The twins have been watching the movie Sinbad with our next door neighbor's little girl. It's rated PG and I had some objections to them watching it. So yesterday Wil wanted to borrow it, they say he could, and we watched it together last night. It's actually very good. The ending is terrific. Sinbad is a hero because he does the right thing which is the harder thing to do instead of more flashy stuff. The parts that rate it PG are mostly innuendo and some language, (which in one case we had to tell Elizabeth she could not say and give her an alternative. She obviously didn't know what was meant.) As 4-year-olds they miss most of the inappropriate remarks. I'm not sure I'd let my 9-year-old see it, and I don't really want the twins to watch it much more. All that to say, we've had a lot of Sinbad play around here today. When Wil plays by himself he uses his Veggies, a truck and his pirate ship. Junior Asparagus is Sinbad. When he plays with Elizabeth, he is Sinbad, Elizabeth is Merina, and Freckles the Dalmatian puppy is Spike. It's entertaining to say the least.

A follow-up to the "amounts experiment": Elizabeth counted her carrots at lunch and said "Five. That's the same as when I'm going to Walt Disney World." But she thought about it for a minute and added, "Five carrots, not five weeks (years). It's not the same. Momma how many weeks until we go to Walt Disney World?"

Elizabeth picked The Nutcracker in place of her 2 TV shows yesterday. She watched the entire thing. I couldn't believe it. More surprisingly, Wil watched most of the last half with her. They were entranced. "There's the prince again," one of them would say, or "Here comes Clara." And even though it was a different company than the one Elizabeth watched over Christmas, she knew exactly which parts she'd seen in Iowa. "This is the same as the one at Granma Sue's house!"

The twins are experimenting with amounts. For example, "It'll take twenty-hundred to give it to you." I didn't realize how confusing this was to other people until we were at my parents' house last week. Wil wanted more milk. GiJi told him there was still milk in his cup. "But I want 80," he said. GiJi and GrampAl both looked confused. "He's experimenting with amounts," I said. "Like 80%?" GiJi asked. "No, just 80," I explained, "80 is a lot of milk."

We're attempting to cut back on our TV watching now that we're all starting to feel better and the holidays are over. The twins get to pick 2 PBS shows to watch during the day and then, if they're not too tired, we watch a "movie" at night. Mostly we've been watching parts of the Harry Potter movies which I got for my birthday. Therefore, they've been playing "Harry Potter" during the day. Elizabeth is always Hermoine. She knows lots of Hermoine's lines and is trying to learn the "spells" like "lumos," "occulus repairo" and "finite incantatum." That's a mouthful for a 4-year-old. Wil has been wearing an enormous pair of black sunglasses with the lenses popped out and flying around on his Nimbus 2000 mop. His favorite scenes to reenact are when Harry catches the snitch in his mouth; when Harry is chased by the bludger, gets his arm broken, but still catches the snitch; and when Ron throws up slugs. He also drew an amazing (and kind of scary) picture of Fawkes and Harry defeating the Basilisk. The most gruesome feature is the snakes' bloody eyes. (Honestly, I haven't let him watch any of that! I did tell him what happened though and I guess he figured out the snake's eyes would be bloody if Fawkes pecked them out.)

This morning, however, they watched Barney. Now they want to make smores like when Barney went camping. I tried to explain we don't have any marshmellows or chocolate in the house, but Wil thinks we can use York Peppermint Patties left over from Christmas instead.

Wil took a nap yesterday and then fell asleep relatively early (say around 11). Predictably, he didn't sleep well last night and woke up at the crack of dawn. He tormented me between 4 and 5, asking me to come sleep with him in his bed. Christine was already sleeping with Elizabeth, so he and I had my bed to ourselves. Therefore, I was not about to leave my warm, snuggly-sheeted (flannel) bed for his cold, lumpy bed with lots of kid-sized covers. Christine heard us fighting and came in to check on him and said she'd lay down with him in his bed, which made me feel like the worst dad in the world. I was still able to fall back asleep, though.

When I woke up Wil had been up for a while, followed by Christine and Elizabeth. Christine said Wil had been all over the house and that every light was on. He'd already cut some tissue paper into pieces. We had two gallons of drinking water in grocery sacks (don't ask) that he even took out to the garage, thinking they were trash! He has certainly never taken the trash out before, nor shown any interest in such an activity. I didn't know he could even open the door to the garage. Christine asked him where the blue bags were and he said 'I put the trash out there.' Then she said 'You've been busy this morning.' and he said 'Yes I have.' Later he offered to take the bowls and spoons to the table for breakfast unprompted. What's more, this is not something we even ask him to do, usually, since it's so far beyond his ken.

Of course, all of his sweet industry only makes me feel like an even worse dad.

Still, I wonder 'Who are you, and what have you done with Wil?'