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Summoned

On special nights, after story time, the boys and I watch a short, curated playlist of movie clips I put together on YouTube. One of the clips is the last two minutes of the blind man scene from the movie Young Frankenstein, where the blind man lights the monster's thumb on fire when he thinks he's lighting his cigar.

The boys howled with laughter again. That's their favorite. There's another scene from that movie in our playlist, too; the one where Igor tells Dr. Frankenstein that he got the wrong brain and the name on it was Abbey Normal. Osamu imitates Gene Wilder saying, "I will NOT be angry." When he chokes Marty Feldman the boys like to playfully imitate that as well.

Even though the boys technically weren't 100% well-behaved tonight we still did special videos after story time. Sometimes I think I'm probably expecting too much. They're little boys and they're gonna fight with each other no matter what. I just need to deal with it. Luckily clips of Mel Brooks movies fix everything right up. I can't wait until the boys are older and we can watch those movies together. They're starting to venture beyond Paw Patrol and Pixar. Yesterday they watched most of the new Karate Kid movie, the one with Jackie Chan. They were both imitating lines from that as well.

I gotta be vigilant about what they imitate. Last Christmas they watched Jingle All the Way a bunch of times. It's a pretty harmless movie. I enjoyed watching it with them way more than I did when seeing it at the theater when it came out in 1996. It's not that great of a movie, but it's got Schwarzenegger and it has some laughs. There's a line toward the end where one of the characters says he's sweating like a dog in a Chinese restaurant. Ahh, a simpler time it was. Kenzo repeated that a few times over the summer. At least it was in context. I weighed how I should handle this and opted to basically ignore it. No reaction whatsoever. He hasn't repeated it in months. Christmas is right around the corner again though.

Osamu loves to "help" in the kitchen, even though mama generally shoos him out because of hot pans and sharp knives. Tonight, though, he got the summons to come and help mix the meat and onions and breadcrumbs to make hamburg steaks.


He loves to help mama. Papa, not so much. He likes to use me as a jungle gym.


Later, when everyone settled into bed, I prepared a little Saturday evening treat for myself after a cool nighttime walk. Canned anchovies on crackers and a little bourbon.



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