Words of a Child

This little story made me cry. I was walking my kindergartner home from school. As usual, I asked him how his day went, who he sat with at lunch, and who he played with at recess.

He said, “I didn’t play with anyone at recess.” I asked why, and he explained that he waited in line almost the whole time for one of the swings.

So I asked, “Did ya have fun swinging?” But he said no. I asked why.

He said, “Well, I only got to swing for 5 seconds. Right after I got on, my friend Andrew asked if he could have a turn, and I let him.”

My little guy. We talked about giving to friends after we take a turn, rather than giving up our turn.

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Rowdy Rebel’s favorite question is “Whassat!” (What’s that?) He says it very, very excitedly. And over and over. When we read stories before bedtime, my job is to turn pages and remain quiet while yells over and over and over, “Whassat!? Whassat!? Whassat!?”

This morning, I walked in and Denise (our part-time nanny) was reading with Rowdy Rebel. He must have eaten something that didn’t agree with him, because he was passing gas. Every time he made a sound, he looked at Denise and asked very loudly and curiously, “Whassat!?!”

Denise was blushing throughout the entire ‘conversation’ and just kept answering, “That was a noise, Rowdy Rebel. Just a noise.”

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Rowdy Rebel still loves the Power Rangers. He does lots of Power Ranger karate moves at the playground, which sometimes turns into fighting, and is a little embarrassing for me but also sometimes funny. He doesn’t get it.

The other day he was trying to impress a little three-year old girl he likes to flirt with. He kicked her so hard she fell down–not at all impressive. Huge time out for this one. (Time-outs are not yet working, though he hates them, and he seems to understand that it’s a form of discipline. The discussions haven’t yielded big results either, but the ground work has been established.) I trust he’ll learn over time.

A few weeks later my father and sister took him to the park and reported that Rowdy Rebel AGAIN was roughing up the girls. Come on guy, show some charm!

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Deep Thinker and I love watching SpongeBob and reading SpongeBob stories. So, last night before bed, we were reading one we bought at a school bookfair. I was trying to do a SpongeBob imitation (which sounded exactly like SpongeBob, and extremely funny, in my opinion).

After I read a few lines using the ‘SpongeBob voice,’ my son said, “Um, Mommy, can you please read in your normal voice?” But I was having fun, and thought he’d get into the story, so I kept imitating Spongbob anyway.

He asked me again, “Mom, please stop using voices!” This time, he was a little more insistent. I decided to play a little joke on him. I said, “I love reading in this SpongeBob voice! I sound just like him. Maybe I should read all of our stories using my SpongeBob voice!?” His little face darkened, his expression irritated and slightly anxious.

After a minute, he rolled his eyes dramatically and said, “Well, you just don’t sound like SpongeBob, Mom.” Goodness, didn’t realize one little voice could be so annoying!

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The other night, Deep Thinker and I were reading about gliding possums. (As many of you know, children’s books have some yucky topics–bugs that kill frogs, possums that fly, I’m serious, it gets crude, but the cruder it is, the more my boys seem to love it…).

So, the book explained how the wings aren’t used for flying but gliding. I thought about explaining the difference between gliding and flying to my son. But then I decided, he probably won’t understand (plus he was already late for bed), so I’ll just move on.

As I finished my thought and got ready to turn the page, my little deep thinker piped up, “Oh, I understand! The possum does the same thing as those guys who use parachutes.” Hm. Well, kind of…

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Rowdy Rebel’s now pointing to EVERYTHING all over the place and telling me the name. It’s fun to see how many words he’s learned.

I have a shirt that Rowdy Rebel LOVES. The shirt has a bird on it.

So the other day, he points to the head of the bird on my shirt and says “bird…bird…head!” Then to the foot. “Bird…bird…bird…foot!”

Finally, he points right under the tail and says, “bird…bird..boggom.” Boggom. That one had me laughing for a long time.

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Deep Thinker read his first word today. It was the word “he.” 🙂

This totally made me cry.

We practice reading a lot now. He can sound out the first few letters of words and guess what they are based on the story beyond that.

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So, cute story from yesterday. Deep Thinker is going to baseball clinic (camp) for four days.

We were walking, and we passed a construction site with a crane digging a huge hole, and piling dirt to the side. There was a small mountain of dirt and gravel, probably 15 or more feet high.

My son looked at the dirt with wide eyes and got all excited. He said, “MOMMY, look at that!!!! It’s the biggest sandcastle I’ve ever seen!!!!”

Is that cute or what?

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Rowdy Rebel drew a beautiful crayon picture on the wall in the afternoon yesterdayl. I cleaned that off.

Then somehow he got a hold of two markers. I noticed it was very quiet in his room, which peaked my interest (and fear). So, I went in, and there he was, drawing another picture for me on the wall. The art was HUGE, orange scribbles spanning the wall between the top and bottom bunk.

I screamed (as in “AAAA!”, not words to him). But it scared him, so he started to cry. After that, I cleaned the marker off. Well, mostly.

For the rest of the day, every time Rowdy Rebel went into his room, he pointed at the places where the scribbles had been and said, “Ooohhhh.”

His tone implied thoughts like, “Something bad happened there, and it scared my Mommy.” Thank goodness for Mr. Clean erasers.

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Rowdy Rebel was out like a light at 8:30 pm. After I got him in bed, I went back in to my room to check on Deep Thinker.

Deep Thinker was wearing my reading glasses. He explained that he needed them to finish drawing his picture. He has a little Power Rangers transformer toy that looks like a telephone. So, the word “enter” is written on one of the keys. He said he needed my glasses to see what comes after the “t.”

I was a little concerned, but after I took the glasses and put them on myself to write this blog, he copied the other letters without an issue:)

He also asked me for his grandmother’s (my mother’s) telephone number today. I guess he’s all ready to make phone calls at age 5:)

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