New floor... oh, and play-doh

The big news at our house this Tuesday certainly wasn't the crappy batch of homemade play doh we made, it was the new concrete floor we had poured in the basement. More on this soon! The anticipation is making my kidneys ache! Or else i just really need to pee...

Robot Parade

This is our Sony Dream Machine clock radio, which we would recommend to anyone currently in the alarm clock market.

About a month ago, the kids figured out how to slide coins into a little opening in the CD player, pumping it full of  spare change until it didn't work any more and sounded just like a piggy bank.   To begin this week's activity, the kids and I used the tool set Sam had received as a gift from my sister to open the radio and look inside.
My wife was clear that if we were to open the radio, we should really try to remove the coins and repair it.  The kids and I agreed, but we kind of had that feeling you get bringing your rabid pet squirrel to the vet: you know it's going to end badly for the squirrel, but you're secretly excited, too. Well, similarly to how you can't wait turn that dead squirrel into twelve handmade fish hooks and a fuzzy coat collar lining, we were dying to turn our Dream Machine carcass into... robot parts!

"In a future time, children will work together...to build a giant cyborg!"

The idea was to fashion robot suits out of scrap pieces of giant bubble wrap, decorating them in a robotly fashion with the guts of the clock radio and a bunch of hot glue.  I should mention that I had been prepping the kids for this day by showing them this youtube video featuring my favorite kids song, Robot Parade by They Might Be Giants.  Oddly, my kids love that boring video.  Even more oddly, they absolutely love this disturbing, unrelated video. Our plan was to hold our own Robot Parade.

Complicating the project was the fact that the kids had recently come down with high fevers, sniffles, and coughs.  Still, they gave it their best shot, and we managed to make some hats and decorate some flags for our Parade before crying, sniffling, and whining took over.  We did early naps.

"wave the flags that the robots made"

During nap time, I decided the kids weren't probably in good enough shape to sit through much more craft time, so I put together some suits and robot crown hats.  It was a lot of fun, even though that damned hot glue really is hot on the hands.

When they woke up from their naps, the kids had a really good stretch before eventually remembering they were actually super sick.  We had the Robot Parade song on repeat with the volume up loud, parading up and down the hallway and around the furniture.  We brought the remaining robot materials to the neighbors, and later their little boy came to parade with us in a suit that conveniently featured a helmet with face protection.  Not a bad idea, given that my kids were exhaling pure SARS by that point.

"Robot Parade, Robot Parade.  Robots obey what the children say."

Fun Rating: 9 out of 10.  There were lots of fun steps (take apart the clock, build the suits, make the flags, do the parade, etc) that made it cool for 34 year olds, 3 year olds, and 20 month olds.  The suits are still sitting around and I think the kids will keep playing with them. Plus, I learned that my kids love parades, and those are easy to do whenever.  I wish they had been feeling better, but having something to do kept all our minds off it for a while.  Not to mention that we mined $2.90 in change and a crumpled post-it note out of the radio. 

Bonus Post: Snow Day

Piles of snow so deep you could jump off the porch and discovery of a new weatherproofing application for re-used spider web tape:

 Snow day with Mom and Dad scored an unreasonable Fun Rating of 11 out of 10!

Snow Day, Plan B

Today's activity was supposed to be "Play in the Deadly Historic Blizzard", but it turned out to be waaaaaay windier and colder than the romanticized snowflake adventure zone I had imagined us romping in.  Instead of the foot of powder I was anticipating, today's blizzard brought thousand mile per hour winds carrying clouds of snow dust, gravel, chunks of sidewalk and the occasional wayward chihuahua.  I wasn't going to spend a half hour wrestling kids into boots and snowsuits, just to have them blow away with the neighbor's dog.

To make things worse, my second cup of morning coffee, while delicious, had the sudden, urgent, and unexpected effect of sending me racing to the bathroom, leaving the kids unsupervised for a few moments.  The girls took advantage by opening the fridge and dumping out a jar of mulled wine that had been recently given to us, the bulk of it flowing safely under the refrigerator.  Powerless and unable to see from the bathroom, I was forced to visualize the situation through Sam's cryptic narration: "Sisters...what have you done?!  You dumped out a bunch of beans and now Daddy is going to have to clean it all up with a cloth!" This did not prepare me for the actual non-bean-related scene I would encounter:

I think those "beans" are raisins

With our planned Tuesday activity postponed for a gentler historic blizzard, we had to turn to "plan B".  Here are a few of the activities we tried:

Plan B(a): Giant Bubble Wrap

At first mention, "Giant Bubble Wrap" sounds like something regular-fun that becomes really-super-fun through elargement, similar to  Pee Wee Herman's Giant Underpants.  In this case, however, I was just using that term in place of "radiant-heat thermal underlayment" in a Tom Sawyerish attempt to motivate my kids to help me with my work and think they were having fun. 

As I got ready to work, I noticed a reddish wet spot on the concrete floor.  Closer inspection revealed that the mulled wine puddle under our fridge had found its way through the floor boards and was dripping onto the water heater like some sort of Chinese wine torture.  Perfect.

Sam was content for several minutes attempting to bore holes in the brick wall with a phillips screwdriver bit in my cordless drill.  The girls found some forgotten, dirty toys to fight over.  The kids had some fun rolling on and over the giant bubble wrap as I worked, but I scrapped the project in less than a half hour.  The girls had stripped off their boots, sweatshirts, and snowpants, and were crying.   Sam was bored, and I wasn't getting any work done.  

Nice try, Daddie.  The "work with me" idea worked badly enough that I'm beginning to wonder if biographer Mark Twain may have fictionalized portions of Tom Sawyer's fence-whitewashing incident.

Plan B(b): Finger Paint

We finger painted.  

Sam finger painted with brushes and insisted I wash his hands when they got paint on them, so I don't know what you call that.  

Iris painted in her coat, which made her look kind of like the Ally Sheedy character from The Breakfast Club.  

The kids were prolific in their work and I'm hopeful we'll be able to chop some of the pieces down for use as Christmas thank-you notes.

Plan B(c): Couch Fort 

Making a Couch Fort is a standard part of every day at our house, and as such doesn't warrant much mention here.  I mostly included this to showcase Iris' no-pants, no-shirt, winter coat with flats outfit.  It's like the racier, pantsless Ally Sheedy character they didn't dare script in an 80's movie.  This was one of five distinctly different outfits that Iris sported today.

Fun Rating: 7 out of 10.  Not bad for plans B a through c.  Thank goodness I pulled the plug on the bubble wrap thing.  We'll do our snow games another day.

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Haircut for Daddie

Civilian haircuts are generally designed to achieve two main purposes: 1. Shorten hair length and 2. Improve appearance. In today's activity, Haircut for Daddie, we certainly achieved one of those two objectives.  Here's me before the festivities began.  (Note: hair has been fluffed to clearly demonstrate its full magnitude.)

My most recent haircut had been administered just before halloween and was supposed to make me look like the boy from The Cat in the Hat. So, it had been a while and the ol' weeds had grown pretty thick. Other daddies may be able to relate to how hard it can be to find time for personal maintenance, so I decided to do the thing myself, with help from the kids.

With a one-inch guard on the clipper, I turned the kids loose on my dome, snapping cell phone pictures in an attempt to document the proceedings.  My inability to aim the camera lens with my extended left hand, along with the blurred images and weird bathroom lighting end up making the whole thing look just like a bad slasher film. It really is more fun if, as you scroll, you just imagine you’re watching stills from a horror movie.

 

Whoever played the lunatic character with the bad haircut was totally overacting with that constant insane grin.  I mean, seriously!

Iris was the victim in the corner and grippng my neck, frightened as expected by the sound of the clipper and vacuum.  Jane and Sam enjoyed taking turns clipping, but they kept wanting to shave their own and each other’s heads.  They really had more fun sweeping and vacuuming up the thirteen pounds of hair on the floor.  After cleanup we had a four-person family bath, which was splendid. 

I did a bunch of touch-up work during nap time, but will still certainly get made fun of by my students tomorrow.

Fun Rating:  Haircut alone might be a 7.5 because Iris was so petrified and I had to work to keep one of the kids from cutting their or a sibling's hair.  If you throw in the floor cleanup and bath, it raises the score to about 8.5 for the whole shebang. We'll be back on Tuesdays again next week.  

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Wednesday With Daddie

Due to a funny schedule thing, I went in to work today, which means I'll be home on Weds, with a full post by Thursday at the latest. As though someone was worried about it!
Also, due to a swift veto by Mondays with Mommie, this week's activity will not be Making Meatballs, as hoped. Given the rate at which our girls ingest play-doh, markers, and loose change, it does seem best to wait a few years before resuming activities involving the direct handling of raw meat. Note to self: I must be disciplined about my forgiveness-easier-than-permission policy as it relates to discussing potential tuesday ideas casually around the house.

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spider web

My kids love tape, and really, what's not to love? It comes on a roll, you can stick things to one side of it, and that's about all there is to know.  The truth is I'm usually very stingy handing it out, but for this week's acitivity  I had to put that aside.  The idea was to give the kids all the tape they wanted and have them go crazy sticking strips together to create a huge spider web.  At the Home Depot this weekend, I grabbed roll of painter's tape for only $3.48, which is less than you would pay for your daily Triple Baconator at Wendy's.  The plan was coming together.

Side note: Blue painter's tape possesses a rare combination of properties found nowhere else on earth, making it ideal for child care and amusement purposes.  Its like a roll of duct tape married a stack of post-its and they had a blue baby.  Somehow, it manages to adhere strongly to a wide variety of surfaces (including children), yet removes easily without a residue.  You can even untangle it when it gets twisted and sticks to itself, which is great for the little clumsy ones in my family.

To get in the mood, we started out by pretending to be spiders.  Sam provided a detailed tutorial in backwards spider walking (v similar to crab).  We reviewed what spiders do (catch and eat bugs) and what they make (webs).  We made spider teeth with our fingers, and then it was on.  I helped get it all started by sticking some big pieces, but once they got the hang of it they could easily connect pieces together.  Throwing caution to the wind, I kept handing out strip after strip of tape and the web took shape.

Once we had a basic web up, we drew bugs on paper.  We ripped these out and stuck them in the web, along with whatever else it would support.  I had to help the girls ("no, this is the sticky side"), who are still mastering the subtleties of tape.

A highlight came when sam got his sister's ultra-cute garden fairy doll to stick in the web, at which point he descended on it and pretended to eat it like a spider.  I cannot be certain about the existence of fairies, but I do know one thing:  if they are real, and if one got caught by a spider, and if someone happened to get a video of it,  THAT video would go viral, for sure.

In all, we had a ton of fun trapping and devouring bugs in our web.  I had to monitor the web and ensure that it stayed at a height above the twins' heads, allowing them to move around easily without breaking the strands that Sam had placed.  They still managed to take a good chunk of it apart, which kind of made Sam lose his mind.  I kept busy repairing torn pieces in their wake.  Frugal daddies will be happy to hear that I was able to salvage about a half-baconator's worth of tape, rewinding it around the roll for use on another Tuesday.

Fun Rating: 8.5 out of 10.  We had a ton of fun and Sam really got into the whole spider scenario.  I had to help and monitor the girls, but it was worth it.