Attaboy!

Everyone went back to schedule today - school and work. Mommy and Madison joined Daddy at work for lunch, which is always pleasant. We're still a bit under the weather today, so it was a bit more subdued for Daddy, who has been running a pretty good fever all day.

Madison has been sniffling too, of course. She went to school this morning and seemed to be doing better. While in the car, she's been intrigued with this one comic book Daddy's had in there - it's an old one of the X-Men. It was a throwaway sort of issue, not valuable at all. At least now it isn't! Anyway, while she sits in her car seat, she reads it - or at least looks at the pictures - over and over again. Today, she asked Daddy to read it to her after class. I was quite happy to do so!

It isn't the greatest comic of the collection. In fact, it's towards the bottom. Yet she was fascinated by it, so I told her the story within - in a kid-friendly sort of way so she could understand it better. Some vocabulary was a bit bigger than a five-year-old will understand. The difficult relationship between humans and mutants tends to be one of those discussions you try to save for later! Anyway, it was neat to see her into comics because Daddy was so into them for a while. I think she likes the character Jubilee, who made an appearance in that very comic. Also, she likes Storm.

This week, our "Superheroes" series draws to a conclusion at the church. It has been a lower budget version of something we've done in the past, but although different, it's been very fun to do. You can thank Squirrel Girl for that. I equate it to the last pirate movie, "On Stranger Tides." It had a much lower budget and scale, and yet it was still just as enjoyable. Yeah, it's just like that.

Today's music class went well - Daddy was there this time. Madison has learned the note "sol," which you use your pinky to play. We've learned other things as well, but that's the big advancement for the day. The class is moving along quickly with learning. It won't be too long before Mommy and Daddy will have to practice hard just to keep up! Right now, we're doing fine. Mommy is actually learning a thing or two about notes and such (Daddy has a little experience, so he's got a slight head start!).

We went to bed early tonight, but not before getting a good bath: tomorrow is school picture day. It'll be Madison's first school picture, so that's a fun thing. Mommy picked out a great outfit, red with ladybugs. We'll post it here as soon as we get it. Things have changed so much since we were having our pictures taken at school. For one, they use digital cameras now and can actually see the results immediately after taking pictures! Crazy, huh? It's hard to imagine 35 mm film going the way of polaroids and 110 film. But digital pictures are amazing and easy to do now. We may do 35 mm for fun and to be "old school," but it's all digital from this point on, isn't it?

Tonight Madison watched a bit of Wallace & Gromit again. She's been really into these two. We've got four other shorts that feature this duo, and Madison has been soaking it in. I think her favorite is the story of "The Wrong Trousers" and that naughty penguin.

Once she was in bed, Mommy and Daddy watched "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." We have a whole lotta' seasonal movies, and we were both in the mood to watch this classic with Don Knotts. If you haven't seen it, you should. They certainly don't make them like they used to. This is a fun movie with a creative concept. We aren't into the gory, uber scary stuff when the season comes around. It's all fun stuff, like "Addams Family," "Ghostbusters," or "Scooby Doo." We've got a list of movies we sort of go through each October - "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," "Nightmare Before Christmas," "The Corpse Bride," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "Tower of Terror," "Edward Scissorhands," "Haunted Mansion," "Young Frankenstein," "Beetlejuice," "Monsters, Inc." and of course "Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." Also, there's anything about or by Ed Wood. Goodness, that movie "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is a classic!

Madison won't watch many of these this year. Actually, I can only see her watching two or three of these right now. But Mommy and Daddy tend to watch a lot of these each year, almost as much as they watch Christmas movies in December!

It's a fun time of year, no matter what you watch or do. And by gum, we're going to have the best fall season with Madison ever!

"Attaboy Luther!"

- The Ghost and Mr. Chicken