On plundering and treats

Simon's been following his passions. Passion before last was volcanoes, and he would walk up to perfect strangers and regale them with stories of volcanoes "Sometimes a volcano explodes and then lava comes out!" Luckily, most people are fairly pleasant when accosted in this fashion by a 3.5 year old. Last week I was not pleased to discuss that Daddy had, in the interest of the NEW passion, been playing "we're pirates, let's STEAL things" with Simon. Great. Just what you want to hear little prating lips saying "let's steal!" Aargh. Bona fide quote: "If you go out and steal a lot of things, I'll give you a treat!" Since he dearly loves to be a pirate, my solution was just to teach Simon that it's just not called stealing by the *fashionable* pirates. It's called PLUNDERING!!! So this morning, Simon jumped onto our bed and said "I'm going to plunder a lot, and then I'll STOW it!" Apparently Daddy got into the spirit of things, so now burying plunder is called "stowing!" I used Tivo to search through all of TV-land looking for volcano stuff and yesterday played a taped segment for him called "Hawaii Revealed," which showed a bona fide volcano. It was OK. Wasn't too fond of the Bella Lugosi music that they played in the background, though, but there were plenty of shots of lava spurting, roiling, and falling into the sea. It was funny. Even with the commentator talking, Simon would look at me and say "what are they talking about?" Falls right in with what I once read (about the Blue's Clue's show, actually.) Apparently the show is set up so that children can watch it multiple times in one week because they get so much more out each time. It would be fairly interesting to see what little kids derive from watching something on TV. Probably just the peaks and valleys? Time to go and work around my kitchen sink, which is clogged this morning. Ugh. Maybe I'll try to fix it myself. I have a call into our insurance company (I bought into American Home Shield which means that when old stuff breaks in our house it costs me $35. Yay!), but I guess I have to wait for 4-plus hours for them to call and show. And I was trying to CLEAN it! I hate to start the day with a dirty kitchen. I used to clean the entire kitchen at night, but stopped doing that because we try to get Simon to sleep, etc., plus I'm often just too tired. So every day I amble in, make a big pot of tea, and wash up. It's quite fun, not hard, and fine, as long as nobody visits before I've had 15 minutes at the sink!