The Awesome

I just published like 4 posts in the past 2 days.  To be honest with you, I probably won’t post again until we get back from Disneyland in a couple weeks.  It seems to take me a while to adjust back to my routines after returning from vacations.  I think that is one of the main reasons I don’t like long vacations a ton.  I really lose momentum afterward.

So last week was a nice little school holiday.  I have always wanted to actually observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day rather than just have it be another one of those days that we can’t go to the bank and our mail doesn’t get delivered.  I tried to tell my kids a little about MLK.  In order to do that, I felt like I had to tell them a little about the civil rights movement.  I had already told them a little about Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery.  It’s tricky to talk to kids about these things.  I wanted them to understand, but still have the discussion be age appropriate.  When Milo returned to school his teacher gave hima handout about MLK.  It had a picture of him on the front and it said “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught people to solve problems without fighting.  Kids can solve problems too!”  Then on the back it had illustrations of common kid problems and ways to solve them without fighting.  I think that was the gist of what I was telling my kids.  I just didn’t mind telling them some of Dr. King’s methods.  Milo cracked up when I told him how so many people got arrested for sitting down in restaurants that the jails got too full.  He said, “That’s ridiculous to get arrested just for sitting in a restaurant!”  I love how easily children see that.

Milo is always curious about the holidays that give him a break from school.  I’m gonna have to look up some of these Jewish holidays so I can tell him more about them.  I was delighted that he was curious about the meaning of this one too.  I made some cupcakes to make it feel like a celebration.  They were dark chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting.  I wanted that to be symbolic for the holiday. I couldn’t decide if that was un pc, though.  What do you think?

The next day, my man Obama was sworn in as president.  I think that it’s so cool that America voted in such a great person.  I downloaded these cupcake toppers and stuck them in the leftover cupcakes to celebrate that special day.  Me and Si ate them while we watched the inauguration speech.  It was awesome.

After so much ado, I made it to Ikea and got the desired dresser for Silas.  That night, Friday the 9th, I assembled it in his bedroom while he watched even though he was supposed to be sleeping.  I covered it with blankets so that he could pretend to be nice and surprised.  We had a party Saturday the 10th, one week after his actual birthday.  Since I felt like we had already thoroughly celebrated, we just had a cake-mix cake and gave him presents.

The R2D2 was an awesome toy.  We ended up getting it for about $50.  When we first turned it on, it was pretty noisy in the room with all four of us yelling at it to do things at the same time.  We ended up being happy with it once we realized that it has to be fairly quiet in the room and you have to be standing in front of it for it to understand your commands.  It is probably the most sophisticated toy I have ever encountered.  It is probably also a little complicated for a 4 y/o.  Nevertheless, Silas loves it like we knew he would.  He gives it commands and it emits a series of beeps that would probably translate to “Dude, I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me.”  Instead of giving the set commands to R2, Silas likes to put his arm around R2′s “shoulders” and say, “R2D2, Play hide and seek with me?…Pleeasse?”

The toy actually does play hide and seek, that’s just not the command.  It has an infrared sensor on it so that it can find people.  It also doesn’t confuse the pets with people.  So you give it the command and then go hide.  It will wander around the house and when it finds someone, it shines it’s light beam at you and says, “Ha Ha! I found you,” in a bunch of triumphant sounding beeps.  This setting is good for children who are not very good hiders.  It’s not going to find you if you hide anywhere that a small child wouldn’t be able to find you.  Duh.  Anyways, it does a ton more things than I should list here without having to change the category of this post to “BORING.”  But I thought the internet would be interested to know about this sweet toy I got my child.