This dwarf turned his head back and forth, but notice how his eyes *never stop watching you*. 

Here's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Here's a classic: the donkey who shat golden coins. If you ask me, they're still going to be hard to spend.  

This was really the defining moment for me. These are mining dwarfs, and they are mining Stollen (a German xmas cake), from what I can tell. And according to the recording, not a beam of natural light ever made it into their caves. Creep-o! 

Belated Birthday

D.D. had her birthday a couple of weeks ago, but it was in the middle of her school break, and we managed to fart around and not arrange anything then. She today we took her and 4 of her friends to the local amusement park. It's about like Neff's in Angelo (is that place still open?). Anyhow, it's called the Fairy Tale Paradise, and there are lots of kid-friendly rides and playgrounds. D.D. and friends rode on the back of a giant plastic witch around a track, ditto a pony, rode around the park on the train, bounced on the giant moonwalk thingy, and drove non-bumper cars. D.D. almost caused a pile-up as soon as she got in her car, and it took her a couple of tries to get the hang of it. As she careened around, trying to make the car go where she wanted it to, she called out, "I don't have a driver's license!" How irresponsible of us to let her drive without one!

Interspersed among the rides are these creepy animatronic scenes from fairy tales the Brothers Grimm collected back in the day; these things make the Pirates of the Caribbean and It's A Small World at Disney World look cuddly and cute. For your viewing amusement, I'm posting my photos of what I like to call the Animatronic Nightmare. Enjoy.

The Joys? of Parenting

The crack about the Nixon parenting method was made just before Deep Throat came forward. Talk about a weird coincidence.

Except that the parenting seems not to be working. D.D. punched a boy in the nose at after-school care and made it bleed. There was much eye-closing and sighing around here after she finally confessed. The boy had been pulling her dress up and wouldn't stop, and she claimed she couldn't get the teacher's attention, and finally, her "mind was out of control", and she punched him. Her friends claim he deserves it, because he's punched them, too, but we don't want our daughter to use violence to counter violence. Of course, now that he knows she might *make him bleed*, he might not try anything with her again.

She gave herself a week's restriction from tv before we could even come up with a punishment, so we went with that. Then she wrote a heartfelt letter to Barbie on her web site and said that the one thing she would like to change about herself is her fury. We knew she was on the Barbie site, but our interest was piqued when she asked how to spell "school" and "fury", so I went and had a look at what she was writing. We're thinking that the pre-programmed Barbie response will probably not be appropriate to the Daughter's soul-baring letter.

She Comes By It Naturally

D.D. is a bit of a geek (see Yoda picture below) because her dad and I are geeks. We were listening to a radio interview with a man who is part of a group of people who are trying to break a record by reading as many places of pi as possible in 30 hours. This led L.H. and I to rack our brains trying to remember what we knew about pi: I had the denominator—7—and he had the numerator—22. I only remembered 3.1.4, but when he tried to outgeek me (incorrectly, I might add smugly), I was able to come up with 3.1416. Dr. Math at Drexel gives a short version of 3.14159265358979323846, so mine was rounded up. Considering I haven't taken math of any sort since 1995-ish, and no geometry-related math since 1992, I felt less stupid than I have of late.

D.D. and I are geeks. We got a multi-pack of paper towels just because this little guy was in it, then we fought over him; I won. And the paper towels are nifty, too--they have Star Wars characters on them. They go with the travel packs of tissues with the Star Wars wrappers. 

Translation: "Hannah's Revenge Notebook" Yes, we're parenting using the award-winning Nixon Method. 

All D.D., All This Time

I Think I'm Turning Japanese (sing it if you know it). D.D. has gotten into the habit of asking for a drink out of the "waddle boddle." Now I can't say it right. I even caught myself writing "watel" the other day. And it's starting to bleed over into other words. Sometimes I don't even sound like I'm speaking English when I get on a roll.

D.D. is very flexible; she's inherited my grandmother's "loose hips." That means I know 2 people who can cross their legs at the knee, then tuck the top foot behind the ankle of the bottom leg. I certainly can't do it. She's been entertaining us recently by bending and crossing her legs into the shapes of different numbers. She can do 4, 0, and 8, and we expect her to start on letters any time now.

I think D.D. is veering into "whoa, take it easy, kid" territory. I put her in the tub yesterday afternoon, and she asked me to pull the stool over by the tub. On it were her clean shirt, a book of Far Side comic strips, and a guide to the first few seasons of the Simpsons (thanks, JKL!—pre-JEKL). She couldn't believe I wouldn't let her *read in the tub*--"I'll dry my hands off first!" So she read the Far Side book as part of her bedtime reading ritual instead.