Caution: Singularity Ahead [DEFUNCT]

Caspian is deeply, madly in love with Ariel (from The Little Mermaid ). This isn’t precisely recent. Prior to our last trip to Disneyland he’d written a letter to Ariel (with a drawing of his robot bunny), and on said trip he delivered it to her she sits and talks with children at her grotto (not the restaurant, but a dedicated spot near the Matterhorn at the boundary between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland). It is, however, much more pronounced lately, perhaps more so after receiving a Little Mermaid fleece blanket in the mail (a cereal box offer ). He’s requested to watch the movie several times of late, and has the movie soundtrack on his MP3 player and listens to it often. He is also, apparently, an R.E.M. fan. He asked me to put that on today, and then had to specify “No, I want Out of Time .” But I digress. This has led to some interesting conversations. He wants Ariel to come live with us, perhaps “stay in our bathtub.” On more than one occasion he’s whispered to us, so...

Out at dinner a few weeks ago, we were talking about where we might want to live. So we asked Caspian. That's a difficult question. I think.... I'd want to live where there are coatis . In other news... My sister Gillian has gone home now. She was with us for the month of June At the end of her trip we took her to Disneyland for 3 days. What fun. I even remembered to bring Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom  this time. (Yes, yes, I could have just read it on my phone before.) Although I was pining for a "Ping My Whuffie!" shirt while crowd-dodging and those few times we waited in lines rather than going to walk-ons. The trip came in handy a few days ago when, in SL in my pirate av, a resident asked "so what does a pirate do in SL?" - easy to respond "We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot..."

Caspian has a persistent imaginary friend - "Robot Bunny". Robot Bunny came about a few months ago, and has gone on walks with us (often needs to be carried), is featured in drawings, and in comparisons to the Ostara Bunny. He wrote a letter to Ariel (the Little Mermaid, upon whose lap he sat and chatted with at Disneyland) telling her about Robot Bunny. Last night, when asked "who moved that (something)?" he said that maybe Robot Bunny had done it. He long ago figured out how to turn the white noise generator ("soothing rainstorm") doodad we have in his room to its radio setting, and we'd often wake up at 7:00am to the scratchy sounds of whatever band he'd tuned to. We just got Caspian a pair of speakers and Susan's keeping the MP3 player in his room so he can listen to more appropriate music. He woke up at 6:00am yesterday... fortunately he kept it pretty quiet after one... suggestion. He now also wants music on more frequently. Caspian i...

First, two old ones: Regarding Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean: Susan: "Pirates are bad. But he's good at heart." Caspian: "Yeah. But bad at head." Playing the yummy/yucky game: Caspian: "Snake soup is yucky! But eel soup is good - it's unagi!" And today: Caspian: "Santa brings bad guys coal and light switches."

Caspian has a Mac SE in his play area. We just have MacPaint and MacWrite on it, so he can use it productively. Yesterday he was being frustrated by the unresponsive mouse. I opened it up to take a look. The ball was looking particularly sad (it was a black and resiny, definitely looking aged) and Caspian said "Oh, I know.. I'll get the other ball!" As an early toy I'd given Caspian an old dead mechanical Microsoft mouse, sans cord. After a few months it went to the trash heap in the sky, but he kept the rubberized ball since it was fun to roll. He dug it out of one of his toy boxes lickety-split, popped it in the mouse, and as he had predicted the responsiveness was much improved. Score one for the 3-year old.

Two Caspianisms worth sharing: I have a razor. Therefore, the verb associated with the tool is "to raze". As in: "Dada, your face is scratchy. You need to raze." This morning while Caspian was watching TV, I turned on the espresso machine (self-grinding) and microwave (I'm too impatient to steam the milk). Caspian's request: "Can you volume the TV?" I really like that one. The shortest equivalent we use around the house is "adjust the volume of" which is a bit wordy. I suppose most people would use "turn up" or "turn down" but that's not really our style - it implies that the person to whom the request is being made can't figure out the correct action based on the context.

For posterity, I should note where Caspian's reading level is right now: - One morning during the trip to NZ in March, he treated me to a reading of The Paper Bag Princess . I think he'd had Susan read it to him one time before. I was only half-awake so I couldn't have helped if I wanted to, and he skipped a page, and he made one mistake where the grammar got complicated, but otherwise it was perfect. - We picked up a copy of The Complete Adventures of the Mole Sisters , and Caspian now compulsively reads it in the car. Last Saturday we let Su sleep in and we drove around doing some shopping. Over the course of the trip he read it out loud, front to back.

In NZ we all shared a hotel room each night, so Caspian got used to sleeping close to us. Now that we're back he's had a hard time - his imagination is running strong, and so any little thing that wakes him up can trigger monsters (the bad kind, not like Cookie or Harry). Su was comforting him after a waking-up incident, and saying things like "you have your Care Bears here to protect you," which apparently lead to a conversation about what Care Bears ate. Susan said, "They eat cloud sandwiches" which lead to the quote: "But those are just made of air, they don't have any protein!" Susan then said she'd give him a magic "good witch of the North" kiss, to which Caspian responded: "But that's too powerful!" He also said he "couldn't be Luke [Skywalker] brave, but I can be shot brave, like when I was little and didn't cry when I got a shot." I also taught him a trick I learned (far too late, IMHO) ...

We were reading a pamphlet for a mini-golf place in Queenstown, and it said "Ages 5 and up." We explained this to Caspian and he said: "Can we cross it off? That would work, okay?" Meaning: if we cross it off the rules, and then show them the pamphlet, would it still apply? It turns out he was able to talk the nice person behind the counter into letting him play anyway. And, for tracking purposes, he ends a lot of sentences with "okay?" at the moment.

We were in Claresholm this morning to visit my grandparents, staying at a motel. We came awake at a reasonable hour and flipped on the TV to see if there was anything for Caspian to watch while we finished waking up. The kids shows in the offing weren't good choices at that point, but an episode of Star Trek (The Original Series) was on. ( "Miri" , for those taking notes, but it's not relevant to the story.) It's on for a minute, and the landing party - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Rand, and two redshirts - beams down to investigate. When we first get a good look at the crew, Caspian immediately says: "That's the guy that sings the Bilbo song!" Caspian is a big fan of The Hobbit and whenever we're on a car ride (no matter how short!) he asks us to tell him the story again. At one point, on a lark, I showed him the video of Leonard Nimoy singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins". Made a big impression, apparently.

This one is a few weeks old; Susan just related it to me. It seems she and Caspian were in the garage putting a load of laundry in and Caspian was being a bit of a twit. Su needed a way to distract him and she noticed a small flip-open mirror sitting near the dryer. She discretely pocketed it, and told Caspian he'd get a surprise when they went inside if they behaved. Upon going inside he asked for the surprise, and she gave him the mirror. His reply: "That's not a very good surprise." Can't put anything over on him.

Caspian told Susan this story the other day, and it was so good she wrote it down. "I can make babies all by myself. First I get an egg then I tape it shut then I swallow it to put it in my tummy. This makes my egg baby starts to be a baby, then it pops out and I can take the tape out and I crack it open and then I see her! It becomes a baby sister." The entertainment never stops. :)

While waiting for Susan to do some shopping in Redmond, Caspian and I took a walk around the block. We walked through an empty field with grass, weeds, and such. At one point we came upon a spot with a clump of feathers where something had met its demise, next to a clump of rocks. Caspian: "Those are from a bird. Those are from a volcano."

So we showed Star Wars (that's Episode IV) to Caspian a few nights ago, in two installments. It was the first time I'd watched the DVD, so my first re-exposure to the "Special Edition" since seeing in the theater in '97 (and yes, I know the 2004 DVD edition is different ). The Jabba scene really detracts from the flow - the framing of the shot where Luke and Obi-wan first see the Falcon - a dramatic reveal of the ship - seems very out of place given that the audience has now seen the Falcon for several minutes. And the all-CGI effects (Jabba, Mos Eisley, Cantina aliens, the Rebel attack fleet, and so on) stick out like sore thumbs. The minor fixes are appreciated, though, and seeing it again on a big screen - we have our projector set up so we've got about a 10' screen - remastered for the DVD shows just how well done the original film was. The cast is gorgeous, the lighting and sets are spectacular. Star Wars really does deserve all the fame it gets. In ...

This one happened over dinner tonight. Caspian was drawing, and Susan was telling me about her day: Susan: "I got stuff to make a girl dolly for Caspian to go with his boy dolly." Josh: "I thought his dolly was a girl?" Susan: "Nope, he's just been saying 'she' a lot. Hey, Caspian, I'm going to make dolly an extra part to make sure you know he's a boy. Do you know what part?" Caspian (without skipping a beat): "A chromasome."

Like always, this will require some explanation: "Don't cook me!" Susan's parents are in town and so grandma was helping get Caspian ready for bed in his bedroom. I knew what was coming so I was cleaning up the house, but keeping an ear open. I suspect it was when they were trying to put his pajama shirt on, and something when awry. I heard laughter, then from a grown up: "You know, to many cooks." Caspian: "Why did you say cooks?" Grown up: "It's something you say... if you have too many cooks cooking something it can go wrong." Caspian: "Don't cook me!"

I was sitting with Caspian in his room, reading him some postcards he'd received in the mail. He's good with block printing, but handwriting is too much of a challenge for him to enjoy the content. He was being particularly wriggly. So I said: "Caspian, you're very wiggly. Can you go potty?" And so Caspian got up and headed to his bathroom. On the way he passed one of his toys - a piece of SWAG from TechEd 2005 which could loosely be described as an "octopus yo-yo" (there are several in the upper-left quadrant of this photo ). From a previous toy of this sort which easily disassembled, we called it his " sea jelly ". So he picks up the toy and says: "My jelly is very wiggly. It needs to go poo." So he picks it up, takes it to the bathroom, gives it a turn on the toilet, then has his own turn.