Our big little boy

If you’re a six-year-old or nine-year-old boy (or the father of one) tonight’s television offerings were the best they get. Our DVR worked up a sweat this evening as the boys (and their father) jumped back and forth between watching the NBA All-Star Game and the Millrose Games, which I now know is an indoor track meet that features the best high school, college and even some professional tracksters out there. (For the record, it appears to this untrained eye that the NBA All-Star Game is just that, a game, where big men practice fancy dunking basically unguarded, but whatever.) We watched these two events for the better part of two hours. When I first called it time for bed I got convinced that it would be alright to skip reading for tonight to watch a little longer. The second time I called for bed I meant it and we headed upstairs.

Thomas went right up because a birthday party he attended this afternoon wiped him out and he was ready. Andrew came up grousing and harrumphing and snarling. He marched into his bathroom, where Thomas was brushing teeth and I was tidying their sty, and said, “Mom. It is totally unfair that I can’t watch the rest of the All-Star Game and I want you to know that I think you’re just wrong, wrong, wrong to keep me from watching such an important event. I am WAY old enough to stay up later than Thomas.” Before I could even think of responding, he continued. “I also want you to know that someday when I move out of this house I am going to stay up as late as I want and I’m going to watch whatever I want on television because I will be at college. I kind of think I’m ready right now and I know for sure that the day I move out and go to college will probably be one of the best days of my life. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings but that’s just true.”

I had an infrequent attack of maturity at this point and quietly went downstairs to get a drink of water. My usual response would be to debate him or something but I knew that he was being ridiculous and also honest and also that he was probably right so I left the room for a few minutes. I had been in the kitchen for about 90 seconds when I heard, “Mom, mom, MOM. Where are you? I need to tell you something.” Assuming that he wanted to tell me one more time how happy it would make him to flee the nest I said, “'I’ll be back up in a minute to tuck you in after you’ve brushed teeth.”

“But, MOM. I need you right now. I need to tell you that I can’t open the toothpaste and need you to help me.”

Alrighty then. We won’t start packing his bags just yet.

I can spell it how ‘bout you?

You know that idiom about not being able to have your cake and eat it too? Generally, I think it’s true, but last weekend we proved it wrong, if only for 90 minutes.

We had a date night dinner with two other couples…that included our kids. No sitters, no guilt! While we were upstairs enjoying adult conversation, drinks, dinner and even dessert, our collective kids were enjoying a buffet of mac & cheese, chicken strips, Halloween crafts, a movie and all the Sprite they could drink, in the basement. We live in a small town with a little hokey small-town country club, but I have to say they got this one right. It was awesome.

When we first arrived we sent our kids and two others off to find their evening entertainment. It seemed as though the situation was well-supervised and the kids were going to be happy as clams. About 15 minutes later I decided to go downstairs and check-in when the third family arrived and their kids were joining the festivities. It had really just at that moment occurred to me that Thomas was likely to be the odd man out in this group of older kids. Imagine, then,  how predictable surprising it was to hear Thomas crying as soon as I rounded the corner toward the basement.

When I got downstairs I found Andrew and a friend double-fisting sugary drinks and Thomas sobbing and swinging at his brother. Needless to say the college student in charge looked happy to see me. I stepped in between the boys and asked for some form of explanation. Thomas was so upset that I could not understand his crazed rant through his tears and Andrew, shockingly, had nothing to offer beyond a guilty grin.  I pulled Thomas away from the other kids and asked him to please stop sobbing and tell me what was wrong. That’s when he explained that Andrew was “putting stickers” on him. It wasn’t immediately clear to me why that was offensive so I called Andrew over to get his side of the story. Thomas was still – quite loudly – maintaining that Andrew was calling names with stickers on his back. 

Huh?

I turned to Andrew and asked if this was true. He vigorously asserted that he had done no such thing. I almost believed him. But, the smirk on his buddy’s face and Thomas choosing that moment to turn his back on me gave him away. This was stuck squarely in the middle of Thomas’ cute little back:



Gosh. I wonder why Thomas would think Andrew was calling him names?

I hauled Andrew upstairs, marched him past the other parents, and sat him in a chair in the dark recess of an empty room. On the way I told him that he shouldn’t use words if he doesn’t know what they mean. That’s when he accurately told me that a Neanderthal was kind of like a caveman. While he sat in solitary, the dads all got a good laugh out of this and Mark took a picture. The educator in our group suggested that he should get a commuted sentence if he had spelled it correctly. Damn if he hadn’t.

I’m pleased to report that the rest of the evening went uphill but I can assure you that the next time Mark misbehaves I’m breaking this one out of the verbal toolbox.

No respect

Thomas and I were cruising down the street earlier this week and he was, as he’s apt to do when he’s not competing with his brother for air time, telling me a big story from the backseat. He seemed to be questioning whether I was listening so he asked me to repeat a piece of the tale, I think just to test me. Amazingly, I answered correctly. He was appropriately impressed and then he said, “Mom, are you the smartest person in Kansas?”

I was going to assure him I wasn’t, but I was also admittedly flattered and amused so I paused a second before responding.

In that split second of dead air, he chuckled and just as I was about to speak he said, “Never mind. OF COURSE NOT. I forgot about dad!”

On honesty

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”

-Spencer Johnson

For the second summer running, we’ve purchased a subscription to a CSA through the boys’ preschool. I love everything about it. We’re supporting local farmers, we’re eating vegetables that I probably wouldn’t buy at the store like Napa Cabbage and beets and it’s a total steal when you break down the cost.

Each Thursday afternoon we pick up a bag of fresh produce when I get Thomas from camp. An area farmer brings the goods to the school, along with recipes and cooking suggestions, and we often even get to make some choices. This week we could choose between garlic or basil (basil) and kale or broccoli. Andrew was helping me choose and he knew he was going to have to eat some of everything and he knows he doesn’t like broccoli so kale it was.

Tonight I turned that huge bunch of kale into what seemed to be only a few kale chips. They were, if I do say so myself, delicious. Like, I could hardly get them to the table without eating them all good. I gave the boys each a chip and asked them to try it. Andrew ate his and announced that while he didn’t think they were as good as I did, they were “alright” and there was no gagging or excessive milk drinking accompanying the process.

Thomas took a little bite and then just sort of busied himself with eating pasta. When I asked him what he thought he said, “Well, they might have been good if you’re into eating leaves, which I’m not.”

That, according to the aforementioned Spencer Johnson, is integrity and honesty all rolled into one six-year-old boy.

I raise you a javelin

Andrew is generally believed to be a reasonably intelligent child, which makes the fact that he managed to get his “good” soccer ball stuck in a tree today totally irritating baffling. Apparently he didn’t remember that those trees are in possession of numerous sporting goods captured by their upward arcing branches. He was genuinely surprised, after he and a friend threw a soccer ball as high as they could in the general direction of the tree, that it became lodged 25 feet above the ground. He pleaded with me to get it down but I assured him I had no tricks up my sleeve that would allow me to reach that ball. Mark, who had been outside,  heard the commotion and silently disappeared. I assumed that he was silently disappearing so that I could handle the situation without his interference. (Insert eye roll here…)

Imagine my surprise when he reappeared seconds later dragging a very long cardboard tube behind him. That tube? It looked familiar. That tube has been leaning in the corner of our garage for the last 10 years. That garage? We’re not quite ready for Hoarders, but we can see it from here. I’ve inquired about that long cardboard tube several times in the last 10 years. “Are we seriously keeping this?” “What are you EVER going to do with that?” “Do you really think anyone will use that again?” 

That tube? It holds a javelin. I’ll give you a second here to wonder why in the world we would have a javelin in our garage. The answer is that we apparently have a javelin in our garage to dislodge soccer balls from Bradford Pear trees.



Every experience has the potential to be a teaching moment. What I learned this afternoon was that even though I’m the parent that prepares 82% of my kids’ meals, does 74% of their laundry,  and does 99% of any caretaking that happens between 9 p.m.and 7 a.m., I will never be their favorite.  Why? Because I don’t know squat about a javelin.

In less than 30 seconds, Mark expertly pulled the javelin far enough out of its cardboard home to make the total reach long enough to push the soccer ball to freedom, which elicited cheers from Andrew, Thomas and the playmate. Then? He let them each have a turn to throw the javelin. He showed three small boys how to throw a very long, metal, pointed object in our backyard.

I quit.

I watched this nonsense from the deck and decided that if I couldn’t win the favored parent award I might as well try to throw a javelin. It turns out that I suck at that and should stick to laundry. Mark was, predictably, the only one of us that could actually make it stick in the ground.
 


I document all of this mostly as a reminder to myself. We all have our special gifts and we all make our contributions to the family unit. There will come a time, probably this week, when I feel a little sorry for myself, what with the 82% of feeding and 74% of the laundry and all, and this will serve as a good reminder. It takes a village to raise a couple of great little men and I am grateful that their dad is capable of doing 26% of the laundry and a far greater percentage of the stuff that they’ll actually remember when they’re older.

p.s. Any of you who are related to us should consider yourselves potential character witnesses should Andrew’s playmate’s parents call into question why in the world we let their child throw a javelin in our backyard today!

Starting where I am

We’re 13 days into 2012 and for 10 of those I have been meaning to update the ol’ blog site with a well-crafted post. I need (want) to write about our holiday celebrations that were replete with family and fun. I need to document our amazing post-Christmas vacation to the happiest place on earth with dozens of photos that should really be narrated before I forget the details (and the hilarity) that can surround a traveling party of 10. We truly had so much fun.



However, as my wise mother-in-law recently reminded me, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  I also recently read that the best way to move forward is to just start where you are. How profound. So, here we are.

Since we returned from Florida we’ve been embroiled in Life. We re-acclimated to school and work, which was easier for the kids than me, and we’ve also been running an infirmary.Our sweet Madeline dog had a spleenectomy last week to get things rolling and since she came home we’ve been busy keeping her off the stairs while she heals. That’s a full-time job because her interest in said stairs has quadrupled since they’ve been taboo. We heard from the veterinarian today that the tumors they removed defied the laws of probability and were benign. We feel good about electing to have the surgery and when the kids want to know why their college accounts aren’t fully-funded we’ll remind them about the extra years we bought with the best last dog we've ever owned. (I jest, I jest. We love her and are very pleased that she seems to feel better than she has in months.)

Last Saturday at 9 p.m., when the kids should have been in bed as I was wrote a brilliant trip recap, I was instead watching Chopped and the boys were roughhousing in the basement. They were fighting over a football and were in a standoff on opposite sides of a chair. At the exact moment I opened my mouth to intervene, Thomas surprised his brother by making a move toward him over the chair instead of around it. Andrew, of lightning quick reflexes, flew out from around the chair and had almost escaped his brother’s grasp when he thwacked his foot on a corner of the wall.  Hard.  We then got to have one of those parenting moments where we make a decision without speaking out loud to one another. That decision was, “sure looks gotched but we’re not taking a kid to the ER for a gotched toe on a Saturday night.”  That’s when we sent him to bed with some ice and a dose of Motrin.

By Sunday morning it looked worse so I consulted facebook. Facebook told me that there’s no reason to take a kid to a doctor for a broken toe because “they” “never” do anything for a broken toe. When he spent the entire day on the couch with it elevated we knew something might actually be wrong, however, and decided that we couldn’t even bear to buddy tape them because it was obviously out of line and we suspected that maybe it was just jammed but didn’t want to make it worse.

So, on Monday morning, right after he delivered me home from having four wisdom teeth extracted, Mark took him to the doctor. She ordered an x-ray and Mark took him back to school.  Andrew's desk chair had barely had time to get warm when the doctor's nurse called our home. I was in no shape to talk because of the gauze filling my mouth, the ice packs on my face and the general fuzziness that results from anesthesia so I hazily told my mom to talk with her. When I heard, “Oh, two toes? A boot? For how long? When do we do this?” I just reached for another pain pill.

My dad went to have Andrew called out of class and, as he drove him to the doctor’s office, broke the news that he’ll be wearing a little walking boot on his foot for the next four weeks.  FOUR WEEKS. He’s been a great trouper. It’s a big shoe on a little leg.  The lesson here is that if you’re going to break toes, don’t break them where they meet your foot. Break them near the tips where there is indeed nothing to be done for you.



Poor Thomas actually lost a tooth at school that day and there was so much commotion with my throbbing face and Andrew’s new fashion accessory that he forgot to tell us until dinnertime. Needless to say, my parents and Mark earned stars for their crowns this week for dealing with the rest of us.



The bad news is that Mark has now developed a cold that isn't bad enough to keep him away from the gym or work, but it is a mancold, which is the worst variety, so he's as bad off as the rest of us. The good news is that we’re not actually all that bad off, we’ve got some good stories from the week and 2012 is off to a rollicking start!

What he said

We go from best friends to worst enemies and back to buddies again around  here with alarming frequency. (I’m talking about the boys, not me and Mark, for any of you wondering.) 

The general pattern starts with Thomas asking Andrew to play something with him. Andrew, after he makes Thomas beg a bit, agrees. They play well together for some period of time before Andrew decides that he needs to do something to exert his will over Thomas, just to make sure that everyone is clear on Andrew’s self-designated roles. The first time or two that Andrew does this Thomas might just go along with it but eventually Thomas remembers he has a spine and offers up a little resistance. From here things can go one of several ways, but the endgame is always the same; Thomas ends up sort of taking it and Andrew is still three years older and three years savvier.

This little scenario played out here a few days ago and just as  I was ready to jump in and defend my baby, my baby took care of it himself. He jumped up off the couch, approached Andrew who was sitting down and yelled, in his toughest tough guy voice, “ANDREW, DO YOU WANT A CHUNK OF ME? I DO NOT THINK YOU WANT A CHUNK OF ME!”

With that, he exited stage left and left Andrew speechless. 

Bravo, Thomas. Bravo.

Apology accepted

Mark thinks I should be pleased that he doesn't know how to spell snuck. I think I should be pleased that he does know the way to my heart is the written word.

Isn't it ironic

You know how you have those days where you just feel "off" or like things aren't clicking, but you're not entirely sure why that is? Thomas had one of those evenings.

After school it was a meltdown over his brother not wanting to play what he wanted to play and at dinner, the meltdown was over yogurt; after showers it was over my nerve to ask him to please follow directions.

Except? It was probably actually all about being physically tired, or hungry, or just mentally exhausted from having what was, ironically, a very good day at school.  And? Truth be told, I'm probably having one of those weeks as well. It's probably not a coincidence that my mood would rub off on him. 

At bedtime things were a little rocky around here and I looked him square in the eye and said, "Thomas, I need you to talk in a normal voice to me and get your act together." He paused for a second and said, quite clearly, "Mom, that's the problem.  I'm trying to get an act, but I just can't find one and it's just not working."

Ugh.

Note to self: Get your own act together before you ask these sweet boys to do the same.

What if

Once again it appears that three weeks have passed. I hate that. I hate that it happens without my really being aware of it and that I have little to show for it. What if I was either busy discovering a cure for cancer OR immersed in the every minute of the days of my little people? Would that missing three weeks still bother me as much as it does?

+++++++++

Inquisitive is a nice euphemism for Andrew's incessant curiosity. Like many kids, he asks an astounding number of questions each day. Lately, though, he's started posing more rhetorical questions. These are not fabricated, nor are they even embellished. These are actual What if questions he's lobbed out into the air in recent weeks...

"What if I ate four thousand marshmallows and then drank four gallons of Coke? Do you think I would explode?"

"What if the United States just killed Moammar Gadhafi instead of trying to talk him into being nicer?"

"What if I purposely did a belly flop off the high dive? If I did it on purpose would it still hurt?"

"What if people pooped from their mouths and talked out of their bottoms?"

+++++++++

We're getting lots of practice at the "not reacting" part of this parenting business.

Who's laughing now?

We at House of Hondo are so excited by warmer weather and longer days. The boys rush to get dressed so they can play outside before school and they rush home to jump in the trampoline after school. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining and things are grand. 

Or are they?

We've reached a phase in our house where the boys "sleep in." While the definition of "sleep in" is relative, we've become accustomed to 7:15 or 7:30 for Thomas and even 7:45 for Andrew. That leisurely hour feels purely luxurious after the early years of Thomas' life where he was regularly up and at 'em by 6 a.m. He's the reason we instituted the Do Not Come Out Of Your Room Until The Clock Starts With A Seven rule.

It turns out the only drawbacks of longer days and more sun are longer days and more sun. Hello, 6 a.m.! 

***I do not like 6 a.m.***

After a few consecutive mornings of early wakeups, and the resulting grumpy evenings,  I have taken matters into my own hands. Genius or desperation?  You be the judge:

That's right. I taped their bedroom curtains to the walls last night. They already have blackout lining but that pesky gap between the curtain and the wall seemed to be giving us fits.  I've taken care of that issue in a super klassy manuever involving a roll of masking tape. Mark was sure they would notice AND that it wouldn't work. It turns out to be very fortuitous that theirs are the only two rooms in this house that I haven't painted so their contractor white walls match that klassy tape pretty well and they were none the wiser.

Everyone stayed in their own beds until 7:20 a.m.  I'm thinking that this round goes to Mom.