Moves in Curves

Last night I put the boys to bed as usual, with C on the bottom bunk and D on the top. I came back in their room an hour later when I heard them banging around in there instead of sleeping, and found C on the top bunk. I stuck my head in and said “Go to sleep!” and C responded “I’m D!”

I said, “No you’re not, go to sleep C.”

This morning when they got up, I realized they had switched shirts last night as part of their attempted deception. They cackled happily when I said “Did you guys switch shirts?” and were rather impressed that I hadn’t been fooled. “How did you know I was C?” he asked. I told him Mommy can always tell them apart. “You can’t fool me. But don’t do that to your teachers.”

Twin B wrote his first book. It is, of course, a fanfiction, based on the popular-among-little-boys-everywhere “How To Train Your Dragon” fandom. He illustrated it, told me the story, and I wrote it down for him. He wrote the title on the cover himself.

"The Gronckle Book"

Page 1

Page 2

And here is the text:

Fishlegs was having fun with the Gronckle on Dragon Island. The Gronckle was not having fun. He wanted to bonk Fishlegs in the head.

So he flew and flew and flew, and knocked Fishlegs’ helmet off. And then he bonked him in the head.

The End.

(Fishlegs is one of the Viking teens in HTTYD.) We have seen this movie three times now, and it hasn’t even come to DVD yet, and they have several of the books and all the McDonald’s dragons (thanks to my mother, I didn’t even have to buy two dozen HappyMeals to get them: she found a McD’s that had all the dragons, bought up the 8 or so the boys were missing – times two, of course, one of each for each of them – and mailed them to us. The boys were ecstatic, and the dragons remain their favorite and most-played-with toys), so it isn’t surprising he should be writing about them.

I’m very proud of him, of course, and That Man and I are pretty delighted parents that Twin B wrote this little story. He’s very creative. The illustrations show he clearly had this story in mind when he was drawing it – he was very definite about the order the pages went in before I stapled them together into a “book”, and – in typical writer fashion – he had a few pages that didn’t make the cut. At first I thought he was just drawing a half dozen pictures of Gronckles, but there really is a story there. You can see Fishlegs has his horned Viking helmet on in the first scene, and his hair is showing in the second as the Gronckle knocks him in the head with its stubby tail.

“I have no sympathy for any of you feculent maggots and no more patience to pretend otherwise. Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness.”

I’ve been playing on foursquare a lot lately. It’s so pointless, yet so fun. Everywhere I go, I check in. I’ve checked in at about four or five local bridges, and am thinking of going up to the peninsula this weekend just so I can check in on the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel. I want to go to a cupcakery in Hilltop to see if it will give me the Cupcake badge, or if I need to visit a few more cupcake places (there are only two around here, sadly, and I’ve already been to the other one). I’m mayor of my house and my kids’ speech clinic. I have several badges and on the way to several more.

There really seems to be very little purpose to this thing, though, I have to admit. It’s sort of like a game. But now I want to go somewhere, so that I can check in to local places somewhere else. I keep thinking how fun it would have been to be foursquaring while I was in Hawaii or San Diego, or up in Maine. In two weeks, I’ll be down in Florida for Infinitus, and I’m going to be checking in left and right down there. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’m looking for somewhere interesting I can go this weekend so I can get some new check-ins. I’m almost at the 25 check-ins badge.