You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2009.
This morning, in order to avoid the screaming and crying surrounding teeth brushing , I said to Alban “I am going to set the timer and if you can brush your teeth and come down before the timer goes off, then I will give you a trinket.” Trinkets are usually things that my husband finds in his junk drawer and lets the kids choose from. For some reason this is a big deal and trinkets have become quite the hot commodity at our house.
This is what I got in response from Alban (imagine in a 4-year-old voice which involves dropping r’s):
“You don’t have any trinkets. You are not a trinket person, so why would you say that you would give me a trinket. You are not a trinket person. But if you think you have a trinket then you can give me a trinket. But I don’t want you to set the timer for one minute. I need more time. I want it to be ten. Ten minutes. And you can’t set the timer until I get to the bathroom and I call down and tell you that I have started to brush my teeth. Do you have my trinket now? Can I see it? I don’t want to brush my teeth before I see it. I need to know. Because you are not a trinket person. Do I have to put my toothbrush away? How long do I get for that? I want ten on the the timer. Not one or two or three, but I need ten. Don’t start my time until I get up there to brush my teeth. I will tell you when I am ready for you to start the timer. If you don’t have my trinket you need to look for one now. I want to choose. I need more than one to choose from, mom. So don’t start the timer on ten until I get up to the bathroom and start brushing my teeth. I will tell you when I am ready. O.k. I am going up the steps now but don’t start the timer. I am not in the bathroom yet. I don’t want you to put it on ten until I tell you that you can start the timer. OK!! YOU CAN PUT IT ON TEN …. “
I won’t go into what he had to say about the two trinkets from which I let him choose. He ended up with both.
I generally view my kids as idiots. Not that I don’t feel that one day they may grow up and be very happy, successful and possibly quite intelligent members of society, but right now they are kids and I have the upper hand on them smarts-wise, so I think of them as idiots. Maybe this is more a comment on my selfesteem than their intelligence, but that is for the couch not the blog.
However, every once in a while they surprise me with a burst of intelligence: they might listen and actually do what I asked of them the first time around; or they may regurgitate a piece of fairly complex information with skill and ease; or they may ask a question of great value and actually show they listened to the answer by replying with a great thought or question. But generally they are running around the house singing, “I like to move it move it!” or saying things to one another such as, “What if you had to go see a doctor about your butt-hole??” or making up the most nerve grating sound effects for anything and everything which includes misplacing sound effects meant for the bathroom and applying them in the kitchen. Or they are just in general being annoying.
Last night while on the couch with Alban watching WALL-E (fantastic movie, by the way), he had one of the above mentioned moments where I get a glimpse into their intellectual future. During the scene in which there was a moment of life altering realization for the ship’s captain when he proclaimed “I want to LIVE not SURVIVE!” Alban asked, “What does survive mean?” I was really into this movie so I absentmindedly replied, “It means to live.” Alban thought for a moment and replied, “NO IT DOESN’T!! IT MEANS THE OPPOSITE!! IT MEANS TO DIE!!” I just stared at him in disbelief. What had I done to deserve this outburst? He gathered himself together, and said, “Mom, the captain just said ‘I would rather live than survive’ so it has to be the opposite.”
Soon, very soon, they will pass me by and leave me in the intellectual dust. I guess I should start treating them better while they are the idiots so I have a fighting chance.
This post is for my friend, Brian, who says this woman reminds him of me … in a good way.
