How stuff works: catapults

So P-rock is way, way into how things work. When first encountering a motion-activated hand drier: "How does that hand drier work, mommy? Is it magic?" No, it's not magic, it's just, um, automatic. "What's automatic?"... Then we have a 15 minute discussion on the inherent difference between things that are automatic (air conditioners that click on unexpectedly, the doors on elevators) and things that are magic (wizards and flying horses). I think we've nailed down that "automatic" requires the intervention of some kind of machine, whereas "magic" does not.

And at some point every day, we're treated to a long lecture that starts with "Lemme tell you what. It's sumpin about how X works...", X being the subject of the day, whether lightbulbs or shrimps' legs or - our favorite - anything having to do with dinosaurs.

Apparently, catapults have something to do with dinosaurs (ps: "hopticopters" means, of course, "helicopters").

Beacon

We took a day trip to Beacon, to check out the Hudson valley. Of course, we needed to keep ourselves occupied on the trip back... Guess which shots are the ones P took.

Outdoors again, huzzah!

Garden days are here again, time to hang out with our uptown friends...

...and drink blackberry smoovies with our Brooklyn friends (that's "Don't-call-me-baby" Geeves, all grown up!)...

... and help dad work out those upper arm muscles.

Puppy sitting

Our landlords, who live upstairs from us, got a new puppy, Bella. And since she needs some play time every day and both of our landlords are off being lawyerly during the week, and Matt and P are home, they asked us if we could play with her for a little while every weekday. P-rock l-o-v-e-s Bella, it's great. He gets to play with a puppy (without us having to actually own one), and we get a discount on our rent. Win-win.

Pandemic joke

The other night at dinner, we were talking about, you know, the flu. And P-rock interrupts me to say "No Mommy! Swine didn't fly!"

Overheard in Brooklyn

P-rock (singing): "Can you tell me how the hell, to get to Sesame Street?"

Fpring

It's that time of the year again. Bwossoms and silly faces.

Costa Rica

I finally got all our pictures from our February trip to Costa Rica uploaded here. Disclaimer: we weren't just lying around on the beach, pura vida-style. I was in Spanish classes every day (my job partially subsidized the trip for that express purpose), AND I had homework.

Ok, so we still got quite a bit of lying around on the beach accomplished. But the highlight for Mr. P, of course, was all the wildlife: monkeys in the trees, iguanas wandering around everywhere, coatis in the cloudforest, and snakes in the serpentarium (which was a sort of snake museum for those of us who don't particularly WANT to see the real thing in the wild).

For any of you contemplating a trip to Central America, I highly recommend it, it was a great trip...

The terrible twos, the aaaCKK%*%^&$!! threes

Forgive me, I am a blogging failure. We went to Costa Rica in FEBRUARY and now it's halfway through March and I still haven't posted pictures.

But you see, it's not my fault. See, I have a three-year-old. Yup. See? Airtight excuse. Cause as you all know (especially those of you who have already had three-year-olds, and lived to tell the tale but somehow managed to avoid letting ME know), having a three-year-old is WAY WORSE than having a two-year-old.

Seriously, he was pretty bad before. Tantrums, boundary-pushing, button-pushing, nap strikes, hitting/biting/clawing. But nothing compared to now. We were starting to wonder if he picked up some horrible good-behavior-aversion disease in the jungle in Costa Rica, but then our friends (thanks Sonia) and pediatrician (thanks whatever your name is) let us know: three can be worse than two. Thanks for the advance warning, y'all.

Let's just review this evening, randomly chosen from an entire series of other similar evenings, purely for educational purposes. Tonight, P taught us the invaluable lesson that you cannot leave a three-year-old on their own for even a second (mind you, both of us were home, and our apartment only has three rooms), or he might:

a) Eat the entire tube of toothpaste AND use the saliva that generates to soak through his bed and stuffed animals on the bed and then start shrieking uncontrollably because his stuffed animals are "too wet";

b) Take his cup of lemonade (only grudgingly allowed after the toothpaste incident) and the 3-foot-long flexible plastic tube attachment that inflates the guest air mattress, sit on mommy and daddy's bed and try to use the tube to suck the lemonade out of the cup, spilling (of course) all of it on the bed;

c) While getting a timeout for the lemonade incident, scream "I need to PEEEEEE", thus ensuring that his parents let him out of the timeout to go to the potty (no dummy, this kid);

d) While peeing (or hopefully, a little afterwards), grab a spray bottle of degreaser (don't ask me how it got there, I don't know) and proceed to spray the floor, the toilet, the walls and the toilet paper roll;

and
e) Just for good measure, take his shoes off and spit/drool/slobber into them until they're thoroughly soaked.

Keep in mind this was all between dinner and bedtime. That is, between 6:30 and 7:30 at night. P-roc wants to know: what did YOU achieve in that hour today?

To end on a more upbeat note, here's a picture of le petit prince enjoying himself in Costa Rica. It's a lovely country and we hope he survives his parents' wrath long enough to visit there once again some day. On his own.