Ane, who is working on earning some extra money for LEGOs, got a job from her father raking up tree debris in the backyard.

She took this job very seriously, because she had been told that if she did a good job, there was $5 in it for her.

She put in excellent effort, and between the two of them, Ane and the Webmaster filled the yard waste bin.  She earned that $5.

I offered Tad a quarter to sweep the back deck, but he was… preoccupied.

There were lightsaber drills to run, after all.

And while he was at it, a little pretend cello practice.  He LOVES this video.

It was a teasingly beautiful day.

The forecast says it will rain next weekend, of course.

HA!

In other news, the Webmaster – the son and grandson of Christmas tree farm owners – let me buy an artificial tree yesterday.

Here it is:

The Webmaster commented, “You know, the irony is that this was supposed to be the only REAL tree in the lot!”

This is from an official, licensed Peanuts tree kit.  It comes with red ornament ball and blanket.  Apparently, someone at church received one as a white elephant gift and it was set up in the kids’ Sunday school room.  When Tad saw it, he was smitten.  So, I bought him one.  He can recite most of the show verbatim now, including Linus’ recital of Luke, chapter 2.

I think it’s adorable – both the tree and the boy.

All the cards are going out with this picture in them:

This picture of the three kids is a miracle because:

1) All three kids are looking at the camera.

2) All three kids are reasonably happy while looking at the camera.

3) Rerun was sobbing his head off about two minutes before this picture was taken.

Yes, you read that right.  This was taken the same day as the Santa picture.  I’d intended to get a picture at Molbak’s (a local nursery/gift store) poinsettia tree with the kids all dressed up, but we got there 15 minutes after they closed.  Boo.  Anyway, once we got home, Rerun was in no mood to sit still for a picture.  The older two had been bribed with getting to eat the candy canes that Santa had given them, so they were willing to sit and be happy, but Rerun was having none of it.  He was wriggling off his siblings’ legs and crying – tears, screams, the whole works.

In desperation, I turned to the Webmaster and said, “Pull up YouTube on the iPad, bring up “C is for Cookie” and hold it above my head!!!”

You can see the result.  Thank you, Cookie Monster.  You got me my Christmas picture for the year.

It was hard, however, for him to stop watching Great Pumpkin and move onto A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  We eventually got him to move on, but it took a few tries.

He’s already really into A Charlie Brown Christmas, thanks to the app we just bought for the iPad.  It’s seriously one of the most clever and fun apps I’ve ever seen, and uses dialogue directly from the show (with the exception of a few kids’ voices).

We decorated the tree on Saturday evening (pictures tomorrow), and Tad got really excited about my extensive collection of Peanuts ornaments.  “Look, Mama, there’s Snoopy!  And Little Bernie!” he said, holding up one of them.

I blinked.  “What?  Tad, that’s Snoopy and Woodstock.”

“No, it’s Snoopy and Little Bernie!” he insisted.

I still wasn’t getting this name change for the bird.  “But, Tad, his name is Woodstock.  Where are you getting ‘Little Bernie’?”

Tad looked at me and started to sing, “Little Bernie, why you fly upside down…”

And then I started laughing.

Woodstock is not in Great Pumpkin or Christmas, but he is in the Thanksgiving show.  And his name is never used in the show – but he is introduced into the story with the song “Little Birdie.”

Which Tad, being Tad, thought was his name, but turned it into “Little Bernie.”

I think it’s hysterical.

Last night, as I tucked Tad into bed, I found the plush Snoopy that he’s decided to appropriate for his own (it’s okay – we have several), and suddenly remembered that we had a little plush Woodstock in one of the toy baskets in the living room.  I dashed out and found it, then presented him to Tad, along with Snoopy.  He was thrilled with my find.

I never know what Tad will say next… which makes living with him so very entertaining.

The first one is a Cat in the Hat Learning book, Oh, Say Can You Say Di-no-saur?

His pronunciation of “dinosaur” now sounds like “dine-door.”

He loves, loves, LOVES dinosaurs.  I mean, he also loves Lightning McQueen and Mater, and Batman, but he kind of picked those up from his brother.  Dinosaurs, while Tad likes them, is something that Rerun learned to love without any help or encouragement.  Tad uses his two toy dinosaurs as decoration when he sets up his own Bat-Cave.  Rerun actually plays with them.

He will hand us this book every night, and say, “Dine-door?  Dine-door?  DINE-DOOR?”  He gets louder if we delay taking the book from him and reading it.

And once that book is done, there is his other favorite – Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton.

After all, who doesn’t love Sandra Boynton?  This book cleverly mixes dinosaurs and the concept of opposites – “Dinosaurs happy and dinosaurs sad.  Dinosaurs good and dinosaurs bad.”

I think Santa is planning on bringing him a couple of new dinosaur books to expand his library.  He sure does love them!

When she started watching the third movie, Tad groaned and said, “Not Harry Potter again??”

So, I bribed him.  He could watch a movie in his room, on the iPad.  I figured that if Ane got to choose her own movie, he could too.

And this is what ended up happening.

Rerun wanted so bad to see it, too, so I put him up on Tad’s bed to watch.  Fortunately, Tad didn’t care.  We kept a close eye on them, though – the last thing I needed was Rerun getting shoved off the bed.

Have I mentioned lately how much the boys love their new room?  Or how much Tad loves his bed?

Rerun thinks the bed is lots of fun, too.  Fortunately, he hasn’t yet figured out that he can open up the drawers and remove the clothes inside.  I will not have a moment’s peace once he does.

- Obviously, we’ve been watching a LOT of the 1960′s Batman TV series.  And I’ve come to some conclusions.  Lee Meriwether was the best Catwoman, hands down.  And having John Astin play the Riddler in some episodes is just plain weird.  I keep having to suppress the urge to say, “Yes, Mr. Addams.”  I guess some roles are just permanently casted with certain actors in my head.

- The kids are back into The Powerpuff Girls again, thanks in part to my birthday present from Nana and Papa – the complete series on DVD.  I want to know who cleans up and pays for Townsville to be rebuilt each and every time a monster comes to town to smash up the place and the Girls take it out.  Wouldn’t their local taxes just be horrendous, and with all the villains and monsters coming to town, wouldn’t people just, um, MOVE???

- Rerun is of the opinion that there is too much Elmo and not enough Cookie Monster on Sesame Street.  I completely agree.

- Tad likes watching Super Why, and I find the show appealing – to a point.  The whole show revolves around finding the answer to one of the main character’s problems in a book.  In one episode, Whyatt (the lead character) had a problem – none of his friends would play with him because they were all busy.  So what does he do?  He summons them all to The Book Club to solve his problem.  They promptly drop all the important things they were doing to attend to Whyatt’s summons, and then when they get there, all they hear about is how he’s lonely and no one will play with him.  He should have also added, “Well, now you’re all here, so we can play!”  At which point they should have promptly beaten the tar out of him.  But this is PBS, so that would’ve never happened.

Also, Whyatt recently acquired a new dog (which was also a new hook to get more kids watching).  The dog’s superhero name is Woofster, but when he’s a normal dog, Whyatt just calls him “Puppy.”  Um, Whyatt?  Give the dog a name, already.

- Mickey Mouse?  If something has gone wrong at the Clubhouse, experience should tell you to check with Pete first, then go on to investigate other potential causes.

- I’m surprised that Nick and Sally’s mothers don’t have their heads examined, what with their continual requests to go to strangely-named places with a talking Cat.  They don’t seem to find this out of the ordinary at all.  If one of my kids was coming to me with requests to visit places with a talking animal, I have just two words for you: hidden camera.

And if you have anything to add to this list, go ahead!

And we know how to celebrate Shark Week around here.

And those are shark pajamas he’s wearing, too.  I bought those last summer, and did a little shopping for Rerun at the same time:

We keep dressing Rerun in sharks to make him more appealing to his older brother.  So far, it’s met with limited success.  Still, it’s extremely cute!

Rerun has a check-up this morning, Ane has a swim evaluation after school (this is for placement into a group for swimming lessons), and I have some baking to do for Auntie’s graduation party on Saturday.  Graduation went well, by the way – pictures later!

But there are two funny moments I wanted to share…

I stopped with all three kids on the way home from piano lessons at our local Bible bookstore, to pick up the second DVD of What’s in the Bible?, because Tad has suddenly become very interested in it.  It’s not sharks, it’s not Batman, it talks about the Bible… Why, yes, son, you MAY watch it!  And may I buy you some more?

But then he found… a Larry Mobile.  With Larry Boy and Alfred figures to go with it.  And he wanted it.  BADLY.

I told him that he had no money with him, and Mama wasn’t going to buy it… so he was going to have to earn some money himself to buy it.  We have used this principle before, to great effect, with both Tad and Ane, so he understood what I was saying.

Tad then walked up to the girl at the cash register and said, “Excuse me, can I have some monies, please?”

She thought it was the cutest thing ever, and I tried not to laugh as I told him that he needed to GO HOME and check his piggy bank.

His fire truck piggy bank has exactly $4.13.  The Larry Mobile is $19.99.  We have some saving to do.  And some chores-for-cash to assign, it seems.

Second funny moment comes from Tad’s field trip to the zoo yesterday…

I was a parent chaperone for the big huge kindergarten field trip for Tad’s school yesterday.  Rerun stayed with Grandma and Gichan for the day, and Ane was at school.  We were going to ride a school bus to the zoo, and one of the district rules is that only students or chaperones can ride the bus – no little siblings allowed.

One of the chaperone moms had her seven month old baby girl with her, and was going to follow the bus to the zoo.  No problem.

Her kindergartener was sitting in the seat in front of Tad and me on our way to the zoo.  “I can’t see my mom’s car,” she said, somewhat worried, to one of the paraeducators in Tad’s class, who was sitting across from her.

“What does your mom’s car look like?” the paraeducator asked her.

“Um… it’s dirty,” she said helpfully.

I am sorry to say that her description was not all that helpful… but it was extremely funny.

Fortunately, I have a good memory and can keep up with Tad’s obsessions with Dr. Seuss, Star Wars, Little Critter, Pixar films and shorts, shark documentaries and PBS kids’ shows, so most of the time I know what script he is working from.  And the funny part is, Tad has to follow his own rules about scripts.  If we can’t deviate from a script… neither can he.

This works to my advantage, say, at meals when I want him to try something that he is refusing to eat.

“You do not like them, so you say.  Try them, try them, and you may!  Try them and you may, I say!”

And Tad is stuck.  He has to follow the script.  Those are the rules he’s made.

I have gotten him to eat SO many new foods this way.  If Dr. Seuss were still alive, I’d bake him cookies, clean his house, and do his laundry.

But there’s another trick to getting Tad to eat.

Welcome to Cooking with Chef Tad!

The cooking show concept is taken directly from Word World.  One of the main characters, Pig, shoots a cooking show from his barn (where he is referred to as “Chef Pig”), and one of his song numbers is “The Perfect Pizza,” where they list off several foods that begin with the letter P.

I was trying to get Tad interested in helping with dinner, so I brought out his Star Wars apron (his Christmas gift from Auntie Ressis and Uncle Oddball), and had him stir the noodles.  Dinner was fettuccine alfredo from a box, with chicken added, and if I was lucky, a veggie.

As Tad began to sing the song, I had a brainstorm.

“Stir the pasta, Tad!  Stir the pasta in the pot!”

“Now I will add the… poultry!!!”

“And now… PEAS!!!”

Dinner was a smashing hit.

Tad was thrilled to have a “P” dinner, and he ate two helpings (even though he did leave some poultry and peas behind… he is really truly a carb kid).  There were no complaints whatsoever about having to eat dinner.

The perfect pizza might start with P, but the perfect dinner starts with P, too.

And judging from this success, I might have to call on Chef Tad’s services more often.  Even if it does take a little more time to make dinner, it’s worth it just to get the boy to eat.