Brace yourself, son

Today was not one of my finest mothering moments. Sam had an orthodontist appointment, a follow-up to his getting spacers last week. The office said he would be getting bands and a headgear (remember headgears? I can't believe we haven't progressed orthodontically enough to come up with a better solution than those torture devices). I was a bit fuzzy about the details of the appointment but told Sam he was getting bands around his back teeth where the headgear would be attached.

He came out of the appointment just under an hour later with a betrayed look in his eyes. He opened his mouth and showed me the source of his displeasure: braces! What?! Somehow I had missed the idea that he would have brackets across his top teeth. Worse, I hadn't prepared Sam AT ALL for the possibility. He managed to make it through the little braces indoctrination session with the dental assistant (what not to eat, how to brush, the scared-straight pictures of gross mouths who didn't take the hygeine advice) but the minute his feet hit the blacktop of the parking lot, the tears came.

Have you ever heard of a worse surprise? Ever? What a spacey Mom. Oy.

So, of course, he took the rest of the day off from school. To go to lunch. To choose books at the library. To look in the mirror and adjust to a mouth of silver.

Personally, I think he rocks the braces and looks very handsome. And after a bit of talking through it, he's on board for the whole braces thing.

And now for the traditional first-day-of-braces poem, now on its third generation (I had to call my mom to get the complete verse):

Children with braces
Should wear happy faces
Because it is easy to see
That sooner or later
When their teeth are straighter
What good-looking people they'll be!

(Yeah, it didn't make me feel much better when I got braces and it probably didn't help Sam much--since he already IS good looking and all!--but it's part of the circle of life, that poem. The tradition continues.)

Junior sleuths society

Veteran's Day 2008.

Lauren headed to Cambridge with three friends (on the subway! by themselves! huge rite of passage right there) to go to the Harvard Natural History Museum as part of a big Biology project.

Greg was at work, talking on his phone and doing what he does at work, where he is usually found on Tuesdays. (His company doesn't take those kind of holidays off. Moment of silence for absent G.)

That left the three of us (Maddy, Sam and me) for the day. I took a break from homework & projects in the morning and we decided to go letterboxing.

It's no secret that Sam loves everything to do with sleuthing and puzzles and mysteries so he loves it when we go on a letterboxing adventure. Plus it gets us out in the fresh air at the same time...just right for a day off from school. We hadn't been for a year or two (I know I've posted about letterboxing before but somehow can't find it in my archives) so we clicked here for a refresher.

[You could really make this two days of activities: the first day you could make your stamp notebook and even carve your own stamp from a rubber eraser. The next day you could follow the clues to the treasure. I'm just saying.]

Letterboxing is basically a treasure hunt arranged by kind and interested strangers. At each site, they bury a box with a notebook (for you to sign or stamp with your own stamp), a stamp (to stamp your own notebook like a passport book), and an inkpad. On the website, you can search for a location near you and download the clues to find the buried box. We chose the one in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord.

Thank you, veterans.

There were clues like "go to Author's Ridge"
"you will pass a sphere on the right and a hollow stump on the right"

"walk 20 paces"

"...behind the tree you will see a partly buried rock.
The box is under the rock."

The thrill of discovery!

I was kind of concerned about the ethics of bringing Louie
to a cemetery
(would he want to dig anything up?)
but he was very well behaved

The stamp: "the earth laughs in flowers [Ralph Waldo Emerson]"

It was a good day.
{Let me know if you try this...I'd love to hear about
other sleuthing adventures}
p.s.
Lauren successfully navigated the city and the subway
and finished her assignment.
She came back spilling with stories of getting a bit lost
(she did some sleuthing of her own after all)
and loving the glass flowers
and the stuffed llama.

Saturday Afternoon Live

Take two mildly bored kids + one long weekend + a fondness for mysteries + a dash of Monty Python = this kind of wacky but fairly entertaining Five Minute Mystery (the first little bit is fuzzy and then it gets better).

My take away observations:

1. my kids choose the least attractive spots of our house for their filming locations (I mean really, kids, the basement rec room--dumpy and it DOES smell--and storage room?)
   
2. our camera cannot handle action genre films
3. Louie the dog does not like it when you pretend to kill one of our household members (good to know)
   
4. we don't have very much food in our food storage...I'll have to work on that.
5. left to their own devices, two mildly bored kids can come up with some good stuff (I only helped do the titles later but they filmed it all without any help)
6. "make believe" play becomes acceptable again for preteens when there's a camera involved
7. it's very disturbing to hear your son say "sleep well my dead girl..." in a Hannibal Lector voice.  I had to take it out...it was too creepy.
   
8. there's a hole in the ceiling is my very favorite part, complete with an accent of some sort
   

Columbus, we really like your day

After getting all of our have-to-do list done this morning (statistics for me, homework for the girls, flopping around and bored moaning for Sam), we headed east for a chilly but lovely hour at Wingaersheek beach just outside of Gloucester (by the way {helpful Boston insider info}: pronounced glaw-ster, not glou-cest-er).

We figured it was the least we could do on Columbus Day; since he traveled all that way to our shores we could do the same. Yes, I got carried away with photos. (In fact, we also made a movie with MORE photos if these 21 photos aren't enough...)

So that was the best part of the weekend (even though we missed Greg, who had to work today) along with a nice day out with Greg on Friday when the kids were at school.

  

The worst part? Coming home from that Friday date and finding that Louie got out of his gate, got into the Halloween face paint and smeared it all over our sofas and rug. And then had the nerve to have two days of diarrhea.  Grrrr.

He only has sisters

{Christie, this one's for you}

Possible sign that Sam has been overexposed (by his mother and sister) to musicals. But first, three things you should know:

Back to school night is tonight.

Through some error in counting, his locker is alone & not with the rest of his class.

Every year the kids write a letter to their parents to read at BTS night.

So today he tells me:

"I wrote the note to you and dad today. Guess what I was going to write?"

"Hmm...I don't know. What?"

"Dear Mumsie and Popsicle,
There's been some confusion over lockers here at school*..." But then I thought it would be kind of weird."

Good call, son. Clever, but good call.

*this is the beginning line to a song in Wicked (except it goes "over rooming here at Shiz.") Particularly appropriate since the author of Wicked lives in our neighborhood...