The Choice Is Yours (You Can Go with This, Or You Can Go With That)
Posted by mike On October 27, 2013
Independent thinking is an important trait that should be ingrained early on. So as a parent, you try to mix things up. You know, instead of just telling them what they want, or what they should do, you give your kid some options and let them decide on their own. Then if their decision sucks, they learn to do better next time, hopefully. You have to be careful, however. Kids are tricky like that, so there’s always a chance that you get played for a fool. Or that’s what has happened to me, anyway. Many times. I’ll tell you about those experiences at some point. For example now, though, after dinner one night a few months ago, I figured that I’d ask B what he wanted for dessert. Simple right? Not so much:
Me – ‘What do you want for dessert? A banana, or peach applesauce?
B – ‘A bananee!’
Me – ‘OK, a banana?’
B – ‘No! Not banana. A bananee!’
Me – ‘I don’t know what a bananee is. Do you want a banana or peach applesauce?’
B – ‘Peach.’
Me – ‘OK, you want peach applesauce?’
B- ‘No, a peach.’
Me -‘That wasn’t a choice. We don’t have peaches.’
B – ‘Why?’
Me – ‘We have to buy them at the store. So do you want a banana or peach applesauce?’
B (long pause) – ‘I want a pear.’
Me – ‘We don’t have pears! That wasn’t a choice either!’
B – ‘We have to buy them at the store?’
Me – ‘Yeah.’
B – ‘OK! Let’s go to the store!’ (He starts trying to wiggle out of his seat)
Me – ‘We’re not going anywhere! You’re having peach applesauce, OK?’
B – ‘OK!’
So I get him a spoon and the sauce. J is crying now, probably at the ridiculousness of this conversation, so I turn around to tend to her. I turn back around soon after…..B hasn’t touched the applesauce. He’s using the spoon to slurp milk from his cup, though, with the biggest stupid grin on his face.
Lesson learned…..sometimes kids don’t know what they want, even when you tell them what they want.
The Poison Control Affair
Posted by mike On October 25, 2013
You know what you can’t do, when you have little children? Leave stuff lying around your place. Inevitably, said children will weigh their options, and do the worst option with your stuff. Call it curiosity, skill development, exploration, or whatever. I call it kind of annoying. K took up knitting recently, for example. B and J are constantly playing with and misplacing the needles, and getting tangled up in the yarn, like little colourful mummies. B got his foot caught in a roll once, then ran all around the living room and kitchen, somehow unraveling it so that it was caught on all sorts of furniture. By the time I caught him, the place looked like it was rigged with an alarm system laser maze.
Experiences like that just teach you a lesson to be careful with your possessions. For your sake, of course, but mainly for your kids’ sake. I remember another time, last year, we went up to check on B. K found him sitting quietly in our room, calmy eating some of her scented body lotion. We thought that it was high up on the back of her dresser. Apparently it wasn’t that unreachable. How he got it, no idea. In his words, though, he was just eating dip. We had to go all Law and Order on him, and interrogated him to figure out WTF he was thinking:
Me – ‘Did you eat a lot?’
B – ‘Yeah, a lot’
Me – ‘Or a little bit?’
B – ‘Yeah, just a little bit.’
Me – ‘So did you eat a lot, or a little bit?
B – ‘A little bit.’
K – ‘So you didn’t eat a lot?’
B – ‘No I ate a lot.’
‘
After going back a forth like this 5 more times, we switched up the questions:
K -‘So did you swallow it, or spit it out?’
B – ‘I spit it out.’
Me – ‘So you spit it out because it was yucky?’
B -‘Yeah. Yucky!’
Me -‘And you didn’t swallow it?’
B – ‘No I eat it. It was yummy in my tummy!’
Did I mention that neither us are cops?
After getting nowhere, I finally called freaking poison control. I had no idea how toxic that cream was, so better safe than sorry. (” Uh, my son ate some perfumy body lotion, maybe, and I don’t know how much because he won’t tell me. Is he OK”). They asked a bunch of questions, gave me some advice and that was that. B was just fine, too, don’t worry.
Yet another lesson was learned on our part, however, in being careful with our stuff.
The best part of the ordeal? His breath smelled great for a long while after, as well.
It looks scrumptious, but don’t eat it!
Kids Say The Realest Things
Posted by mike On October 23, 2013
Remember that show, where Bill Cosby would talk to some lil’ children, and the kids would say the most random things? Sometimes, that stuff was hilarious, just straight jokes. I used to think that the kids must have been actors or something. However, I understand now that, nah, they weren’t actors. Just from talking to B, and then being around other kids (birthday parties, school, sports etc. You know, those places that you probably wouldn’t be around very much if you didn’t have kids that you had to take there), you realize that children are….random. Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time), I have no clue WTF B is talking about. I remember one time, when B was two, almost three years old. K was at her baseball game, and B wasn’t feeling it when I was telling him that, so we got into an argument about it:
B- ‘Where’s mommy?’
Me- ‘I told you, she’s at a baseball game.’
B- ‘No! She’s at work!!’
Me – ‘What? I never said that. She’s playing baseball.’
B – ‘No! She’s at work!’
Me – ‘No!’
B – ‘ YES!’
Me – ‘Ok ok, she’s at work.’
B – ‘Daddy? Where’s mommy?’
Me – ‘She’s at work!!!’
B – ‘No! She’s playing baseball.’
Me – ‘ARRGH!’
B – ‘Daddy?’
Me – ‘Yes!?’
B – ‘Are you mad?’
Sigh.
No B, I wasn’t mad. Thanks for the Cosby moment, though.
Bedtime WTF Awards!
Posted by mike On October 21, 2013
First post! I will get things poppin’ with an ongoing problem in our house – the bedtime routine.
As a three year old, B was your typical three year old boy. Or so I am told anyway. Before having kids, I wasn’t really up on how toddlers were. Getting him to go to bed varies in levels of sucktacularness and ridiculousness each night. The highest level warranted their own awards, which I call the Bedtime WTF Awards. For example, one night, here were the nominees:
1) B is screaming for help. I go to check on him. As I open his door, he sprints by like Usain Bolt, stops on a dime at his bed, grabs a book and flings it across the room like a discus. He then goes “Please get my book, daddy!”
2) Later, B is screaming and banging his door, I check on him again:
B (tears running down his face, sobbing) – ‘Your hair is on my door. Get it.’
I don’t have hair. I fake wipe the door.
B (sobbing more) – ‘No! The other side of the door!’
More fake wiping.
B (voice suddenly normal) – ‘Put the hair in your pocket! Will you put it in the garbage? For the garbage truck? What colour’s the garbage truck?’
3) Later, yet more screaming, I go to his room again:
Me – ‘What’s wrong now?’
B- ‘The cows outside. They’re mooing. The mooing is scaring me!’
Me – ‘We don’t live on a farm. There are no cows outside!’
And the winner is…no one.
The loser? Me……
.