I Survived Schlitterbahn!

The summer I turned twelve, my dad and uncle took a combined eight or so children to Disney World. My mom and aunt stayed home with the babies.

I was appalled. "Can't we afford Mom's ticket?" I asked, concerned. And "Mom, you are welcome to come. We can have fun even if you're there."

I was convinced that Mom was abstaining for some ridiculous purpose, preferring to play the martyr for obscure psychological reasons. After all, who would voluntarily stay at home with a toddler when she could be traipsing all around the Magic Kingdom?

My concern was entirely altruistic, since I figured we'd have more fun without Mom around. (My belated apologies.) For one thing, she walked slowly and we wouldn't have covered as much ground with her in tow. For another, Dad was much more likely to spend profligately on incidentals (like souvenirs and ice cream) without Mom protesting every expenditure. 

Mom assured me, repeatedly, that she honestly preferred it this way. "I'll talk to your aunt," she said, "Inside. Sitting down. In the air conditioning. We will discuss her recent trip to Germany." (The iron curtain had fallen a few months before.) "I believe I will find it very restful."

I gave up, finally convinced of her sincerity if not her sanity. "I guess I'll never understand," I thought.

You see where this is heading, of course.

Twenty years of perspective later, I think, "Who would voluntarily spend an entire day outside, in scorching 102-degree heat, either immersed in unsanitary, bug-infested river water or limping after hyperactive progeny, when she could be resting her pregnant, swollen feet, tending a single napping toddler, inside the air conditioned comforts of her own home?"

I want you to know, I was a good sport about it. I even had a reasonably good time.

This excursion was a benefit generously provided by Intel. We got three free (and one vastly reduced) passes to the Schlitterbahn waterpark in Braunfels, TX, with a catered lunch included. Further, their timing was excellent: early in June, as soon as school got out. A chance for employees and their families to relax, bond, and enjoy the outdoors. It's not their fault that Texas is in the middle of a drought and heat wave. Or that I'm pregnant, or that I hate swimming. I am, in fact, very grateful for Intel's kindness.

Last year I managed to get out of it on the grounds that I had a brand-new baby, only two months old. Next year, I expect I'll get out of it by pointing out I have two babies. Granted U will be about eight months old by then, but I can use that leverage for all it's worth.

This year, though, I was stuck.

The major issue was that last year, Eric wanted to try the more adventurous rides and Danny didn't, leaving single-parent Jon to negotiate unhappy compromises. This year, they all argued, I could go too, and take Danny to the calmer attractions whilst Dad and Eric tubed happily through choppier waters.

Alas, their point was extremely logical. In fact, it's what we ended up doing. (We got a babysitter for Sammy.)

Now, a note about parenting.

One of the problems with parenting is choosing good consequences. A good negative consequence should be simple, easily enforced, and inconvenient to the child, not the parent. It's also nice if you can make it fairly logical, like, "If you hit me, then I refuse to play with you," as opposed to "No, you can't have a pony because you haven't practiced the piano for a month."

Thus, the Schlitterbahn expedition provided me with an absolutely perfect bargaining chip, since I honestly would have been happier not to go.

I made the kids clean the day before. "We can't have Sammy running around the house with an inexperienced sitter and a bunch of hazards," I explained. Alas, they ran out of time and were sent to bed.

I got up promptly in the morning, made sure Eric took his Ritalin, and assigned them their last chore.

It took the kids two hours to do ten minutes of cleaning. (I wanted all the trash and laundry in the upstairs hall cleaned up.)

Now, if I had really cared about the trip to the water park, or if we had paid full ticket price, I might have tried something radical, like going upstairs, sitting in the hall, and supervising.

Instead I yawned, sat in the rocking chair, and chatted politely with the babysitter.

Various arguments, drifting downstairs, indicated they had picked up perhaps five pieces of trash.

I got myself some cereal.

Every twenty minutes or so, I bestirred myself enough to point out that if they didn't hurry, we wouldn't be able to stop at IHOP (or Dennys) for a leisurely breakfast. That if they didn't care about arriving early, they also presumably didn't care about leaving early. That their indifference to my agenda meant my indifference to their agenda in picking rides. That we were still paying the sitter for his time, even though he didn't have anything to do yet, and that fee might come out of their point jars. That I was delighted our house was so much more fun than an amusement park! I must be doing a superlative job as a Mom if they preferred performing gravitic experiments with coat hangers to the over-stimulation of a crowded Schlitterbahn. (This supports the theory that cardboard boxes are far superior to loud, obnoxious, flashing toys.)

Jon, after waiting for an hour, started getting cranky. "I'm hungry," he complained. I offered to get him a snack.

He declined, then reminded the kids that from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the park would only be open to Intel employees, which meant virtually no lines on the most popular rides. I added that the later we arrived, the hotter it would be and the faster their dear, sweet Mama would wilt like a delicate flower in the hot, hot sun.

The babysitter played with Sammy and laughed at us. It was very pleasant, actually, that Sam had time to make friends with him. It meant there was less panic when we did eventually leave.

After ninety-plus minutes of listening to play punctuated by sporadic clean-up, I recommended that Jon impose a time limit. "Kids," he called upstairs, "If that hall does not pass inspection in the next five minutes--" (I waited breathlessly, hoping he would say "We won't go at all!") --"We won't get breakfast at all! You'll have to wait for lunch!"

Ah well.

Thirty seconds later, the kids announced they were done. (Miraculous. Predictable, though, which is why I didn't suggest the time limit earlier.) I inspected. I pointed out perhaps three items they'd overlooked, and then declared myself satisfied.

We decamped a few minutes later, a mere two hours behind schedule.

Between the late start, breakfast (at McDonald's), lunch, and my leverage to leave early, I spent a mere hour and a half at actual attractions. Plus a fair, but not excessive, amount of walking. I seized every reasonable opportunity to sit down in the shade. I kept my hand sanitizer close and dispensed it liberally.

I even unbent far enough to purchase a single memento: a cute little over-priced sand castle refrigerator magnet. I intend to display it prominently, as a trophy.

Despite the abbreviated adventure, the kids were both exhausted and fell asleep on the way home. Eric actually went to bed early.

The kids had fun, Jon got to spend some quality time with them, I got a clean house, Sammy did fine, and the babysitter got paid for eleven-odd hours of work, even if two of them involved sitting on the couch chatting and Sammy napped for a couple more.

Further, because of our liberal smearing of sunblock, nobody is even sporting a burn today.

The only drawback is that I don't have very many pictures, since there was no way we were taking our cellphones inner tubing on a river.

Overall, a definite success!

Still, I would rather have taken a nice, leisurely nap. I am remarkably sanguine about having joined the club of Old Geezers at the mere age of twenty-nine, v. 3.0. Do I hear an amen?

One final word of advice: Never, EVER, go shopping for swimwear while pregnant. Especially in the second trimester, when you're big enough to look fat, but not big enough to look pregnant. I was depressed for hours. In the end, I just wore opaque maternity clothes. (And, no, there are definitely no pictures of me.)

Best Homeschool Lessons: Silly Sentences with Rigorous Research

I have a confession to make.

It was a sin. A wicked indulgence. I wish I had never seen that llama. But the illegal tweezer shipment was totally not my fault!


Actually, I never learned to diagram sentences.

I had a good grammar course in eighth grade. And it was at Pine View, which counts for much.

Still, though it emphasized recognizing parts of speech, it never covered graphical representations thereof.

Sad that I made from grade school through a decent university--with a BA in English!--without once diagramming a sentence in my native tongue.

This sad deficiency I have determined not to inflict upon my own children.


Today Eric wanted a "really tricksy" sentence. I decided to challenge both of us by writing the sentence first and figuring out how to diagram it later.

Part of the fun was that Eric got to make suggestions about words to add. In the end, I mostly wrote the subject and verb, while he constructed the rest of the predicate.

Left: A sentence growing progressively more complicated and silly. Right: the final result, "Mommy, who is very surprised, nevertheless placidly observes rogue undead arrows with tattoos attacking her."


We both learned a lot.

For my part, I learned how to show a relative clause. Also, I discovered some fantastic reference websites.

For Eric, it was doubtless salutary to watch Mom, who is supposed to be The Expert, saying things like "I think 'nevertheless' is a subordinating conjunction. But it's not acting like one here. 'However' can be both an adverb and a conjunction, right? Let me look it up....

It unsettled him a little, but he got through it. Aspie anxiety practice!

('However,' by the way, can, indeed, function as either an adverb or a conjunction. According to dictionary.com, though, 'nevertheless' is only ever an adverb. It seems like the sentence "I appreciate your concerns; nevertheless I must insist" uses it as a subordinating conjunction. Grandma Homer? Help?)

Speaking of Aspie anxiety, imagine how it will upset him tomorrow when I mention, "Oops. I just realized something. I think there should either be a comma between "rogue" and "undead," or we should have charted them differently. Sorry."



I also think a "sentence contest" would be fun. I write a hard sentence for Eric to diagram; he reciprocates. (*Shudder*) Grandma Homer could grade our results.

Or y'all could submit sentences which Eric and I could tackle together. Perhaps a complex/compound sentence full of silliness? Suggestions?

"This orange juice is REVOLTING!...More?"

Do you recall the Star Trek movie where Data finally turns on his emotion chip, tries a drink, makes a face, decides he HATES it, and then asks for more?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZmkjKeqSOY&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I have a rival clip!

Behold, Sammy trying orange juice for the first time:

Well, actually, this was his third or fourth time. Jon claims his first two faces were even better.

Best Homeschool Lessons: Repentance Tenses

Last week, I needed to run an errand. Loathe to lose homeschool time, I put Eric and Sammy in the car and taught a grammar lesson en route.

Before you remonstrate against my cruelty, let me point out that grammar lessons in our family are not tortuous. My children are spoiled by having a creative mom who invents interesting sentences to diagram. Of course, I am also spoiled by having superlatively intelligent children.

(When Ronald was in seventh grade, I recall explaining independent and dependent clauses to him by using Star Trek examples. Know your audience, I say. Ronald might now deny ever having liked Star Trek, but it worked at the time. Ah, nostalgia.)

In this case, I invented stories about Bear repenting. (He does that a lot, I note. I fear that, in a few months, both Daniel and Bear will need separate baptismal interviews with the Bishop. I also worry that Bear is so naughty, he might not get a recommend.)

Present, past, and future tenses were easy review. Eric also quickly caught on to the idea of "progressive," or "ongoing" tenses, as when Bear stole Danny's screwdriver with the intention of replacing it later. "I will start repenting next week," Bear justified to himself. ("Future progressive!" said Eric. Smart lad.)

(Though tempted, I refrained from a discursive lecture about how that attitude made a mockery of the atonement, deeming it more important to stay focused on the lesson. This required great willpower on my part, as I am rather prone to digressive tangents.)

Eric, further, did fine with past, present, and future perfect, once I had explained them to him.

"Perfect" implies the action has been completed. For instance, ' "I had just repented for the candy when I fell to the fish's blandishments!" wailed Bear.'

With minimal practice, Eric could correctly identify examples such as the one above. (Past perfect, by the way.)

Once we hit the perfect progressives, though, we had a problem.

It had never struck me before that there is a potential conflict between the perfect (i.e., completed) and progressive (i.e., ongoing) tenses. "But by the time I hit college," protested Bear, "I will have already been repenting for a decade! I SAID I was sorry for wrecking the van!!!" The previous sentence is an admirable example of the future perfect progressive, or an action which 1) begins in the future, 2) takes place over time and, 3) finishes in the future.

The problem came when we hit the present perfect progressive. With most actions, the "end" is easy to define. "We have been swimming for an hour," argued Char (who, as a fire-breathing dragon, naturally preferred non-water-based activities), "Now let's do something else." Even if the group consensus is to remain in the water another hour before breaking for lunch, you can argue that the swimming before Char's protest and after are two separate actions. Perhaps the poor dragon, bedraggled and disgruntled, leaves the pool early even if his friends remain. If nothing else, his sentence references the past and brings us up to the present moment.

The difficulty arose when Bear appeared before the Bishop, tearful and penitent, and gave a full confession of all his misdeeds over the past week. "I have been repenting for days," he sobbed, "But I'm not certain whether or not I'm done!"

Now, grammatically, this qualifies as the present perfect progressive. But the uncertainty of the situation struck me at once. "What if," I wondered, "Bishop Loderup counseled him to refrain from taking the Sacrament for two more weeks, read his scriptures, and then report for a follow-up interview?"

--(Of course, I doubt that an unbaptized child under the age of eight is even eligible to be disciplined in that way. Let alone a talking stuffed animal of indeterminate spiritual status. Yet another problem to consider. Or punt to my own mom. But I digress, again.)--

Repentance is a long process, and it can be a bit ambiguous. Sometimes people honestly think they're done, but a wise bishop says "I don't think you have fully forgiven your partner in crime yet." Or, sometimes people continue to beat themselves up unnecessarily, only to be told "You are fully forgiven. Let it go now."

I understand the Protestant reluctance to have a priest intercede between the individual and God. I also know that people are frequently not objective and do, sometimes, need an outside perspective in figuring out exactly how much is enough.

But philosophical questions of clergy aside, some actions really are vague in their completion. "I'm in love?" she asked herself. "But...when did that happen? I don't even remember starting to fall for him..."

To solve this dilemma, I have decided to invent, not a new creative sentence, but a brand-new tense. Thus, Bear's despondent cry, "I have been repenting for days" is an example of the Present Probably-Perfect Progressive.

In situations of more ambiguity, you could have the Past Possibly-Perfect Progressive. As in Bear's confession at a recent Addicts Anonymous meeting, "I had been repenting for weeks and thought I had conquered my problem, but then I almost succumbed to the temptation of a Studebaker..."

"Ambiguous Perfect Progressive" is more pronounceable, but not as much fun.

(In another random aside -- I've got to stop doing that -- this reminds me of my eighth-grade masterpiece "A Pathetically Perfect Parody of Pointless Perverse Poetry." Ah, those were the days...)

Now, you may claim this exercise was silly, or pointless, or was tortuous after all, either to Eric or to the hapless English language.

Any or all of those may be true.

Nothing I do could possibly be worse than Douglas Adams' "Future semi-conditionally modified sub-inverted plagal past subjunctive."

Still, I will-on have been likely starts repenting sometime by next Tuesday ago.

Sammy's Cheyenne Star Gate Escapade

I did, indeed, run a three-part series about Berry's Brave Band of Babies infiltrating Cheyenne Mountain. Using one baby as a diversion, Sam and another little girl penetrated deep into the bowels of the base, hid themselves in the backpacks of an SG team, were carried through the Star Gate and onto an alien planet (where babies were not allowed because they could do magic), used their new powers to play with an alien airship (and thus save the SG team), and were evacuated back through the Star Gate. Back on Earth, they were interrogated (unsuccessfully) by military intelligence, then eventually remanded to the custody of their parents.

Sammy calculated he had circumvented at least ten layers of security and was thrilled about having set the new world record. ("This totally beats that toddler who snuck onto a nuclear submarine!" he gloated.) Alas, he then realized that this was all so top-secret classified, his feat would never be made public. Even his parents were told only "Your baby was caught trying to sneak into Cheyenne Mountain," with no mention of how far he'd actually gotten.

Mommy, tired of her little Houdini's antics, announced that from now on, he would sleep in a padlocked steel cage rather than a crib. (She charitably supplied a mattress.) "If you're a really good boy," Mommy told him, "We will re-evaluate your status in a year."

Not my best bedtime story, but I thought it very sweet how Eric insisted that we leave the door to Sammy's room open so his little brother could hear the story. I was afraid this would give Sam ideas, or, worse, keep him awake at night, but I complied.

--[Naturally we would not use a prison cage crib in real life, but the policy is tempting because then we, his beleaguered parents, would no longer be required to pick up his toys several times a day.

Jon's theory is that Sammy falls asleep with his mongoose. When he wakes up in the morning, he plays with Mr. Mongoose for a while, then, despairing about parents coming to rescue him in the next three minutes, cries  "Save yourself!" or  "Get help!" and jettisons the animal overboard. He then does target practice with any other toys still in the crib, trying for a symmetrical distribution of scattered plastic.

My theory is that Sam throws his toys overboard to punish us for not getting him within twenty seconds of his first piteous mewling. Fortunately, his terrorist policy of tossing one toy per minute has minimal effect, since we don't let him sleep with more than two in the first place.]

Youse boy!

For each of our babies, Jon and I have chosen a letter to represent the unborn child.

Back when I was pregnant with Eric, I hated calling my pregnancy "it". "The baby has a gender," I argued, "We just don't yet know which."

We decided to call the baby "B" (for Baby) in the interim. As with many of my linguistic ideas, this quickly morphed into its own jargon, with pronouns and puns. "He, him, his" became "be/bee, bit, bits". Even after we knew the gender, we still didn't have a name and continued using them for fun. Examples:

• "B, baby, be!" [A growth mantra.]
• "If B would let me eat a byte, be would get a bit. But NO, bee's making me queasy. Never did like honey, anyway...and there's the fear of botulism..."
• "B has been hyperactive all day. Busy as a swarm of bees. It's like be's banging on a professional drumset in there. Tell me this isn't a prophecy...?" (Note: It was. I wonder what would happen if a pregnant lady took Ritalin...?)

Daniel was "C" for "Child." Pronouns: see/cee/sea, sit, and sits.

• "Peekaboo! I see you, C!" [when we could see him kicking]
• "C! Sit!" [When he was too active]
• "When this is over, I will need a Sitz bath..." [That was also prophetic, given the involuntary natural childbirth.]
• "See C sit! Sit, C, sit! Is C a she? Soon we'll see.."
• "C likes to swim in the amniotic sea. I wonder what degree cee is?"

Naturally, outsiders were utterly confused when they heard sentences like "It's not sit's fault!"


Marian was "I" for "Infant." Pronouns: eye/aye, ite, and ites. Or sometimes eye's or aye's. Whatever made the pun work best.

It was fun saying stuff like

• "Threw up AGAIN. I is mad at me."
• "Aye, aye, I!" 
• "I can't see eye's eyes. Aye, I think eye's playing boo times 10 to the negative twelfth." (Picaboo.)

My favorite pun there was "There were no -ites among them," but that, too, proved sadly prophetic.


Sammy was "Q" for "Query" or "Question". Pronouns: cue/queue, quit/quite, and quit's/cue's. Again, whatever worked best.

• "Q, quit being impatient. Back to the end of the queue for you."
• "Quit it, Q! I've had quite enough!" [When he, too, was kicking me in super-hyperactive mode.]
• "I wish cue'd give me a cue. A clue. Anything!"

It was further inevitable that we would make comparisons to Q, the mostly-omnipotent but highly immature being from Star Trek.


Well, this pregnancy, we held a family council to decide on a letter. Eventually we came up with "U" for "Unknown." Pronouns: you/yew, and some barbaric, unpredictable mixture of "you" "you's" "use" and "youse" for the objective and possessive case.

Daniel took particular delight in making sentences which sounded ungrammatical but weren't, like "You is so cute!" Jon and I encouraged him to try some of them out on his first grade teacher. Cackle. Danny also deliberately misunderstood me when I said things like "You need to clear the table now." He would look blank and exclaim, innocently, "Huh? But how could U possibly clear the table?"

Note on Usage. (Heh, heh, couldn't help myself, sorry.) "Youse" can be used as possessive (like "Hey, that's you's/youse toy!" Or as a contraction for "you is" or "you is a" As in...

"Youse boy!"

Also, it helps to pretend you're a gangster. More fun in character.


Further, during one particularly boring church meeting, I set a horrible example for my children by playing with anagrams.

• BQUIC (be quick) [Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack, jump over the candlestick...Jack, join your brothers abusing the couch with crazy gymnastics. At least you don't slouch...]
• BUICQ (buick) [rather unoriginal, though]
• CQUIB (squib) [from Harry Potter universe; means a non-magical child born to a magical family. OUR family would never produce a Mundane, though. OUR babies are all exceptional.]
• CUBIQ (cubic) [Very mathematical]
• IQ CUB (Smart baby) [my favorite]

Now, I am not promising anything. But, theoretically, if --IF-- there were any more babies, I am leaning toward the letter "L" for "Lottery." After which I could make the word QUIBLC, or "quibbles." Then maybe "R" for "arcane" or "recondite," from which we could form "QUIBLRC" (quibblers) or CQUIBLR (squibbler). That it is a nonsense word does not detract from it's charm, I think. We could invent a definition, like children who post ninety-five scribbles on the church door and set off huge, lawyerly debates. (The more I think about it, the more I love the image of my children all having deep philosophical debates in shaky crayon drawings.)

As for U (still no name, sorry), I'm just glad to have a final answer. All the physical evidence -- a new over-the-counter gender predictor test, lack of nausea, and a fourteen-week ultrasound where the doctor said "I wouldn't go shopping yet, but that looks like a boy to me" -- pointed to a boy. After some particularly awful nightmares, which I'm delighted were not prophetic, I'm happy that everything looks normal developmentally.

My friend Mark pointed out I wouldn't have to pay for weddings. I responded with the approximate cost of four missions. (Probably over $50,000, depending on inflation.)

I have seen the future, and it is full of Ramen noodles and dormitory-style bunkbeds, even before Eric leaves for college.

I'm particularly looking forward to the day I tell him, "Hey, you! Quit trespassing!" Similar to when I poked baby B (on my due date) and said "That's it. Move out, or start paying rent."

Had U been a girl, we could have made more puns about "the wee ewe lamb," but one can't have everything.

Every baby is a blessing. I'll be thrilled if this one turns out as cute, sweet, and smart as his brothers. I'll settle for "Not a gansta'."

The Cat and Mouse War

Eric likes epic, multi-part bedtime stories.

He provides me with a prompt, and then I resist his efforts to micromanage the details.

This month has been pleasant because he has let me go my own way with minimal interference. Artistic control!

The prompt was "I want a story about some mice and cats having a war and there's an arms race where each side keeps getting more complicated."

"Ah," I said. "A war of escalation. Yes, I could manage that..."

I won't inflict all the details on you, but I do have some favorite excerpts from the fifteen-night story:

[Plot summary: a colony of mice who live in the exterior wall of an old farmhouse, realizing the kitchen cat is about to give birth to a new kitten, decide to better organize their food acquisition. Some strategic household raids yield a pile of paperclips, string, yarn, cloth, sewing needles, popsicle sticks, and other paraphernalia. Engineers work to design innovative technologies which will be tested while the cat is most exhausted in the immediate post-partum phase. They hope to become so expert at scavenging that they will continue to thrive even after two adult cats are on patrol. Finally, the kitten is born and they launch the second phase of their cunning plan...]

"Ladies and gentlemice, welcome to this historic event. The cat is asleep and it's a beautiful afternoon for a raid on the pantry. Our team look fresh and organized in their new gear, but will this innovative "paperclip armor" really work? The engineers swear -- Oh, and they're off! I must say, I had my doubts about those rag "sock skates," but they really seem to be working! The mice have reached the cheese and -- Oh no! The cat's awake! She's chasing after number three, but he passes the cheese to number five. It looks like the carpenters may need to adjust the stick shape; the shot looked wide and number five is having trouble handling the cheese. The cat sees his difficulty and is pursuing! Number five is concentrating too hard to notice the danger...The captain calls out an order...Aha! Numbers two and three are teasing the cat. Great interference there by number three, I love the faces he's making...and it looks like number five has things back under control and is heading for the mousehole...the cat realizes her mistake and sprints after him...number five lines up his shot and...score!!! The cheese is in the goal! I repeat, the cheese is in the goal!!! [The mouse spectators erupt in cheers.]

"What a success that was, ladies and gentlemen, enough food for two days, by the looks of it, but it remains to be seen how our brave team will fare...the team captain has called the evacuation order, but the cat is blocking the hole...And the Team Captain sacrifices himself to let his men escape! He's running in circles...he's taunting the cat like crazy! What courage! What skill! He takes off running...will the cat...yes, she does! She's chasing him across the kitchen!!! Oh MY, those skates are fast on the polished hardwood floor! But the cat's legs are longer...she's gaining on him...the rest of the team are home free!...[The crowd cheers again]...and now the cat has pounced the captain! [Gasps] She takes a bite...[Breathless silence]...I can't see much...and SHE SPITS HIM OUT!! He's moving! He's ALIVE!!!! The armor worked!! [Cat calls] Let's hear it for our dedicated engineers and craftsmice! [Applause] He'll have a nasty bruise...hopefully nothing is broken...the cat looks furious, but is holding her mouth. Could one of her teeth have broken?...She's still distracted...he's limping away...and our captain is home! A TOTAL SUCCESS!!! DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES...???" [The mice roar.]

[Soon the cat retaliates with a large magnet and captures a hostage. The mice stage a daring raid wherein they rescue the hostage and capture the kitten instead. The exchange of ransom notes is complicated by the lack of a shared language. The mouse linguist does her best to translate, but her limited data set led to numorous errors in the subsequent negotiations...]

#1 Mice to cat, actual message:

"During communion argue beneath a flag of truancy, zombify the suitcase shall."

Intended message: "While we're debating your conditions of surrender, we'd like to come under a flag of truce to feed the hostage."

#2 Mice to cat, actual message:

"We plinkle your vocabulary! Craven flea-vermin books! Was undead vampire cargo resussitated! Sock, sock. Small boy goddess former cash time very fat annoying we crooked ate."

Intended message: We reject your terms. Mouse liberty! We rescued our hostage. (Taunt, taunt, mock, mock.) If you want to see your kitten alive again, you must agree to allow us perpetual access to the larder."

#4 Mouse linguist to cat, actual message:

"You-pejorative goddess, bad sin possess. I your network-count learn lightning. More romantic courtship-outings assist it I. Send us dictators! We your Tom own. Dance/assumption prey we always and it back you purchase. Empty it."

Intended message: You, cat, have a bad temper. I am trying to learn your language as quickly as possible. It would help if I had more data. Could you send us a dictionary? We have your small boy cat/Tom/Rice wine. Promise us food forever and then you can have him back. He's getting hungry.

 

[Alas, the linguist was reasonably competent. As her data set grew, she made fewer errors. The final peace treaty was mostly readable. To give you an idea of how she suffered, though, I share her raw translation notes from a reply message the cat sent...]

#3 Mouse linguist's very raw notes:

"You-form mod'd mice are modifier(?) very(?) bad. I-form mod'd hate [three emphasis modifiers] you(?)! [Untranslateable cat onamotopeia.] You(?) are so hunchbacked(?) [idiom evil?] I-form owe(?) you future form fair/equitable two paw beneath. [Idiom??? Work on this.] Conj.(?)/but(?) I-form mod'd own try conj(?)  for ??? [suffix] rice wine?? You-form mod'd possessive final messy? Create-past no smell. Try again to insult. [Primitive anthropological territorial marking.]"

Cat's actual message: "You (pejorative, plural) craven flea-vermin are very, very bad. I HATE you! Hiss! You are so stupid, I doubt you will even understand this, but I have to try for Tom's sake. Your last message made no sense. Try again, idiots." [Smelly urine stain/signature marking]

[The council of elders, who had been breathing down her neck demanding real-time translation, glared at her, appalled when she tried reading her first-pass notes aloud to them. (Bad as it is to read them, imagine only hearing "You form modded mice are modifier.") "That's complete gibberish!" they complained, after which she snapped. "Yes! I know! Go away and let me do some real translation in peace!" Subsequent attempts to nag her resulted in her meeowing fiercely at them, apparently so absorbed in "cat" she didn't realize she was speaking it. Taken aback, they decided to give her some space and wait patiently, lest she start clawing at them as well...]

Other highlights from the epic conflict:

*The mice had a "Ransom of Redchief" moment when they realized the kitten would only drink milk and also needed his diapers changed frequently. Rather dangerous when the "baby" is larger than you are, hungry, tired, cranky, yowling so loudly no one can hear, and keeps trying to disembowl his caregivers.

*A bunch of mice tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to milk a cow. Part of the problem was they approached her from the right, not left, side. A lashing tail, well-aimed kick, and strategic stomp dislodged the mice, knocked over the stool, and broke the milk bottle. The children loved the image of a mouse hanging on the cow's teat for dear life, first trying to squeeze milk out frantically, and then slipping inexorably to his doom...(the other mice broke his fall before they all scrambled away)...

*A three-person mouse commando team raided the garage, hoping to steal back the magnet which had rendered their armor unusable. The farmer's wife, who had a phobia for mice, saw them and attacked them insanely with a live chainsaw. In the subsequent melee, she scratched the hood of her car, hacked the leg off the workbench, shattered the overhead light, knocked over a can of bright green paint (which covered and temporarily blinded her), chopped down an overhead storage shelf, and did a few thousand dollars worth of damage to the tractor.

--This inspired the mice to write a war ditty called "Three Commando Mice," in which they terrorize the poor blind farmer's wife. Hardly great poetry, but the kids loved the parody.

The final peace treaty was signed a few nights ago. Eric keeps asking for sequel "hockey games," but I insist that a wise author knows when to let the story end.

He has accepted that and moved on. Last night he asked for a story about Sammy leading a bunch of babies on a daring raid to sneak inside an unspecified but secure facility. I had Sammy and two other Leander Ward babies infiltrate the Library of Congress.

When Brother Woodbury heard this, he asked first if Sammy had gotten in trouble. ("Of course not," I answered. "He flirted with the librarian who found him and she melted completely, then reluctantly remanded him to the custody of his concerned mama.") Then he said, very generously, that he would bail Sammy out of jail any time.

For tonight, Eric is muttering about having the same team get into a really top-secret secure facility. I foolishly suggested Cheyenne Mountain. Oy. How does a nice Mama like me end up in crazy situations like this? Still, I think bedtime stories are one of the very best parts of Mommyhood. I wouldn't trade it for anything. :)

*A minor linguistic note: Cat language has many minute gradations of importance. Imagine the subtleties of Japanese bows and you'll get the idea. The cat keeps using the most pejorative form of "you" while using a very superior form of "I" when writing to the mice. The distinction is much more obvious in spoken cat, where higher and lower pitches indicate the level of respect intended. Anyway, the mice, only seeing the "you" and "I" sent by the cat, have no way of knowing what other forms of the pronouns exist, so they keep sending back very insulting messages wherein they unintentionally claim status akin to godhood and address the cat as though she were the lowest possible life form on the pronoun ladder. This drives the cat CRAZY, since, to her, she honored the mice just by elevating them from "ignore completely" onto the pronoun ladder in the first place.