In our last installment, you met the family. Today, I shall introduce you to the house. Our house is named Volcano. Orville gave it this name when he was four and his favorite book was DINOSAURS, DINOSAURS, LONG, LONG AGO! (which has a volcano in the pictures.)
 
Volcano is not a bad name for the place, as it often looks as if a volcano has erupted here – a volcano of toys.
 
Now, my husband and I both agree it’s better for children to have a few toys they play with all the time rather than a sea of toys they ignore, so we have bought them a minimum of toys. And yet, they keep arriving. Christmas, birthdays, boxes of toys handed down from cousins and neighbors. Personally, I believe that they breed. We turn out the lights and the big toys all get together and produce more little toys. I can’t think of another explanation for how we end up with so many.
 
So, finally, I put my foot down. Without order, we were about to disappear under the lava flow of toys, so I declared a Toy Pogrom!
 
The Toy Pogrom is still only in its early stages. I’ve bagged up four large garbage bags of toys. Two for the attic (with its plywood floor, handcrafted by the intrepid Uncle Bill,) two for giveaway. I also moved most of the drawers to the attic.
 
And, yet, the place is still a seething mass of toys, no matter where I look.
 
No!  Wait!  Look at that!  I can see the carpet!
 
 
And now, from the annals of OVERHEARD AT THE WRIGHT HOUSEHOLD:

1) Juss found an old toy Star Trek communicator that a friend had given us, but which had since been destroyed by Orville when he was young.

After pushing buttons and listening to it beep for some time, he cried out exultantly: “Look! I’ve got my own Game Boy! I can play any game I want!”

This amused me to no end. I had no idea that he knew what a Game Boy was, but the fact that he was entirely happy to press three buttons and hear noises and declare it ‘any game I want’ just charmed me. ;-)
 
 
2) So, we’re walking along through the forest on a dirt path:
 
Juss, with his eyes shut: “I’m a baby bat.”
 
Mommy: “Not only do bats have eyes, they also echolocate.”
Immediately, and without opening his eyes, Juss begins jerking his head forward and emitting high-pitched noises in an effort to use echolocation. 
 
 
3) Grandma, putting out the materials for preschool: “Megan and Hannah are going to make a flower and Juss is going to make an airplane.”
 
 Megan: “I’m going to make a flower for my mommy!”
 
Hannah: “And I’m going to make a flower for my mommy!”
 
Juss: “And I’m going to make an airplane for my mommy!”
 
He didn’t understand why Grandma and I started laughing.
 
 
4) To understand this next one, you need to know that Arko is Juss’s invisible brother. (He’s called Arco because he lives in Noah’s Ark.)

Mommy, responding to the previous comment Juss had made about “Baby Jackal going back to his den to play with his computer.”: “Do Jackals have computers in their dens?”

Juss, emphatically: “Yes. Arko told me that some Jackals have computers in their dens, and I said ‘Really?’ and he said: ‘Really!'”

I just love his transcription of his conversation with Arko…but I have no idea whether or not he thinks Jackals actually have computers in their dens.