A Bunch of Gooble Gabble

Coleman is very into G.I. Joe and all things army guys right now. He really likes to play computer games with army guys too. After seeing one he was playing, I told him it was too bloody and he wasn't allowed to play the bloody games. One day this week he brought home a picture that he drew at school. It was, what else, but a picture of army guys. This is what he said:

Coleman: Is it OK to draw blood?
Mommy: I don't think your teacher would like that.
Coleman: Well, I did and she didn't say anything.
Mommy: She probably didn't know what you were drawing. But if she did, she would tell you not to draw bloody pictures.
Coleman: Yeah, she probably just thought it was gooble gabble. That's like scribble scrabble.

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Coleman's school cafeteria let's you do prepaid accounts. Each child punches in their 6-digit code when they buy a lunch. For the first week of school Coleman's teacher punched it in for him. Then she sent a paper with the code home for us to work with him to memorize. I figured memorizing a 6-digit number might be a little difficult for a 5 year old. Not to mention that he would probably have no interest in memorizing a 6-digit number. So I made up a song to help him. It's to the tune of "This Old Man":

6*5**3
that's the number that feeds me
with a 6*5 and a **3
punch it in it's time to eat!

Coleman kind of looked at me weird, and when I asked him to sing it, he just rattled off random numbers. Spence, on the other hand, was singing the song and repeating the correct numbers by the second day! Since then, Coleman has gotten it down. And we sing it every morning at breakfast. Sometimes we even add some groovy moves. Yesterday I asked Coleman if he told his teacher about the song. He gave me a "you're kidding, right?" look and said no. I figure he doesn't want his teacher to know he lives with a bunch of weirdos! And hopefully the cafeteria lady doesn't notice him humming "This Old Man" while he punches in his code!

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Something strange has happened since Coleman started Kindergarten. It's like a shift in the family dynamics. Before, it was the boys and Allie. Or the big kids and the baby. Now, there has been some regrouping. Coleman is at school most of the day, and Spence and Allie are now grouped together. I guess it's so new that I don't even have names for these new classifications. The big kid and the little ones? That doesn't really sound right.

Here are a few pictures to add to this assortment of happenings!

This is Spence's main form of transportation these days. He bounces around the house on this thing all day!

I was taking his picture the other day and said, "I don't think I've gotten a picture of you on the Spider Man ball since you first got it."

Here's that picture: Christmas 2008

We made cupcakes and frosted them with melted chocolate chips. That's why the boys are shirtless!

And these two are always into something. In the last 24 hours they have pulled out all the markers and coloring books, emptied the game cabinet and pulled all the contents out of Connect Four (yeah, so that's like 50 poker chips), The Memory Game (OK, 100 matching cards), and Sorry (requiring a search for 16 game pieces and stacking a deck of cards), and pulled all the books from the living room book shelf. They are busy! Therefore I am busy.

But aren't they adorable? It's as if she's saying, "Hey Spencey, I know what we can get into next!"