Soon it’ll be all the rage with the 5 year old set

Some news, an update, and some silliness…

I survived the camping trip – but just.  There was a typhoon on Saturday afternoon that lasted almost an hour.  The rain was torrential.  I’m pretty sure I saw a cow float past at one point.  And they say the monsoon is over.  I guess, but the rain would belie that.

Kelli helped me the other day with the plot for Dalton and Olivia’s book.  One of the things I learned from Francesca and Thomas was that a book really requires a plot.  You may laugh, but it seems that I have no problem whatsoever with sitting down and writing 80,000 words that never go anywhere.  That is all well and good for geniuses like Anne Tyler, but not so much for me. 

Kelli is a whiz at mapping out the plot – such a weakness of mine, and I am grateful that she will sit with me for several hours with a piece of poster board and different colored post-its and help me put it together.   Now that I have a map, I can easily write to each destination.

One quick little note about The Bandit.  Since he started kindergarten at Sassy’s school this year, and the school requires uniforms, I’d saved some of Sassy’s unisex outfits for him to wear – things like pants and polo shirts.  There was one particular pair of pants that look perfectly unisex except for a band of fabric inside the waistband.  Now, I figured these wouldn’t be much of a problem since no one would ever see the waistband of his pants.  The other morning, it was a little chilly and rain had been forecasted so I brought out pants for him instead of shorts.  Those pants.

“I can’t wear those, Mom.  They’re girl pants,” he protested.

I held the khaki pants up for inspection.  “They don’t look like girl pants,” I said. 

“Well, they are.”  His face looked particularly mutinous.

I tried to look perplexed even though I already knew the answer before I asked the question.  “How can you tell?”

“There’s pink in there!”  He pointed with his little, indignant finger at the pink polka dotted waistband.

“Oh that?” I scoffed.  “That’s not for girls.  That’s the tickleband.”  I tried desperately to keep a straight face.

He stopped frowning and his face expressed burgeoning interest.  “What’s a tickleband?”

“Well, it’s really cool,” I told him while I stealthfully slid his legs into the pants and pulled up the zipper.  “Every time you go to the bathroom, or even think about your pants, the tickleband will give you a little tickle around your middle.”  I demonstrated exactly how this would work.

Now, the only problem is, he only wants to wear clothes with a tickleband.  Where does one pick up yards of pink polka dotted fabric on the cheap?