Yearly Archives: 2010

Domestic Blitz

And now we have a playroom!

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We went ahead with the plan to move the kids into one room, and so far it’s working out well. Petey took a very long nap in his “big boy bed” yesterday, and they both slept well last night — after a good bit of giggling and small talk. They were up rather early this morning, but Rockford redirected their attentions from our bed to the new playroom. I’m going to get a “here’s when you can get up” clock for their bedroom, because I suspect that they won’t be sleeping in late all that often anymore, what with a little cohort nearby to encourage them to get up and going.

Right now there are four small bookshelves holding the toys and books in the playroom. I have my eye on a few pieces of furniture from Ikea so I can consolidate things a little more. I’m hoping to be able to get the space much more organized by August, when it’s going to be doing double-duty as the playroom and the schoolroom.

Homeschool

To share or not to share?

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Here’s an equation I’ve been puzzling over lately:

3x(2y)+h=s

wherein:
x = the numbers of bedrooms in our house
y = the number of children in our family
h = homeschooling
s = where, precisely, is the homeschooling going to take place?

We’ve been doing our schoolwork at the kitchen table and on the couch. It’s worked out fine, but I’d like to get all of the stuff into one place. I’ve been thinking about putting the kids’ beds in one bedroom and turning the other room into a playroom/schoolroom space. Because we have a boy and a girl, it wouldn’t be a long-term solution. But right now they’re nearly-5 and nearing-3, and I think they’d be fine with limited privacy for a few years, at least.

What do you think?

Screen time

We had ‘Lotso’ fun at ‘Toy Story 3’

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Toy StoryOur first family movie-going experience went so very well. The kids were riveted, and there was only minor squirrelyness from Petey. One of us had to wipe away some tears, but I won’t reveal that gentle soul’s identity to you. Here’s what the kids thought:

(There are some very minor spoilerish statements below.)

Poppy: “It was great. It was awesome. It was a great movie. My favorite part was when Woody and Slink stopped the monkey.”

Pete: “My favorite part was ‘Toy Story 3.’ ”

I enjoyed it, too, but I still think the original was the best one. I did find the similarities between “Toy Story 3” and the “Lost” finale interesting — the live together, die alone theme was there, as was the echoing of the movie’s/series’s opening sequence.

Because this was a movie, Rockford had the most to say. I asked him to keep it to five sentences. He wasn’t able to be quite that succinct, but he did pretty well:

It’s a bittersweet send-off meant for the people who were 6 years old when the first movie came out rather than the people who are 6 years old now. The characters have gotten older. They’ve seen toys come and go, and they’re all a little world-weary. This might be the most well-directed of the three movies; of all of them, it’s the hardest thematically. It has some of the darkest moments of the trilogy, but it also has some of the best examples of the friendship and camaraderie between these “people.” I would watch the movie again just to see the Chuckles the Clown scene, which used the convention of film noir. And you found yourself laughing at the reference, but it was also really well done. I give it four out of four stars.