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"Taste the Rainbow," and Other Trademark Infringements
When I was a lad, we had a large window in our front room through which the sun would shine in the late afternoons. Inspired by Pollyanna, my mother decked out the window with several prisms so that the sunlight would split into its various wavelengths of light to cast gorgeous rainbows all over the room.
Now that I’m older, with children of my own, we have carried on the tradition a little bit. We have a large front window as well, although the angle with the tall trees across the street gives us about 10 minutes of sunshine coming through at the correct angle. We have a single prism dangling there to catch the sun’s rays (I believe we inherited it from my mother, in fact).
A few days ago, the older boys were playing in the front room when the sun happened to shine at the right angle to make the little rainbows all over the room. Hakan was especially excited, and shouted for me to come and see. I went in and he pointed out all of the rainbows he could see. One of them was right at eye level on the wall, and I showed him that he could touch it. He played with it a moment, and then I jokingly suggested to the boys, “I wonder what it tastes like!”
Hakan did not hesitate, licking the wall immediately. Carver followed right after, licking the wall whereupon the rainbow had been cast. I laughed and cringed a little at what had just happened, when Carver looked at me somewhat puzzled and said, “It just tastes like wall.”
We’ll see you in court, Skittles.
In other news, we’ve had little success with Merritt’s sleeping. Kira was wiped out by the end of the week after all of the late-night nursing, so I decided to get up with him Friday night and try a bottle again. He had been refusing bottles for a few weeks, but we thought surely if he were hungry enough, he could lower his standards just a bit and deal with it.
Boy was I wrong. I tried three different styles of nipple, and about a dozen holding positions, but he would not even let the cursed things touch his lips. After an hour, Kira took over again. We’ve also resorted to taking him on drives to get him to sleep. That is very effective, as he will zonk out after just a few minutes, but the process of moving him out of the van back into the house without waking him takes so much time and caution that it is its own hassle. He’s lucky he’s so cute or we might let the zoo raise him during this phase.
Still no teeth to show for his trouble, so we are starting him on a little bit of food in the hopes that it is just his hunger getting him up. We’ll see…
Avey began a fundraising project for orchestra this week, and the little prizes that are available have really motivated her to get out there and pound the streets. She’s a regular little saleswoman, having successfully conned nearly all of our neighbors out of their hard-earned cash for some overpriced sweets. With her ability to get people to buy things they don’t want for way more money than they could have spent elsewhere, she may have a bright future ahead in politics.
I’ve had some big changes at work this week. With low enrollment plaguing the school, there have been some changes to our duties, including an increased teaching load for next semester. That’s left me scrambling a bit. I’m not opposed to more teaching, I just wish I had had some notice.
We are looking forward to Halloween and Thanksgiving, if only to break up the routine a bit. Scare responsibly.