Two half men

I don't know what is in Zach's head. I really don't. But given some of the things that come out of his mouth, I imagine that his brain is kind of like a pixelated version of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, littered with Minecraft zombies, TNT, and talking pieces of fruit. Good thing we keep exposing him to weird stuff like Tim Burton movies, right?

Exhibit A: Zach is doing his homework at the dining room table and is feeling overwhelmed. With a heavy sigh, he puts his head down on the table and declares, "I wish this house would just fill up with...cheeseburgers."

Exhibit B: Zach is struggling to eat an ear of corn at dinner. Finally he puts it down in exasperation and announces, "I need longer teeth."

Further inspection reveals that one of his teeth is in fact loose. This will be the very first tooth he has ever lost (as opposed to the one that was pulled). Now he is totally freaking out. "You need to GLUE that tooth back in, Dad! I cannot lose it! I have to keep it in FOREVER!!!"

(I don't remember Luke losing his first tooth - is anxiety a common reaction? I guess it's kind of alarming to have blood in your mouth and then lose a part of your body, but the Tooth Fairy makes up for that, right?)

Luke is having a tough year, with more homework, and a general feeling of being put upon (especially by his challenging brother). The other day I asked him to tell me what he was most proud of, and I thought his list was interesting: "My Lego sets. My Skylanders. Being best friends with Blake. Going to movie premieres."

That afternoon we dragged - no, seriously, dragged - Luke to the beach, and he was even more annoyed once he got there not to see any of his friends there. But he hung out with Dave and they wound up having a great time engineering an extraordinary cave with four separate interconnected tunnels (miraculously, we managed to keep Zach away so he didn't break it). That night Luke told me, "I wanted to add something to the list - I was really proud of that tunnel."

Luke's karate teacher is preparing to bring a group of students to Poland for the world championships, so he's been teaching some Polish to the karate class, mixed in with Japanese phrases. On Monday Luke came home and announced, "In karate, I learned how to say, 'I'd like one more beer' in Polish!"

Like I said, things are weird over here.