1 post tagged “pinocchio”

I've really meant to post here for the last couple weeks, so this will be a little longish I'm afraid, to make up for lost time.  First, I have discovered that my children all find the movie Pinocchio deeply disturbing. Rose wasn't feeling very well the other day and insisted on choosing her own this time, rather than letting me do it.  Pinocchio was duly selected and we started it, with giggles as Jimmeny was elected the "conscience"    --  now there is a word you don't find yourself writing every day.  All went swimmingly until the boy-puppet's first temptation by Honest John and his accomplice.  Jimmeny extricated said puppet from the problem, and a collective sigh of relief passed over the children  -- but when two minutes later, he got himself embroiled in another situation with the same two individuals when he should have known better, my eight year old had to leave the room and my four year old stood in front of the screen and sobbed.  My little boy, now six, was less troubled.  So we fast forwarded to the puppet show under the care of Stromboli.  Somehow the captivity and imprisonment of Pinocchio wasn't as much an issue.  It was only when, after his rescue by the blue fairy and being told that was his final chance to be good, when he fell in again with Honest John and decided to listen again to the bad advice that the sobs redoubled.  We fast-forwarded to the land of the little boys who get turned into donkeys and the crying continued, so I removed the film, briefly recounted the ending and we decided on something a little less stressful.  

For his school, my son is collecting "Box Tops for Education," and there is a classroom competition.  I had only before noticed them on cereal boxes, but no, on further research, one can find them on ziplock bags, cake mixes and even Tampax products.  Who knew?  Since we tend to by generic, I didn't find all that many in my pantry, but have lately been buying Kix and Cheerios exclusively, so we'll have a few by mid-April, when the drive is over.

We have somewhere in the range of two to seven pets!  One is "Baby," who lives in our refrigerator --  a sourdough starter.  And one is "Sluggy-Bug," a small black slug who lives in a peanut butter jar, outside.  My eldest daughter noted they aren't very exciting, and when I mentioned that we'd probably get a dog sometime  -- she said, "No, it's okay, Sluggy-Bug can climb trees with us --   a dog couldn't do that."  (They've made a little harness for the peanut butter jar and haul him up with them into the trees)  We also discovered a nest of b5 aby mice in our pool/garden box outside.  I'd left a bag of birdseed there, and the other day saw a mouse, so David  kindly offered to move the bag out and set a trap.  However, moving the bag revealed 5 baby, hairless, newborn mice -- so we didn't quite have the heart to set the traps for the mom.  Internet research proved that caring for baby mice was quite labor intensive, besides feedings, they need help on an hourly basis to "go potty."  Since all of our children are well past that stage, we weren't eager to take it on.  So we now have some baby mice on the same basis as Pharoah's daughter had Moses --   we have them, but the real mom is doing all the work.  We also removed most of the food, just left the stuff that had spilled out, so not sure if the mom will hang out there, or if they'll survive.  However, I don't plan to investigate the situation closely.  When they're grown up in a month or so, we'll sweep up the rest of the  food and set traps so they don't plan on setting up house.