Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

I knew what he was doing, so I readied the camera and slipped into his room…

Whereupon he immediately grinned (not that he’s a ham or anything, noooo), and as soon as the flash had gone off he was holding up the book to show it off…

So how did I get a just-turned-9-yr-old to read a freaking HUGE hardcover Michael Crichton book until 2am in the morning when the only reason he put it down is that he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore?
Easy. I cheated.

Unless you’re having this read to you, you can obviously see that my son is absolutely OBSESSED with dinosaurs.  In just this picture alone you can see that his sheet set, his comforter, his bedside lamp, a poster on the wall behind him, and two of his hand-drawn pictures all feature dinosaurs. The only thing in the pic that *doesn’t* is the ant farm.  (Which we STILL haven’t gotten the ants for, by the way… Kelsey says he’s starting to think Uncle Milton’s is a fraud.)

Around this house, we get more than our fair share of hearing about and looking at dinosaurs all the time.  Consider the shirt my 2-year-old was wearing today:

Yeah, we’re inundated with big nasty creatures who would eat us if they could.  Kelsey actually wants to make a REAL Jurassic Park when he grows up.  Of course, the JP series are his favorite movies of all time, and his favorite Xbox game, too.

So imagine my delight when I found both Jurassic Park and Lost World at the thrift store today for 99 cents each! They’re in perfect condition (minus the grease-pencil price marking on the cover that will wipe right off whenever I can pry it from his hands).

Honestly, I didn’t think he’d want to read them right away. I figured they’d be nice to put on his bookshelf and read “one day”. After all, these are big, huge, HEAVY books.  Lots of text and no pictures.  We’re batting a thousand on “the reasons young boys wouldn’t want to even open this book” list.

I had this little speech all made up for when I showed them to him.  I was going to tell him to remember that the book is ALWAYS better than the movie, that it has details and entire scenes that they don’t have time to include in the movie, and even though the book might *seem* overwhelming because it’s so big, it’s like eating an elephant. You don’t think about the whole elephant, you just eat one bite at a time.  Like reading the book… one small part at a time and before you know it, it’s done.

I needn’t have bothered making up the speech.  The instant I pulled them out of the bag he went nuts. I haven’t heard that many “oh thank you thank you thank you’s” in a looooooong time.

I gave him the speech anyway.
Because I’m a mom, and that’s what we do.

Besides, it was a really motivating and well-reasoned speech.  So there. 

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This is my youngest, Alex, fishing this past summer. He was just-turned-two at the time and wanted SO badly to actually be fishing and pulling in the spot with us. Someone let Brendon’s rod get too close to his stroller and before we knew it, he’d picked it up and was “casting” with it, over and over again. He didn’t know to press the button while “casting”, but he did know to reel it in afterwards.

Yes, we did take the salt water rig and multiple hooks off of it - more for the safety of everyone else around him. You see, they were securely attached at the top of the rod way out of his reach, but after a while he tired of whacking the rod on the railing and started whacking anyone who got close enough. Those nasty squid-covered, bloodworm-covered razor-sharp hooks just wouldn’t do when you’re giving passers-by unexpected piercings.

I live very close to both the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, so when I think of salty, I think of the ocean! And fishing and crabbing, baby!
And now, thanks to Alex, I think of a cute little boy wanting SO much to be fishing in the wonderful salt air as well.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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Yesterday was Kelsey’s birthday party - 8 screaming boys all ages 6-9 (plus a tagalong 2yo) going full-force for two hours. Wow… whodathunk that it would have tired us all out so much? The boys all fell straight asleep the instant they got home, without even complaining that it was time to go to bed. I fell asleep within ten minutes of my head hitting the pillow - amazing enough in itself - and then slept for 11 hours. Double wow!

So anyhow, today we just kinda vegged out. I did get a bunch of dishes done and some laundry and cleaned the science experiments out of the fridge, but other than that we just vegged.

One of Kel’s birthday presents he received yesterday was Monopoly - Here & Now. I’ve been looking forward to cracking this open, as I used to love the original edition. The older 4 of us played it (Alex kept trying to help, much to our dismay) and we had fun… but it really did last too long. Brendon quit after 2 1/2 hours, Kelsey and I were ready to quit at 4 hours and convinced Mike to pack it up. He wanted to keep everything set as it was so we could continue the play later. His words - “but I like it when somebody actually WINS!” - meaning him of course, LOL.

Next time, we’ll play the “short game” way: agree before starting on an end time, deal each player 2 properties right off the bat that they must pay for, and whoever is worth the most (cash and properties) at the ending time wins. Period.

I have 3 complaints:

If you’re considering getting this for your family and have kids ages 10 and under, I’d really go for the original version. There’s no benefit to this version besides more “hip” or “cool” tokens, and those aren’t worth $30 on their own. Monopoly has always been such a great educational game because it taught kids realistically about money in a fantasy setting; with real dollar amounts that kids could really put their hands on ($1, $5, $10, etc). Here And Now takes the “realistic” angle out of it completely by using money amounts of 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 500k, 1million, 5million. The entire game becomes fantasy, nothing to care about; just a game… and the thought of having REAL money and doing this for REAL just flies out the window. Stick with the original.

Despite those problems though, we had fun. It was nice having a family game going that wasn’t a video game, and I’d like to find a way to make it a weekly ritual. Shorter games, though!
Ones I’d like to get that I remember from childhood are: TriOminos, Uno, Skip-Bo, Boggle. I’m also planning on getting Blokus for Brendon for his birthday in May (he really wanted it for Christmas but it didn’t fit into our budget), and I’m thinking about getting Set as well.

If you’ve got any suggestions for COOPERATIVE games that are fun for families, please, lemme hear ‘em! (Okay, even Xbox 360 games, sigh… lol.)

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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