables on him.  For now, they've got me willing to tune in again next week.

That's Mr. Engale to you

Eric: I know a bird; it's called a night ... thingy.
Me: A night bird?
Eric: It's a bird; it's called "night-", but I don't know its last name.
Me: Nightingale?
Eric: Night Engale.  That's it.

What we're reading now

Faith finished reading The Silver Chair and has moved on to The Cricket in Times Square.  Her art curriculum had a section on collage last week, and the activity was to make a collage illustrating a scene from a story.  She chose to make the main characters of The Cricket in Time Square: Chester Cricket, Harry Cat, and Tucker Mouse.  As a rule, I don't think she has any great talent in art, but I thought this turned out quite nicely.  I helped her with Chester's back legs, but she did all the cutting and pasting herself for the rest of the figures.

Eric has started reading some of Faith's old Curious George books: He read Curious George's First Day of School on what would have been his first day of kindergarten and has now moved on to Curious George Takes a Train.

As for me, I'm still working on my stack of magazines, trying to make progress as new issues keep coming in to add to the pile.  Now that swim lessons are back in session, that gives me a bit of reading time two days a week, although I generally end up spending that forty minutes reading the newspaper I didn't have time to get to in the morning.

Truth in advertising

Eric saw the new lightsaber toys when we were shopping today.  He desperately wants one, although I'd give him half an hour before he forgot he couldn't actually hit anything with it and broke it.  What gave me pause, though, when I picked up the box was the blurb on the side: "Looks and feels just like a real lightsaber!"

Really?  A "real lightsaber?"  What does that statement even mean?  Who knows what a "real lightsaber" looks and feels like, since there aren't any?  It's like advertising something that "looks just like a real dragon" or "feels just like a real unicorn."  If the claim were true, the toy would be invisible and intangible.

Mandolin Rain

I'm typing with the window on the screen door open, listening to the sound of rain falling outside.  It's been a long time since that sound has been heard around here.  I was just thinking this afternoon how badly we needed a good rain.  We had the roof replaced at the end of the July, and the driveway was still covered in asphalt grit because we haven't had any rain to speak of since then.  It's been raining off and on since about 6:00 this evening, the first rain to send more than a trickle through our new gutters.  The first half-hour or so, the water pouring out of the downspout was absolutely filthy with the dirt of a long, hot summer.  It could rain all week and not make much of a difference to our poor, dead lawn, though.  I'm afraid we're just going to have to wait until next spring and see what comes back.

As long as I know where I stand...

Faith slept over last night at her grandparents' house up the street.  She loves sleeping over at other people's houses.  She never wants to come home again afterwards.  Tonight, when I was reading bedtime stories, I noticed she was quietly crying.  When I asked her why, she said because she missed her Mawmaw.  I said, "I'll bet you didn't cry like that last night because you missed me."  She said, "Well, no, but Mawmaw's better than you.  But I still love you, Mommy."

More swimming

After Eric's swim lesson on Monday, today was Faith's first swim lesson of the fall.  Yes, I could have scheduled them both on the same day, but not at the same time.  While it would have meant fewer miles on the road, I would have had to entertain the one not in lessons while the other one swam.  This way, I get my forty minutes of sitting and reading while I wait, not just once but twice a week!

Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses

We got the call yesterday evening that Faith's glasses were ready, so we went and picked them up and had dinner at Cici's.  Faith is very excited, even though she only gets to wear them when she's watching TV and she says she can't tell the difference between having them on and having them off.  At least she's making a fashion statement!

In the swim

Eric went to his first swimming lesson today.  Here he is with goggles and Thomas the Tank Engine swim trunks.  There are five students in his beginner's swim class at the Y: four boys and a girl.  One of the little boys (younger than Eric) can already swim on his own.  Eric, similarly to most of the rest, just lets himself be held up and moved through the water by the teacher, while he makes ineffectual paddling motions with his arms and kicking ones with his legs.  He said he had a good time, though.

How about that weather?

From the AP:

Texas' heat wave has surpassed Oklahoma's Dust Bowl years to become the hottest three months on record in the United States.  Texas' 86.8-degree average for June through August beat our Oklahoma's 85.2-degree average in 1934, the National Weather service said Thursday.  "This is a record we're more than happy to let Texas have," said Gary McManus, associate state climatologist in Oklahoma.

Under the Sea again

Another photo from the aquarium.

Vision quest

Faith had her first real eye exam today.  My parents took me to the eye doctor for the first time when they realized I couldn't read the name of a town on a water tower on a trip to my grandparents' house at the age of seven.  With Faith, I just knew genetics were in play.  (My uncorrected vision is 20/400 or something ridiculous like that.)

The doctor found her vision to be 20/40: nearsighted and likely to get worse, as I did.  She's very excited about getting her new glasses and was disappointed it will take them a week to make and ship them, and Eric is jealous he's not getting glasses (yet -- his first visit to the ophthalmologist will come).  I'm regretful.  While I'm glad she's excited about getting glasses, I know the hassle will eventually overcome the fashion statement.  At this point, the doctor says she only needs to wear them for distance, like watching TV or going to the movies, but I used to only wear mine to school when I started out.  And I can't help the nonsensical notion that if I hadn't taken her for the eye exam, the problem wouldn't have existed.  Of course, it would have; we just wouldn't have known about it for a while.  Still, if it bought her another year or two of not wearing glasses...?

Under the Sea

I took the kids to a new aquarium that just opened up 45 minutes from here this summer.  Here they are in the 360-degree ocean tunnel, with fish, including sharks, swimming all around, over, and under them (none of which obliged by being in the background when I snapped the photo).  Also a fake dinosaur skeleton.

Labor Day

We didn't tell the kids that Tommy was going to have the day off today because we thought it would be a nice surprise for them to get up and find him not leaving for work.  Sure enough, when he got up this morning (and I stayed in bed because, come on, it's a holiday!), I could hear Faith's squeals of excitement through the door from the living room.

Eric, however, was more concerned with the disruption of routine and not at all sure Tommy should still be there.  He had to wait for me to get up; then he ran to ask me, very seriously, "Does Daddy stay home on Mondays?"  (Obviously, Tommy's word wasn't good enough for him.)

Expensive tastes

Carino's is offering a special this Labor Day weekend: one free kids' entree with each adult entree.  When Tommy and I go, it's usually just the two of us, but with that offer, we took the kids today.  They both ate most of their food, which almost never happens with both of them at the same time at the same restaurant.  Eric, in particular, won't eat anyplace that's not McDonald's, Cici's Pizza, or Joe's Pizza & Pasta.  Of course, they would both decide to like the restaurant that we only go to once a year because it's so expensive.  (Love their lemon rosemary chicken, though.)

Baby Blues is broadcasting live from my house again

Thinking inside the box

The kids and I went to the office store and bought a new chair for Tommy to sit in at the computer armoire the other day.  The arm of the old one has been broken for a few months, and even the cat is ashamed to sit in it anymore.  So we are now the proud owners of a new leather office chair and, more importantly, of the box it came in.

Tommy wanted to cut the box down tonight and put it out with the recycling for the morning, but our recycling bin was pretty full this week so I've put it off for a week.  Honestly, I feel like a huge hypocrite for throwing out a box when the kids still want to play in it.  I grew up in a succession of recliner boxes; our house was large enough that we had the room to keep them around and out of sight until they collapsed from overexuberant inhabitation.  My neighbor Becky and I would decorate the insides with drawings of rainbows and unicorns, carry in flashlights or a lantern and some snacks, and not be seen again for hours.

In our house today, sadly, there is no place for the box to reside but the living room or den.  It's not large enough for the two of them to be inside together anyway, and they play more roughly than I used to (or boxes aren't as sturdy as they used to be).  I bought them a week.  By next Thursday, they'll probably have it broken anyway.