About Time for an Update, No?

Here's what's going on around here, with the kids:

1. Ezra is waaaay into his Bunjinkan (Ninjutsu) class. He wants to take it twice a week instead of once, but we don't have a car the other day that the class is offered. He does practice on a daily basis, though, of his own accord. As I type, he is in the bedroom trying to give Ottar (3 yo) lessons.

2. The "Japan Unit" went O.K. - not as well as it could have, as it seemed to be too much dependent on me gathering things (without money), etc. We did do origami one day (but then lost all the paper), we read several awesome new children's books about Japan, and Ezra works almost every day on his Hiragana alphabet - either copying it, making up direct-translation words, (i.e. he just made me a sign that says "ma-ma"). Kenny was supposed to make a Japanese dinner with him or something, but apparently the Japanese fervor is not so infectious as to affect Papa Pyefeld. He muttered several times under his breath about it, but I have yet to see any wontons or sushi.

3. Ottar is obsessed with words, asking me all day long, "what does _____ mean?" Sometimes I feel like crying, if it's the end of the day and he asks me something complex, as in last week when he kept asking for increasingly precise definitions of 'deserve'.

4. Ezra is also still a voracious Tintin reader. I cannot stop him, though I am worried because the print is so tiny, and he will read it for hours on end. I am amazed by the amount of vocabulary and geography he has learned from these books!

4. Guns, guns, guns! Ezra can now identify just about any firearm by sight, and also explain how it works, what it is for, and the materials it is made from. In yet another attempt to draw myself in to his world (because I am so NOT interested in guns), I started looking stuff up on the History Detectives website last night, and I think that if we watch some of those videos together, we may have found some common ground!