DS told me his science teacher has a "stuffed herpes" toy and will occasionally say OKAY, PASS THE HERPES. He thinks this is hilarious but it did also cause him to ask a bunch of somewhat uncomfortable questions.

I had no idea what he was talking about, until this post.

Last night I was helping DS7 with his French homework, and there was one question that neither of us could figure out. I told him to leave it and ask his teacher.

This morning I reminded him to hand in his homework and he didn't want to because of the unfinished question. So I said "Well ask your teacher - that's what teachers are there for".

DS: "That's not what they're there for - they are there for their careers!"

No idea we had such a cynic in our house! I swear that neither DH or I have said anything like this to him (despite the current labor dispute with the teachers where we are)!

Speaking of obscure costumes. On Thursday, DD12's new school had a Halloween party. She was excited to go, but did not want to dress up. When we picked her up afterward she said: "Guess who won best homemade costume?" Seems it was awarded by applause volume and she made an impassioned plea for having made a costume of a "regular person" by growing the cotton and spinning the thread and weaving the fabric... and so on. She basically charmed her way into a bag of m&ms (the prize).

In years past, when I was struggling with the sewing machine trying to make her some outfit, I used to dream of a time when she'd be able to handle her costume herself. Guess we are there.

DS's teacher, during my parent-teacher conference: "I always go to to DS when I can't remember something, like what page we're on in the book or where we left off or whatever, because he always knows. Actually, he just knows a lot of things generally. If I don't know the answer to a question, I sometimes just ask him because he might know. He just has so much general knowledge."

BTW, this is in a class composed only of gifted kids. She's really sweet and a good teacher, but my jaw did drop just a little.

For all the difficulties in parenting kids like this in so many ways, it merits pointing out the converse:

DD10 described how she's been getting angry very quickly and easily at Minecraft lately... one little mistake, and she's blowing a fuse, where she used to take it in stride.

Me: "Do you think that maybe it has nothing to do with Minecraft, and there's something else that's making you upset?"

DD10: "Yes." [cue five-minute oral self-analysis on all the different ways she's reacting to being in the active planning phase of a cross-country relocation]

That was easy.

Now if someone could point me to plush galaxies for Christmas...

DS8 was doing homework last night. I was anxious for him to finish and get to bed:

Me: You see right here it says ...
DS8 (interrupting): Mom, STOP. If you start explaining my brain stops working.

Note to me - get the heck out of the way!

Out of the blue in the car the other day:
DD6: Has anyone ever built a real time machine before?
Me: I'm sure some people have tried, but not successfully. Why? Do you want to build a time machine?
DD6: Well a time machine, a rocket ship, an airplane or a magic school bus. I haven't really decided yet. But I do know I am going to need lots of buttons.

DS4 asked that we "never, ever talk about the impacts of daylight savings time" because he "knows all about it, and the discussion is redundant."

Yeah, good thing we homeschool.

These plush planets are the best I can come up with so far:

http://celestialbuddies.com/shop/