Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window

[porphyry]

These are Andrew's latest toys, which, I am pleased to be able to say, he actually likes. Who knew that one would be able to get such nice things anymore?



The large one is a de Haviland Mosquito Mark VI. I was compeletely flabbergasted when I saw this one on offer on the web.

The Blue one is an F-18 Hornet painted in air-show colors, which Andrew thinks is Big Jet from the Little Eisnteins (if you don't know what that means count yourself fortunate). Big Jet is really an F-15, but since its painted blue, Andrew more easily accepts this as him than he would have the actual F-15 in the series which was painted in desert camoflage. The next one a German Comet from the War (really a rocket rather than a true aeroplane), and finally an A-10 Warthog; this he knows from a video I showed him on you-tube of an A-10 shooting up tanks on a fireing range with its gattling gun after he enquired about Big-0's gattling gun.

Comments

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

you put a big grin on my face. supercool and supercute!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Yes, the conversations they have about robots and airplanes and monsters from 1950s Godzilla movies are funny; touching, but funny.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Your boy looks lovely. Your home looks lovely. Even those wooden floors look lovely.

But what looks loveliest is that model of the de Havilland Mosquito! I always wanted one of those. Last of the great wooden framed military aircraft. Amazing machine.

Andrew seems to be recovering well. How is he now?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Very nice of you to ask: Andrew's physcally fine, but bored; just more than half of the six weeks he's to be in the cast have gone by.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

At that age, when one is at one's most, for want of a better word, "tigger" like, it must be torture. Good luck in managing all that pent-up energy. You must be developing the patience of saints.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Malkhos probably has more inborn patience than I do; it's more in his nature to easily acclimate himself to the patience the situation requires. The upside of this is that Andrew is more like his father temperamentally than he is like me, so overall it's caused him to cope quite well, probably better than average... he's demonstrated pretty impressive patience the way his father would.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thanks on all counts.

Our home used to be lovely, pre-children. After they got here, all the really nice furniture was replaced (temporarily, in my mind) with things we didn't mind getting ruined. All my lovely porcelaine pieces have been carefully wrapped and stored and I've had to put aside my tendencies towards being a neat freak (one can only pick up toys so many times a day before one realizes the futility of it). But we do love the space and light because we have so many windows--now if I could just get over the tiny fingerprints all over them! :) (I say all this tongue in cheek, however; I'm happy to trade in all this for my children.)

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I have to say that the windows are my favourite feature in my own home. Looking out to sea, as I do, means that in the late afternoon there can be this wonderful buttery light that fills the room. On other days the sky is crimson and the walls are pink with it. The storms out to sea are beautiful too, with great lowering skies and flashes from the lightning that can even come from below the horizon, far away on the French coast.

As my home is on top of a cliff, the vantage point means that one feels very close to the weather (if that doesn't sound ridiculous).

Of course looking out also has the advantage of meaning that I don't have to consider how much the inside needs decorating!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

A view of the sea! How wonderful--what a beautiful description of the landscape. We only have trees; we are surrounded by them, which is good because beyond the trees is a vast and horrifying display of urban sprawl. And yes, we do love our windows and all the natural light they provide.

[gislebertus.livejournal.com]

The title of this entry cracked me up.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Staging the photo like was Mme. Malkhos' idea; in fact she bought binoculars specially for it.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Andrew does like binoculars though--he had a pair but they've gotten lost.

[siamhussein.livejournal.com]

You are doing a wonderful job in educating your son. When I was his age, Père Hussein brought me complex paper models of the aircraft made at MacAir, just north of where you live. If dates me to say this but the F15 was just coming off the production line. How I struggled with it! It is probably a good thing your boy has an image of the destructive power of the A10 in mind.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Malkhos really is a wonderful father, not in the least because he's already got Andrew interested in things such as above.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

They still ahve the MacStore in the same place, but they call it the Boeing store.

[siamhussein.livejournal.com]

You all should have a look at the latest (for me) issue of Harper's. Within an essay called "Falling" is a description of the joy felt by a young boy confined to a body cast. You will doubtlessly see similarities between the narrator and Andrew.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Mme. Malkhos asks, especially as you suggest it my not be the issue on the newsstands here now (and we have little enough opoportunity to get to the newsstand, let alone a library), could you mention the points that stand out in your mind as interesting? Probably that would be more entertaining to read than the whole article anyway.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

I remember being on an archaeological excavation of an Iron Age hill fort in Wales and American F-10s targeting us for fun.

I've been trying to find an internet clip of the Mosquito raid on the Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen. Really astonishing; flying down streets and round corners.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

"Targeting" you? How do you mean, exactly?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

I mean locking onto us and diving towards us.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Christ! I bet they thought it was funny, too. I wonder if that's within acceptable military practices? Did you find it amusing, scary--what was your reaction?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

They were sufficiently high up that it didn't bother us. Just one of the hazards of living on 'Airstrip One'. We thought it was funny that they were seemingly flying around doing nothing during the week that Gorbachev was put under house arrest and the Soviet Union looked like it was going to go hard-line Stalinist.

You know bots

[benicek.livejournal.com]

On the subject of toys. Does Malkhos, with his encyclopaedic (literally) knowledge, or Andrew know the name of the robot in this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7312777.stm

Re: You know bots

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Actually, though Mme. Malkhos couldn't stop laughing when I revealed all this to her, that figurine is quite easy to identify.

One of the first anime type series in Japan was called [I]Tetsujin 28 (Iron Man 28)[/I] which concerned a giant fighting robot created by a 10 year old boy genius (he was operated by a joystick remote control the boy constantly fiddled with in a highly suggestive manner). This was in 1964. The series was released in the US under the name [I]Gigantor[/I] (I suppose because the name Iron Man was already copyrighted here by Marvel comics for another character who is due to have his own film come out this summer, incidentally). The series, as is common in Japan, was remade in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. While the whole genre of giant fighting robot anime derives from this character, with Iron Man 28 having numerous nearly identical copies, the identity of the doll in question is quite certain owing to the no. 28 inscribed on its wrists. The style of the figure corresponds to the 1980s incarnation. You can read a bit more about it here:

http://www.gigantor.org/

and at Wikipedia sv. Gigantor. As it happens the first DVD of the original series is about 5 down on Andrew's Netflix queue.

I notice the author of the BBC piece asks for readers to help idenitify the figurine, but I didn't see any link that would permit one to do so.

Re: You know bots

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

Try using this comment form here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_3990000/newsid_3993900/3993909.stm

Re: You know bots

[benicek.livejournal.com]

So does that mean that the toy found on Midway Island might be around 20 to 25 years old?

Re: You know bots

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I imagine, but that doens't necessarily mean it was in thewater that long.

Re: You know bots

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I couldn't stop laughing because he knew instantly. Before he even read your query, he said, "Oh, look, it's Gigantor" as though everybody knows that.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

What a cute little guy. Binoculars can be fascinating at that age; I remember playing with them as a kid, looking out the apartment windows.

Hope it's not wearing you out, finding things for him to do. I hope the next three weeks fly quickly.

We are going to the physical therapist today to get A. off her crutches and walking again with an "air cast." It really hasn't hit me yet that soon she'll be off them.

Best wishes for your son's healing!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I was on crutches last year with a broken foot and cast. Oh, those things were horrible--although everybody else thought it hilarious to watch me negotiate the baby safety gates (Madeline is the kind of child for whom those gates were made ;) Anyway, those crutches just wore me out, and I had ten weeks of them. I imagine your daughter managed better, though; she's young and spry :) Seems like she's been casted up for a long time! What's an "air cast"?

Andrew is doing very well; thanks--he says when his leg is better, he wants to keep his wheelchair!

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Wow, you went over safety gates in crutches? That's impressive. It must have been terribly diffcult with small children, though. I hope you were able to recover completely.

A. went to her first physical therapy appointment this afternoon, and put weight on her foot for the first time in almost 8 weeks. (It was not bad at all.) She has been having a longer recovery because of the surgery (screws and plates on both sides of the lower leg.) However, the PT is optimistic that she will be totally off crutches in a week or two.

After the 2nd week, she didn't have a cast; instead she had this velcro-strapped "boot" (something like this.) The good part is that she can take it off to shower. The bad part is that it is pretty heavy, heavier than a fiberglass cast.

Over the next week she will transition from two crutches to one, and from the boot to an air cast (like this.) It's to stabilize the ankle for the next month or two. It can be worn with a relatively loose shoe, and when she is able to walk comfortably w/ the air cast, she won't need the one crutch any longer.

The crutches wore A. out too - she is really physically fit, but they were still difficult for her. In fact, I've been homeschooling her because her high school is *technically* accessible, but actually was quite exhausting for her to navigate. She is really ready to go back to school - but not until her balance is good and she can walk comfortably w/o the crutches entirely.

LOL, Andrew wants his wheelchair. I can see him wheeling around on those hardwood floors.

How did you injure your foot last year, if you don't mind me asking?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Those hardwood floors are precisely the reason Andrew wants to keep his wheelchair! He can get up some good speed and he's learned to steer around with utmost precision--he imagines he's Racer X (from Speed Racer, remember? Andrew never wants to be Speed; he prefers Racer X, Speed's older brother :)

Speaking of those hardwood floors, here's my broken foot story; I don't mind telling at all. In January of 2006, when Madeline was about three months old and I was still doing night feeds, it was very early in the morning, about six o'clock, and barely light. She had awakened hungry, and I was carrying her out of the bedroom in the semi-light when I stepped on a Matchbox car (if your son had those, then you know no little boy ever has three or four of them but forty or fifty or a thousand). I had somehow missed picking this one up, and so stepping on it was like stepping on a slick spot on that floor. As I did so, I lost my balance badly but of course my only goal was Let's not drop this newborn baby on a hardwood floor!, and let it suffice to say, Madeline did not get dropped but my left ankle and foot took a beating. At first, I thought I had only badly twisted my ankle, and eventually that felt better. My foot, though, kept hurting and hurting but I did nothing about it until one of my co-workers remarked, four months later--yes, four months; I really do ignore pain--"You know, Rita, if your foot still hurts you probably have something wrong in there." So I went to the doctor, finally, and it turned out I had a broken bone in my fifth metatarsal, meaning the long bone of the little toe, the part that runs across the top of the foot to the ankle. When my doctor asked when the injury occurred and I told him the past January, he looked at me like I was crazy. I wore a walking cast, a boot similar to your daughter's, for twelve weeks. But that wasn't the end of this.

In February of 2007, last year, I took a misstep and I heard that bone break again--it sounded like a twig snapping. When I went back to the doctor, he x-rayed it again and found that it was indeed no new break; it was the old break, rebroken. "I'm not touching this," he said, and sent me to an orthopedic doctor, who pronounced it a "true Jones fracture" meaning the break had occurred in a very particular part of the bone that has a low blood supply and are notorious for healing poorly. His first approach, though, was conservative; he wanted to pin it as a last resort. So I went into a cast and was given instructions not to bear any weight on it, so this meant either crutches or a wheelchair. Not wanting to seem weak (I'm rather foolish that way), I opted for crutches. For ten weeks. And I didn't miss a day of work although I had to teach sitting down. But that approach worked, and I have had no trouble since.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the italicized text; I didn't mean to do that!

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, my brother and I loved Speed Racer.

Ouch - stepping on a toy. Good for you, not dropping the baby. We at one point had so many toys strewn around the floor, it was a miracle something like that didn't happen to one of us.

Yup, Anna got her plate and screws because of the location of her fractures; apparently there's not too great a blood supply on the distal ends of the tibia and fibula.

It's probably better in the long run that you didn't go for a wheelchair. Crutches are hard work, I imagine (from watching Anna!) and the less muscle you lose, the better - and the easier it is to get functioning back.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I saw on television there's a Speed Racer movie coming out in May. I imagine Andrew will want to go see it.

Crutches suck! But you're right--my arm muscles certainly strengthened but what was better was I didn't lose aerobic capacity; my mother is quite concerned after being so sedentary for so long that she won't be able to do much without getting exhausted! She'll be having PT, though, whereas Andrew won't need that. The doctor at Cardinal Glennon said kids his age bounce back pretty fast.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

A.'s PT is to re-establish the flexibility, stretch, and strength in her ankle and calf. The MD thought she needed it when he asked her to rotate her foot around at the ankle, and she had some difficulty. I like her PT, though, and she's making progress, so it's good.

I know what your mom is saying; I'd be worried about that too. I hope everything is going OK with her.

Yeah, we saw the trailer for Speed Racer this afternoon - it looks pretty tolerable. Lots of CGI; seems halfway between animation & live action (but a lot better job than Beowulf.)

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Looks exactly like a pirate captain onboard a dito ship, spying across the ocean for other ships to conquer. What a wonderful home you have! Hope "the captain" is mending well.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

He is mending quite well. And he does look pretty cute and rather solemn, doesn't he?

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Very much so indeed!
I confess of being quite jealous (no kids but momentarily no double income either, nothing in blogging for me, it seems;), I think.
Should I still have kids, which gets more improbable with every year, I´d wish them to look exactly like that.
Stern individuals from their very first own glance onto the world, and on.
That, to me, were the utter fascination (but hitherto I am quite confidentally happy with the family production done by my sister) not the "cootchy-cootchy"-bit a lot of females seem to find most fascinating, i.e. the before-communicative-diaper-state. (Has always made me wonder on some female brains.) Thank God, my nieces are a dream of own will and very pittoresque at that!
...almost feared I scared you off with my overlong comment on "gossip"...and glad this is not the case.
Watch me go, again;)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Maybe not so improbable--I had my daughter at thirty-eight and my doctor thought I should have more! (I'm not.)

I always feel bad for saying so, but that "cootchy-cootchy-coo" baby phase--the newborn age, especially, rather bored me. They didn't talk--they ate, slept, and dirtied their diapers. I really got into being a mother when they got older, developed personalities, opinions, ideas--even when they don't agree with me. Andrew, especially, is like a little old man.