My apologies to anyone who lands here because they were googling photos about the Titanic.

The Titanic in all her original glory. She will never sink!

Oh no! Iceberg! (the dots are people moving around on deck. The blob off to the right is the iceberg)

The great ship sinks. A chunk of the boat has fallen off, people are in the water. The guy in the lower left died. That’s why you can see the inside of his human body.

This is the map that the scientists are going to use to try and find the shipwreck. Scientist ship to the right, Titanic wreckage to the left.

The scientistific submarine nears the wreckage. My favorite detail about this is the way the scientists are drawn from above. All those circles inside circles? Are people. The sun-ray looking things are lights. Note that the Titanic is covered in sea sponges or coral or something. Dang, I forget the name of those things, but you know. Sea stuff.

And there she is, a peaceful gravesite at the bottom of the ocean.

Then, just because I’m an ass I have to show you a couple of other pictures he drew this week that I love:
1. Graham demanded a ROBOT! So Nicolaus drew this:

2. Then he felt bad and decided to draw a much happier one:

And, just because I’m so happy to not have any more tears over the wretched sea turtle problem:

She only has one eye because you’re looking at her from the side. The front flipper is huge and weird because that’s the difference between a sea turtle and a regular turtle.

And finally we have this one, which I found in a stack of blank paper. I have no idea what the story on this one is, and I’m scared to guess.

There are already plenty of mothers out there who write eloquently about the central role that poop plays in their daily lives. So I try not to dwell on it. Kids poop. So do grownups. Obviously most grownups don’t ask for a parade in their honor whenever they wipe themselves or poop the biggest poop ever or name their turds or clear out entire aisles of Target with their stink. But kids do all of that, every day, and it’s sort of a blog cliche. Right?

That’s why I’m not going to tell you about my afternoon. Because these kinds of events are a given, right? You have kids, they get dirty, you put them in the bath, and then one of them says, “Ahhh!!! Mama! There is POOP IN THIS BATH.” And then, after you jerk them both out, very slowly drain the grody poop-clogged tub and get both boys all soaped down and you wash all of their toys in a good long shower, one of them — the one who pooped earlier — poops AGAIN. A second time. Clogging the bath drain again and causing you to seriously almost cry because what if this never stops happening? What if I am stuck living here in the bathroom forever, draining yellow-brown water and soaping up my kids in a cycle that will only stop eventually because there isn’t anything in here for either of them to eat. Yawn, whatever, it happens every day to millions of moms all over the world, so I will not bore you with the details.

Or maybe the truth is, I touched poopy water and it’s grossing me out and I just don’t want to talk about it.

Our newest theme in randomville is The Titanic. It started at the Fourth of July festival thingie. They had bounce houses for kids, including one shaped like the sinking Titanic. Someone waited too long to place their bounce house order I’m guessing, because all of the ones they had were a bit of a stretch on the patriotic theme: The Titanic, Noah’s Ark, A giant child-eating dragon, and Lightening McQueen.

So while kids squealed and slid joyfully into the big puffy funthing, Nicolaus wanted to know what that big boat was and why was it all crooked like that. Ah! Well, see, a long time ago there was this huge ship that was amazing and everyone wanted to ride it and then it hit an iceberg and then it sank but there weren’t enough lifeboats and like 1700 people died and you know now that we think about it, that is a really fucked up thing to make a kiddie bounce house out of.

I’m paraphrasing. But we went to eat at the local pizza place, and that’s basically all we were able to talk about through lunch. He positioned his chair so that he could see the HMS Inflatable Titanic (They said it could never be deflated!) through the window. Instead of eating, he pressed us for details about what happened. We figured he was just avoiding eating because he really doesn’t like pizza that much, or any food other than black olives really. But no, he wasn’t messing around. He’s eaten several times since the fourth of July, but hasn’t stopped talking about the dang Titanic.

Like all of his assorted interests, this one led to a Netflix documentary rental. He and Kevin watched it this morning, and Kevin said that he was almost in tears through all the parts about people dying. Nicolaus was almost in tears I mean, even though it IS tragic enough to upset a grownup, and Kevin is pretty much a crybaby.

So anyway. They watched it this morning, making my afternoon alone with the boys really bizarre. Ship-wrecky.

It’s exactly like most rainy summer afternoons, with the battling baby snot and the getting them drinks and snacks and the diaper changing (my living LORD what does Kevin feed this kid in the mornings??). Like most afternoons, there have been several ridiculous fights and only one of my kids is still wearing pants, maybe as a result of one of the fights but probably just as a result of me changing him and him running away before I could put his pants back on and me deciding that I was sort of fine with that.

But today we’ve also been on many tragically sinking ships, clutching our plastic apples with our names on them that would ensure us a spot on one of the lifeboats. Don’t ask me what the deal was with the apples because I swear I don’t know. I was handed an apple with a tag taped to it that said TIN, which is code for Tiffany, and by God if that means I get a lifeboat seat well then, rock and roll.

We’ve also spent a lot of time safely aboard submarines that were looking for wreckage. And about once every ten minutes! We guess what?? FIND THE TITANIC!

Just like you’d think, it is an incredible discovery every time.

He was going to write a book about the Titanic, but figuring out how to spell the words “Chapter 1″ made him too tired and pissed off at the world. So he switched to pictures. I need to scan these pictures tomorrow.

Like a lot of his drawings, the Titanic ones are from a bird’s eye view. He even drew most of the people from above, as concentric blobby circles. Head. Body. Cool.

There are six drawings.
1. The Titanic.
2. The Titanic hitting an iceberg.
3. The Titanic sinking with water everywhere and a smiling person who died.
4. The map we are going to use to find the Titanic.
5. The submarine used to locate the wreckage.
6. The wrecked Titanic under the sea.

I’ll try and scan them after the boys go to bed, but no promises. This sitting on the couch pretending we are hunting for a sunken ship has been hard work, and I’m awfully tired already.

I’m at work – shhhhh not supposed to be updating or even acknowledging blogs and things. But people (nice wonderful smart and cool people) keep asking about the nerdy baby flashcards.

They are at long last available again! I finally got them press-printed, and oh my goodness I wish I’d had the money to do this a long time ago. They look awesome, and came out so much cheaper per set – allowing me to lower the price to $16 per set. I’m also able to take wholesale orders now, so if you know anyone who owns a shop or just likes having large quantities of random crap that they buy in bulk – please pass the link along to them. Because um, I now have like 17 big cardboard boxes of these sitting in my office. I should probably start working harder to sell them.

So! Here they are. Go! Buy! Yay! Right now. Link to Nerdy Baby ABC cards.

All produced lovingly right here in the U.S.A. — and I will ship anywhere in the world at no extra charge.

1. My dad’s in the hospital. From my 3rd grade understanding of human anatomy, my mom’s extremely not detailed descriptions, and my dad’s morphine-affected but nonetheless lucid explanation what happened is that his appendix went bad, way bad, and then his liver got jealous. So they took the appendix out, and are hoping that sends a good strong message to the liver and the gall bladder and other things that we are not fucking around here.

Nice timing, if he were going to do this anyway, because me and the boys had planned a trip to visit this weekend and were bummed because he was going to be working. But now he isn’t on account of all the excitement and all. So that’s good.

2. We’ve been on a hunt for the perfect preschool for the naturalist. Today I found one that made it solidly onto the Possibly Good list. A relief that anything even okay exists here. All of the other schools we’ve looked at are intensely… what’s the word for people who brag that they are highly structured and give spelling tests every week? To four year olds? Oh yeah: Freaky.

They all push academics in a way that blows my hippie-raised mind. Yes, learning is important. But WHY is it important? Is it important because it enriches the spirit and leads to a more fulfilling life? Or because you want to be able to brag to your friends that your kid is reading at such and sucha level and is skipping grades and is so good at everything that his teachers are calling Bela Carroli to have him come and coach him for Olympic test taking, not that he needs coaching because you had the presence of mind and LOVE in your heart to send him to a good preschool. Not some shitty child-led preschool.

What about looking at butterflies and playing with play-doh? And building with blocks? And just – playing and singing little songs and things?

I’ve been struggling to articulate what we want out of a school for him. The school he went to in Plano was amazing, and it’s very hard for me to define what was so great about it. They were down to earth. Diverse. Warm, loving, not at all pretentious.

I realized today while driving to work and thinking about this (it’s the topic that my brain is currently devoting more than 70% of its power towards) that what I want is a school that simply has the goal of teaching kids:
Be excellent to each other.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Preschool.

It would be perfect. And I’d be all like, woah, and he’d be all like duuude and then we’d both be all like, awesome.

3. There was more, but I’m technically asleep now.