Now playing...

Mars Mission...
- It's for real, not just on the net, and great for some male bonding, too! Jon couldn't wait to put together that alien strike ship and mining vehicle, and he did, almost completely by himself, except those clamps took a bit of help from his daddy.




Bear Grylls...
- We are big fans of the Man vs Wild show on the Discovery channel, where British special forces trained Bear Grylls makes his way out of some wilderness destination, starting with the Sahara Desert in the new season. Among other stunts, he 'narrowly' escapes a cobra and scorpions, and does a monkey-crawl out of quicksand!

All this, in a t-shirt for a headgear -- that Ben must have, too. And pants with "heavy duty" patches at the knees -- that Jon can identify with, because iron-on patches still work for us to salvage his pants for a few more wears! (I haven't stopped wondering what kind of sports Jon plays during recess. Umm... "see who can crawl fastest on your knees?" What can I say? It's a jungle out there)!



Dinosaurs...
- Ben doesn't always like to do drawings, but now and then, when he draws something like this, I just have to snap a picture of it!



Is this a figment of his imagination, or is there a dinosaur with spikes on its back and a club for a tail? What's it called?*

Librarian...
- Part-time firefighter, takes on a more serious, deskbound job at the library this week. Future librarian in the making? The rapt audience I try to be, in between trying to involve Ben in my chores -- like, pretend there's a fire we have to fight in the basement, whenever I need to go get laundry in or out of the washer and dryer, and we've managed two loads in a row, like this! Hey, it's not all play and no work, you know... hehe!

But each time we play library, I only get to be the person asking to check out books. Probably because Ben likes to go "beep", for every item he scans!



Besides our couch doubling as the bookshelf, with books Ben himself will arrange rather nicely, these are his other tools of the trade:

• a scanner for books, with a holder for "Date Due" receipts
• a smaller scanner for DVDs
• a long strip to demagnetize whatever's in the spine that triggers off the alarm at the library door.

So, don't chuck those mega blocks just yet, you never know when they'll come in handy for something like this!

Small Talk
And it's not just watching the boys' imagination at work, at play, that makes being a mom so much fun, but also getting a laugh here and there, from the things they say.

Here are some quick quips from Ben...

me: So, your library is open till late?
Ben: Until midnight.
me: Wow!
Ben: And it's almost midnight! Let's play!

***
me: Shall we take a break from checking out books, and sit down to read a story?
Ben: Why?
me: Because libraries have story-time, and my 3-year-old likes a good story now and then.
Ben: But your 3-year-old is not with you.
me: Huh?
Ben: He's at the library!

***
me: How was school? What did you do?
Ben: Nothing.
me: Huh?
Ben: I don't know what's the schedule.

***

Ben: For my next Show 'n Tell, I want to bring you!
me: =) (That's a compliment, right?)

***

* And the answer to the dinosaur question is:

Euoplopcephalus
".. was well protected from predators. It had a thick, armoured skin, covered with spikes, and a bony tail-club. If attached... will swing its tail at its enemy. A blow with its tail-club would have wounded even the fiercest predator."

When I asked Ben, he came and showed me the page on the "Triceratops" book by Early Childhood Publications, where he'd first seen a picture of this dinosaur, that I wasn't sure if it existed. It lived in the same Cretaceous Period as the Triceratops, Ben's favourite dinosaur.