Quoth the three-year-old, "Cat volcanoes blast pink cats!"  It came completely out of the blue.  We haven't touched geography materials in weeks.  He was very expressive about it, illustrating with his flying fingers the trajectory of the kitties.   That child has a unique mind.

The middle boys are starting to get excited about Hanukkah.  We printed out coloring pages, and Verdi has been copying letters off the dreidel.   I have already had several opportunities to practice my "Christmas is their party; Hanukkah and Shabbat and Purim and Rosh Hashana . . . are our parties."  I have also had several invitations to give up Hanukkah and join in the tree worship but I just can't bring myself to do it.  True, it would make more sense given our actual religion.  But even if we aren't Jewish, Hanukkah is what we have done since the oldest was a baby.  It's sentimental.  It's tradition. 

Bear listened to me read The Funny Little Woman the other night and has since been pretending to be an oni monster. That's a type of Japanese demon. 

Verdi has been very much into cars lately, talking at length about ways to design them.  Last night on the way back from the grocery store, he said, "Hey!  I know how you can make a car that's not so awful for the environment!"  (We often discuss, while trudging through rain or cold, the ethics behind our decision to walk almost everywhere.)   I asked how he would do that.  "We could trap the exhaust fumes in a container, then dump that container once in a while at a kind of reverse gas station."   I thought this was brilliant for a six-year-old.  We talked some about ways to contain fumes safely and other engineering issues. 

Sterling, meanwhile, contains to write his fan fiction.  Even though I have officially completely banned Pokemon for the younger kids, he has free reign.  I'm not sure exactly what he is doing, but according to my parent spyware, in the past week he has created and downloaded tons of sprites (little pokemon icons), registered with a message board hosting site, registered with a regular website hosting site, and spent hours typing up stories about Pokemon adventures.  He's being extremely creative and diligent -- nd secretive, or maybe just respectful of my distaste for the cartoon cockfighting.