March 18 - Superhero Drawing Studio

Today Lyric threw a tantrum about Superhero drawing studio, despite the fact that they had chosen to do extracurricular drawings previously during the week after other morning activities. Weird! Lyric got all upset that we were going to draw, and started ripping paper in front of me to show me how mad he was. I told him he could go into his room and be mad if he wanted, but that I was going to draw with Zephyr. I looked at the cool robot Mechsuit in his new Plants Vs. Zombies comic book and figured I could show him how we could draw something cool like that by just drawing some circles and squares and semicircles.

That's a pretty bad-ass mechsuit!

I did a quick sketch of the mech and then let Zephyr draw the imp piloting it. He threw on some details as well.

I then took Zephyr through all the main shapes in the mechsuit, paying special attention to note which shapes were in front of other shapes to have the figure layer correctly.

Mine in red (note the imp he drew), Zephyr's in green. Still drawing from the left side of the brain a bit, but getting there! The broccoli guy was also looking good.

Meanwhile, Lyric predictably saw me lavishing attention on Zephyr and decided he COULD do superhero drawing studio after all if he could use the time to put stickers on the underwater scene he had worked out last week.

You can switch morning activities if the kids say they don't want to do it (it's no fun forcing a kid to do something, that's for sure), but I find if you just stick to your guns and say that YOU'RE going to do the morning activity as it's listed, the kids will eventually play along. Most of the time.

March 17 - Hide and Seek Championship

Another go at hide and seek championship this morning, and another day where I find out taking pictures of this activity is absurdly difficult. Especially when I have only 20 seconds to hide.

Hiding behind the door. Works 65% of the time.

This time we tried "Sardines", where someone hides and then when they are found another person has to squeeze into the hiding space with them.

Lyric with me behind the door. Sorry, these pics are really crappy.

But with only three people it was pretty lame. I gotta work on making this better next month. I still like hide and seek in theory, especially since it requires no prep time, but there must be a way to freshen it up. Maybe add blindfolds? Check back on this one next month.

March 16 - Dinosaur Treasure Hunt

Today was Treasure Hunt day, traditionally the favorite Morning Activity. Lyric just started a unit on dinosaurs in his school, so I wanted to make this a dino-themed treasure hunt where he could take the lead and Zephyr could serve as his helper. Often times with Treasure Hunt, Zephyr takes the lead and Lyric just follows, so this was something of an experiment. I had written and printed out clues yesterday and hid them around the house, along with a chest I loaded with 4 action figures.

I usually leave the first note on the kitchen table to find when they wake up, but this time I hid it under the computer so I could try and get better pictures (trying to learn my lessons from yesterday).

Zephyr had to read the clues aloud to Lyric, of course. The burden of literacy.

So here was the first clue. Play along!

Zephyr was able to piece out the word "carnivorous" after a few attempts, and when he told Lyric to think of what carnivores eat, Lyric said "plants". Zephyr corrected him, and showed him the four letters were for the word "MEAT". Lyric immediately got excited and pointed to the kitchen. "The fridge," he yelled, "where we keep the pepperoni!" They ran there and Lyric threw open the door, making a bee line to the meat drawer.

Lyric was REAL excited to find the note there. He proudly passed it to Zephyr, who pulled off the masking tape holding it closed and ran to the couch to read it.

I wasn't sure how this would play out: the word "TYRANNOSAURUS" is so long, and the double N is tricky. But Zephyr got it almost immediately and yelled it out excitedly. Lyric knew at once who the cuddly orange dinosaur was: Boris the Tyrannosaurus, who we keep on a high shelf in their room. They immediately ran off to find him.

After I pulled him down from the shelf (along with his buddy Morris the Dilophasaurus) Zephyr read out the next note. Boris and Morris accompanied Zephyr and Lyric the rest of the way as well.

Zephyr got pretty excited about this one too, and blurted out "Swan!" I stepped in here before Zephyr could lead the charge because I wanted Lyric to figure out where to look, but by the time I started to say "where's the swan we made?" Lyric had already taken off running towards it. In fact, he got there so fast I didn't have a moment to get a picture of him finding it, he had already lifted it up and gotten the note underneath. Zephyr was thrilled. "It was behind us the whole time," he excitedly screamed. Lyric pushed the note into his hands and Zephyr read it aloud.

The boys ran into their room and dove under their beds looking for the chest, but didn't find it there.

They were clearly puzzled. Zephyr said "the clue said it was under the bed!" So I asked him, "Is that what it said?" Zephyr stopped suddenly and pulled Lyric out to the other room to re-read the clue. I'd like to think this subtly encouraged greater reading comprehension.

Cheating a little here on the picture placement (#RadicalHonesty) as this was them reading the second clue, but they DID run to here and re-read the final clue again as well.

After a bit of explanation on where the "foot of the bed" was, the kids ran back into the room and started searching again, and Zephyr uncovered it in the blue bin. But Lyric was the one who triumphantly pulled it out.

All in all, pretty successful! I think Lyric got to build up his confidence a little, and Zephyr got to act as a guide and a helper, which I really want them to do for each other as a lifelong thing. Afterwards they were so happy they hugged and Lyric jumped up into Zephyr's arms, wrapping his legs around his brother for a moment. It was pretty darn cute.

Not that Zephyr could really hold him up, but still.

March 15 - Mystery Elves Obstacle Course

I gotta tell you, this Daylight Savings switchover is messing with me. Waking up in the dark is no fun, and keeps me all sleepy-like. I'll get used to it eventually, but it sapped my enthusiasm this morning.

Today was Mystery Elves Obstacle Course, in which I try to get my kids to clean up the house under the guise of running an obstacle course. It worked a little better than it did last time, and I managed to get the kids to bring a bunch of stuff that didn't belong in the living room back into their room, but I didn't get any good pictures of it.

This terrible shot of Lyric's butt as he ducked under the table was the best I got. For real. Guys, I'm sorry, you should expect more from me.

Figuring out good shots for the blog is a relatively new concern for me, and I'm still learning. Next time I'll try and get a good before/after shot at least. 

But more importantly, tomorrow is the Treasure Hunt, and so today was my prep day. I just finished the notes, and it promises to be a pretty good one. I talked with Zephyr a bit about it yesterday, and we're going to try and have Lyric be the leader of the hunt this time. I want to see if Zephyr will enjoy being in a more supervisory role... it's an experiment. Stay tuned!

March 14 - Chess Puzzles

There's so many great reasons to teach your kids how to play chess, but the best reason in my book is HOLY CRAP I JUST WANT TO TRAIN SOMEONE I CAN PLAY CHESS AGAINST. I went through a period in college where I was playing chess every day, and man, I felt so sharp when I was doing it. I was at a point where the game started working its way into my dreams (similar to the way Tetris can get into your dreams) and I would see problems in my life as chess problems I only had to play out to solve. I want to give my kids that confidence and that ability to strategize. So teaching them chess was one of the original morning activities I ever developed.

I mean, I shouldn't quite say I developed it. I lean heavily on "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" (1972 Bantam edition), which I got years ago and still think is far and away the greatest Chess instruction book ever written. Fischer might have his issues, but he was an indubitably great chess mind, his book is easily accessible, and it has just the right amount of cockiness and swagger to make it impossible to put down. It's filled with loads of little puzzles illustrating small pieces of chess strategy, cleverly organized into a detailed program of instruction. The puzzles show various situations the reader is asked to play out; sometimes these boards come from Fischer's own career. Like the above board, which Fischer tells us came from his match against Paul Keres in the 1959 Bled Tournament in Yugoslavia. Fischer was playing black. Can you see the move that gets Fischer a checkmate?

Zephyr sizes up the board.

The fundamental thing I've been trying to teach Zephyr is that when the king is in check, he has three options:

1. Flee
2. Capture the attacking piece, or
3. Interpose (put a piece between the king and his attacker)

So as Zephyr puzzled out what he could do, I just asked him over and over, "if you did that, what could the king do to get out of it?"

Moving his queen there... nope. King can flee to there.

It took a little time for Zephyr to get it (he's admittedly out of practice... we used to have weekly chess lessons for him, but they're on hiatus for the moment). But not getting it gives us more time to game out what would happen in that scenario, which reinforces the lesson. Eventually he got it.

Eureka!

For Lyric, it's still a little early for chess lessons. So what I do with Lyric on these days is quiz him on piece names (and then hopefully we'll move to how each piece moves once he gets that.)

Today he was 4 for 6 (he thought the Pawn was "the other word for Castle" and the Bishop was "the lighthouse", but he got Rook, Knight, King, and Queen). Not too shabby!

Afterwards Zephyr and I played a quick round of chess together using this old Russian chess clock I have. It has great action when you press the button to stop your clock and start your opponents, Zephyr loves using it.

I really dig this Pavilion Chess Teacher set because the way the pieces move are written below each piece. It's the ideal teaching set IMHO.

The joy of the morning didn't hit me until a few hours later when I realized that I had produced a being that could play chess against me. I beat him handily at the moment, but he's learning, and watching him learn is so AWESOME. One day (if I keep at it with the training) I know he's going to beat me at chess, and that's a moment of pride I can't wait to experience. That in my mind is what fatherhood is all about.

Bonus peek inside my obsessive compulsive behavior! This is how I insist on organizing the interior of my chess box. It's a very precise arrangement.

March 11 - Piano Lessons for Dad

The kids take piano lessons every Thursday. To be honest, they're probably a little too young for it (at least Lyric is, Zephyr is at least starting to noticeably improve), but their teacher Lauren is very kind and patient and I believe this might be one of those things that might go a little over their heads now but will serve as a nice foundation for deeper knowledge and familiarity later. I've mentioned before that I don't play a musical instrument, and I think that's been to my detriment. I'm fairly determined to make sure my kids have the chance to learn how to play an instrument when they're young, so that they'll have the ability to become good at an instrument when they're older.

Unfortunately, the fact that I don't play an instrument leaves me at a disadvantage for teaching my kids how to play an instrument. At some point, there's going to be a lot of practice time I'm going to have to mandate, but we're not at that point yet. Now I think we just have to get them to a point where they're enjoying playing around with the instrument (in my case, that instrument is a piano - a Yamaha Synthesizer - but I think this could be applicable to any musical instrument). So the challenge for me was to come up with a way to make them enjoy playing.

This challenge led to me coming up with the "Teach Dad Piano" morning activity. It's somewhat like Teddy Bear School in that it lets the kids act as teachers, but I think it's even more like the ancient Roman practice of Saturnalia, where role-reversals were encouraged and masters served their slaves at the family table. The kids are so used to being the ones learning something that the novelty and power of being in the position of teacher can be a thrill for them. If I can link this thrill to playing piano, I think I'll be closer to my goal of getting them into the instrument and reinforcing what they learn at their lessons.

Lyric showed me his song first this morning. It was pretty simple.

Lyric teaches me the song he learned in Piano lessons so far. You kind of don't realize how important fire is to birthday parties until it makes it into a song.

I got his song pretty quickly... it was just a simple scale, after all. But he did get an opportunity to correct my technique, however, saying my fingers needed to cross over each other as they went up the keyboard. I could see that made him feel good to know something I didn't.

Then it was Zephyr's turn, and he showed me a slightly more complicated song he's been working on:

Zephyr teaches me his piano song, "The Wishing Star". It's apparently some sort of German folk song? I don't know, I never heard it before.

Zephyr told me "Piano is a test for the brain and for the hand", and I could tell by the way he said it that it was something he's been told a bunch of times. Just by that I got a really nice glimpse into his lessons, what he's learning, and what he's working on. I didn't think I'd be able to film myself trying to play what Zephyr had taught me, but Zephyr said he'd do the filming while I played.

And now I try to play "The Wishing Star" with Zephyr's help. Camerawork by Zephyr!

Not bad for someone who doesn't know how to play, I guess.

March 10 - Action Figure Epic

Today was supposed to be Action Figure Epic, where I have the kids play out a scenario with action figures, but it was something of a bust. This has happened before, sometimes the morning activities just don't work out, and this time it was because I didn't give myself enough time to prepare a story beforehand. I did try improvising with the kids, but it was hard to keep their attention and to keep them focused on the lessons at hand I would hope to impart through this activity because I was just winging it as we went. In the spirit of radical honesty that I'm trying to get at with this blog, I'll go into it a little more.

They were playing Plants vs. Zombies, and a bunch of stuff was exploding.

The kids were already playing action figures with each other when I got up. They were playing pretty nicely with each other, all told, so I let them continue while I made breakfast and tried to brainstorm what the scenario could be for the morning activity later. But it is HARD to brainstorm in the morning. I'm not at my sharpest, that's for sure. This is why I traditionally suggest brainstorming the night before.

I asked Lyric which action figures he'd like to use for Action Figure Epic, and he brought out these three different sized Bane figures. He said one was the Daddy, one was the older brother, and one was the little brother. I thought that was pretty sweet, watching him model our family dynamics (despite the fact that my wife thinks Bane looks disturbingly like The Gimp from Pulp Fiction), and I think there could have been something there to build a scenario out of. But as we played, it just didn't pull together... Lyric kept on running out of the room and having characters get trapped in his room, and Zephyr was doing his own thing with other action figures, and I just couldn't corral the action.

So, yeah, kind of a bust day. I'll try harder next month on this one.

March 9 - Poetry For Prizes!

It was Poetry For Prizes day today, but Zephyr wasn't really feeling it. That was okay, though, because

a) last time Zephyr learned his part for La Di Da Di but Lyric didn't, and

b) Zephyr got a new comic book on Sunday and has been angling to read it for a few days now.

So I let Zephyr just watch and read and focused in on teaching Lyric how to do the "hypnotize" song in La Di Da Di. He certainly offered a bunch of resistance to it, but I kept dangling how close he was to winning a prize in front of him. "All you need to do is repeat this back to me," I said, "And then you get your prize!" It always managed to bring him back in.

It didn't stop him from flopping around, however. Training your kids like this takes persistence, and being persistent means adapting to whatever it is your kids throw at you. So I let Lyric flop around and got down on the floor with him, but I still dangled the prospect of a toy in front of him if he could just repeat the song to me. I recorded this while he was lying on the floor:

Lyric tries to get the second song section from La Di Da Di by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. Sorry for the portrait orientation! It was supposed to be in landscape!

Incidentally, I know I'm not the first person to ask for this, but can't we get an option on iPhones to "always shoot video in landscape format"? It would be so easy to do!

Anyway, We got it to a point where Lyric had the song pretty much down when I prompted him with the start of a few lines. From here it just becomes about repetition. Zephyr, meanwhile, just picked up the song from listening in the background. Here they are doing it together:

Progress was certainly being made, so I gave both kids an action figure for their effort. More to come soon!

March 8 - Teddy Bear School

Ring the bell, because Teddy Bear School is back in session!

Almost entirely bears today! So much for diversity...

When we laid out the bears this morning, Lyric insisted we have a new student, and got out his little Totoro doll to be in the class. I asked Zephyr and Lyric what they do when a new student joins their class, and Zephyr said they play the "name game". When I asked what the name game was, he said they pass a ball around and when it stops, the person that touches it says their name, and everyone has to touch it once. Lyric ran to get a ball, and I just sat back and watched.

Zephyr passed the ball from one bear to the next, chanting "round and around and around it goes, where it stops nobody knows" until it landed on a bear, and then either Zephyr or Lyric would say their name (depending on whose bear it was). They had slightly different voices for each bear.

Totoro was last. After he said his name I asked them if they thought Totoro felt more comfortable in the class now, and Lyric said he did. This is what Teddy Bear School is for, finding out about what really goes on in school through kids acting it out, which is sometimes easier for them to do than to describe it.

Zephyr then said they were going to do a math game, which was notable because he was complaining about learning math a few weeks ago. The game was called "What Hundred", and similar to the name game, it involved passing a smaller ball around and calling on the person the ball stopped on, but this time they had to say numbers that when brought together made up 100 (for example, 50 and 50). I'm not sure how much of their school day actually revolves around "hot potato"-esque games, but apparently it's more than I thought.

Zephyr took a few bears, but when it was Lyric's turn (or rather, Lyric's bear Arc), he said "One and zero". I think this was actually pretty accurate for where he's at in Pre-K number theory... understanding that you write 100 with a one and two zeroes. I told Arc he was factually correct in that you needed a one and zero to write 100, and then I asked Zephyr to tell Arc what you'd actually have to add to zero to get 100. Zephyr was able to see that it was 100, and made a show of teaching it to Arc. This was, as you might expect, pretty cute.

Things started to go towards the silly when they asked Bat Bear to say something that could make a hundred and Lyric had him say "Black and yellow and brown". Lyric thought that was the height of wit. I know Zephyr is working on a money study in school, so I had him work out how many quarters go into a dollar (after making sure he knew a dollar was 100 cents), so that he could get that four 25's go into 100. It's a nice side benefit that Teddy Bear School lets them revisit and reinforce what they've been learning at school, and I fell like I could see it working. But of course the main benefit is that it's just freaking adorable.

March 7 - Juice Crew & Breakdancing

Today was supposed to be an easy game of animal charades, but since we had to skip juice crew for product testing on Friday and we had veggies in the house and I had something I wanted to raise a glass to this morning, I made the command decision that we would juice. And a delicious juice we made!

As I've said previously, I like to make a juice representing six colors of the rainbow. Today we had:

• Red watermelon
• Orange clementines
• Yellow frozen mango and a frozen banana
• Green Pear (and beet greens!)
• Blue blueberries
• Purple beets

The kids enjoyed throwing the pieces of fruit into the juicer, and thought they were pretty sneaky taking pieces of pear and watermelon and eating them before they went into the juice. Little did they know it was all part of the plan to get them to eat more fruit.

The nice thing about juice crew is that you don't waste fruit. Those clementines were about a week old and somewhat unpeelable, but use a knife to cut them into cubes and they juiced just fine. Another thing to make sure of is to use the beet greens. Those things are CRAZY healthy and packed with iron and betaine, and I don't quite know what that means but I know it's good. Using frozen fruit was a sort of experiment that worked pretty well... it made it more of a smoothie.

This juice tasted astoundingly good. The kids used shot glasses and knocked back quite a few.

For the old-school hip-hop music choice, I put on a mix of classic Nice and Smooth joints. "Early to Rise" is especially appropriate in the morning for my kids. For our Breakdancing portion, I showed Zephyr and Lyric a youtube video of Mr. Wave from the New York Breaker crew:

Uploaded by tamjeedreza on 2010-09-27.

With that example in mid, I had Zephyr try and give me an "electro wave". He returned with light up glasses and did this:

Pretty good! I'm seeing improvement, and I think the instinct to use the light up glasses was very "Rapture". He's a cool customer, that one.

In the end, we all clinked glasses and toasted, because...

IMPORTANT

ANNOUCEMENT!

Today I officially released the video for the song "Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth"! It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here! If you've somehow missed it so far, get ready for it:

And also check out this 360 video version of Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth starring Zephyr and Lyric!

This was the thing they helped me with that I was rewarding them for way back when, by the by. Mystery solved!

March 4 - Product testing

Today's normally scheduled activity of Juice Crew and Breakdancing was pre-empted for another round of product testing, but unlike last time our morning activity was turned into a focus group, we had several products to test today for Mommy. It was kind of a relief as our juicing materials were not quite where they should be, honestly (For those wanting to see some hardcore juicing action, may I recommend last month's offering).

Today we had four products to test:

Clockwise from Top Left: Wood Rocker, Magnetic Artist Finger Puppets and Plush Dolls, what I believe are called Tazoo magnetic blocks (?) , and Evolg Three finger mittens.

First there was the iPhone powered air guitar "the Wood Rocker", then a set of artist-based finger puppets and plush dollls, then a set of strange magnetic blocks from Switzerland, and finally a set of three fingered touch-screen-compatible mittens from Japan. The kids went first for the magnetic blocks.

On the positive side, the kids seemed to figure out the way to put the blocks together pretty easily... which seemed a little complex to me, as you had to build a spherical core out of square and triangle wedges stuck to a metal ball. I'm still kind of unclear WHY you had to make the spherical core, as the rest of the construction seemed to be about attaching things to the outside of the core. It just seemed to me like more pieces and parts that could get lost, but there was something satisfying about using magnetism to make the core. The kids did get a little frustrated trying to put together the bird on the front of the package, but they eventually got somewhere close to where they needed to be and it certainly occupied them for a while.

The finger puppets didn't thrill them as much. I was able to make a quick vine for Chay based on an incident from the life of Pablo Picasso, in which he painted a portrait for Gertrude Stein:

In 1905, Picasso asked her to sit for a portrait, and the results (not Cubist, but representational) were dark, brooding, and strange. Picasso famously said, “Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will," which was quoted by Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

-poets.org

We didn't have a Gertrude Stein finger puppet, so we used a Frida Kahlo finger puppet as a stand in.

So that was fun, but then we didn't really know what else to do with the finger puppets.

Then we broke out the Wooden Rocker guitar. For this you download an app onto an iPhone, strap it to the guitar, and then use it to strum out music. You can apparently tilt the neck to give it different harmonics, but that didn't work all the time. What was interesting here was seeing the different ways Zephyr and Lyric played with the guitar. Zephyr was more reserved, trying to figure out how to make something musical.

But Lyric... man, Lyric just wanted to turn around and rock out. How perfect does he look with a guitar, man? He had the attitude down!

I mean, he wasn't making music or anything, but that doesn't seem to be what the Wood Rocker is about. It's just about looking fresh and practicing your Eddie Van Halen moves. Maybe some more experimentation will bring us some more expertise with it, but I'll settle for just looking cool.

We didn't get a chance to try out the mittens before school, but we tried them at night and they worked fine, if perhaps looking a little odd.

So final scores: Wood Rocker B+, Magnetic Artist Finger Puppets B-, Tazoo blocks C, Evolg Mittens B. Tough but fair.

March 3 - Veggie Challenge

Today Zephyr wanted to help me write the blog entry, so this will be co-authored by him.

ZEPHYR: Today was veggie challenge. But Dad, again, forgot to get stuff. So we had a silly orange contest.

ROBERT: This is true. But they were actually clementines.  I tried to keep it a secret as long as I could, but Lyric smelled it out (and I think he also peeked).

ZEPHYR: He definitely also peeked. CLEMENTINE CHALLENGE! With five exclamation points.

ZEPHYR: Why didn't you put five exclamation points there?

ROBERT: I'm not doing that. Anyway, the rules for today's veggie challenge was that we would have three rounds to see who could eat their clementine in the silliest way. Zephyr, being the oldest, started.

ROBERT: Zephyr, tell us a little about what you were going for here.

ZEPHYR: SILLY!

ROBERT: Yes. Kind of a Cosbyesque thing going on here with an eye roll as he ate the first piece of clementine. But then it was Lyric's turn.

ZEPHYR: He decided to eat his clementine with no hands.

ROBERT: Like an animal. It was kind of a surprise, too, I didn't snap a photo of his head at the plate in time. But I got the above photo of him inhaling the clementine slice. He saw an opening and he went at it! Point: Lyric. On to round two!

ROBERT: Talk to me a little about your technique here. Eating a clementine with your elbow! Very impressively silly.

ZEPHYR: I ate a clementine with my elbow and I don't regret it.

ROBERT: Okay! Where did you get the idea for that?

ZEPHYR: Same kind of thing as the clementine challenge, NOWHERE!

ROBERT: Strong words from a strong contender. But then it was Lyric's turn!

ROBERT: And I don't know what Lyric was doing here. Something with his hands in front of his face. Very confusing.

ZEPHYR: Confusing to me too!

ROBERT: Point to Zephyr! And just like that, it was all tied up. Time for your final round.

ROBERT: This one had a wind up and then a silly ending. Take me through it.

ZEPHYR: It started with grabbing a clementine with one finger and putting that finger in the air, and then another and putting that finger in the air.

ROBERT: And you were chanting "bo bo bo bo bo".

ZEPHYR: Don't say that! I was chanting "La da da ya da".

ROBERT: I do not remember it that way. But then you pulled the classic "Vampire Fang" maneuver. Talk to me about that.

ZEPHYR: La di da di, we like to party. This is the silly part of the blog.

ROBERT: Very silly. But then it was Lyric's turn. He'd need to pull out the big guns here.

ZEPHYR: He did a clementine smile!

ROBERT: Understated but effective. Just look at that face he makes at the end - a classic mug. I had to call it a tie. We went to overtime! And this is where you shined!

ROBERT: I thought you were doing clementine lips, but you told me different.

ZEPHYR: Could I say what it is? It was a clementine moustache and beard.

ROBERT: Yes it was.

ZEPHYR: Lyric tried to pull out the big guns, but instead he pulled out the big hands! AH HA HA HA HA!

ROBERT: Yup, a lot of action going on behind those hands. I gave the final round to you, winning today's Veggie Challenge.

ZEPHYR: But Lyric got a toy.

ROBERT: He did, because he got 150 veggie points for going into overtime. He had 300 from last time, and the rule is you get to trade 350 Veggie points for a toy.  You got 200 veggie points for winning and now have 305.

ZEPHYR: Pretty close to a new toy!

ROBERT: That's right! Meanwhile, Lyric has 100 veggie points and a brand spanking new Kilowog action figure. And you both got some vitamin C from fresh fruit this morning. Another win win from the Veggie Challenge!

ZEPHYR: I'm going to stop now, okay?

ROBERT: That's fine, we're done for today.

Zephyr with his very "hunt and peck" typing style.

March 2 - Karaoke Dance Party

Okay, I've been excited about writing this post, because I think this might be THE parenting innovation of 2016. This is about to change the game right here. Two words: YouTube Karaoke.

Here was my problem: I don't know how to play an instrument. I've tried to pick them up at various points in my life, but nothing has ever really clicked. I love to sing and I love to make music, but my ability to do so has always been limited. This was especially galling to me when I tried to sing bedtime songs to my kids, and I couldn't adequately get out my favorite tunes without converting them into acapella numbers. What I needed was a background track behind me that I could sing to. And then one day in 2014 I had the idea of searching YouTube on my iPhone to find karaoke songs.

Holy crap. There are thousands upon thousands of karaoke tracks available on YouTube. The selection is a little weird sometimes, some of the selections don't have lyrics that scroll with the song (so you just have to know the words yourself), and quality of the instrumentation can vary, but man oh man, the selections are DEEP. I have a playlist that has 10 songs by the Smiths/Morrissey on it... I'm lucky if I find one Smiths song at a standard karaoke joint! AND THEY ARE SO MUCH FUN TO SING.

So I've been singing karaoke to my kids at bedtime for the past year and a half, and they've picked up some favorites along the way. So for morning activity today, I turned the tables on them and had them sing me some of their favorite tracks.

We set up on the kitchen table after breakfast. Zephyr was torn between David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and an Elvis tune, but he eventually decided on Elvis' "Marie's the name (of his latest flame)".

Zephyr does "Marie's the name of his latest flame" in the style of Elvis Presley. Well, kind of in his own style, actually.

Since Zephyr can read, I think he was a little early on a few lines just out of standard Karaoke panicking. I needed to prod him a little to keep the tune and timing, and keep up the volume. But I was really proud of him for stepping up, and I think the King would have been into it. And seeing his brother do it made Lyric really want to do it himself.

Lyric wasn't at all conflicted about which song he wanted to do.

Lyric does "Moonage Daydream" by David Bowie. And he nails it. No, he can't read yet, he just knows the words because it's his favorite bedtime song.

He kinda nailed it, right? I love that dude's "singing my heart out" face.

March 1 - Cardboard Toy Shop

It's March 1st! I consider it the REAL on-the-down-low New Year's Day. I'm with Romulus on this one, January and February don't really count... they're just the months between calendar years. This way September is the seventh month, October is the eighth month, November is the ninth month, and December is the tenth month, like it literally is supposed to be.  But point being, it's a new month, a new calendar, and a new schedule of morning activities.

Today was supposed to be Cardboard Toy Shop to use all the cardboard I had left over from last week, but my wife couldn't take it around the house and recycled the cardboard sheets. Fair enough! One of the joys of Cardboard Toy Shop is that cardboard boxes are almost always abundant.

Since we made Zephyr's suggestion last week, I let Lyric pick the project this week, and he wanted a big robot he could ride in. After some sourcing in our compactor room, I found some boxes and we were ready to go.

The boxes were pretty small, but fortunately enough Zephyr and Lyric are pretty small too. I figured we could make the bottom box big enough for Zephyr or Lyric to crawl around in, and build the body of the robot on top of that. The first step was to tape up and reinforce the side flaps of the big box to make them larger and open on the bottom:

Then I stacked the boxes on top of each other, growing gradually smaller "like a square snowman", in Lyric's words. I got a gold paper cup for a neck and cut a hole in the top of the smallest box to have it attach as the head, making for a robot about the same size as the kids.

From L to R: Zephyr, Zippy Mark 2, Lyric.

With the basic shape set, I began coating Zippy with aluminum foil to give it that shiny robotic look. The kids took some sharpies to start decorating the robot (which they named Zippy Mark 2 after our original Cardboard Toy Shop robot from a few months ago), and Zephyr designed a face:

Lyric tried putting a piece of pepperoni on the face, because he is very silly. That's why there's grease marks on the face. I let Lyric do his own face for Zippy on the back of his head too.

From here there was some trial and error, experimenting with how we could make the robot move. The initial plan of crawling didn't work, as the kids would straighten up and make the robot topple. I cut out some eye holes (more like an eye square), but it didn't help. And then I had an idea: we could use the wheeled storage bins I got at Ikea as a base and put the robot on top.

With a little coordination, we were ready to have Zippy Mark 2 make his first steps. Zephyr was the pilot and Lyric was the motor for this run:

Zippy Mark 2 on the march! Check the retractable arm!

Beep boop, y'all.