Oh, The Satisfying Achievements!

The weekend was one of unprecedented laziness for The Family Joy.

For the most part we've been keeping close to home because The Mayor, as it turns out, does have mono complete with an enlarged spleen. (Though he's apparently not contagious.)

On Sunday, all four of us stayed in our pajamas until 4:00 when we changed into our bathing suits, went for a quick dip, returned and changed back into our pajamas.

We did manage a few unexpected achievements.

For a long time now K and I have specialized in parenting from the floor - also known as The Horizontal Parenting Technique.

This weekend, while The Mayor and Rooster played with a train track that took up all the floor space, I crawled up onto The Mayor's bed and K followed.

"And the horizontal parenting begins," I said.

"Except we're taking it to a higher plane," K returned.

In addition to our robust commitment to lying around, we did manage to feed ourselves and our family.

K popped corn for our afternoon snack and, as usual, we all sat around the giant bowl on the kitchen floor.

Putamayo's Arabic Groove was playing in the background. It's a CD of dance music with an Arabic theme - Middle Eastern grooviness that makes your butt wiggle.

The Rooster started dancing first. She tucked her hand into her armpit and flapped the resulting folded limb like a baby chicken. She bit her lower lip with her upper teeth.

The Mayor opened and closed his hands while swaying from side to side to a beat quite different from that of the Arabic Groove CD, but then fell in with the chicken move.

K and I tucked both our hands into our armpits, flapped our giant elbows and displayed our upper dental work.

Next weekend we're going to teach them to bounce up and down on both legs without moving their feet -- and if that goes well we'll move on to shaking imaginary dice and revving imaginary motorcycle engines. (Maybe even graduate to the pencil maneuver!)

We're taking steps to insure the longevity of The White Man's Overbite on dance floors everywhere.

We taught this guy everything he knows...