Evening of Culture

Manny and Shayna watched Shakespeare's "King Lear" tonight on DVD. Last week they watched "the Taming of the Shrew."

Manny got a singing CD-rom for Shayna to use to practice singing (for auditions). I decided to try it out tonight. It sets it for your vocal range and then you can sing and record songs and it tells you your percentage on key. I had just started to record "Down by the Riverside" and I didn't realize that Skyler was sitting under my chair. I had a glass of water on the desk in front of the tower. You wear a headphone with attached microphone, and it has a long cord that hangs down. Unbeknown to us, Skyler had gotten hold of the cord, and as the music began, he started to pull the cord to the music. He pulled so hard that my glass got knocked over and all the water spilled all over the place. It was recording as all this happened, and I stopped singing and said "what the hell..." It then recorded all of us after that, Manny grabbing Skyler, Shayna running for a towel, etc. and all of us laughing at the situation. So we replayed it a few times and just laughed.

After all that confusion and Skyler went to sleep, we started misusing the program and goofing around. We took turns as the main singer while the other 2 sang and made funny noises in the background and then we played it back. We had a blast and I laughed so hard I had tears coming down my face.

We ended the night with classical music watching BBC's "Last Night of the Proms"- a music festival at Royal Albert Hall in London. It was very lively and fun to watch. It was the retirement show for the Maestro (forget his name) and there was a really good opera singer performing.

If you want to know more about the Proms see this website. The last night of the Proms music festival is sept. 10th this year. Its simulcast in 4-5 cities via huge screens in various parks and each site also has its own concert as well in addition to the main concert in London.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/pitp/

Tasmanian Devil

Manny started calling Skyler Tasmanian Devil, because the way he makes a mess reminds us of the notorious Tazmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I envisioned him years from now, in college, and his fraternity brothers calling him "Taz." Of course, my vision was of him being the cool guy, the guy in college that everyone likes and who is very well known (thus the "Taz" label).

To give an example of how he fits this label, here is what happened last Saturday:

Shayna and I were in our pool out back, Manny was watching Skyler in the family room. About two or so hours later, I went inside for something. Manny said "oh no..we're going to need the vacuum!!" Apparently, Manny had dozed off for a few minutes. Within that brief time, Skyler got his hands on a container of chocolate cookies that was on the table. Now there were cookie crumbs all over the carpet, by the sofa side closest to the window. Near the other part of the sofa, he had shredded up a napkin and the entire carpet was covered in shredded paper.

July 2, 2005 

Accident prone?

We are not sure if it is because he is a boy, but Skyler sure seems to have a lot of minor "accidents" in his brief 11 months of life so far.

So far here is what has happened:

1. Fell down bottom part of stairs and got cuts on side of face (we have since put up a gate)

2. Got cuts on belly (no idea how).

3. Fell into corner of family room coffee table and cut inside of mouth.

4. Just as I was typing this, he closed the drawer under the fax machine on his finger.

Harry Potter's Broomstick

Shayna (now age 8) is really into Harry Potter.

When she was maybe 4 or 5 years old she got an official Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 broomstick for Christmas. It had special sound effects and ran on batteries. At that time, Shayna would ask me quite seriously how to get it to "really fly." She really thought it could actually fly, because it ran on batteries, made the sound effects, etc. Recently when we talked about it, she said that she thought it could actually fly because it used batteries (ie had a motor).