Do you want some beef turkey?

"Dad, are you eating beef turkey?" asks Ben. Yep, I made the jerky myself!

Don't eat Superman...and Batman...hey, not Green Lantern!

As a reprise of my earlier post, here Ben is 4 1/2 years old, and during those moments when he is fussy and doesn't want to eat, guess what still works? Yep - pretend each bite of the food is a superhero. We go through the Justice League. Superman is out for a fly, going to fight Lex Luthor, when suddenly - he gets swallowed by a kid! Batman hears about it and comes to his aid, but he is swallowed too!! Oh, no - who will protect the world from this new threat? Wonder Woman? No, her invisible jet and all. Hawk Girl? No way. The Martian? Gone. Aquaman? He's just seafood. Good thing the Justice League is so big - it's usually enough to finish the plate.

Dad, he's my Skunk Double

Just before school let out for the summer, we parents were invited to come in and see what our first-graders had been working on all year. We waded through a folder packed with math quizzes, writing assignments, spelling words, and art projects. We sat through a PowerPoint presentation the teachers had done, showing a picture slideshow set to music of those adorable kids at work. This had been an eventful year - the local news station had done a TV broadcast a few weeks before, because one of his classmate's community service project had been to adopt a unit in Iraq and send letters and care packages. At the end, my son drags on my hand, and wants to show me what he made on his locker. It's a trace cutout of his whole body, decorated in a 7-year-old's crayon creativity, and named with a silly relettering of his name. "Dad, he's my Skunk Double," he says. I could not hold back my smile, but it was all I could do to hold back my laughter. "What is he?" I asked, just to hear it again. He obliged. "Oh, that is a beautiful Skunk Double," I said in a voice shaking from suppressed laughter. Jeremy, you're the best!!!

A tomato is coming!

A couple of weeks ago, the skies were getting dark, and it started raining. Ben and Jeremy came running in from outside. Ben says "A tomato is coming!" all excited like. I smiled. He hates tomatoes! Well, the kind he was talking about, so do I - I had heard just a few minutes before there was a tornado watch for Oakland County.