Lunacy

Reading the NYT article today on Zacarias Moussaoui's testimony, I caught this quote:

Mr. Moussaoui said there were times when a Muslim can lie without being immoral: to reconcile Muslims, to answer "yes" when a wife asks, "Am I beautiful?" and to carry out jihad.

Now, I understand the man is a deranged terrorist, but how A and B has any remote relationship to C is just completely beyond me.

And maybe that's the most frightening thing about him and his ilk.

Our latest destination

To where does a Thomas the Tank Engine obsession lead?

To a Thomas the Tank Engine outing, of course.

It is a powerful magnet for parents - a ride onboard your child's current great indulgence. Throw in a few other sources of entertainment (stories, music) and you've got yourself a must-do experience.

There were five of us that made the trip, boy, parents, paternal grandparents - making a trek to a park 1 1/2 hours from our house, all for a 30-minute train ride.

Honestly, the ride was quite boring for us adults. I'll spare you those details.

But to my son, it was absolutely magical. At the front of the train was a massive blue Thomas, with the biggest smile he had ever seen. Behind stood his reliable coaches, Annie and Clarabel. We got onto the first coach, so to this day, he remembers it as the day he rode Annie. He sat by the window, eagerly trying to see everything he could see. We passed an orange grove and houses with happy waving people and car traffic and majestic oaks with the hanging Spanish moss. It was like a dream come true.

And I guess, like in those MasterCard commercials, it was priceless.

Hard day at work?

Here is your favorite roving reporter getting the story on Spring Break. I was out at the beach interviewing some of the college students in town, when my cell phone rang. It was an interview subject that I needed to speak with, so I just parked myself and did the phone interview right where I was.
(Thanks to my buddy BVP for taking the photo.)

On the right track

Sometimes, I wonder if my husband ended up in the wrong profession.
Sometimes, I think he should have been a track designer.

With my son's love of the Thomas the Tank Engine collection, he has indulged his own longlost love of building tracks, though in his boyhood it was Hot Wheels.

What's fun with our set is that it is a random collection of tracks from that premiere set, some compatible Brio tracks, and even a set from IKEA. (Those people can do anything.)

We also don't have an established board or mat that we have to follow. We build to our imagination's content and never have the same track twice.



I like to think I'm pretty good at creating fun track designs, but then I see what my husband can invent and there is no comparison. He is the king of track designs.

And my son is quickly following in his footsteps. How else to explain the fact that he wakes in the morning, wanting to build train tracks first, even before he's had pancakes.

How's the weather?

The weather down here is lovely, as you can see from my new weather pixie that has a new home in my sidebar.

It's days like this that makes me glad I moved to Florida. :)

Turn about is fair play

Everyday, my son teaches me something new. Or at least he tries to teach me.

At random moments, he will suddenly do something his teachers do or that we do and will expect me to respond appropriately.

He’ll open a book and point to a letter, asking me, “What is this?” (He’s learning the phonetics of each letter) Sometimes, I think he does it when he doesn’t recognize a letter, but after I answer, he’ll say, “Very good,” in that gentle sing-song voice of a preschool teacher.

Or he’ll share toys, but before I get the toy, I have to ask, “May I please have the toy?”

Or when it’s cleanup time, and I get lazy and just randomly throw things into his toy bin, he’ll remind me to put them in the box gently.

He doesn’t let me get away with much.

At the prompt

So I've just been asked this question:
“What does being a Crazy Hip Blog Mama mean to you?"

Some of my readers may not understand this question, but it's part of a membership in a unique club with which I find myself.

To which I answer this way:
In life, you need to redefine yourself when the time comes to accept change. The most dramatic redefinition of my life happened more than three years ago when a new life came from me and from his first breath, would always depend on me. So I am a mama.
But with the change, part of me remained the same intelligent, independent minded, curious, yearning-to-learn woman I had been and this is the part of me that is still hip.
What is crazy is that these two essential parts of myself can find balance and harmony in my hectic existence.
So being a crazy hip blog mama means I am all of these things and that I have a blog now to express my different phases, come as they may. And it also means that I have a group of kindred spirits who must do the same.

If that sounds particularly transcendent, you'll excuse me but I just finished watching Matrix:Revolutions and I think I am channeling The Oracle. But I bet she'd be a crazy hip blog mama, too.

Play it again, Mommy

My son has very distinct tastes in music. He prefers jazz over rock. He loves violins and he is constantly humming his favorite songs around the house, whether it be the theme song for Bob the Builder or Darth Vader.

Would you believe his current favorite is a 1962 Wayne Newton hit?

It was from that classic scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris takes the mike at the German-American parade and starts lip-synching Danke Schoen.

The song came back into our lives through this oddball CD of random songs that a friend of my husband's had burned for him. Our friend, grateful for some of the help and presents we sent after their New Orleans home was destroyed, ended the CD with that very song.

My Darling Redhead has been playing the CD in the car and my 3-year-old has gotten quite attached to the song. And if you catch him at the right moment, he'll start crooning the song too.

So, of course, I had to add it to my iPod so I can play it when I drive him to school. He now asks for it at least once a day.