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Art Thief, Spy Notes & Bear Pizza
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Jan. 27th, 2007 | 01:52 pm
Ben and I spent Thursday evening at the Family Resource Center. We ate before we went, because Ben lives in fear of encountering something gross like "meat salad" there. We did enjoy some brownies for dessert, and had a good time with friends. Ben played with the other kids and invented some games of his own. When the carpet was cleared to be a dance floor, he busted a few moves. Later, at home, he got up the courage to hold each of our ten mouse girls in his hands as they took turns playing in their tub while I cleaned tanks. Before bed, he fed the dwarf frogs for me, dropping bloodworms into the water with a toothpick and watching their antics and laughing.
Yesterday was freezing cold, and we opted to stay home all day. While Dave was working, we made pumpkin cookies and played a new game called Art Thief. I'd found two collections of art postcards on my bookshelf, Matisse and Van Gogh. I pulled all the paintings out of the little binding, and set about 20 of them along the walls in the living room (the museum). I sat at the kitchen table with a stack of notes and a dish of change. I asked Ben if he would steal paintings for me, and he'd receive a reward for each one. I handed him one note at a time, which had a description of the painting and the reward amount, and he found it and collected his reward himself from the dish of change.
Examples: 10 cents for a Matisse painting of a white head swallowing three swords
2 cents for a Van Gogh painting of crows flying over a wheat field
3 cents for a Matisse painting of a woman with a blue and yellow face
25 cents for a Van Gogh painting of a cafe terrace at night
We spent about an hour after that playing Spy Notes, where we write each other notes and slip them under the door with a pen. Here is some of our written conversation:
Ben: Who are you?
Me: I am a short man. Who are you?
Ben: A spy.
Me: Why are you spying on me?
Ben: Spys do it.
Me: How do you plan to escape?
Ben: I kill you.
Me: How will you kill me if I am invisible?
Ben: Radar.
Me: I need your description, and do not lie. What color is your hair?
Ben: Tan.
Me: What color are your eyes?
Ben: Purple.
Me: What color is your skin?
Ben: Pink.
Me: What do I do if there's a spider over my head?
Ben: Stay still.
Me: What if it falls in my mouth?
Ben: Swallw it.
Me: What would you do if I put a spider in your pants?
Ben: Take it out.
We went upstairs and Ben played a racing game on the computer while I lay on the couch and read out loud from the 2006 Ultimate Book of Lists (Top Ten of Everything). Ben asked about the longest cave in the world (Mammoth Cave System, Kentucky, 360 miles) and we were surprised to learn that half of the world's longest caves are in the U.S. We talked about the most popular names, fastest roller coasters, largest populations, largest animals.
Ben worked with Legos for a while, and we watched Nanny 911 as a family, and Ben decided he wanted a half sheet of bacon pizza. He also decided to buy it for us with his own money. He gave the pizza guy the money and the gift of a small styrofoam plane ("because he deserves it"), and I held the door open for him as he carried the pizza into the house. He pretended that we were were eating a bear we'd killed. "Wow," he said. "He had lungs all over his body. I like his skin. It's cheesy."
We all watched Antiques Roadshow. Lots of cool stuff, including a confederate sword with a dolphin on the hilt. Ben built with Tinker Toys. He arranged the pegs on a Chinese checkerboard to indicate different types of food by color, and served us food. We played hallway soccer. Ben and I created a construction paper collage of some mountains with a moon and snow over them, a skateboard ramp next to some big rocks underneath, a cave in the mountains and a fire-breathing dragon in the sky. We put it on the fridge and played with the magnetic poetry words for a while.
"You should start reading Treasure Island tonight," he told me as we hung out on his bed.
"I could," I said. "But since I just finished Kidnapped last night, I want to lie here and think about it for a while."
So I did, and Ben read his Peanuts comics and chuckled, and fell asleep with his book by his head as usual.