It was the last week of summer. Spymom believes all boys require copious outside time. Whining, Spy and Q were dragged into the yard. “Play,” I commanded. More whining ensued.

At last, I managed to get Q to play a game of catch with me. Spy, meanwhile, was poking around the yard.

Spy catches things. Bugs mostly. Toads and frogs sometimes. Once he spent a half hour chatting to a worm as the two of them played with the hose. This day, he caught something a little more… exciting.

The scene:

“I’ve caught something! Come see,” Spy yelled.

“Be nice,” I yelled back and tossed the ball to Q. Q rolled his eyes.

“OOW! It bit me!”

Okay? Now Spy had my attention. There was nothing in that front yard that he’s caught before that has teeth.

The victim:

Spy had snagged a vole. Which was now running quickly for cover. A key question ran through my mind: Are voles nocturnal?

Once upon a time, Spy’s aunt – age 8 – was bitten by a bat in broad daylight. It flew away. And she suffered through a series of very painful rabies shots because the animal could not be analyzed.

With this in mind, I grabbed the watering can and started smacking at the vole, shoving it back toward the driveway, preventing its escape. “Go grab some Tupperware. We need to trap the vole.” I yelled at Q. “What’s Tupperware?” he yelled back, running nonetheless for the kitchen. He knew what I wanted, however, and returned with a drinking glass.

While Q crouched, holding the poor rodent captive, I dragged a shell-shocked Spy to the kitchen sink.

Yes indeed, the vole’s teeth had broken skin.

Alcohol.

Neosporin.

Too many band-aids.

I called Spydad. How convenient to have a pathologist in the family just now.

I explained the situation. “The internet is still out, thank you Tropical Storm Irene. Can you check and see if voles carry rabies?”

The answer? “Theoretically. But probably not.”

Of course, probably is not a good enough answer for a mom.

“Let your ER know, we’re coming in. And we’re bringing the vole.”

I grabbed the recently abandoned hamster Habitrail from the dining room floor (more on that later) and went back outside to wide-eyed Q. Together, we stuffed the vole into the cage and slammed the lid. Into the trunk went the cage. Within minutes, Spy and Q were buckled up.

“Am I going to have to get shots?” Spy worried from the back seat.

“Maybe,” I replied, unwilling to spare his feelings. Sometimes a little deep emotion can help impress upon a kid the severity of the situation. Thus followed a lecture about touching wild animals (specifically mammals) and the rabies virus.

We arrived in the pathology department with this in tow:

Expectant and amused faces met us at every turn. Co-workers couldn’t help but burst into laughter to see their boss carrying the multi-colored cage followed by a parade of wide-eyed boys. Spy’s adventure was today’s excitement.

Turned out we didn’t need to go to the ER. The infectious disease doctor stopped in Spydad’s office to hand over a prescription for Augmentin. He was amused. And impressed that Spy had managed to snag a wild rodent. The concern for rabies was almost zero.

That’s one thing about scientist types. You’ll never get us to commit to anything 100%.

The lab techs found this both interesting and amusing. “Let’s send it in. We never get to do this.”

Out came the forms. “Uh Oh. It says we have to send the specimen in dead. And on ice.”

“Oh,” I replied, dragging a cold pack from the snack bag I’d hastily thrown together. “Here. Use this.” ER waits can be long.

“We have to kill it,” she repeated, not looking pleased with the idea.

“Not a problem,” I replied. “Six years of mouse research has me thoroughly qualified to do the job.” I was led to a hood where I gloved up and pulled the vole from the cage. The poor thing was nearly dead of fright already. This is one of the (many) reasons wild rodents cannot be made into pets. They will die of fright. Literally.

Moments later, the vole was packaged on ice and I was being given directions to the Department of Health. We didn’t warrant a courier.

I left Spy and Q playing video games under their dad’s desk and departed. Nobody even blinked at the Dept. of Health.

Over the next 24 hours, Spy worriedly inquired about the test results. He worried so much that we covered the basics of viral and bacterial disease and what was being done to keep him safe and healthy. As such, the nasty liquid antibiotic was consumed readily, treated by Spy like a magic elixir.

A day later, the results were in: the vole was rabies free. Spy jumped up with a cheer and did a happy dance.

Spymom has since noted the family hamster has been treated with more respect.

It took one and a half hours to cross the border back into the United States. People were wandering about, chatting and walking to the Duty Free store as cars crept one car length at a time towards the border.

When at last we arrived, we’d all but finished answering the officer’s questions when Spy struck up a conversation with said officer through his window and made his own declaration. Part of it went like this:

“We have bears. But we didn’t buy them in Canada. We got them at the Teddy Bear Factory. My bear’s name is Cupcake because he’s courageous.”

Spydad and Spymom drove away snorting. Isn’t courageous the first thing that comes to mind when you see a white cupcake with pink frosting?

Then again, Spymom had promised to sew Cupcake a rainbow superhero cape when we returned home.

Here’s Cupcake wearing his Colorful Courageous Cape:

Stage 2 of Spy and Q’s vacation had us presenting passports and crossing into Canada…

where Spy and Q were forced to learn a touch of French. Arrete was the first word to be assimilated. Followed by: Bonjour, Merci, and Mouche.

Spy delighted in pointing out: Every. Single. Mouche.

And much to the amazement of Spy and Q (and the amusement of the residents of Montreal and Quebec), Spymom and Spydad exercised their dusty high school French. We expertly managed signs, menus, greetings and questions about the time (Freshman French). But from there, it was downhill.

Spy and Q were frustrated by the hotel televisions. Darn it, only the “baby” shows (think PBS) were in English. Did that deter them? Not at all. Which begs the question of the value of cartoons… (Er, Spy and Q have now found their favorite cartoons at home converted to Spanish. I have it on good authority that this will promote language fluency…. *cue the evil laugh*)

In Montreal, we visited the Montreal Science Centre and their debut of the Indiana Jones exhibit. Awesome exhibit. Catch it if you get the chance. They even had a digital ‘find-the-missing-pieces-of-your-artifact’ game that kept Spy and Q engaged, interested and busy.

We ran the Labyrinth or Labyrinthe du Hangar 16.  Very cool. Being impatient people, we opted to go with the first group available.

In French.

Oops.

So we started the maze not knowing anything and not being able to communicate well (if at all) with our fellow lab rats.

In the dark, we made our way through shredded tarps, bungee cords and bars. Up ladders and down tube slides. From up high, water guns were turned on us…

Spy was worried, tho’ eventually, 45 minutes later, we reached the end.

We also rode the Saute Moutons, a ride on a jet boat to play in the rapids of the St. Lawrence River. The website photos and video well-represent my experience. Water. Lots and lots of water crashing over us. Again and again and again.

Almost everyone enjoyed the trip.

Spy hates water in his face and so we helped him strap on goggles that we’d dragged along on our trip specifically for this part of the vacation (much to the amusement of the family in front of us).  After the first splash, Spy’s enthusiasm for this boat ride took a dive and, when a wave removed said goggles, he screamed to the captain, “Go back NOW!”

Alas, his screams were to no avail. Spy quickly learned to keep his mouth shut and clutch the bar tightly. Nothing was dry by the time we returned to shore.

Spy now considers that he has bragging rights. “We almost drowned on that awful boat ride!”

The next day we headed to Quebec City where we put Q in jail. But when the guide turned off the light, he bolted.

Solitary confinement for 30 days was a frequent punishment (followed by the pillory and a branding). It was also here that they held serial murderers. However, for children under the age of 14, no matter the crime, there was no jail time. Just punishment. For example, ages 7-14 could spend time in the pillory for crimes.

The rest of our time was spent wandering and touring Upper Quebec, Vieux Quebec, and Lower Quebec. Spy grumbled loudly and continuously every time he was forced to climb yet another hill. Overall, ’twas the battlements that most impressed Spy and Q.

Well, no. That would be a lie. What most impressed Spy and Q was the hotel pool. That and the fact that in Canada, you only had to be 7 to go in the hot tub.

Recently, we were in NYC and stumbled upon a street fair, Spy and Q’s first. It was early – not crowed and comfortably shaded – and so we began to wander down the street. Much attracted the boys’ interest, mostly as curiosities, not as anything they hoped to own.

Then Spy’s attention focused with laser-like intensity on one particular stand. They were selling real, formerly live, still glowing-in-the-dark, moon sea jellyfish embedded in glass. Month five of Spy’s deep sea creature obsession.

They were cool, no mistaking that, and Spymom and Spydad made a half-hearted promise to stop on the way back, perhaps to purchase.

Oops.

Time passed, streets were crossed and stands were examined. Then Spy stopped mid-street staring toward Central Park (still several blocks away). “It’s going to take forever!” he declared.

“Oh, Spy, we’re not going to walk all the way to the end,” I reassured him, thinking his feet might be tiring or that he grew bored as the stands began to repeat their displays.

He looked up at me with sad, distressed eyes. “But we’re already FOUR blocks away! It’s going to take forever to get back.”

Spy had been counting the number of streets we’d crossed since the jellyfish stand.

Yes, we now own our very own glow-in-the-dark ***, real, formerly-live, moon sea jellyfish. Spy carefully selected one, then ascertained that a parent was indeed carrying his precious find after every sit-down stop in NYC that day. It now rests in a place of honor for all to admire.

*** Technically it fluoresces under UV light – it’s a GFP-expressing jellyfish. Those scientists who first developed the use of Green Fluorescent Protein in biological research won a Nobel prize. And Spymom spent several years making use of GFP herself and so was easily swayed to argue on Spy’s behalf.

I’ve been asked about how I taught Spy to read so many times that I’ll post it all here. I’m not looking to start a fight of phonics vs. whole language vs. whatever. Plenty has been written and posted about that elsewhere. This is just a travelogue of what worked for me and for one kid (n=1).

So.

Back in December, it became quite clear that Spy’s ‘reading’ was more ‘memorization of particular books’ or ‘sight words’. And he wasn’t even doing that particularly well. Halfway through first grade and he was only at a Kindergarten reading level (DRA 4). Not good.

We’d been doing the ’10 minutes of reading’ at home and were getting the sinking feeling that something wasn’t right. His school teacher confirmed this. Spymom started researching.

After coming across this article at http://donpotter.net/education_pages/ (or just Google ‘Don Potter Lippincott’), Spymom was struck with inspiration. I’d been taught using this wildly successful phonics reading program: Lippincott Basic Reading. Running over to Amazon.com and other used online bookstores, I searched and hunted and found those old books. I’d've known those dotted covers anywhere.

I started by ordering the accompanying text’s workbooks. They’re still in publication, but I’m gathering from the lack of photos on Amazon.com, that they may be following in the path of their textbooks. I ordered all three (A=K, B=1st grade, C=2nd grade) and dragged Spy back to the very beginning.

We rocketed through Workbook A. After each new phonics sound, a list of words is introduced followed by a series of worksheets to practice the sound. Finally, you arrive at an eight-page booklet with a short story using those new (and all the old) sounds. Spy loved hitting the booklets.

Worried that he might not be getting enough reinforcement/reading practice from the workbooks alone, I ordered the old (1970s) Lippincott Basic Readers that I learned from:

AND the newer incarnation (1985) which introduced new, updated stories:

Why the books? They have stories in them that track with the introduction of phonemes in the workbooks. Basically, I’d introduce the sound with Spy, read the accompanying words, work through the worksheets, read the booklet…. then we’d go to the text and review all the words for that sound (the book contains a corresponding word list) and then read the stories in the book further reinforcing the phonics lesson. Yes, we read both the ‘dot’ book and the more modern book.

I was a lucky teacher. Spy flew through Workbook A (and accompanying texts) in three weeks. It snowed a lot here, which gave me lots of time to work with Spy. When the school re-tested his DRA levels at the end of January, he was at a DRA level 14 – dead smack on the mean for his classroom.

Workbook B and texts took a month and a half. Spy was sounding out words like ‘oxygen’ and ‘auditorium’. He started reading everything spontaneously. Water bottles. Menus. Museum signs. Spy was super proud of himself.

Workbook C and texts were done in just under two months. Very few words now escaped Spy’s decoding skills.

In just over four months, Spy was reading.

I don’t have an official DRA level, but SpyAunt is a teacher and has helped me determine that he’s reading on a level 28/30, the expected level for a child completing second grade.

For his summer reading practice Spy has opted to read from the ‘Harry Potter’ series (well above his ‘level’ at a DRA of 44-50). Most level 28/30 books were rejected as ‘boring’. (Sigh. I have a few we’ll work on later, but he’s on a Harry Potter kick right now and I’m going to run with it.) By no means is he reading the Harry Potter series on his own for enjoyment. It’s work and we stop to discuss vocabulary at least once a page. But Spy constantly surprises me by sounding out incredibly complicated words I am almost certain he hasn’t encountered before.

All in all, a resounding success.

Spy and Q were overheard a few days ago discussing the ‘dirty’ state of the family cat. Darwin has been spending much time on the screen porch monitoring chipmunks, squirrels and birds. In the process, he has become coated with pollen, dust and spider webs.

Conversation turned to the idea that perhaps they should “clean up” the cat by means of a bath.

Spymom is of a mind to lean back and watch that attempt.

We do, after all, have plenty of band aids and Neosporin.

Spy and Q were drawing with chalk on the driveway. Each had his own plans. These plans conflicted with the other’s. Turf wars erupted and despite ongoing hostilities, nothing was solved that evening.

The next day, while Q was away, Spy resolved the issue by encroaching upon Q’s property. Spy then set up satellites to prevent Q from retaliating.

Careful, they’ll shoot your chalk helicopters right out of the sky.

Yesterday, we took Spy and Q to see The Flying Karamazov Brothers in NYC.

Given the show’s name was 4Play, Spydad and Spymom previewed this YouTube video and a couple of reviews just to be certain it was kid friendly.

It was. Extremely.

Take a moment and go catch glimpse of these four men in kilts. I’ll wait.

It’s worth your time. Promise.

We had second row seats in a small theater down near NYU. Fortunately for Spy (and for whomever was supposed to sit there), the two seats in front of him were empty.

The show opened as the Brothers Karamozov (Pavel, Alexei, Zossima and Nikita) rhythmically drummed upon and then rhythmically destroyed a number of cardboard boxes. Spy was bouncing in his seat, laughing. As they walked from the stage, one wearing his box over his head, Spy turned to us with glee in his eyes. It was his kind of show.

Particularly since the performers encourage audience participation.

Spy doesn’t need much encouragement. He participated. Repeatedly.

E.g. #1:

As one brother juggles raw eggs a mere four feet away, Spy yells, “Throw it on the floor!”

“Not my job, kid,” Zossima replies, not missing a beat.

The crowd cracked up.

E.g. #2

Pavel is lining up items of ‘extreme danger’ to be juggled for the finale. He holds up a torch and announces, “Item number…”

And in this pause for effect Spy yells, “TWO!”

“No, kid! Number FIVE,” Pavel says, walking away, rolling his eyes.

E.g. #3

This was Q’s moment. The brothers ask to juggle improv items from the audience. Q tosses up his mohawk hat to join 9 other items. It’s not chosen. Instead, the brothers fling it back and forth wearing it as a crown, banging the stage with a hockey stick (another improv item) as they take turns playing Roman emperor.

What items were juggled? An apple pie, a stuffed cloth chicken and the hockey stick.

E.g. #4

At one point, Spy is so excited, and getting so loud and so far out of his seat, that Spydad clamps his hand over Spy’s mouth and tries to haul him back into his chair (and off the kind lady to his right). The Brothers catch this and, in the middle of improv, all move as one to mock Spydad.

Three of them suddenly point to the lights, hopping up and down on stage and yelling.

One brother clamps his hand over another’s mouth, dragging him backward across the stage.

Nikita stopped hopping to look at Spydad, “Glad to see censorship is alive and well in America, dad.”

E.g. #5

We, the audience, were warned that the next part was improv juggling and that pins would be dropped. If, we were instructed, they landed in the audience, we were to leave them where they lay. The Brothers, tossed, spun around and did all kinds of impressive tricks. And, yes, a few were dropped. One pin skittered off the stage and landed on the floor in the front row. The Brothers then began to argue with each other, insisting that they should get the pin back. An eleven year old boy in the front row near Spy was exhorted to return the pin. That kid refused to move.

Spy, in complete affinity with the Brothers, drops to the floor and, before Spydad could catch him, army crawls under the chair in front of him, retrieves the pin and pops up with it, waving it in the air.

“Oh, there it is! The chatty kid in the second row’s got it.”

“Oh, good.”

“Throw it here kid!”

With no hesitation, Spy wings it back on stage.

“Thanks!” they all yell.

Spy is bouncing with glee.

Spymom and Spydad are relieved no one was injured.

At the end of the show, the people behind us tell us how much fun it was to have Spy in front of them, and the lady who sat next to Spy waves an amused goodbye. Spy is still bouncing with excitement after 90 minutes of juggling and improv comedy.

On the way out, we meet one of the brothers at the door as they said goodbye to their audience.

“He was the one in second row?” Alexei Karamazov asks.

I nod.

Smiling down at Spy, Alexei says, “He was great. We loved him.”

Gleeful, Spy hops over to meet the other brothers where Spydad announces, “It’s Q and Spymom’s birthday today.”

One of the brothers yanks Q’s hat from his hand, pops it back on his head and begins to sing. And so our theater experience ended with a three-part “Happy Birthday” serenade.

We’d laughed so hard for 90 minutes our faces hurt.

Spy loves insects. Worms too. And when a spider is trapped in our house, we call him to execute catch and release.

So it seemed natural to let him have the ant farm he so desperately craved: AntWorks. Space age gel? Well, that’s because NASA wanted to study ant tunneling in space and they needed a substrate that wouldn’t collapse the tunnels during lift off. AND the gel contains all the food and water the ants need.

Spy insisted that we order the harvester ants immediately. He stood by my elbow and monitored the online ordering process to be certain it was complete before heading to the bus stop. His first question that afternoon as he got off the bus, “Are they here yet?”

Patiently, he waited two whole days. Then they came in a plastic test tube, all 25 of them.

But the next morning, one made an escape. The lid wasn’t perfectly flat. Easily solved with two pieces of scotch tape. Unfortunately, we lost two and one was mushed in his attempt – forever entombed between the lid and the bottom to serve as a grisly reminder to his cohort.

So we spent the next few weeks watching them build tunnels. Fascinating.

And then they were shuffled to the side until this past Saturday when Spy moved them to the middle of the kitchen table as he worked on an art project. Hours passed. Spy moved to a computer game. Spymom, Spydad and Q were in another room when it grew eerily quiet in the kitchen.

All of you know I should have investigated. But I was tired and so I waited.

When at last I pried myself off the couch, Spy headed me off at the doorway. He shoved a finger in my face. One dead mushed ant.

“He got out!” Smiles. “But I fixed it.”

Indeed he had – and using materials easily at hand: Glitter Glue.

“Now they can’t get out,” Spy stated proudly. Then he explained the extra gold glitter glue on the lid. “And at night, they’ll think they see stars.”

Spymom wonders if this will affect oxygen levels, but chose to stay silent…

About a month ago, we sat down with Spy and Q and developed a work chart for allowance. One ‘task’ for Spy was: stay in your bed and go to sleep. Spymom forks over $0.25 per night. Completing homework & piano practice without whining is worth $0.10 each. But the biggest money maker? Wash the dog = $0.50.

One day not too long after the chart was taped to the fridge (It’s stainless and non-magnetic. Poor Spy at age 4 upon move-in sadly stood in front of it trying to get his magnetic letters to stick only to watch them slide to the ground. But I digress…) Spy heard spymom comment to spydad, “The dog really stinks. What has she been rolling in?” It was a busy morning, 15 minutes until bus time. Spy, who was ready to go, coaxed the dog up the stairs and into his bathroom. Spy and Nira play often in the morning, so I thought nothing of it.

10 minutes later, the dog returns with white stuff on her back. Spy proudly proclaims, “I washed the dog!”

Well, he tried. It’s just that toothpaste on a hairbrush doesn’t work all that well.

So I’ve finally met Spy’s teacher. I think I shall call her ‘M’. Here’s why.

Spy started out the year a touch nutsy, so M gave Spy his first mission. She handed him a STOP sign and assigned him the duty of making certain that the first graders did not run to the bus at dismissal time. Spy loves giving orders and loved it even more when they all came to a respectful yet screeching halt. Yes, M confirmed, Spy stood out in the hallway and announced/reminded the entire first grade that: “We have to walk or we might fall and get boo boos.” M informs me that Spy drags a chair into the hall every day and takes up his post. The job is his as long as he wants it.

And when Spy stirred up trouble in the cafeteria the first week? M gave him the task of watching the clock. When the big hand on the clock hits the ’2′, he reminds his table that  it is time to buy ice cream and when the hand hits the ’3′, he instructs them all to begin cleaning up. No trouble with Spy in the cafeteria anymore. He’s too busy running things.

And his ‘teacher’s helper’ tasks have expanded. He is now in charge of teaching all his classmates how to get the mail from the office for M. And when a classmate is injured, he gently places his arm around their shoulders, reassures them it will be okay and escorts them to the school nurse.

M has given Spy so many missions, he has no time to misbehave.

Spy is a first-grader now. It boggles the mind.

And there’s this new kid in his class who keeps ‘bugging’ him. Poking at him in line, yanking on his backpack, and generally making a pest of himself. Spy has been ‘telling’ on this kid a lot. Probably WAY more than the teacher wants to hear about the ‘situation’. But what she might not yet realize is that Spy has been summoning all his reserves to not clobber the kid.

And yesterday, Spy announced that he needed a play date with him.

“What?”

“I’m going to ‘vite him over and in the middle of our play date I’m going to teach him not to bother me and then we’ll finish playing.”

No, Spy was not going to bring out the brass knuckles (so far as I know, he hasn’t any). Spy intended to sit the kid down and lecture him on good behavior in the classroom.

This might be the pot calling the kettle black – I’ll know more in a month at parent-teacher conferences – but we commend Spy nightly for his restraint.

Once again Spy and Q are in their underground engineering lab working on their fledgling skills to take over the world using robots.

This time, they’ve actually managed to animate their creation. Spy did the design work and and Q provided the labor.

Up from the cellar come Spy and Q (safety glasses shoved onto their foreheads) with this joint creation:

With all the appropriate mechanical creaky sounds, his arms MOVE!

The arm on the right sports a toothpaste gun.

Inside beats a red light indicating a connection to the remote control which Q uses to control each arm’s movement separately.

And those glowing green eyes? Here’s a view from the top.

Next time, plans are to make the robot walk.

Yesterday a huge machine arrived to grind up our street in preparation for new pavement. After a few passes, it stopped. Q wanted to check it out. So we went down to the street and met the man who was replacing the grinding pegs underneath. Q was full of questions for him. Before I knew it, he was underneath with the driver getting a lesson on how it worked. Moments later, the two of them had the side of the truck open for an explanation of the two different drive belts. All I have retained is that this behemoth of a truck weighs 70 thousand pounds.

Today, the grader and the roller are out in force and we almost have a smooth surface. But all the beeping of the trucks has our poor dog, Nira, terrified. (She’s trained to respond to a beeping electric fence collar and is convinced – despite my having removed the collar – that she is about to be electrocuted.)

This past February, Spy came home with these shoes:

“We studied Jackson Pollock in art today,” said Spy. The art teacher had them throwing paint on the floor and Spy had “The Best Time Ever” in art class.

We took Spy and Q to New York City during winter break. One of our stops was at the MOMA to see the Tim Burton exhibit (This exhibit fascinated Spy to no end – one particular image really caught his attention: a toilet at the end of the hall that had teeth.)

After the Burton exhibit, we took Spy up the escalator to view a real Jackson Pollock. He wasn’t very impressed. After the Burton art, I had to agree with him. But he did make an impression the guard. Spy ran headlong in the gallery and dove for the cushioned bench in the middle of the room. The guard hopped to attention and – for just a moment – I though he just might jump on top of Spy to protect the art.

We dragged him from the room after that, thoughts of headline news running through Spydad and Spymom’s heads.

School’s wrapping up now, and we’re getting all kinds of artwork sent home.

Here’s Spy’s rendition of ‘Jackson Pollock, Untitled’:

Many of you followed a number of iPhone uploads during our Spring Break vacation to AZ, UT and CO (with a brief stop in NM). Here are Spy and Q’s favorite parts.

The boys loved the Pink Jeep Tour in Sedona, AZ. Particularly the ‘going over cliffs’ part:

Q was psyched to see the Grand Canyon. We almost missed it because of the snow. But it cleared up the next morning:

Goblin State Park was a huge hit. Kids are allowed to climb on the formations. Spy and Q spent a good hour zooming. Slept like logs that night:

Spymom and Spydad’s greatest worry was the 32 foot ladder leading to the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. Spy and Q LOVED it.

And they became Jr. Rangers. This Park Ranger made them WORK for their badges:

And the Monument Valley horseback tour was quite possibly “The Best Day Ever”. Q’s horse behaved and the Navajo guide only had to stop Spy’s horse from running away once.

Spy got some at a birthday party.

We let him have a handful for dessert that night, leaving a good half the candy canister full.

It was nearly empty the next morning.

Seems Spy snuck downstairs in the dark and carried them away…

Grandma found half of the wrappers tucked in a corner behind the bathroom door and the other half tucked inside the cardboard tube of the extra roll of toilet paper.

Twice a week Spy brings home a packet from school containing a word ring (sight words) and a book at his reading level to read with spymom and spydad.

For a while, the reading level was fairly consistent. Then there was a dramatic swing to the easy side when a book featuring adorable baby animals arrived in his backpack.

Spydad and spymom’s eyebrows went up. Had Spy been demoted?

And just last night, there was a book a bit beyond his current abilities called The Bravest Cat! featuring a true story about a mother cat named Scarlett who rescued her kittens from a burning building.

So we asked.

Turns out Spy isn’t happy with the books his teacher has been assigning him. When Mrs. C turns her back, he swaps out his reading material for a book that he wants to read.

T’was the seventh night of Hannukah, and all through the house
A creature was stirring, but it wasn’t a mouse.

The children weren’t nestled all snug in their beds,
Because visions of chocolate gelt danced through Spy’s head.

Then from the dining room we heard a faint patter,
The sound of little feet, tinfoil, and a clatter.

We rounded the corner, but no Spy was there,
The room was empty – deserted and bare.

But there in the corner, behind a door in the dark,
An empty glass and gold foil – Spy’d  been on a lark.

We looked at each other, spydad scratching his head,
When we heard the sound of feet heading back up to bed.

As Spy ran the stairs, chocolate dribbling from his chin,
He turned back to us, laughing with a big Cheshire grin.

Q has decided to work on his spy skills.

This morning, some five minutes before the bus was due, Spy and Q decided to hide from Spymom.

I’d last seen them in the dining room doing something with Lego on the floor, but it was quiet there now.

Their Lego projects generally ‘fly’, so I called up the stairs, “Bus! Coats and shoes!”

Silence.

So I repeated the call up the stairs to the room over our garage.

Silence.

I’m walking through the house calling, “You’re going to miss the bus…” when I hear giggles and thumps.

Spy and Q drop to the dining room floor.

They were stretched out on the dining room chairs hiding under the tablecloth.

Q informs me, “We’re working on finding good hiding places.”

Great. Just great.

Spy obtained a ‘Disco Light Ball’ yesterday.

This is what we found last night on the floor of his room in the dark:

Two lines of little people stood in the center of Main Street staring up at the disco ball as it spun on his desk.

So of course, we asked.

“The people are being hypnotized by the light so they won’t see the bank robbers break out of jail.”

As it goes at home, so it goes in Kindergarten.

Here’s the note we got today:

Primary Self Assessment Practice

Major Concept: Following Directions

Objective: To Follow directions from the teacher the first time.

Assessment: Fail ***

Comments: Understood and repeated the direction and chose to do something different (colored page 2 instead of page 1 because he wanted to).

*** The unhappy frog was circled.

Today Spy broke a code on the TV timer – his brother’s.

Toward the end of summer, Spymom was tired of monitoring Spy and Q’s TV time and so BOB was purchased.

Each child gets 3.5 hours of TV time per week. Every Friday, it reloads. Spy and Q each have their own PIN number. They type in the code, BOB beeps and they turn on the television. When the time is up, BOB disconnects them from TV, Wii and the DVR. BOB works beautifully and has considerably cut down on TV time and kept Spy and Q from arguing about whose turn it is to pick the TV show.

Then today, Spy broke his brother’s code.

Spydad noticed Spy standing before BOB punching in numbers. BOB kept buzzing, denying him. Turns out he knew some of Q’s numbers and – having used all of his BOB time – was attempting to use his brother’s. Minutes later, BOB chirped and the TV went on. Spy had broken his brother’s code.

In quotations are Spy’s exact words.

Sigh.

Ready?

Today, the kids “on the list” in Spy’s Kindergarten class lined up to go to speech therapy. Spy was curious, bored or perhaps both – so he got in line.

No, he’s not “on the list”.

Yes, Spy left his classroom in disguise. And he did it so well that he made it all the way to the speech therapy classroom and was participating in the exercises before discovery.

“Why? Why did you want to go?” I asked.

“To see where they were going. The teacher there has a whole jar full of lollipops and she has stickers.” Pause. “But Mrs. C. was mad. She was looking all over the school for me.”

Yes indeed, his teacher was not happy. But ultimately, Spy was located and returned to his classroom before he was able to obtain a lollipop.

But he did get his sticker.

*

*

It was a family outing. Spy was allowed to bring his stuffed horse along. But then, predictably, he started smacking his brother with it. There were howls from the back seat, threats were made, and finally, just as he took aim at spydad (driving), I snatched the stuffed animal from his hands.

Minutes later, I asked for a tissue.

Ha!

Spy took the box and pinned it between himself and the door, far beyond my reach without ordering the car to a stop. And he gave me that grin. You know the one I’m talking about.

It was clear that he would trade tissues only for the hostage I held…*

*

In an undisclosed location (Grandpa’s Cellar), Spy and Q receive intense training in electronics.

Once upon a time, my father received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering. He went on to medical school, shifting his focus to the electrical system in humans and is now a neurologist by profession. Did he give up those EE skills? No. They simply went underground.

Literally.

Growing up, lights would dim and strange sounds would emerge from the basement….

Today, this underground facility is still in use, occasionally for Spy and Q’s training.  As spymom, my only request was that my children be returned with both eyes and all ten fingers. Yes – for now – there are safety regulations.

At this bench, Grandpa teaches them the basics of wiring electrical circuits:

Nearby, deceased electronics are subjected to dissection:

What? You can’t tell what that is? Look harder….

Did anyone guess? Its a (former) VCR. In the past, a microwave oven… a TV… no one dares throw anything electronic out. I believe an alarm clock is slated for the next postmortem.

A lot of other interesting activities go on down there. One activity is the training Spy and Q receive using remote controls. Sure, they think they’re just playing while they crash remote control cars into piles of soda cans, styrofoam blocks and cardboard boxes. But secretly, Grandpa is training them to operate remote controlled airplanes so they can join him one day on the airfield. Drones are probably only one step beyond that…

Hot glue guns, balsa wood projects, saws, nails, wires… all this and more is at their disposal. Spy and Q can’t get down into the cellar fast enough when they arrive at Grandpa’s house.

For now, the experiments seem harmless enough. But at ages five and eight, its early days. I wouldn’t be surprised if Grandpa has an old electromyograph down there somewhere… so if Spy and Q start talking needles, muscle potentials and nerve conduction, I might just have to intervene.

Then again, NASA is working to interface man and machine by connecting people directly to computers in order to control flight systems using electromyographic signals. Perhaps Spy and Q will just be getting a head start.

This weekend, we are heading to an undisclosed location where Spy and Q frequently train: Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Which brings to mind one incident that foreshadowed future Spy activities.

Spy was a mere three and a half years old, but already demonstrating worrisome tendencies. This particular night, we tucked our children into separate upstairs bedrooms. Q, as usual, dropped to sleep like a rock. Spy, as usual, didn’t understand the need for sleep.

Nevertheless, we baby-gated him in, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

For a while, there was the usual noise overhead. Then silence. We figured he’d fallen asleep after an exhausting day of tramping through the countryside and generally wearing down all the adults.

We figured wrong.

My parents have a downstairs bedroom, connected to the house by a walk-through bathroom. Spy’s grandmother stepped away from the conversation and entered the bathroom. All the lights were off in that section of the house. All was quiet.

Then a red dot appeared on her chest.

And she knew it could mean only one thing.

Walking into her bedroom, she threw on the lights. There was Spy. Seeing no reason to sleep, he’d scaled the baby gate, descended rather steep stairs in the dark, slipped past a room full of adults and into the dark bedroom in search of one of the best toys at Grandpa’ house: a laser pointer.

*

*

The Spy and Q spend most of their free time building and playing with Lego. The other weekend, they built a little Wall-e. And then they went nuts. At peak, 20 robots were counted. An entire army. There were Wall-e transport vehicles, boats, planes… an entire compound.

Meet their leader:

The compound came complete with a night club including a hot tub, a bar (drinks & food), and a dance floor with flashing lights. You know, so the robots can relax after their missions. (Which begs the question: How do my children know about night clubs?)

Where did the flashing light come from? It turns out they pulled apart one of those bouncy balls with a pressure activated light in the middle. Q discovered that the light could be activated by completing the circuit using Spy’s tongue.  Q doesn’t care for the mild shock involved, but Spy doesn’t seem to mind.

*

*

Today, Q built a small box out of Lego for Spy.

Spy filled this box and gleefully presented it to his father.

His unsuspecing father (football was on, it was the perfect setup) opened this box.

Really, he should have picked up on the giggling.

A giant ant crawled out and started running across his lap.  Spy had located such a large ant that its pinchers were easily visible.

Spy has no fear of bugs. He thinks they’re cute.

He’s just lucky he didn’t try this one on me.

*

*

Its the first full day of Kindergarten. Day 3.

Spy now has an assigned seat on the bus. He’s the only one.

Why?

Because, as a spy in training, he recognized the value of those high-backed school bus seats. Crouching, he waited for unsuspecting elementary school children to board the bus. They sat. He popped up and bopped them on the head. Repeatedly.

The principal is now aware of Spy’s activities.

And Spy now sits in the front seat surrounded on either side by Q and another older child. That’s right, Spy rides the school bus under guard.

*

*