visitors, Halloween, and plate tectonics

Things are busy in the Mergenthaler-Schmidt household. My sister and her fiancee are arriving tomorrow for a long weekend visit, so we've been cleaning -- a LOT -- in preparation. The cleaning gets done very slowly, however, with two energetic little boys in the house. I think both of the boys are going through growth spurts, because they are both wanting to eat constantly.

James is starting to get pretty excited about Halloween. We have a preschool Halloween party as well as trick-or-treating this year, so we'll be celebrating all weekend long. About 43 times a day James comes up with a new costume idea, although we've already got two costumes for him. Some of his more original ideas include the letter L, fire, and an earthquake. When I asked him what an earthquake costume would look like, he replied, "A rock. A very very circle rock." (He asked me about earthquakes yesterday, and I gave him a very vague, simplified explanation of plate tectonics, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't really get it. It's tough when your child is interested in things that he can't adequately comprehend yet. And it doesn't help him any that he's interested in science and tends to ask me about things -- I have a feeling that even if he were intellectually mature enough to understand certain concepts, he still wouldn't understand them thoroughly with the explanations I'm giving him. Poetry? Music? Religion? Those I can do. Too bad he's not interested yet.)