Sometimes being at home with Everett is like being on the set of a musical. He sings constantly, recites lines from movies and acts them out. Recently he has expressed a lot of interest in pirates, which has been reinforced by the pirate costume he received for Christmas and the pirate exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The latter featured the Whydah, a pirate ship that sank off Cape Cod in 1717 and was recently located. A fair amount of treasure and other artifacts were recovered and are now part of a traveling exhibit which we thoroughly enjoyed. It explained a lot about pirates that we didn’t know, including the contrast between their reputation as ruthless outlaws and the apparently democratic way in which they ran their ships and freed slaves. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed in the exhibit, and there were several live pirates with swords who were present to enforce the rules, so we didn’t try our luck. The only photo we have is Everett and Mom at the front of the museum.

Everett has become even more interested in pirates since seeing the exhibit.

He often wears his costume, and recently made a map of treasure that is buried in our house. “Instead of an X, we’ll mark it with a Y, so no one will ever find it!”

Chris was wondering how pirates felt about roughhousing. Not surprisingly, they seem to like it as much as anyone else. This prompted Chris to ask “When is it not roughhousing time?” Everett provided the most accurate answer we can imagine: “After roughhousing.” After one recent roughhousing session Chris remarked “I feel like I’m training someone who is going to defeat me one day.” Melissa responded “I think you just summarized parenting in a nutshell.”