Coincidence? My daughter's favorite character from The Incredibles is the mom, Elastigirl. My son is loving both of the Fantastic 4 movies, and although he loves all 4 equally, and also the Silver Surfer, he says he's partial to Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic or – as my son calls him – The Stretchy Guy. Okay, I made that second part up for the sake of the story: My son's favorite is The Thing, just like every kid who ever came before him (the nerd-crush on Sue Storm comes later down the line, towards adolescence), but let's agree to pretend that he loves The Stretchy Guy as far as this post is concerned. Anyway, this I know for sure: My own superhero children are made of taffy. See photo above. I swear.

We're outgrowing clothes left and right over here, and shoes too, and even socks, and now that the weather's changing where, oh where, is a single long-sleeve shirt or light jacket that fits either of these shape-shifting kids? I spent my entire life as the short guy, so where does my son get off being one of the tallest kids in his class? My daughter, too, just sprouting right up.

Other recent developments: My superhero son – let's call him Bent Out Of Shape Boy – can suddenly read.  And count to 100 by ones and twos and fives and tens... and hundreds. He gets a kick out of that one: "Zero... one hundred. Done. See, Dad?" And he's killing it on the monkey bars at the playground, too. He's also riding his bike with one hand, and then no feet, and occasionally nothing at all, just purposely crashing the thing, and he's pretty awesome at that, too. And then there's this one, just kills me every time, makes me want to do his bidding: He's getting pretty good on a skateboard and has me wrapped around his little finger because of it, which is lucky for him because he's also brought home some pretty tedious new behaviors now that he's in a public elementary school, like totally hulking out when he gets angry and totally hating it when I dismiss his tantrums like, "Okay, whatever, Hulk. Can we get Bruce Banner back, please?" And perhaps the most indisuputable sign of his genius: He's telling jokes, nailing the punchlines, has impeccable comedic timing. But most pressing: The kid is growing like crazy, eating me out of house and home, and shedding outgrown clothes like second skins. In short, I think my son may be mutating or at least undergoing some kind of metamorphosis. I'm half expecting he'll wake up as a cocoon ("chrysalis," he'd correct me, the little wiseass), and then a butterfly, and then fly right out the window. Stranger things have happened around Action Academy lately.

Like this: My superhero daughter – let's call her Girl Growing Out of Those Expensive Clothes Her Dad Bought Her At An Alarming Rate – is going through some serious metamorphosis herself. I mentioned in my last post how she's bucked Action Academy's vegetarian tradition and declared herself a meat-eater. Well, now she's decided she wants to take over the Action Academy cooking responsibilities altogether and is demanding I get a stool for the kitchen counter. What does a mutant kid who can stretch herself all out of proportion need with a stool? I have no idea, but I've been told we need a stool. She started with popping frozen waffles into the toaster when she wakes up ridiculously early instead of stirring me from my slumber (come to think of it, that's actually pretty handy: Keep up the good work, kids!) and pretty quickly decided she wanted to learn how to use the kitchen knives. I've mentioned, haven't I, that we frequently call her Dangerg!rl? I had to move the block of knives to a much higher vantage point, because she wants to cut everything all of a sudden. Vegetables? Chop-chop. Radom pieces of paper? "Scissors, please." We're manufacturing paper snowflakes, apparently.  And the clincher: For her birthday (she turns 4 this month), she's requested the Our Generation Salon Chair she saw at SuperTarget one day a few months ago: She says she wants to "cut" her dolls' hair, and I'm not at all convinced she means to play make-believe with it. I'm envisioning some punk rock dolls with spiky 'dos around our place in a very near future, but thankfully I'm the kind of dad who will be okay with that when it comes to pass. Here's the thing, or another thing, anyway: The kid's got a steel-trap memory too, because it's been months since we first saw that Salon Chair, back a long, long time ago when I dismissed the very notion of it with: "Maybe for your birthday, okay?" and forgot all about it. The birthday seemed impossibly far away at the time, but it's now almost upon us, and she hasn't forgotten or moved on. SuperTarget, here I come.

And while I'm at it with the stream-of-conscious superhero riffs: SuperTarget.  I suppose you won't be surprised to learn that my superheroes are obsessed with SuperTarget. RegularTarget no longer passes muster, now that there's a SuperTarget nearby, and the kids have an elaborate set of rules dictating our shopping experience there:

1. We have to pretend that only superheroes shop there because, you know, SuperTarget. "Who do you think we'll see by the women's clothes today, Daddy? Wonder Woman or Supergirl?"

2. We each get to pick out a new toy for ourselves every time we go, Daddy included, to reward ourselves for being "super" enough to shop at SuperTarget. I picked out a special edition Hot Wheels Batmobile for myself last time. Seriously. This is part of why we have kids, right, so we can get the new Batmobile toys?

3. We also apparently can't get out of SuperTarget for under $200 dollars, no matter what we went in there for in the first place. Damn. That's not one of the kids' rules, but it seems to be the way the universe bends in there, especially if you're dumb enough to take a couple of kids into SuperTarget and let them pick out some stuff for themselves. Watch out for that.

– Colin Bane