Come fly with us

Will has really been into paper airplanes lately, making a bunch of them at day care and kindergarten, then stashing them in his backpack. So yesterday when we are at Barnes & Noble, and he saw a paper airplane kit, it made perfect sense to take it home with us. Will paid for the $10 kit with his own money, and was very excited to get change back.

Upon returning home, Will opened up the kit and was excited by the different types of paper in the box. I was overwhelmed by the 10 or so different blueprints, each requiring 20-plus steps and extensive use of fractions.

Still, we plunged forward, gathering materials and equipment to make the plane. Will asked for a glider. The first step called for cutting the paper -- and I realized that the paper included in the kit was 1/2-inch too small for these plans. Nice.

So I made the plane's fuselage (Will had a fun time with that word) out of plain, heavy white paper. Over the course of the next hour or so, I measured, folded, cut, cursed, and glued my hand to the kitchen table. Will did a great job bringing me what we needed to keep it going. At one point, I muttered to Jana, "This better be the best paper airplane we've ever seen."

And it sort of was. Even after decorating it with the paper from the kit, it still didn't look like much.

But like the Millennium Falcon before it, our plane may have been short on style, but it was long on substance. Will's first throw, which I expected to result in an immediate nosedive and crash into the floor, actually resulted in a smooth, graceful flight.

Will has taken to calling this plane an "upper-case plane" because it is larger than the pre-made plane that came with the kit, which he calls the "lower-case plane."

The plane has since crashed several hundred times and been in and out of Charlie's mouth, so it's losing its structural integrity. But it will always hold a special place in our hearts.

Rasslin'

Will has been challenging me to wrestling matches a lot lately, feeling like his muscles are getting pretty darn big and ready to put a whuppin' on his old man. The other night I suggested that, like Andy and I did when we were younger, we adopt fake wrestling names to make things more interesting.

OK, Will said, he would be Muscle Man. (To drive the point home he went shirtless). I put on the pumpkin beanie Charlie had on in the Halloween pictures below and called myself The Great Pumpkin.

After several rounds of me dominating my 4-year-old son, Will declared "Daddy, your name makes you too strong, so you need to change your name." So I went with a moniker that used to bedevil my brother: Mr. Sock. When that made my hands too warm, I went with Bandito.

Will's other names: Band Man, Jumping Man, and Speeding Man. Those worked out better for him.

Halloween, U.P. style

As we were walking along on Will's perfect Halloween night, I couldn't help remembering the disasters that my cousins and I had when we went trick-or-treating in Upper Michigan.

More often than not, there was several feet of snow on the ground. Sidewalks? No such thing. We had to be driven from house to house by my Aunt Carol, who always seemed to draw the short straw among the parents on Halloween night.

As I got out of the car, I'd put on my little plastic mask that I thought made me look like Cinderella but really made me look like pint-size bank robber. At least half the time, that evil little elastic would break, sting my face and cause the mask to fall to the ground.

I remember frantically trying to hold my mask up to my face with one hand while taking my coat off with the other. Someone yelled "trick-or-treat" before all our coats were off and we'd all be yelling, "I'M NOT READY YET!"

It was horrifying ... disappointing ... and without a doubt one of those things that make me laugh until my stomach hurts whenever I get together with my family.

Hopefully, Will's perfect trick-or-treating experience is as memorable.

Rejected Halloween costumes

Halloween ended up being a lot of fun for us even though Will and Charlie had a hard time deciding what to be this year.


First, Charlie outgrew his Pea in the Pod costume. Well, I'm not sure if he outgrew it or if he just didn't want to "copy" Will (see picture of Will circa 2004).

Then he decided to go as Zorro but we wouldn't let him hold a sword and his mask was a little too colorful. He did try it on for Katy who thought he looked pretty cute.



He finally just settled on being a pumpkin since he's roughly that shape anyway.

Will didn't have it much easier. Grandma Clary got him a Spiderman costume but it didn't have a mask. He tried to add the Storm Trooper mask that Daddy got from Comic-Con, but we weren't buying the "Spider-Trooper" he was trying to sell.

He was thrilled when we found an actual Storm Trooper costume on clearance. Of course, there weren't a lot of sizes left and it ended up being a bit too "fitted." Doesn't matter, he had a blast and, he reports, all the kids thought his costume was the "coolest."

Halloween 2008

Will arrived home after about a week in the U.P. just in time for trick-or-treating. He had missed the Scandinavia hours on Sunday so we figured we'd head to Waupaca instead.

Turned out to be a great night. Will got only about a 10th of the candy but had about 10 times as much fun.

The weather was in the 60s and the atmosphere of the historic district was amazing. The houses were decorated and many of the people giving out candy were in costume and character. There were crowds ... actual crowds ... of trick-or-treaters.

Below are a few pictures from that night ... enjoy!

Will the pundit

On the eve of this historic presidential election, it's a good time to share the activism Will has been exhibiting lately.

Friday, as we drove to Waupaca for trick or treating, we were listening to POTUS '08, an XM satellite radio station focused on the presidential election. One of the commentators mentioned Barack Obama.

"I don't think Barack Obama should be president," Will declared.

"Then who do you think should be?" we asked him.

"John McCain," he said.

"Why's that Will?"

"Because Grandma Clary said McCain should be president."

Interesting, we thought, because just days earlier Clary had told us she was an Obama lean. Before we could press him further, Will revealed some of his own polling data.

"Everyone in the whole world wants McCain to be president," he said.

"Not Mommy and Daddy," Jana said.

"Then everyone other than you two wants McCain to be president."

Jana was getting pretty worked up so we changed the subject and it didn't come up again over the weekend. Then tonight, Will brought it up again. Jana called her mom looking for some insight; turns out Clary never did say anything to Will about McCain or Obama.

When confronted with this fact, Will confessed. "I was trying to trick you," he said. Ah, more Republican election dark arts! But then it was revealed that maybe Will wasn't a part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

"Why do you support McCain, Will?" I asked. "Is it his leadership qualities, or the fact that Joe the Plumber says Obama wants to take away his hard-earned money and redistribute it?"

"What's a plumber?" Will asked indignantly. Not Joe (at least not a licensed plumber).

Will then went on to tell us that while he thinks McCain should be the next president, Obama was our last president -- as well as our first president. "I read it in a book ... see?" The book in question was actually the biography of Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan.

This Family Ties-like situation has been fun, as our little Alex P. Keaton has flustered his mother and amused his father. I hope it leads to many years of productive political discourse in our family.

Will's Pumpkin Pie recipe

A few weeks ago, Will wanted to make pumpkin pie ... out of one of those tiny decorative pumpkins.

"I'm not sure I know how to do that," I said.

Fortunately, Will knew just how to do it.

"First you cut it open, then you add a little salt, and you add a little pepper, a little flour and some CIMM-O-NEN."

"Some what?" I said.

"Cimm-o-nen."

"Oh, cinnamon."

"Yup. Then you put it in the oven and cook it and then you eat it."

So, he made the pie, just like he said ...



Scott cut open the pumpkin and Will removed "the guts."











Then Will added his ingredients ... salt and pepper ....












flour ...











cinnamon ...










he stirred it all up ...















and as you can see, it came out amazingly well.








We were super-excited to have Erin and Tyler visiting that day and they got to try the first few pieces. Erin even asked Will for his recipe, which he was happy to share.

I'm not so sure that Sara Lee would be so forthcoming.

An apple a day

Will has always made a lot of art projects at his daycare, but now that he's in 4K, well ... we may need to get a bigger fridge and more magnets.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Will made his "Apple Pattern Crown." There are four apples on the crown in the "red-green-red-green" pattern and it is, as he says, "awesome."

This morning, Will was wearing the crown around the house and left it on the living room floor, a mere two feet or so from Charlie.

Have we mentioned that Charlie is teething?

Well, it didn't take long for that little guy to scoot over and start chewing on that crown. By the time I noticed, it was covered in drool and ripped to shreds.

I looked behind me and there Will stood, looking devastated, tears starting to well up.

He looked so sad, I just gave him a half-hearted speech about not leaving stuff around where Charlie can get to it.

"I know, Mommy," he said, starting to sob full force. "But what am I going to do now? I don't have a crown! What will I do?"

The drama threw me for a loop, but we soon figured out that we can make a new one after school.

Here's the thing ... after more than 5 months of constantly reminding Will to "be gentle" and "not wake up the baby" and "stop squeezing his face" ... I was more than a little surprised: Who knew that Charlie would make Will cry first?

Selective hearing

The other day we were in church, and our priest was giving a homily about God's will. As part of it, he was emphasizing the need to go to church, and describing the excuses people use to rationalize not attending church. To paraphrase, he said something like this:

"They'll say 'Church is boring, it's too long, I don't get anything out of it,'" he said. "No! It is your obligation as a Catholic to go to church!"

Will, who we assumed was lost in the book he was reading, perks up and looks at me, Jana, and my dad.

"He said church is boring!" Will repeated, grinning from ear to ear, as if to say "See?!? Even the guy in the robe agrees with me!"

The old folks in front of us got quite a kick out of it. I can see Will treating this as powerful evidence in what promises to be about a 14-year battle for the Tappa family's Sunday morning agenda.

It's apple time

Recently Will's four-year-old kindergarten class took a trip to a local apple orchard to learn more about how apples grow, how to make apple cider, and how to avoid stepping in cow droppings. Even on an unseasonably cold morning everyone had fun. Captions for the photos below:

-Will was one of the first to climb the ladder and pick an apple. Unfortunately he didn't see the bug bites on it, which bummed him out.

-At the end the kids got to grind up the apples and prepare them to become apple cider.

-The kids really enjoyed playing with Farmer Honken's calf.

-Farmer Honken warned that there was a haunted house on his property. Will wasn't buying it, as much as I tried to sell it. However, Will did think that this was where Mr. Honken actually lived, leading to a barrage of cringe-inducing "My house is bigger than Mr. Honken's house" proclamations from the boy.

-Will and his buddy Logan palled around all morning.