Ice cream and personality

Costellos take ice cream very seriously of course and it's amazing the degree to which the boys' personalities are reflected in their choices in the matter of frozen treats. I take the boys for an ice cream most Mondays after school. It's a nice tradition and a good way to take some of the sting out of the Monday blues, to which both are subject. Jamie, our loyal, steadfast child invariably gets the same thing, which is basically the combination with the most possible chocolate, in a cone. Connor, on the other hand, is adventurous with his choices seeking out new wonderful things, almost none of which are chocolate. At this place you can mix in two candies to your ice cream and Connor produces some extraordinary combinations. Sometimes there is an aesthetic to it that I can appreciate, as when he got vanilla with white sprinkles and white chocolate chips. Other times they are the strangest things imaginable. This last week he got Lemon Custard ice cream with gummy bears and Reece's pieces. It may be because I'm a little punchy with the stress of the kitchen renovation, but I just found this so funny I couldn't even say it to the women helping us without laughing. Jamie had to do it for me.

I should add that Connor gets his in a cup. He does not eat ice cream quickly, to say the least, nor in a linear fashion so a cone gets very messy very fast. He used to complain about this periodically but seems to have come to some self-knowledge. Once, when Sarah took them instead of me, she let him get a cone. He smiled devilishly and said, "Daddy never lets me get a cone! After today, you won't either!!" He was right.

Wait, what?

Connor did a classic Connor the other day. There was much discussion about baseball this winter, because Little League abruptly changed the age definitions so that Connor suddenly went from being baseball-8 to baseball-9, even though he'll play the whole season at 8. This is big because it means he goes from playing machine pitch with 7s and 8s to playing kid pitch with (real) 9s and 10s. When I told him he could choose to play down if he wanted, however, he said without hesitation he wanted to play kid pitch. A laudable sense of adventure in my view.

So the other day, we are meeting his coach and the subject of kid-pitch comes up and Connor looks at me and says "Wait, I'm playing kid-pitch???" His coach looked at me like I was nuts, not to have informed my own child of this. Sigh.

Confidence in me!

Going to try and get back in the habit of blogging as there has been lots of fun stuff lately. Here's a little nugget to get started. Jamie had his audition for middle school the other day. He tends to be very even keel about stuff, and self-aware, so he himself seemed a little surprised as we were getting out of the car to say, "Oh Dad! I have butterflies in my stomach." He wasn't too worried, but I reassured him that was normal and good and to use that energy to play loud and strong. We walked on and he informed that he was singing "I Have Confidence in Me" from The Sound of Music.

The audition seemed to go well. He did his usual strategy and let someone he know be the first to go play and then describe it to him, so he know the situation he was getting into. We'll see what the results are, but Julie Andrews would be proud I think!

Duet time

Occasionally the boys can stop bickering long enough to be really cute together. Here they are singing the "Sorry song" from Calvin and Hobbes:

Hallway baseball

That is the sport of the moment. The boys invented this game and it is all they want to play most of the time (other than Minecraft, of course). Basically it's like stickball, except that instead of a narrow street, we have an even more narrow hallway. Instead of cars for bases we have doors. Instead of a tennis ball, a bean hacky-sack and instead of the broom stick, a sawed-off pool noodle. None of this sounds like to produce success, and I have to admit I was skeptical at first and rather reluctant to get drawn in. It is, for  instance, very difficult to hit a fair ball. In fact, it's difficult to hit it all. The boys have learned that throwing the "ball" at a very high speed from a very short distance is a path to pitching success. Connor, interestingly, is particularly good at this. Then, since you have a foam noodle you have to hit it almost perfectly for it to go anywhere at all. Also almost everything is foul territory.

On the plus side, one can make it to first base in about 1/4 of a second, so if somehow you do get it fair you are in business. Also, especially when Connor is pitching, there are a lot of hit batters so that's one path to scoring, albeit a painful one. Otherwise, funny things just happen in tight quarters, including thunderous bopping on the head of the umpire/catcher for any rulings the batter dislikes.

A new Connorism

Connor's malapropisms are wonderful, as were Jamie's. Jamie's could live for a long time, because we found them so cute we never corrected him. Unfortunately, Connor's tend to be much shorter-lived because of course Jamie pounces on them immediately and gleefully informs Connor of the mistake.

Anyway, the latest one has been in play this week with Sarah being tired coming back from Italy: "Mommy, are you jetlogged?"

Ewwww....

Connor and Jamie still love their woobies, no question about it. The other night, I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of their room as I sometimes do. I thought Connor was asleep when suddenly he proclaimed, "Dad! My woobie smells like a mixture of French Fries and throw-up!" Oh, I said, OK, we'll wash it tomorrow. He yelled "NO!!!!!" Got it just the way he wants it apparently.