Ask A Stupid Question...

I couldn't let this one wait.  Alyssa was being a little challenging just after I got home tonight.  She was climbing and bouncing on the furniture, I told her to stop, she stopped, then she immediately headed back to do it again.  I said, "No!"  She ignored me and started climbing up again.  I said, "Alyssa, NO!"  She stopped for a second then started again.  I said, "Stop it, right now!  What part of 'no' do you have trouble understanding?"  She got down from the furniture, looked at me, smiled, and said, "Hmmmm, 'n.'"  I was flabbergasted.  I said, "What?"  "'N.'  'Nuh.'"  Then she smiled at me and walked away.

How do you respond to that kind of quick thinking from a five year old?

Stuff My Boy Does To Me - And To Anyone Else In The Line Of Fire

This is all about Ethan today. Because he's getting pretty creative in the things he's doing to me and to everyone else around him. And, considering that my parents take great joy in telling me that I earned every bit of it, I'm perversely happy to report that my Dad got caught in Ethan's sights a little this weekend.

Though hitting Dad with a few things doesn't mean Ethan was leaving me alone. So this week, there's one thing he did to me and two things he did to my dad.

1 - Ethan's into stop signs right now. A lot. I don't know why, he's just decided he likes stop signs. All right, he's three, they get these weird "things" sometimes. The problem is that he has to make absolutely, positively sure that I know when we're coming up on one. Or coming up near one. Or can see one on any nearby roads. "Daddy, there's a stop sign." "It's not on our road, Ethan, it's OK." "OK, but there's a stop sign. S-T-O-P. Stop." "OK, Ethan, thanks." If it's really facing us, it's even worse. "Daddy, there's a stop sign. You have to stop." "OK, Ethan, I will." "Because it's a stop sign, Daddy. You have to stop at the stop sign. OK?" "OK, Ethan, I'll stop." "OK."

So, the other day, I was driving him to gymnastics. We were cutting it close getting there on time, and I was coming up on a stop sign on the back country road we take to get there, at the intersection where we turn right to head to gymnastics. It's a great intersection with fields on every corner, clear for miles every way when (like now) the fields haven't grown very high. The sign is there because the intersection is impossible later in the season, when the corn's high. Then, you can't see a car coming until you're almost in the intersection, and the road does get a decent amount of traffic.

So, with that in mind, maybe, just maybe, possibly, I didn't make my stop quite as complete as I absolutely, positively could have that day. I mean, I could see coming up to the intersection that the roads were absolutely clear, and I really felt like I stopped. I certainly hit the brakes and slowed down to a point that any forward movement should have been imperceptible. I would certainly have called it a stop. But not my stop sign lover, oh no. As we started to speed up again following our turn, Ethan, who had been surprisingly quiet as we approached the sign, suddenly piped up, "Daddy, why didn't we stop at that stop sign? It was a stop sign, you have to stop." "Well, Ethan, it's like this - hey, look! There's a horse in that field up there! Cool!" Thankfully, he does still distract easily enough.

And yes, I will make sure the stops are more complete now. Thank you for the reminder, Ethan.

2 - At least mine was only safety related, and a good reminder for me. He gave it much worse to my dad this weekend. Due to some odd circumstances, Grandma and Papa (pronounced "paw-paw," but always spelled Papa, it's just the way it is, don't complain to me about it) came up to visit two weekends in a row, last weekend and this weekend. Memorial Day weekend, it came time to put the kids to bed, and Papa went to read to Ethan. Ethan picked one of his favorite Cars books, all about an off road race against Chick Hicks and his evil student, the monster truck El Machismo. (Yes, I do know all that off the top of my head, thank you.)

Now, I'm sure everybody has some thought in their head about how to pronounce "El Machismo." My wife and I both go with the "ch" sound like in cheese, so it's "El Mah-cheese-moe." A quick check online says that's probably right (though no doubt butchered by heavy Midwestern United States pronunciation), but not at all the way many English speakers would say it. Many would apparently say something more like "El Mah-Keys-moe." So, it's not entirely insane that good old Papa would read it "El Mah-keys-moe" that night. But Ethan would have none of that.

He stopped my dad in the middle of reading to correct him. My three year old stopped his grandfather to let him, "You're reading it wrong, Papa."

But it gets better. In a week, he apparently didn't forget.

This past weekend, my parents were up again (for Addison's baptism). It came time to put the kids to bed again, and Papa offered to read to Ethan. Ethan, my precious three year old, looked at his Papa and said, "I want Grandma Ryan to read to me. You say the wrong words."

We all laughed. A lot. Not that we wanted to encourage that, but it was really the only thing we could do.

3 - Finally, yesterday, their last day visiting, Ethan was out on his new swing set with his Papa. Ethan was up on the covered deck, and his Papa was standing at the bottom in the sun. Now, my dad's hair is, to be kind, thinning. To be less kind, it's mostly gone from the top. Ethan looked down from his shady spot on top of the swing set (a deck that will easily handle several adult men, thankfully), saw his Papa standing there, and told him he better join Ethan in the shade or his head would get burnt.  Not entirely nice, I suppose, but very practical.

So there, Dad. If I was a challenging enough kid to deserve anything Ethan can throw at me, how rough did you have to be to earn two generations of this stuff?

Daddy's own little interpreter.

A quick one today, just to keep adding...

We were in one of our favorite stores last weekend, Target, to let the kids pick some toys to buy with the gift cards they got for their birthdays.  Laura was a little frazzled; we had a number of stops to make and a short time to do it all, thanks to circumstances, so she was adamant that we were doing the things we needed to, and we would not be deviating from the list.

As I'm wont to do, I noticed some DVDs on sale and wandered over to take a look, carrying a tired Alyssa with me.  Laura, at the register trying to check out, tried to get my attention, which I missed entirely while I was off in my own little world.  Thanks to Alyssa hearing Laura and prodding me, I finally heard Laura asking, "What are you doing?"  I answered, almost as if I were being reasonable, "There are some movies on sale for less than five bucks over here, I thought I'd see if there was anything we might need."

Now, I can't blame Laura for the exasperated look I got back.  I knew we were trying to get done and go, and I know I tend to wander sometimes, so I earned it, and I responded quickly by getting back on task.  Apparently, though, that wasn't enough for Alyssa, who immediately had to tell me, "Daddy, that is so not going to happen." 

Thanks for the interpretation, Lyss.

Of all the things you have to learn from me...

Today is Ethan-centric.  Because he's doing a couple of things lately that scare me very much.  Why am I scared?  Because it's becoming all too clear that I'm raising a small version of myself, and I remember what I put my own parents through.  I am afraid.

First, I'm worried that I've created a tiny little lawyer.  The other day, Ethan and Alyssa were upstairs playing; we were downstairs.  Everything was relatively quiet, right up until we heard Alyssa yell, "Ow!"  Followed by a little bit of yelling.  Alyssa ran downstairs to say that Ethan hit her.  We sat the two kids down, I looked at Ethan, and I asked, "Did you hit Alyssa?"  He looked at me calmly and said, "No."  Alyssa was incensed.  "Yes he did!  He hit me!"  Laura looked at him and asked a little more angrily, "Ethan, did you hit Alyssa?"  Calmly, again, "No."  Laura started to talk to Ethan a bit more sternly; at the same time, Alyssa was tugging on my sleeve, saying, "He did!  He did!  He hit me with my Barbie."  Just then, I heard Laura say, "Ethan, tell the truth - did you hit Alyssa?"  Again, "No."

Uh oh.  Maybe it was the stress on the word "you," but with sudden, perfect clarity, I knew what was happening here.  I said, "Ethan, did the Barbie in your hand hit Alyssa?"  Eyes downcast.  "Yes."  "And did you swing the Barbie at Alyssa?"  "Yes."  "So the Barbie hit Alyssa, but you made it hit her."  "Yes."  Fantastic.  Punishments all around (yes, Alyssa, too; we found out the altercation started because she was trying to physically force Ethan to do whatever it was she wanted him to do while they were playing, something he didn't want to do), explanations that you can't be bossy and you definitely can't hit, apologies and hugs between the children, and I went to cower somewhere in fear, realizing that my 3 year old is already working on telling the "technical truth" in order to cover himself.  Does anyone know what the definition of "is" is?

Second, it's pretty clear that Ethan has some of the same little tendencies I had as a kid.  Obsessed with a movie and collecting all of the action figures from it?  Absolutely, though it's Cars instead of Star Wars for him.  Carefully answering exactly what he's asked, and nothing more?  Obviously.  "Creatively" using found objects as climbing tools and the like?  Oh boy.

We've got this great new swingset.  One of the big wood things, nice and tall deck with ladders for them to climb, big slide, swings, trapeze, it's got it all.  Including, apparently, the strange attraction to "creative" climbing that held sway over me as a young child.  It's not enough for Ethan to climb the ladder and hang out on the deck.  No, I've already discovered him hanging on a cross-beam that sticks a foot out away from the deck, about five feet in the air.  And Laura and I have both found him this week trying to use a small plastic rake as some kind of climbing hook to go up the ladder.  Instead of grabbing the ladder rung, he holds up the rake, hooks it over the highest rung, then tries to use it to pull himself up the ladder.  It's...well, it's kind of ingenious, but also terrifying to watch.  We've now told him three or four times not to do it.  I shudder to think how many times he's done it when we didn't see, if we've caught him at it that many times already.  Because I know how many times I'd have already tried it if my parents had managed to catch me at it three or four times.

Somebody help me, I've been cursed to raise a tiny little version of myself.  Laura, I know you'll read this.  Read carefully, and know I'm being unbelievably serious right now.  Don't let the boy get near any ropes!  I've still got the scar to explain why.

A grab bag ranging from syrupy sweet to rear-end kicking awesomeness.

Four more today.

One super mushy:

The other night, the day before my birthday, I was getting the kids ready for bed. Alyssa came over, gave me a big hug, and said, "I love you sooooo much. Thank you for being my Daddy!" Yeah, I didn't tear up. Nope. Not one bit. Of course.

She then followed up by telling me I could pick what book to read to her that night because the next day was my birthday. Go ahead, gag a little on the sweetness, if you need to.

One of Ethan testing me to keep from being too sweet:

Ethan was sitting at the table. He started talking about tumbleweeds. What???? I said, "What did you say?" He said, "There aren't nine tumbleweeds, Daddy." "Nine what?" "Tumbleweeds." It was the matter-of-fact way he kept saying these things that was throwing me completely. No sign he was hallucinating or anything, just talkin' about tumbleweeds. I said, "What are you talking about?" He grinned a little. "Tumbleweeds. There aren't tumbleweeds, Daddy." "What in the world are you talking about? I don't understand at all." He grinned again. "Tumbleweeds." "Ethan, you're confusing me, why are you talking about tumbleweeds?" He grinned and said nothing. Exasperated, I said, "Ethan, are you just trying to confuse me?" He gave me a huge smile. "Yep." Then he went back to eating.

Seriously? What did I do to deserve that? *Note to anyone who knew me as a kid: That's a rhetorical question. Yes, I do know what I did to deserve this. Please leave it be.

One from Addison yesterday:

I came in from working outside, walked up to her, and she grinned. Man, grinning babies are awesome. I said, "Hi, Baby Girl!" She giggled. A real, out loud, awesome baby giggle. If grinning babies are awesome, giggling babies are God's own way to tell the world that everything is great sometimes. So I said it again, she giggled again. Said it again, another giggle. She must have giggled six times just because I said, "Hi, Baby Girl!" Then Ethan asked me to pick him up to say hi to her, and she leaned on him so he could hug her. Yeah, that's pretty great.

Finally, a second-hand story from Laura today:

First, two things that seem totally unrelated, yet come together beautifully here. The first is that Ethan watches a PBS cartoon called "Dinosaur Train." It's all about (obviously) dinosaurs, and they have a couple of segments on each show where a paleontologist comes out and talks about the dinosaur featured that day, inserting little tidbits of knowledge by saying (for instance), "Point of fact: Pteranodons blah blah blah blah." The second is that Ethan loves his Superman pajamas. And he should, they're pretty sweet. Blue pants, blue shirt that comes past his waist and has the "S" shield and Superman's belt printed on it, and an extra-sweet red cape attached with velcro. And the S has little red lights that flash when you hit it. Pretty awesome, and Ethan loves to wear them.

So Laura's in the car with Ethan today, and he's going on about holding a worm outside yesterday. Talking away, telling her all about it, when he stops in the middle and says, "Point of Fact: I am Superman." And then goes on with his story. That rocks.

The things that they pick up. It boggles the mind.

Alyssa got me pretty good on her birthday. We gave her a fancy new bike (it's bright purple, sparkly, covered in pictures of Tinkerbell and her fairy friends, and it has streamers on the handlebar and a light up musical, um, thingy, on the front of it), and I took her outside to try it out. She had recently been listening to Laura reading one of Ethan's (many, many, many) books featuring the characters from Cars (including, as Ethan often calls him, Chick Hicks and His Mean Tricks; I think I want to use that as a band name). She thought racing me (while I was on foot, mind you) was a good idea, and a great time to pull out a quote from Ethan's book. She pulled up next to me on the bike and said, "Let's race! Get ready to lose, old man!" It's hard to outrun a five year old on a bike while you're trying not to laugh and trying to tell her that's not a nice way to talk to people at the exact same time.

Ethan popped up with some great stuff a couple of days ago, too. While all of the girls were off doing girly things, Ethan and I went to McDonald's for some guy bonding time. He got some junky Happy Meal Hot Wheels toy with a little plastic dude that popped out of it. He declared that little plastic driver guy was a superhero and said, "His name is Batman Superman! His last name is Krypto!" I said, "What?" I think I was rendered momentarily incoherent by the awesomeness of this from a three year old. He responded, patiently and slowly, almost like one might when explaining something to a three year old, "His name...is Batman Superman...and his last name is Krypto! Batman Superman Krypto to the rescue!" Thank you, Ethan, for making me realize I'm such a superhero geek that my tiny three year old has already picked it up and reflected it back at me. Also, that's awesome.

Aha! So humility is the lesson kids are meant to teach!

If you've read my initial note on Facebook, thanks for coming here to read again!  I'm not doing any real editing on these first notes, other than taking out those paragraphs I put into my first explanatory post, so feel free to skip to anything you haven't seen yet.

 For anyone entirely new to my child-centric ramblings, here are the first few stories that got me going:

1. Alyssa. My dear oldest child, Daddy's little girl. Sweet as can be. My darling daughter Alyssa, five years old now and getting a little too smart for Mommy and Daddy's good, hits us with some great stuff sometimes.

As a lot of my readers know, I was a bit overweight a couple of years ago. Like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man was "a bit overweight." Seriously, how I let that happen is just shameful. At the beginning of 2009, I set out to lose the extra weight, and I did it. I lost about a quarter of my body weight, and I've been pretty proud of myself. Maybe a little vain. OK, definitely a lot vain. Thankfully, the apple of Daddy's eye is around to knock me back down a couple of pegs.

Alyssa and I were playing, doing something, I don't remember what, a few weeks ago. Whatever it was, it was something that I probably would have been too winded to do when I was a fatty. Alyssa looked at me sweetly, smiled a beaming smile to melt my heart, and said, "Daddy, I like it better now that you're not so...puffy. Remember when you were puffy? Like this?" Then she blew air in her mouth and puffed up her cheeks. To show me how "puffy" I was, just to be sure I remembered. Then she laughed and ran off.

Thank you, Alyssa, yes, I do remember when I was so puffy. But I'm awfully happy you're here to remind me at odd moments.

2. Now Ethan, he's Daddy's boy. He's the only other bastion of maleness in the house, the only other soldier to stand with Daddy in the battle against the overwhelming femininity of Mommy and her two tiny female minions. Surely, Ethan will always stand firm on Daddy's side, right? He'd never cut down the other guy, right? Oh, yeah. Right.

I was feeling grumpy one Saturday a few weekends ago. I don't know what it was that caused it, I'm sure it wasn't important, but I was grumpy. And I was cleaning up our kitchen, so my mood wasn't exactly improving. Ethan had been after me to turn on the TV, to play Cars with him, to turn on the movie Cars, to do this and that. He's a three year old, it's his job. I played with him a few minutes, then told him I needed to get some work done. I turned on Cars and brought his Cars toys downstairs to keep him occupied, and got to work.

So there I was, standing at a sink full of hot water and nasty dishes, and Ethan came running into the kitchen. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy?" "What is it Ethan?" "Can I have juice?" Sure, kid, here's your juice, now go watch your movie. "Will you come watch with me?" "I have to do dishes. I'll be right here if you need me." He gave me a tiny little scowl, said, "OK," and went back into the kitchen. I dove back into now lukewarm dishwater, turned on some hot to perk it up, and got back to work.

Not two minutes later, Ethan was back. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy..." "What, Ethan?" "Will you come watch now?" "Ethan, I have to clean up the kitchen. I'll be right here if you need me." Another tiny scowl, another "OK," and he went back to his movie.

A couple of minutes later..."Daddy, Daddy, Daddy..." "Ethan, I'm busy doing dishes. Are you OK?" "Yes, but..." "No, Ethan, I'm busy, go watch your movie." "But, Daddy..." "Ethan, I'm busy, I'll be done soon, then I can play, now let me do the dishes!" "But, Daddy..." "NO, ETHAN." At this point, he scowled mightily, stamped his tiny little foot with whatever tiny force he could muster, and said, "But, Daddy, I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING!" "WHAT IS IT ETHAN? WHAT CAN'T WAIT?"

He lit up, gave me a giant smile, hugged my leg, and said, "Thank you for juice. You're the best daddy in the whole world."

Oh, well, yeah, obviously. Just look at how well I handled this one.

3. Even Addison. "How can Addison do anything," those of you who know me are asking. "She's only a few months old." Sure she is. But she still messes with me, and I'm sure she does it on purpose. I think all three of them do these things on purpose, but it's the tiny babies that have the rest of the world conned into thinking that they don't. And she has to be creative to do these things, because she doesn't talk or move much yet.

I was home with my darling children while my wife was sick and trying to take a nap. The older kids were quietly and happily playing with some toys, Addison was sitting in her little Bumbo chair, and I was happily lying on the floor, enjoying this idyllic little scene. For about two minutes. Then, Alyssa did something with the toys that Ethan didn't agree with, they started arguing, I started to get up to referee, and Addison...

Well, I don't want to be too graphic, but let's just say that babies can only make a few sounds, and the sound I heard next, even over the big kids arguing, did not come from her mouth. And the smell that followed was astonishing. I yelled at the big kids to go to separate sides of the room, encouraged them to do so quite quickly (for "encouraged them to do so quite quickly" read "grabbed each one under the arms and pulled them to separate sides of the room"), and dashed to my baby. To find that diapers, to be delicate, sometimes cannot fully contain the wrath of a determined baby. Sometimes, the onesie, the clothes, and the chair she's in, on top of the diaper, can barely contain that wrath.

So now, I've got two crying kids trying to tell me their side of why the other kid was wrong in their argument (in the broken language of upset three and five year olds) from two sides of the room and a crying baby with poop halfway up her back held gingerly in front of me. I shushed the two older kids, told them it didn't matter who was wrong right now, and we'd talk after I took care of their sister. Then I rushed Addison to the changing table and started surveying the damage and working out how to best remove her clothing without worsening the carnage.

As I started trying to manipulate the clothes over her head (because, of course, they all have to be pulled over her head - isn't that fun?), she looked up at me, paused for a moment to listen to the continuing chaos of her elder siblings snuffling and complaining about each other, surveyed my no doubt frantic, wild-eyed face, and gave me the biggest, sunniest smile you can imagine. Then she giggled.

Oh, she knew what she was doing. They all do. Don't try to convince me otherwise.

Stuff My Kids Have Done To Me

Inspired by another blogger out there, I started writing down some of the things my kids do in notes on Facebook.  That's not exactly the ideal way to keep doing something like this; I got tired of it pretty quickly.  So I've made a blog to do it.  Allow me to plagiarize myself to better explain what I'm doing here.  The following were the first two paragraphs of the first note I created.

So there's a blog or Twitter account or something out there called (keeping it cleanish for any smallish eyes here) "S*** My Dad Says." It's strange and funny or disturbing things that this guy's older dad has said to him. Thinking about that, I realized kids tend to do some of the same kinds of things...they blurt out odd or inappropriate statements, they have no filter between what they're thinking and what they say, and they cut loose with some honesty sometimes that just blows your mind. Invariably, it's pretty hilarious looking back at it. At the time, though, it's almost certainly not very funny. You other parents know what I'm talking about.

All that rambling is my way of saying I'm going to try to write down some of the funnier things my three kids say and do. I'm only going to start with a couple today, and I won't be too surprised if I just kind of forget about this for weeks at a time, but I want to give it a shot. I'm calling it Stuff My Kids Have Done To Me because it's not always just what they say...it's what they do, say, and how it just cuts you right to the core.

And that's pretty much it.  I'll copy the three notes I've created so far as my first three substantive posts, and I'll go on from there.  Thanks for reading!