"And each particular hair to stand on end"

 J's family calls it "broccoli." 

We just call it "Smith hair." It's the unmistakably slept-on appearance of little boy hair, sticking out at an odd angle and contrasting with the pink, flushed, first-thing-in-the morning expression of a child coming down for breakfast. 

Or, in the case of our boys, coming down for a negotiation. Smoothies, for example, are forbidden on Mondays. They are too time-consuming to make, and this is our busiest school morning of the week.

Fridays, however, can be pancake mornings. Owen loves making pancakes for his brothers. And both of his parents hate cleaning up the kitchen after Owen has made pancakes. Hair askew and full of early morning music, he cracks eggs onto the countertops, spills batter onto the stove, and generally crashes dishes about.

Sunday mornings are granola mornings, and they are also the one morning per week when we might make some attempt at taming the hair that pokes out in all directions. (Also, this is the morning we insist that Felix needs to FINALLY change his clothes, since he's been in them for multiple days in a row.)

But we are inevitably behind and need to be loaded into the van by 8, so the compromise ends up being that they will scarf down some granola in a fresh button-up shirt, but without having made any attempt to smooth out the hair that is pointing in every direction. 

I am not, however, one who can cast stones blamelessly. I too am sometimes in a hurry to get myself fed and out the door, and have seen my several pictures of myself playing a morning concert in black suit and colorful tie, but with half of my hair pointing out at odd angles while the other half remains unruffled. 

"He waxes desperate with imagination"

The boys are cursing each other.

They would tell me that they are sometimes cursing each other, sometimes hexing each other, and sometimes using charms. And sometimes just using normal spells. There's a difference, you know.

We are back into the world of Harry Potter again after a hiatus of over a year, and the whole house rings with cries of "Stupefy!" and "Expelliarmus!" and "Petrificus Totalus!" which they pronounce (variously) as "Petrifitiss Totalus," "Petrissitus Totullis," and "Pecrifictus Totalus!"

(This is what comes of reading the books very quickly and at a young age.)

There are also some other charming pronunciations. Peeves is a Polerantalogist, which I assume means that he studies Polerantology. We quarrel over a Slytherin LEGO character named Blaise Zamboni. 

It's nice that the younger two are into it so deeply now. Previously James was driving the interest for all three, and he apparently re-read the first book so often to the point that he basically had it memorized. (The former Bible quizzer in me sighs at this...) He acquired a board game that was basically Trivial Pursuit on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and was disappointed when no one would play with him after he trounced us all on the first few playings. 

The younger two appreciated the music from the movies and the idea of Quidditch. (Somewhere on J's Facebook is one of our favorite videos--a 2 year old Felix explaining the rules of Quidditch using Christmas ornaments.)

But now Owen and Felix are both deep into Hogwarts history and lore. I recently played a live film-to-projection concert of the second movie, and they came (dressed in Hogwarts gear) and watched the performance. 

I had hoped, when we started homeschooling, that these boys would grow up with imaginations fired by Fairy Tales, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and the Arabian Nights. They didn't. We allowed a (small) TV into our house, and their imaginations were pretty much entirely formed by Lightning McQueen, Curious George, and the NFL. 

But it's good to see them playing at wizards and, in Owen's words, "finally having a use for all of this Latin we have to do."