D, eyeing the skillet suspiciously: “What is that?”

Me: “It’s a tomato cream sauce. It’s yummy.”

D: “I will have my noodles plain.”

They never want sauce. I don’t know why I bother, except that I don’t want to eat plain noodles so at least That Man and I can eat the sauces I make. So I finished making dinner and called them in to have each of them try a single noodle (I had made some fusilli for them, because I knew they were going to balk at noodles with SOMETHING INSIDE THEM) with the sauce on it. D acted as if he were being force-fed rotted horsemeat and told me he hated it. C chewed his up with remarkable lack of ceremony, then informed me he’d have to think about it when asked his opinion. A few minutes later when I asked if he wanted his noodles plain or with sauce, he asked for plain. Le sigh.

So I added three tortellini a piece to their bowls of plain pasta (I despair of them, really) for them to try it. It has cheese in it. They like cheese, of almost any variety, as long as it comes shredded. I didn’t point it out to them, in hopes they would just eat it without noticing. But then D wandered past me with Nintendo DS in hand and paused in front of me.

D: “Those noodles you made? The new ones?”

Me: “The tortellini?”

D, gesturing emphatically and making a face as if I had gotten a really unfortunate perm: “They were bad. You should not make them again.”

Me: “Oh, come on. You guys never like anything, you suck.”

D: “I will never eat those noodles.”

Now, the spider is a toy tarantula made out of squishy and slightly sticky stuff, meant to be thrown at windows and fall down in a way that approximates climbing. It is nearly life-size and accurately colored. It looks pretty real if you just catch a glance of it.

I told C, “You can bring it in, but you can’t throw it.”

C assured me he would only toss it from hand to hand lightly, and not at anything.

So in we went, and they sat down near the front door and I looked for the fabric for about two minutes. They were very quiet and when I didn’t see anything like what I needed, I said, “Let’s go to the next store, guys.”

“Um, okay,” said C, “but first I need my spider.” And he pointed up at the ceiling. The spider was directly above the cutting table, stuck with his belly to the ceiling, perched like a real spider. We waited a few minutes, but the spider – contrary to its past behavior – stuck firm and did not fall down.

I looked up at the spider and debated leaving it behind. But I knew C would be devastated, and there was a strong possibility that one of the shop ladies would look up and not realize it wasn’t real and have a heart attack. My heart jumped a bit when I looked up and saw it, and I knew it was fake. Seeing a palm-sized spider straight above you is enough to give anyone pause.

So I asked one of the shop ladies – three of them were fluttering around the UPS man at the time – if they had a broom or something, because my son had thrown his toy spider at the ceiling and gotten it stuck. She looked up, clutched her chest a bit, and said, “I’m glad you warned me it was a toy.”

The shop stepladder was duly brought out, along with a yardstick, and we poked at the spider. It rolled over but stayed stuck where it was.

“You need to get up there and grab it,” the UPS man put in. We all looked up at the ceiling, which was still far overhead even from the top step for any of us. He grinned and climbed up himself, standing on tiptoe at the top step, and was just able to grab it with his fingertips while the shop ladies twittered about caution and their liability.

“Usually it falls right down,” C remarked as the spider was handed back to him.

The shop ladies, who now were all smiles since no one had fallen off the ladder, laughed indulgently at this. “It must like acoustic ceiling tiles!” one said. “You can tell all your friends.”

The spider rescued, apologies and thanks given out liberally, we left the shop with C clutching his spider and grinning widely. I’m sure it was a huge adventure to him, but I may not be able to show my face in that quilt shop again.

As we got in the car, I told C the spider wasn’t allowed in stores anymore. “Yeah,” he agreed, “Cause it sticks really good to acoustic ceiling tiles.”

D: “I am building the Titanic, but I need my brother to help me. Of course, it is a two person job.”

While in the car heading to Michael’s, which is in a shopping center we go to very regularly, D asked what city we were in and added, “I don’t even recognize it.” I said, “It’s our same city. There’s the Target we always go to, remember?” D smiled and said, “That was just one of my little jokes.”

This morning, C pretended to be a tick, and D interviewed him about his life. “So do you drink a lot of blood?” “Yeah, sometimes.” “Do you like to drink cat blood?” “I like people.”

Playing Star Wars Battlefront (computer game), C turns to me and says “Defeat is not acceptable.” He is SO destined for Special Forces.

While swimming in the pool, we play various games. Often they like to be baby kittens who escape from a pet shop, and I’m their mommy cat who comes to find them while they’re lost in the woods. Today though, the games were “Weeping Angels Attack”, which quickly turned into “Swimming Angels” and “Angels Who Don’t Stop When You Look At Them”. But their frozen-angel poses were hilarious. Then it was zombie attack, and while we attacked D, he suddenly became the emperor and attacked us back with Force-lightning. Who knew. Then C had to be Darth Vader, killing zombies with his lightsaber. It’s good to have balance. Kittens. Zombies. Doctor Who. Star Wars. Y’know.

C can now open his eyes underwater, and does so all the time while swimming underwater. He phrased it, “Now I can track you down under the water.” Special Forces ahoy.

Weeping Angels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18sKNMm5KSI

While at the Wright Bros, I attempted to instill a sense of the grandeur of history in my evil twins. I explained about Wilbur and Orville Wright and the first flights, and added “It was over a hundred years ago!” Twin A immediately piped up, “Dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago!” If this were Twitter, I think the appropriate hashtag would be #justgottold

A few pics I snapped on my phone. I would share the ones I took with the spiffy camera, but sadly, my Internet is still not working. I will try to remember to add them later.

C: “I have a riddle for you, D. It’s something that is square-rectangle and puffy and white all over and is for little kids. What is it?”

D: “Is it a pepper?”

C, laughing: “No!”

D: “Is it a carrot?”

C: “No.”

D: “Is it a little carrot?”

C: “No.”

D: “Is it a yellow pepper?”

C: “No.”

D: “Is it a strawberry marshmallow?”

C: “You almost got the correct answer, but you got to say it with nothing else.”

D: “Is it a marshmallow?”

C: “Yes!”

(both laugh uproariously)

This morning they played Candyland (stacking the deck) with two of their dragons, and D told me, “We playing for the Gronckle and the Zippleback,” and C added, “Because they not real.”

We went to the beach today, and they had a grand old time for a while, but then it started clouding over and C started getting worried. He kept watching the clouds and saying, “Those clouds coming in awfully fast, Mama.” About ten minutes later (when the Starburst ran out) he decided we needed to leave. “It going to rain. Look at those clouds! Let’s go, Mama. We better go.”

Tonight is the final episode of Lost. First they asked if they could stay up and watch it, because they love the smoke monster. I told them no, they had to go to bed at 7. When bedtime rolled around, I reminded them it was the last episode, so they climbed into bed and D said, “You better go, Mama, so you don’t miss anything,” and C added, “Good night, we love you!”

Me: “It’s a hospital.”

C, quite calmly: “In case somebody dies.”

D: “Or gets a boo-boo.”

*

We drove down to Boston, and as we were leaving the city, we drove under a couple of underpasses – roads that go under the city. The boys asked if we were under the water (we’re used to tunnels around our home turf, and these looked quite like tunnels), and I explained to them that we were under the city, not the ocean. Then we took a tunnel out of the city that actually did go under the harbor a bit, but it started and ended in the city, so the water was never really visible. I told them that this time we were going under the water, and D said “No, it goes under the city.” I try not to argue with five year olds, so I just said, “No, it goes under the water” once and then let them debate who was right while I drove. When we came back up to the surface, it was not apparent that we’d gone under the water. C looked around and exclaimed, “D was right! It went under the city!” And D, looking very smug, said complacently, “Yeah, I was right.”