My wife had to go to Texas a while back, leaving me flying solo with the kids for a few days. Though the three of us get along fine, things do sometimes get a little bizarre.
One night, as I was making grilled cheese sandwiches in the kitchen, N ran out of his room without any shirt on.
“Where is your shirt?” I asked.
N was 3 years old at the time. He held his hands up over his head and stuck his belly out at me. “I lost it!”
“Okay, okay, go get your shirt on.”
“Why?”
“Because we wear shirts, that’s why. We don’t just sit around with our bellies hanging out.”
“Why not?”
His older brother walked out, shirtless and carrying a truck. “Yeah, why not?”
“Because,” I fumbled. “Because your momma doesn’t like it.” Hey, I know it was lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
The three year old gave an exaggerated look around the room and then turned back to me. “Hm,” he said. “No Momma!”
His older brother nodded seriously. “Yep, there’s no Momma here. She’s in Texas.”
Aw, what the heck, I thought. I pulled my shirt off over my head and tossed it on the floor. “It’s a belly meal!”
“Hooray!” they shouted.
Flash forward to dinner time the day after Momma had returned. When I called the boys for dinner, they ran out of their room, pulling their shirts off over their heads, staggering and stumbling as they tried to run and take their shirts off at the same time. “Belly meal, Daddy! Belly meal!”
Busted.
I’ve thought several times that I should add a “bizarre” category, but at this point (after 470+ tales), it would involve going back and re-categorizing such a large number of them, that I just don’t think I can do it.
As we were eating lunch the other day, our four year old noticed his momma pass me a piece of swiss cheese.
“Can I have some? Please! Can I have some of that cheese?”
“Okay.” I broke off a piece and handed it to him.
“Are you sure?” his momma asked. “Are you sure? It’s Baby Swiss. Are you sure you want it?”
She said this because he doesn’t usually like Swiss cheese.
His little face contorted itself in to the most dramatic wide-eyed expression of horror you can imagine. “What? BABY Swiss? Blech! No! No!” He dropped it on his plate and tried to climb out of his chair.
I caught him. “It’s just cheese. That’s all it is. They just call it baby Swiss. I don’t know why.”
His momma hurried to back me up. “Yeah, it’s just called that because it doesn’t have any holes. regular Swiss cheese has holes.”
The little guy stopped squirming and looked suspiciously at the cheese.
“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” I said, popping a piece in my mouth.
He tore a little piece off the corner and popped it in his mouth. His face lightened. “Hey! I like it! I like it! It’s just cheese!”
What I can’t stop wondering is: what did he think it was in the first place? Did he really think we were eating sliced babies?
Today’s tale is in the chronicle. Click here to read.
Terms for searchers: god bless a hamburger.
A while back we had a stomach virus go round the family. As usual, this meant a couple days of sickness for each of the kids. I was down for a week.
The virus made itself known during dinner. We were trying to convince C (our 5 year old) to finish his chicken when he opened his mouth and spewed a nasty grey fluid all over the table and everything else.
We leaped into action, grabbing towels and bowls and everything else we could think of. Once he finished - and the mess was cleaned up - we started the inquisition.
“Was anyone sick at school?”
“No”
“Does anything hurt? Does your head hurt? Does your stomach hurt?”
“No”
“What did you eat today? Did anything taste funny?”
“I know! I ate some crumbs off the floor at school!”
“What !?!”
“It looked like oreos.”
“Was it?”
He made a nasty face. “No.”
“So you saw some black stuff on the floor at school and you ate it?”
He nodded.
His momma looked like she was about to throwup.
“Let’s not do that again, okay?”
He nodded.
“No eating mysterious stuff off the floor.”
“Okay, daddy.”
Our three year old became a four year old yesterday. At the end of the festivities, as I was sitting in a chair pondering the cleanup, the little guy ran over to stand in front of me. “Daddy, am I four now?”
“Yep!” I said. “You’re four!”
He looked down at himself, then back up at me. Somehow, he managed to look both confused, concerned, and disappointed.. “But I’m not any bigger!”
I grabbed him for a hug. “Don’t worry. You’re getting bigger every day - a little bit every day.”
Last year, shortly after C turned five, the boys and I found ourselves at one of those mall playgrounds again. Despite my wife’s most heartfelt reassurances to the contrary, the three of us invariably end up waiting for there her whenever we go to a mall.
C was still excited about turning five. He spotted a little boy playing on a giant plastic airplane and raced over to him.
“I’m five! Guess what? I’m five! Did you know I was five?”
He held up his right hand with his fingers spread wide to show that he was five.
Mall playgrounds are loud. It can be tough to hear what people are saying. The little boy looked up at C, saw the hand with its splayed fingers, and high-fived him. “All right!” he shouted.
Being high-fived so surprised C that he stopped talking. He looked at his hand, then looked over at me. I shrugged.
He ran over to another child. “I’m five!” he shouted.
That one high-fived him and then ran off to play somewhere else.
This was not what C was looking for. He turned around, hand still up in the air.
A little girl ran by and high fived him.
The big guy pulled his hand back down and walked over to me. I was laughing pretty hard by this point.
“I’m five!” He said.
“High five!” I said.
As he held up his hand, a smile crawled across his face. He looked back over his shoulder at the kids, then back at me. He giggled and high fived me.
Here’s a fun exchange I overheard the other day. C (our five year old) was pestering N (the soon-to-be-four year old), and had been pestering him all morning. After repeated warnings, their momma finally intervened and sent the five year old to time out.
As she walked back from the time out spot, N called out to her from his bedroom. “Hey momma! Momma!”
She hurried in to his room. “What?”
“Listen! Listen!”
She listened. “What is it?”
“The quiet! Do you hear the quiet?”
About a year ago, I left my office job to work from home. It’s a bit more stressful than working for someone else, but much more rewarding. Now I split my time now between designing games and writing.
The biggest challenge initially was getting the kids to leave me alone when I was in my “office”. Since we were forced to address that issue, we expanded the lesson to include recognizing when someone else is working and not interrupting.
It has worked very well. With the kids out of school now, though, it’s a tougher lesson to stick to.
Friday afternoon found me in my bedroom working on the laptop. N, my soon-to-be-four-year-old son , walked in to the room and stopped about a foot away from me.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Are you almost done?”
“I can take a break soon, sure. Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” and left.
He came back a few minutes later. “Are you almost done?”
“Just a couple more - ” I started.
“minutes.” he finished for me.
“Okay,” I laughed. “It really will be. Just let me finish this. I’ll be just - “
He spread his hands “a couple more minutes!”
Ouch.
He left - and then came back a couple minutes later. “Has it been a couple minutes?”
I shook my head. “I just have to get this last thing done. I’m going as fast as I can.”
He turned to walk away, and then came back. “Daddy, I think it’s running out of juice.”
“Juice?”
He pointed to the computer. “I think it’s running out of juice.”
I laughed. “No, I don’t think so. It’s plugged in.”
“Daddy, what’s juice?”
“It’s what some people call electricity. Can you say electricity?”
He shook his head. “Are you done now?”
“Yes,” I said, standing up and trying not to look back at the screen. “As done as I need to be.”
“Hooray!”
Hooray indeed. He took me out to the kitchen to show me the model plane they were building for Grampa, and we started our Father’s Day weekend a day early.
There are some lessons I hope the little guys never learn, and I hope you all had as great a Father’s Day weekend as I did!
Today’s tale is in the Chronicle. Click here to read it
Terms for Searchers: Art, price, drawing, buy
The first week after school lets out is always challenging. The little guys are not sure where the boundaries are any more, and like to try to experiment a bit. Yesterday was a day of squabbling… “that’s mine”, “don’t touch that”, “dad! He’s being mean!”
It gets old very quickly. One shining gem of a moment emerged from the mishmash, however. It involved our five year old, who had just been told to stop pestering his younger brother for the third time in less than two minutes. I was listening to this one, so I will relate it just as it echoed up to me…
Momma: “That’s it. Time out!”
C: “No! I’m sorry!”
Momma: “This is the third time I’ve had to ask you the same thing. Time out!”
C: “Noooo! I’m sorry!”
Momma: “I’ve heard that before.”
C: “But this time I mean it!”
Ah, honesty! So refreshing in times of crisis. It didn’t help him, of course, but it sure was refreshing.
Some time ago, my oldest asked me what the biggest number was. Being something of a wonk, I answered him. “The biggest number with a name is a googolplex.”
Of course, he thought I was making things up. So did his mother.
I showed it to them online. The biggest named number is a googolplex. That will change as soon as someone names a bigger one, of course, but for now, that’s the biggest named number - and it’s really big.
Ever since then, everything has been a googolplex. How big is that building? A googolplex. How hungry are you? I could eat a googolplex. How tall are you? I’m a googolplex.
A week or so after this discussion, the big guy’s teacher tracked down his mother for a chat. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. She teaches at his school. It was bad enough, though.
The big guy, the teacher reported, had discovered a new word. The other kids were very upset, thinking it was a bad word and he was insulting them. The teacher didn’t know what the bad word was or where it came from, but the big guy refused to stop - or even to admit he was doing anything wrong.
Apparently, my son was there for this conversation, because his mom reports that he interrupted at that point. “But mom,” he wailed. “It’s not a bad word! It’s a googolplex!”
Ah.
His mom explained to the teacher, who went home and Google’d it. To her credit, she came in the next day and explained what a googolplex was to all the kids. To those of you saying that the teacher should have known what a googolplex was, I disagree. It’s about as obscure a piece of math trivia as you’ll find. The fact that she came back and taught the kids, on the other hand, speaks volumes. That’s the kind of teacher you want.
I can only imagine all the other parents that evening looking at their kids saying “What? What did you say? Google-what?”
I just hope they didn’t get in trouble.
My wife had a doctor’s appointment this morning, leaving me to take the kids into school. Amazingly, I’ve only done this one or twice before - so I have no idea what the procedure is. I understand that other parents just drop their kids off, but since I don’t know the protocols, I park and walk the kids in.
Fortunately, since my works at the school, this isn’t unusual for them. She just walks them in as she heads to her classroom.
“Let’s drop your brother off first,” I said to my youngest as we walked across the parking lot. I figured that the oldest probably knew the routine better. I could drop him off quickly and then worry about the younger one. Besides, I had a 50/50 chance of picking the same one that Momma does.
The little guy sighed with exasperation. “No! Momma always drops him off first!”
Whoops. Looks like I guessed wrong.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
He flapped his arms. “She talks!”
“Talks?”
“Talks and talks and talks. First this lady, then that lady, then another lady. Talk, talk, talk, talk!”
I smiled.
“And I just stand there! Talk, talk, talk!” He flapped his arms again.
“No worries,” I said. “I don’t talk like Momma does.”
He smiled. “True.”
True.
Yesterday, I took our three-year-old (soon to be four) out to run some errands while his older brother went to a birthday party. We had a good time, especially once I stopped using the word “errands” and started using the word “missions”.
Afterwards, I treated the little guy to an ice cream at Brusters - a walk up ice cream place. We purchased a couple cones - free for him because he’s less than 40 inches tall - and grabbed a bench to munch and talk.
As we were crunching away the last bites of our cones, he grabbed my arm. “I’m thirsty, daddy!”
“Thirsty?”
He gestured wildly with his hands “So thirsty!”
“Umm…” I looked up at the menus glued to the inside of Bruster’s windows. As far as I could see, no drinks were listed at all. “I don’t think they have anything here, but we’re heading home next and we can get some water there.”
“But I’m thirsty!”
“I’m sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do. They don’t have any drinks here.”
He tried to hide his smile. “They have milkshakes. They’re drinks.”
I stood up. “No! You just had an ice cream cone!”
“But I’m thirsty!”
“Me too. Let’s go to the grocery store and pick up some carrot juice.”
“Nooo!” He flopped dramatically over, like a puppet with its strings cut. “Milk Shakes!”
We’ve never had carrot juice. It was just the nastiest sounding juice I could think to bring up. After some discussions about carrot juice versus milk shakes, we decided to ask if Bruster’s had any lemonade. They did, so we split one.
It was delicious.
Today’s Tale is in the Chronicle. Click Here to Read It!
Terms for Searchers: Door, lawn, lawnmower, key, lock, momma
The downside to having two kids so close in age is that they like to pester each other. I can’t count how many times I’ve ended up shouting “You! Stop bothering your brother! And You! Don’t get so upset! He’s just being a pest!”
The other morning, I heard my wife over the monitor. The five year old was bugging the 3 year old this time around and the three year old was delivering a full-on performance of teary-eyed whining.
My wife’s voice came through the monitor, cutting through the noise. “Look, you just have to ignore him.”
“But I can’t!” he wailed. “I don’t know the hand motions for ignoring!”
Heh. I think I do - and they involve only a single finger.
But I think we’ll save that lesson for later.