Brutalizing!
Brutalando!
Brutalini!
A few months ago, the boys started smothering me in blankets. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my brain, but I thought of an Arnold Schwarzenegger line in Total Recall: “Come on, Cohaagen [the villain], you have what you want, now give the people air!!”—or as people like to render his accent, “Give deez people ehyar!!” From inside the stifling blanket pile I blurted out (in cheesy accent), “Come on, you little Cohaagens, give the Dad-O air!!” Man was that a hit!
Ever since then, the lads have been requesting “brutalizing” (or as they Spanglify it, “brutalando,” or in faux-Italian, “brutalini”), insisting that they be the Darn Cohaagens while I play Ahnuld. I try to get into the bathroom to turn on the fan (y’know, to give deez people ehyar), and they race around turning it off, then re-burying me in blankets. Ja, good times! 🙂
Finny had an unexpected visit to Dr. Feldman, our optometrist, last week. Recently, we’d noticed that his right eye had started to turn too far inward when he was focusing on near objects – like while he was drawing, or watching videos, or playing with Legos. He’d been to Feldman for a check-up in the spring, and everything checked out fine, so we thought it’d be a good idea to have him checked again to figure out what was going on with the eye. 
A few weeks back on my work blog, I 
Finn’s recently taken an interest in “writing books,” his at-school technique of stapling together a few sheets of paper, then scribbling down some random marks. The other night he took me on a tour of his oeuvre:
