Stop snivelin'!

In our social circle, Spring Break no longer means filthy road trips to littered Atlantic beaches (although we're in Virginia Beach right now). It no longer involves rugby tours to foreign nations, nor does it even mean a long week of sleeping in. It means coordinating our co-op child care for the week. Good thing we all have marvelous children.

It was my turn on Wednesday. I had Enchanted as a backup, but the weather was nice enough, and all four played in the back yard with nary a harsh word nor a bonk on the head. Paradise.

Now, I'm not the most entertaining or educational parent that watches these children - I tend to fold laundry while keeping an ear out for screams, instead of making forts or pound cake or taking them on hikes - but I do have one claim to fame that sooner or later some kid will call upon me to demonstrate. I draw on children. I don't draw well - fully half of the parents of these kids have art jobs or went to art school - but I give it a shot, and I admit my shortcomings. No kitties, no food, no horses. Puts me in a league with many real tattoo artists, I would say.

On this day we did two rounds of tattoos, and here's a picture of the first round: Mr Four has a face of his own design (which I would totally get tattooed on myself!), Nature Girl the classic skull and crossbones, Goldilocks wanted a butterfly, and Big Man a smaller skull - with an X.



Later, in the second round, Four added a snowflake, Nature Girl a snake around the wrist, Goldilocks wanted a heart with an arrow, which turned out very well, and Big Man got a snake around the wrist too, "with the head coming all the way down my hand".

During the course of getting his snake, Big Man learned that "Boomslang" had been high on our list as a middle name for him, and he was absolutely enraged that we didn't pick it. (A boomslang is a poisonous southern African snake.) I tried to explain that we could not have known that he'd turn out to be so interesting and broad-minded, and so we picked something (marginally) less unusual. Then I caved and told him he could change it when he got older if he wanted.

Nature Girl doesn't have a middle name, so we tried out various snake names for her: Burmese python; Common garter; Horned asp. I think she settled on Anaconda. Copperhead would have fit better, but I thought it wise to avoid the code names of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.