Monday, January 23, 2012

Odd Beverage Request

Tonight Alexander said he wanted "Chinese Milk"... yes, he clarified, he wanted milk from China.

Maybe this is some kind of youthful rebellion against his parent's generation's obsession with buying local and organic. I mean, he nailed the opposite of that.

Kids these days.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Bub the Builder

We recently unearthed a DVD that I got many years ago for my nephew to watch when he visited - it's called Bob the Builder. Since both Ava and Alexander seem to have an interest in construction equipment, we decided to give it a whirl.



For those of you who don't watch toddler TV, Bob the Builder is a stop-motion animation series. It's kind of craptacular. I haven't bothered to google it or even watch to credits to confirm, but the voice of Bob sounds a lot like Greg Proops... which means he's a pretty effeminate sounding construction worker.




Greg Proops is hilarious, and I assume very successful. So, it probably isn't actually him but just someone that sounds like him. Not since The Village People have possibly light-in-the-loafers construction workers been so celebrated.

Anyway, Bob has a battle cry of sorts. He shouts "Can we fix it?" and all his trucks shout back "Yes we can!" He shouts "Can we build it?" and the response is "Yes we can!" (While this may sound like a political message, BTB came up with this slogan long before Obama used it in his 2008 presidential campaign. If only Bob had trademarked it! Obama would have to shell out millions and he'd be rich - maybe BTB could even afford more than 3 facial expression for their characters.)

So Alexander picked up on this battle cry. The other night he yelled "Can we fix it?" then "Can we built it?" and then, to our surprise, he added "Can we pay for it?"

We literally LOLed. Or is that LedOL? Stupid acronyms making grammar so complicated...

We're trademarking the phrase "Can we pay for it?" right now. It's just a matter of time before that becomes a campaign slogan. Cha-ching!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Holiday Highlights

Alexander showed major improvements in his sprinkle control. (As far as cookies go, anyway.)


He also decorated a fine gingerbread house, pretty much up to code by local standards.


Christmas morning, the kids were excited to see some big guy had broken into our house. Santa put a cell phone in Ava’s stocking. She immediately called to thank him.


Santa also gave Ava a hat…


Which had the strange (brew) ability to turn Ava into Bob McKenzie.



"Take off, eh!"

In case you are in serious need of remedial work in the classics, here is Bob McKenzie:


Alexander received an unexpected promotion to Fire Chief.



Being a nice brother, he worked out some sort of a job-share arrangement with his sister.


It was a good time to have firefighters in the house, because suddenly it seemed that everything was on fire. These were strange fires that only Alexander and Ava could see with their super-trained firefighter eyes.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but this picture captures the spirit of our Christmas morning nicely.



Then we put a frilly dress on Ava and went to spend the afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. When the kids saw Grandma and Grandpa’s tree, they were like “whoa”.




...And it slowly dawned on them that their mother is an extremely lazy house decorator. Well, they’d learn that sooner or later. Sorry, kids.

Over many extended days of holiday funtoonery, presents were opened, big meals were eaten, and the kids got to spend time with their cousin and aunts and uncles and even their great grandma. Ava enjoyed the opportunity to nap on one of her favorite comfy spots.


Overall, the level of happiness experienced by the children this holiday season is show here:


(And, yes, they did receive new toys for Christmas, but apparently none are as fun as our old and curiously scented cat scratcher.)


Here's a fun fact*: according to the Chinese calendar, 2012 is the Year of the Yar. So strap on your yarbelts and get ready for a yarry ride of your life. Yar!

Happy New Year!




*for maximum accuracy, replace the word "fun" with "fictitious"