The other day I was picking a couple of things up off Rose’s floor as she was going to bed and I found this:
I kind of love this, and in case you don’t recognize the merch it is Princess Tiana (of Disney’s Princess and the Frog) driving Buzz Lightyear’s spacecraft. Rose and her cousin Lola had to bend Tiana a bit to get her into the ship, but in my opinion, it was well worth it.
This isn’t my venue for reviewing books, but I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for the first time. And wanted to talk about it somewhere. Despite it being recommended to me by a million people and services, I forgot what it was about. I generally try to forget what books are about, and have a policy of never reading the book jacket (unless I am browsing the bargain bin of my local independent book seller), because I like to go into a book with a blank slate and endless possibilities.
So I forgot that this book is about the fallout to a family after September 11th, and I guess this is a very appropriate time to read it. We will be observing the anniversary by celebrating Enkutatash. …combating the terrorists in a very metaphorical way – having a multiethnic potluck celebrating another country’s culture. Everything that makes America great.
But this book is striking me for another reason (aside from its absolutely brilliant writing). The main character, Oscar, is 10 years old. And he shares a trait with my 10-year-old. He mispronounces words he has only read before.  D does this all the time. I love these little verbal slips that betray his amazing yet untested vocabulary.
“Mom, that excitement sure did get my a-dren-a-LINE going!”
“Auntie Kate, I love when the uh-pss truck comes to our house because it means my mom ordered us some books from Amazon.” (This one makes total sense when you read it, but I needed it repeated it like 20 times… “Ups. ups. OH. U.P.S. Okay.”)
“Her haircut looks like Clee-OPT-era’s”
His very first one of these was as soon as he realized how pizza was spelled, he began mispronouncing it on purpose. “Are we going to eat some pee-zah for dinner?”
Dillon: Mom, will you teach me to cook? Then I can help you out with dinners but also when I am a grown up I can feed my family something other than TV dinners.
Me: Sure… [preoccupied, finishing making dinner] Wait – how do you even know what a TV dinner is?
Dillon: Well, Duh, Mom, I’ve read the Omnivore’s Dilemma like five times! Like as much as I’ve read the Redwall Series.
Me: Oh. Okay.
Rose: When I grow up and become a Mommy, I am going to tell everyone to call me “Rocker Girl.”
Me: Um, okay. But can I still call you “Princess Pink” or do you want me to stop calling you that?
Rose: No, that is okay.
Me: And what about Rose, can I call you Rose?
Rose: Well, you can.
My kiddos totally crack me up.
First, a picture of the family band Charles created. They look pretty good to me, though it is funny to imagine what the kids will look like as adults (or like, CGI representations of adults):
The family band
(That was before Charles and I played until 1am last night/this morning and won 7 million more fans and a tour bus.)Â Anyway…
The unintended (though not entirely unanticipated) consequence of playing RockBand3 with the kids is the new musical vocabulary they are picking up. I say that it wasn’t entirely unanticipated because, at first, I just bought Beatles Rockband because it did occur to me that the kids would be singing the songs around the house and wouldn’t it be nice to hear Beatles songs. And then it turned out that the only song the kids were particularly good at singing was Yellow Submarine, which I was always lukewarm about to begin with, and having it on repeat via the kiddos was not really improving my attitude towards that particular submarine.
And, Charles really wanted RockBand 3. And Nic started a rumor that you could download Buffy the Vampire Slayer singing “Walk Through the Fire” on it, and I didn’t check the veracity of that rumor, and I bought the game. (So far I think Nic is full of it, but if you know differently please advise.) Obviously, I like it a lot. It is an incredibly fun video game to me. There are very few video games that I really, really want to play well, and this is one of them. And the whole family loves music, and this is a fun thing to do together* (we do need another controller, though, because really only three of us can play at any one time right now).
But it still cracked me up completely today when all of a sudden, out of the blue, Rose belts out, “I like Rock And Roll!” and Dillon fills in the “so put another dime in the jukebox, baby…”
Apparently, Rose isn’t entirely sure how she feels about rock and roll yet. She’s going to take her time and get to know it before rushing into anything. Maybe go out for coffee… nothing serious.
But there are way worse things they could like than Joan Jett. For instance, it turns out Dillon is a fan of power ballads. I guess I asked for it…