Then the stubbornness set in. On both sides. I would raise the stakes — “I’ll give you a dollar if you put your hair in a ponytail!” — but the answer would always be “NO!” As the years went by the stakes just got higher. When she was 5 I offered to buy her an Xbox game if she’d wear her hair in a ponytail for one whole day. She hesitated over that one, but still refused in the end — with an admonition that I might as well give up because she would never, EVER wear her hair in a ponytail. When she was 6, and a little more money-aware, I converted the game offer to a straight-up cash bribe, but she still didn’t bite.

So all of this year, the standing offer has been $50 if she’d wear her hair in a ponytail all day on a school day, $30 on a non-school day. And there was nary a crack in her resolve … until this week.

Backing up a bit … we started allowances for the kids this year, and Ella has been dutifully saving up for the LEGO Millenium Falcon. This was, needless to say, a long-term project, but she was carefully saving and exhibiting restraint and generally doing all the things you want your kids to do when you start the whole allowance thing in the first place. She got her first lucky break when my mom found one on sale for $112, and picked it up to be held in reserve for her when she had raised the money. That saved her a good chunk of time. Then came December 1, and some birthday money from one source or another, and she found herself having amassed $80. And then we found ourselves in Michigan, where the actual Millenium Falcon itself was waiting for her. I told her that I’d happily give her $32 if she wore her ponytail for a day, throwing in the extra $2 out of my unfathomable generosity.

At long last, she gave in. And so, today, she is sitting across the table from me, with her brother and her cousins, constructing the Millenium Falcon out of LEGOs — a massive project — while wearing a ponytail that I think looks just awesome. And this is actually DAY THREE of ponytail wearing. I suspect she kind of likes it, actually. But I will never ever dare to say to her “Looks like you really enjoy wearing a ponytail, don’t you?” or (God forbid!) “I told you so!” lest the spell be broken.

2. At a run: I know that this change has happened as more of a continuum, but it sure feels as if Dominic, on his fifth birthday, stopped running like a teddy bear/drag queen and started running like, well, a boy, even with a decent amount of speed.

3. Ella rearranged her room. By herself (with encouragement from D). I still don’t know how she managed to shove the bed around, and the scratch marks on the floor are pretty heinous, but I was so impressed with her initiative that I didn’t make a big deal about them. I did talk her into putting her bed somewhere other than right in the middle of the room, and helped her out with that, but when the dust settled, we had found a superior arrangement from everything in her room, with less wasted space and more room to play.

4. Ella, upon hearing from me that there is going to be a LEGO Xbox game based on the Hobbit: “There’s a happy warmth oozing down my spine!”

Here are the architects.

“You know what? What if the earth is God and we’re driving on his bones.”

He took a little while to warm up, but was soon surging ahead to each door to claim his swag. Even after Ella had declared herself finished and broke off for home, he and I soldiered on for a few more blocks. As the night wore on he had also become bolder about his own allergy-related candy restrictions. A typical exchange went like this:

“Trick or treat!”
“Well hello there, Batman!”
“I’m allergic to nuts.”

“My name is really Dominic.”

He got pretty good at picking out lollipops and licorice as reliably nut-free choices. All this with no prompting whatsoever from me or Suanna — we were just planning to sift through it all afterwards. Of course he was so darn cute about it that he had some neighbors dashing into their kitchens to find something nut-free to give him, and walked home with a couple snack bags of goldfish and other items that were not originally intended for Halloween-bowl use.

Ella was a ninja, and was pretty convinced that her outfit made her look totally bad-ass. She kept taking off her hood because it made her head hot, though — my plan is for us ALL to be ninjas next year, in which case we’ll have to work on staying in-character.

Ella has been to Chuck E Cheese twice, which led me to intone a solemn blood-oath that I would never enter a Chuck E Cheese again as long as I should live, nor would suffer mine own kin to ever have to endure the same.

So of course, Dominic got invited to a preschool friend’s birthday part at … Chuck E Cheese. On the one hand, here’s a chance for the little brother to have an event all his own, nothing to do with Ella. On the other hand, solemn blood-oath. In the end, I foreswore myself for the sake my child and took the boy to Chuck E Cheese. The sacrifices we must make.

If you, as a parent, host your child’s party at Chuck E Cheese you are cursed a hundredfold — but there is a path to redemption. All it requires is that you let the parents drop their kids and go. Take the awful burden of that place on your shoulders and those of your family and friends, and all is forgiven.

So I am happy to relate that I am writing this from the Panera up the street from Chuck E Cheese. I am still foresworn, since I have consigned my son to that place, but he is young, and may yet be able to forget, or perhaps to grow in wisdom and despise the place like his sister does. But this is Dominic we’re talking about, who is not generally inclined to despise anything, so better perhaps that I wish for him simply that he is not corrupted too much by the experience. In all likelihood, we will have to face this trial again ere long.

The kids did some of their own artwork. Dom added to a colored-sand mural in a parking lot. They both did spin art, as well.

When they got home, the kids had hot chocolate. And now we’re in long sleeves and sweaters, and are thinking of turning on the heat. This change has been a little too drastic. I was wearing sandals on Thursday!