Snowflakes that land on my nose and eyelashes...

The Darlings are watching The Sound of Music.

They are watching this movie for the second time today.

They took a three-hour break to go for a very long bike ride while Zio walked with them, stopping for ice cream along the way and playing at the covered bridge and playgrounds. I had stopped the first playing of the movie at the halfway point so they could do this, and when they got home they demanded that I start the movie again. I couldn't, seeing as I was in the middle of hanging laundry outside, and I in turn demanded showers of them.

I forgot that when the Big One doesn't drink enough liquid, she gets mean. She is normally a beautiful, quiet child. Dehydrate her, even slightly, at your own peril. Mean. Angry. Venomous....and since no one else was available at the time, she took this out on her brother.

Thus began The Screaming. I was almost sure you could hear it out to the highway, but I'm probably underestimating the volume, since my hearing is less than 100%. Screaming. No words, just screaming. Blood-curdling (I've always wondered how far you had to go before a scream became "blood-curdling". I wonder no more.)

I felt it best to continue with the laundry.

Eventually someone was in tears, and he came out to tell me he'd been hit and pinched, although I suspected this not to be the entire story. I went in and indicated that both of my progeny should go to their rooms for a while, but I was met with a resounding, "NO!" so that was a bit of a bust. Instead I tried taking the movie away until apologies were issued.

Not my smartest move. The screaming became Howling. Loud howling, enough to knock out my hearing aids (they have a safety device whereby they shut off and act as hearing protection at a certain decibel level. Excellent.) and enough to make me realize that the only way I could gain control of the situation was to dole out liquids. Stat.

After forcing them to drink half a litre of juice and water, they were on better terms, apologized to each other an me, had their showers, finished the second half of the movie and opted to watch it again. They are waiting for CBC's 'Find Maria' tonight, as they'll pick the final Maria tomorrow night. They are totally into this whole Sound of Music thing. It's very cute. Except for the screaming and the howling.

They can both sing quite well for little kids, and as quickly as they learn the songs in the movie, they sing along. Tomorrow they will start one week of art and drama and music camp, and they're both very excited about that.

Funny, this camp thing. Many children that we know attend summer camps; duration varying from one week up to the entire summer, and mostly, the children seem to love them. I hated day camp, it was boring and unimaginative and hot and there were never kids there that I liked. There is a huge variety of summer day camps here, so we're not limited to the run of the mill arts & crafts let's take crepe paper and twist it and then cover it and ourselves with glue so we can wrap it around a wine (whiskey, rum, coke) bottle. That was to be our crowning achievement for the week....and I'm pretty sure that at the end of this current week, there will be a show. Maybe I'll skip work to go to it.