We May as Well Live at Hogwarts

My kids are going through a serious Harry Potter stage right now. The other day I walked into the family room, and this is what I saw:

Haha! No, just kidding. But almost. This is what I really saw:

(And I just happened to be holding Henry and my copy of Harry Potter #7, and I thought it would make a cute picture.)

But seriously, we are all about Harry Potter these days. Tristan started reading them last year and really liked them, so for his birthday he got the Harry Potter movies. After we watched the first movie, Oliver decided he wanted to start reading the books. Normally I would think they were a little advanced for a kindergartner, but Ollie's not really an average 6-year old reader, so I checked out the first one from the library for him. Since then there's been no stopping him. I've also been re-reading the series, and they're even better the second time. So I guess a more accurate picture would be of me and the boys all reading our Harry Potter books together. Yes, Daniel maybe thinks we're nerds.

We thought it would be fun to wait to watch each movie until Oliver had finished the book, so he could read each book without knowing what was going to happen at the end. Tristan wasn't so thrilled about the idea - he wanted to watch all the movies right away. We ended up letting Tristan decide what to do, and he and Oliver made a little deal that Oliver will have 2 weeks to read each book. It's actually been really fun to spread the movies out. After he finished book #2, we all watched the movie, and then we all rooted for him as he read #3, and we just watched the movie about a week and a half ago. I thought there was no way he'd finish the fourth book in 2 weeks (it's over 700 pages), but he has until this Friday, and he only has a few chapters left. After that, I think Tristan's in trouble, because he's still in the middle of the fifth book, and I think Oliver might try to pass him up.

Anyway, it's been fun to see them enjoying the books so much, and I really do find them reading all over the place. There have been a lot of "Hey, where's Oliver?" moments, when he's disappeared for a few hours to read. On Sunday he asked if he could take his Harry Potter book to church, but I decided that was taking it a bit too far.

To tell you the truth, Rachel and Elizabeth might actually be our biggest Harry Potter fans. They are always pretending to be Harry Potter characters. Rachel usually likes to be Harry ("Wouldn't you rather be Hermione?" "No, thanks.") Lizza loves to be Ginny, and also loves to assign everyone in our family a character. I can never remember, and whenever I talk to any of the kids and call them by their real name, she never fails to say, "You mean Ginny?", or "You mean Harry Potter?", or "You mean Professor McGonagall?"

They painted some chopsticks black to use for wands, and they are always running around shouting spells at one thing or another. "Wingardium leviosa" and "expelliarmus" have become common phrases around here.

Also, Oliver and Rachel have been having a hard time eating their dinner lately, because they are always involved in some big Harry Potter discussion. The other night I overheard Rachel (who was being Harry) tell Ollie (who was being Ron) to give her a hug. He must have said something about how Harry and Ron didn't like each other that much, and I heard Rachel say, "Are you kidding me?!!! Did you see the way Harry's face looked in the first movie when Ron sacrificed himself in the chess game?!!! They are like best friends!!!"

It's just really funny to see a little four-year old girl get so into it. Once she ran out of toilet paper in the bathroom, and when I told her she shouldn't have started crying about it, she glared at me and said, "Well, what would you have done, Mom? It's not like you have magical powers or anything!"

Here she is as Harry - she has a few outfits that she thinks look extra "Harry Potter-ish", and if she comes downstairs dressed up in one of them, I know I better watch out.

She loves to make little "shopping lists" on the 4x6 cards that I keep in my desk, and the other day I found this little list on the kitchen counter:

(I still need a wand - Harry Potter)

I guess she had been shopping for school supplies, and that was the one thing she still had to get (Cauldron? Check. Magic wizard books? Check. Wand? Oh, wait. . .)

Speaking of cauldrons, though, she and the other kids have also had tons of fun brewing up special "potions" on the back porch. Here they are whipping up some Polyjuice potion for me. They brought some inside and dared me to drink it, but I wasn't brave enough:

Then they made me go inside because they didn't want me to see the secret ingredients they were adding. Hmmm. Should I be worried?

Name-Calling

Today I was going through some old emails, and found this little story about Elizabeth that I had emailed to my family back in November:


"Lizza did something funny a few nights ago that I wanted to write down. We were getting ready for bed and she came running to find me so she could tell on Tristan (she loves reporting on the older kids): "Mom, Tristan called me a freak!"

She knew he was going to get in trouble because I had already "counted" him twice for that same problem earlier, so she proudly followed me with a smug grin on her face as I went to find Tristan and tell him to take a time-out. Tristan went without complaint into the little time-out area, but Lizza was not ready to be done with the matter. She slammed the door behind him, and then started doing a little taunting dance, bouncing up and down with her face up against the door, singing, "Nah-nah-nah, you have to go in a time-out", which I probably would have just ignored, but then she finished with a big "bye-bye, ya' little freak!"

Right as she yelled "freak" at him, she turned around, still dancing and bobbing around with a "take-that" and "in-your-face" kind of look, and then she saw me standing there and stopped cold. The look on her face was so funny because she immediately recognized her mistake and realized she was going to get busted.

I started to say, "Oh, no - now it looks like you'll have to go take a time out", but she was already sending herself to the laundry room (an additional time-out area) without a fuss. I could tell she was disappointed and embarrassed for letting that last little "freak" slip out there at the end - she had just gotten so caught up in the moment of her victory dance. I was trying hard to keep the smile off my face, but kept laughing out loud whenever I pictured her doing it, because she seriously looked so funny.

I think it's my fault that my kids are even calling each other "freak" - a few weeks ago Lizza started doing these really weird tantrum things. Whenever she'd ask me to do something for her and I said I couldn't, she'd go all crazy and throw herself to the ground and start yelling, "I can't, I can't, I can't!" all the while pretending she couldn't do whatever the thing was (she'd do little half-attempts, and purposely not do it right, and then say, "see? I can't!"). Anyway, it was so ridiculous that sometimes I would just look at her and say, "Elizabeth. Why are you doing this? You are acting like a freak." For some reason, this was very amusing to the other kids, and then they thought THEY could call people freaks, and that's how it all started. So I guess I have to be mature now and not call my children names."

Thankfully in the few months since I wrote that, both the weird tantrums and the name-calling have stopped. Elizabeth continues to entertain us daily, though.

"Oh, Wait - I Have a Blog?" OR "What We Did Over Christmas Break"

Make a Smilebox photobook

Make a Smilebox photobook