Ice Box Art: The Ratio of Hotness to Craziness and The Life-Cycle of Dating

What Kid Artwork Hangs from Clark Kent's Icebox?

So my wife walks into the office the other day and holds up these two sheets of paper. I squint a bit, and lean forward in my chair. What the... All I can make out is the color of the markers that were used, but even so, I knew these had to be something from the mind of Allie. Her sister Avery is the artistic one who draws various family members, over-zealous flowers, and HAZMAT kits; Allie's more prone to graphs and charts which is exactly what her mother was smirking about at the moment.

"Oh no. What'd she come up with this time?" I asked.

That was the cue for my wife to burst out laughing. "Well," she finally said, lifting one sheet higher than the other, "This one's supposed to be a graph that shows the ratio of Crazy to Hotness in women."

I closed my eyes, unsure if I wanted to know the explanation behind this one. My curiosity as per usual in such situation got the best of me. "And this came from ...?" I trailed off mid question for my wife to fill in the details.

"How I Met Your Mother," my wife said. Apparently, while my wife was watching an episode of the TV show, How I Met Your Mother, Allie had curled up next to her and was following along. I'm not going to go into a long, drawn-out run down on the show, but one of the characters, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), plays a lovable, but cocky metro, womanizer who often shares his whacked-out theories on the fairer sex--in this particular case,the correlation between a woman's physical attractiveness and their mental stability during a relationship. Or to put it in simpler terms, the hotter a woman is, the more crazy she is too. (I know people, but it's only a TV show.)

The Ratio of Crazy to Hotness - Thanks, Barney

Hearing this, Allie was able to visualize the concept and commenced to putting this theory down on paper (hence the "How I Met Your Mother" heading). As a testament to her blossoming intellect, Allie also included a couple circles (1 & 2) to indicate examples. Who she had in mind for these two points was never mentioned, but if you asked me #1 would be the lady who does Houston's weather on morning TV, and #2 would be--oh boy, so many to pick from--I'm gonna say Megan Fox.

But the theoretical graphics didn't stop here as Allie went on to outline Relationships via The Life-Cycle of Dating--a concept completely of her own mental processing faculties. For both my wife and me, the sequence was a little muddled (even Allie got a little confused when asked later), but we made our best guess at it.

Relationships: The Life-Cycle of Dating

The first thing to point out is that the whole concept of dating basically centers around Marriage and begins with (1) a Cute Guy. (It's been two days and I'm still rolling my eyes over item number one.) From Cute Guy the next milestone is to (2) Date--not bad, except it moves disturbingly quick to (3) Marriage. By the same token, I am quite happy to see there are no direct lines from Dating to 4 (Kiss), 5 (Make Out), or 6 (Kids). I plan to vigorously reinforce these connections with the girls until they can no longer be claimed as dependents on a tax form.

It's sad, though, that Allie has (7) Divorce listed as part of the cycle, but that is a reality in our family, and not something we shy away from when talking with the kids. There's a lot of discussion around here about the consequences for decisions we make in life, to include relationships which is where number 8, Effects comes from, which means, despite everything, at least the message is getting through to her.

What still puzzles me, though, is the connection between Cute Guy and Divorce. I have a few theories of my own which I plan to test out on the her future dates who I am less than thrilled about.

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Clark Kent's Icebox: Mommy's Moods

Every once in a while, as any proud parent, I'll post something the kids have created on my "virtual" refrigerator, Clark Kent's Icebox. (Clever huh? ...never mind.) This is one of those incidents. A few weeks back Ashley and the girls went to have lunch with some friends. Turns out, Allie and Avery were the only kids at a table full of adults, quickly lead to boredom. To keep their minds occupied, Ashley handed them each a pen and told them to draw something on the napkins.

This seemed to do the trick for a while. Allie, for reasons unknown, came up with an artistic concept of drawing faces depicting her mother's moods from good to bad. Avery, who was obviously moved by her sister's flair and passion for the project, followed suit with her own interpretation of the same subject matter ...which by the end, strayed into the abstract.

See what I mean for yourself...

Here's Allie's...

And this would be Avery's...

And then mommy's mood takes a drastic David Lynch-nose dive...

There's a child therapist somewhere thinking that our family has issues.

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Clark Kent's Icebox: Supergirl, God & Free Stuff

From time to time I'll post a regular deal called Clark Kent's Icebox, which is basically the web version of showing off the stuff our kids have done. They're a creative bunch, and I'd love to know what goes through their brains when they're doing these kinds of things.

Today's offerings feature Avery's handiwork: A lovely rendition of Supergirl (Yessss! Stepdad 1, the Establishment 0) done in Crayola markers on construction paper. The other is a note Avery wrote to God a few days back (we're still working on the postage), which also makes me curious as to what her concept of God is. The other day she wondered allowed, "Wouldn't it be cool to be the first person when God started?" Yeah, I guess it would.

Enjoy the exhibit (you can click on the image to make it larger)



In case you can't quite make out the note, I'll transpose it:

"Dear God, I love you so much. I hope all the people up there are safe."

Oh and did you notice that FREE sign taped to the fridge door? Well that's there to let you know that you can now a FREE CHAPTER from Sugar Milk before the release date.

All you have to do is send an email to publicity@sugarmilkbook.com and write "FREE CHAPTER" in the subject line. A PDF file of the chapter "Not In Kindergarten Anymore" will be emailed back to you.

It's about my one daughter's career as a kindergarten life coach, the ways schools embezzle parent's money, and how things change. Hope you like it.

Brought to you by Dad-Blogs and Fatherhood Friday

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How To Write An Honest Thank You Note: Clark Kent's Icebox

The girls' dad has a girlfriend who the girls have nicknamed "Poofa." Poofa is very nice, and the girls like her quite a bit. When Poofa and the girls' dad attended the recent Curriculum Night, she brought them a couple things.

This week the girls sat down to write her a thank you note, and they held nothing back. The note was so... expressive, I thought I'd post it on Clark Kent's Icebox.

Like I said, the girls were very honest, almost a little sardonic even.

In case your can't read it...



... they really loved the socks though.

(In truth the girls were sincerely grateful for Poofa's gifts to them. It was just a tough day at school.)

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More Fridge Art

From time to time I like to post the kids' masterpieces on our virtual refrigerator to show off like only parents can do. It's a well-known fact that me and my boys are classic Star Wars geeks, but in recent months I've managed to make a new convert to the dark side - Allie. After watching a few of the movies, she's been almost obsessed with all thing Star Wars. Admittedly, it's touching to see her shun Barbie and Ken dolls, favoring instead Padme and Anakin Skywalker. When we go to the toy store, the first item Allie picks up is a light saber, and during drives she peppers me with questions like, "Does Darth Vader still think about Pademe when he's choking people?" Of course, I'm thrilled about her new found interest, and freely encourage it, drawing the line only at her wanting to wear the famous Princess Leia bikini.

What does this have to do with IceBox Art? At school her first-grade class is afforded time to write stories, and Allie has been coming home with an on-going series of her own fan fiction about the galactic saga, which includes hand-drawn illustrations of the characters and scenarios. They are just too good not to share...

Among her fascinations, light sabers hold a special place



She nailed this likeness of RD-D2 ( she spelled it out) like Luke Skywalker did wamprats on his home planet.



Yes, the Force is strong with this one.

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Kindergarten Hazmat Art

A while back I started a series (okay, I say series, but this is only the second one) tagged Clark Kent's Icebox. On these posts I display some of the kids' artwork on a refrigerator they same way you would at home when your children bring home pictures you want to show off. The difference with Clark's Icebox being that the refrigerator is a "virtual" fridge (you'll see, bare with me). Now that school's started, there's practically a limitless supply of items to be hung so I'll probably do this a little more (then I can call it a series for real). I just wish I could get the boys' mother to send me stuff they create. I'm getting off track here.

Last week Avery, who I must say is quite the artist (I have to post her picture of God - mind-blowing), brought home this picture taped to the Icebox. Apparently her kindergarten class has the last part of the day reserved for unstructured drawing time "to let them wind down," according to her teacher. Thus there is always some new picture each day.

If you've read any of the posts on here concerning Avery, you'll realize she is very observant, and definitely has her own way of processing things.

The picture I have here seems rather typical. The little girl, of course is Avery, and that's our van (which shows up in allot of her works, we call it her minivan period). There's a giant butterfly after being hit with a does of radiation that turned it into an over sized monster that feeds on people (I made the second part up, sorry). And then you have the sun and a few clouds.

What I'd like to draw your attention to is the upper left-hand corner. If you look close there seems to be some words written. Can't see them? Okay, here's a blow up. Can you see it now?

If you can, you'll see that Avery has titled this piece, "Body Fluid Clean Up Kit." Her mother and I, after recovering from our fit of laughter, have no idea where she got this from, but we're guessing there's something in her classroom (it's an open concept school for all the teachers out there) marked with these words on it. At the next Parent-Teacher meeting I'm going to find out.

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Clark Kent's Icebox

You know how parents are famous for showing off the refrigerator art created by their children? Well, I had the idea of creating a 'virtual' version of the same concept by posting the kids' masterpieces in a photo-hosting site. To keep with my Clark Kent theme I modified (under the tutelage of Ashley) the pic of an old 1940's fridge, (or Icebox) and added what Noah, Allie, Harrison, Avery and Sawyer have come up with.

For the boys and me this gives us a chance to stay connected by sending them a self-addressed, stamped, envelope and having them mail something they've created back. Once you go to the hosting site, you can read descriptions of the work for each one. Showing everything together allows the family to feel a bit more blended despite the distance.

Click here for a closer view of Icebox Art from the Lunchbox Bunch

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