This and that

Brisco has recently decided he likes to stick out his tongue. After explaining to him how this is rude and disrespectful behavior, he still refused to stop. So I told him if he sticks his tongue out, a bird will think it’s a worm and come rip it off.

The wind pants came out of the drawer this week. It’s funny how kids can’t remember the last time they wore long pants, but Brisco quickly figured it out saying, “Wind pants. You wear them in the wind.”

I tried to put long pants on Cooper one day for school, but he wasn’t having it. He said, “No, Mom. Somebody might look at me.”

We were at an arcade/restaurant last week and a teenage boy walked by with florescent pink hair. Immediately, Brisco pointed his finger and said, “Hey Mom! Look at that!” I quickly lowered his arm and told him that it is rude to point. A few days later, I had my hands in a pound of hamburger and he asked me where Cooper was. I gestured with a greasy finger to the back yard and he said, “Thanks, Mom. Oh, and it’s rude to point!”

Playing in puddles is a good way to burn off rainy-day energy. The kids like it too.

One boy is bothered when I curl my hair. The other boy insists I keep my toenails painted. Where do these things come from?

Lately, the boys have been wanting to take walks. Walks for them involve riding, pushing, pumping or dragging their “bikes”; however, we don’t own actual bicycles yet. Coop rides a tricycle and Brisco drives a scooter.

I didn’t realize that Cooper is really too big to ride a tricycle until I noticed his knees bumping the handlebars as he cruised down the middle of the street. He looks like a circus clown riding that thing.

Children riding scooters are no more safeguarded against skinned knees and elbows than those riding big boy bikes.

When doctoring skinned knees and elbows, Solarcaine and Dermoplast are about as different as peroxide and alcohol.

In our house, everything is a competition. What one does, the other has to do bigger, better and more of…even pooping our pants at the ballpark.

Whoever invented the hand movements to the song “Where is Thumbkin” must not have had children. Or maybe they lived on Siberia’s frozen tundra where the influence of modern society was at a lull. Brisco, proud that he’d mastered the part in the song, “Where is middle man?” came strolling through the ball park, in front of an entire section of people, waving his middle finger in the air, saying, “Mom! Look what I can do!”

While getting dressed for the ball game on Saturday, Brisco said, “I wish I wore a cubby.”
A bit confused, as usual, I said, “What’s a cubby?”
“A cubby!” he said. “Daddy’s boys wear them under their suits.”
Still not understanding I said, “Where do they wear them?”
“They wear them at the ball games,” he said, as if I was the most un-with-it parent alive.
“No, where under their suits?” I said.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to his midsection.
Oh. I get it. A cubby.

And that’s All in a day’s work!

Let them earn it

It seems all it takes is a coin or two flipped from the right fingers to trigger a child’s drive for the good ole American green back. At least that’s how it happened for us. On a Saturday at the baseball field, with a couple of Corbin boys leading the way, the Smith boys got a taste of what it feels like to earn a little money.

It was almost an overnight epiphany. Just days before, a penny was something they might find lying on the ground in a parking lot. A nickel and a dime were two interchangeable pieces of “silver”, and a quarter was what they gave to God every Sunday. But the thought of these jingling pieces of metal holding any meaning or power of motivation for our two young boys wasn’t even a thought in my mind. It seems all it took was a little competition and a desire to be like the big boys to spark an interest in earning that dough.

Since their long, hot Saturday of chasing foul balls, the boys have compiled quite a collection. Each with a jar and their initials on the lid, they can be found scavenging under bleacher seats, scoping the ground near concession stands, and eye-balling the pavement around cars in the parking lots for a chance to add even a “broken” penny to their collections.

I, of course, have searched for various ways to use our children’s new-found obsession to create familial peace and domestic harmony. For example, there’s nothing worse than grocery shopping with two little boys who’d rather be doing anything other than walking quietly and politely through a store while being metaphorically chained to a metal box on wheels. But give them a list, a washable marker for checking it, and the promise of a monetary reward for doing a good job, and they are the next best thing to the personal shopper.

Loading and unloading the dishwasher is no longer a dreaded household chore. With wages lower than they’ve been in decades, I can get this detested duty hired out for a measly quarter. And if it happens to be a laundry and trash day, the three year old is quite adept at collecting, sorting, and shooting those clothes into the washer tub, as well as hauling the bathroom trash to the kitchen. With all of fifty cents going to the lucky helper, the price is just about right.

I’ll not say that they completely understand the concept of this money business, but I can tell that they are both trying to figure the whole thing out on their own. Early one morning, Coop decided he’d ask a few of his unanswered questions concerning the tiny wad he’d collected in his jar. Looking at his one and only dollar bill, he asked, “Mom, who is the man on the money?”

Both proud and amazed that I could answer his question, I said, “It is George Washington. He was the first President of the United States.” The second bit of information seemed really pretty useless to him, but this Washington, fellow, now that had him intrigued.

“Where is he now?” he asked. “Well, he is no longer living,” I tried to explain. But the child wanted more. “When did he die? How did he die? Where is he now?”

Hmm. Well. Let me see. I must say, the details of my Presidential history pretty much ended with, “I don’t know, son, but I know he’s dead.” After a few more questions about “What is the pyramid?” and “Why is there only one eye?” and “How does the eagle fly holding all that stuff in his feet?“ I finally agreed that I’d have to look further into this money matter and get back to him with more legitimate answers.

Brisco was a bit more satisfied with remaining completely oblivious. One Sunday morning during services, quarter in hand, he leaned over and asked me if the man on his quarter was God. Through my stifled guffaw, I said, “No, baby, it’s George Washington.” He just smiled and said, “Oh!”

All in all, it is decidedly a lot easier to introduce them to the coinage when they’re small. They’re learning to master the skill of counting, but they don’t yet know the difference between a penny and a quarter. Cooper will dump his jar at random and “count his monies.” He has no idea the dollar amount he has accumulated, but when he has finished counting, he’ll shout, “Mom! I’ve got 59 monies!”

And dollar bills don’t make a fun sound when they fall into a jar, so for now, at least, our green is secure.

It’s fun to watch the boys get excited about working hard. They seem to have a vague understanding that Daddy works hard so he can provide for our family, and they are trying hard to follow suit. Brisco offered to take his money to the store and help pay for the groceries. And there’s really nothing more satisfying than having your four year old come to you and say, “Mom, I want to earn some money.”

I can’t wait to teach them to do windows!

And that’s All in a day’s work!

The power of a peer

I’m learning too quickly how a parent can lose all influence over her children. In days gone by, what mom and dad said was gold--twenty-four karat, take it to the bank, won’t turn your finger green gold. But apparently over time, the altruistic words of the parental unit begin to roll off their backs like carelessly placed eggs on an untrue counter.

We no longer hold the sole position of selfless, all-knowing guidance counselor, ever available to give honest and direct answers to our children’s toughest questions about their world. We’re losing our standing as the go-to guy when it comes to inquiries about life and death and the origin of the “big blue man” who grants wishes “from a can”.

It seems we have been replaced by those with less experience, a lower IQ, and a significantly smaller shoe size: their peers…and I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until puberty.

But it has, and it does, and the times are fewer and farther in between when I hear my oldest spout, “Mom said!” as the authoritative grounds on which he bases his disagreements with his little brother. Rather I’m the one being corrected and admonished for little things, like the words we have chosen as the names of everyday necessities of life at the Smith house.

Case in point, after spending a week this summer with their five year old cousin, Mattie, they were both shocked and in awe to discover that boys wear underwear and girls wear panties. To most, I suppose this is a simple fact of life. At our house, however, it has always been “panties”, although in a house full of boys, I have no idea why.

I felt a little dejected, then, after being harshly scorned by a three year old and promptly corrected by his older brother at my inappropriate usage of two so distinctly different nouns. I can only imagine how confused the two of them must have been to have received such a revelation. Especially since one of their weekly chores is to put Daddy’s folded panties neatly on his dresser.

Along those same lines, they learned that “girls wear swimming suits and boys wear swimming trunks” and thank goodness that mix-up seemed a little less gender confusing than the previously misrepresented undergarments.

Sometimes the things they learn serve a good far greater than that of simply undoing the misdeeds of their parents. Often, their minds are opened and their vocabularies expanded to include ideas and phrases that will prove invaluable to them in later life. Words that they can call on when no other expression seems to fit so succinctly. My favorite illustration of this comes from my niece, Harlie, top trip in a trio of the most beautiful, brilliant and busy three and a half year olds I know.

During a recent conversation, I was amused and intrigued to discover that Josephine, the full blooded Italian woman straight from the old country who keeps my sister’s triplets, “has idiots at her house”. Upon hearing this revelation for the first time, my eyes widened and an unsuccessfully suppressed smile crept across my face. “Idiots, huh?” I had to know more.

With top notch sincerity she continued, “Idiots don’t come in the house.” I tried some independent analysis, but I was left wanting more insight from this clever little girl. “So where do the idiots go?” I asked.

“Idiots are in the movies,” she explained. “Idiots are not in real life.” Oh how I wanted to alert her to her naïve misinterpretation, but I decided that was a conversation for later in life. She continued, “Idiots steal the puppies.”

I decided maybe I was missing something. That she actually had specific “idiots” in mind and that she wasn’t just speaking philosophically or in general. So I asked, “Harlie, what is an idiot?” She responded without a flinch, “Mean people.” And I thought, well, I guess she’s right!

It wasn’t until later that I figured out Miss Harlie was referring to the idiots/mean people in the Dalmatian movie. And much later, I realized Mr. Brisco must have been listening to our conversation, otherwise how could he possibly have labeled his mother “an idiot” after an unfortunate encounter with Dad’s belt.

More recently, I overheard a conversation between my boys that had real potential to become an all-out brawl. I was so pleased and proud, however, to hear Cooper resolve the conflict with the following statement: “You go ahead, Brisco. First is last and last is first,” which I always thought was a direct quote from the Bible.

I wanted to encourage Cooper in this kind of behavior, so I made sure he knew that I’d heard him. I said, “That’s nice, Coop. God said that to us in the Bible, didn’t he?” He had no problem quickly correcting me by stating, “God didn’t say that. Mattie did!”

Yes, the influence of a cousin, a cohort or even a childhood classic can open the eyes of a parent to the significant clout held by those around them. The power of a peer can be greater than a dearly-beloved mother, a highly-respected father, and even the Good Book itself.

We’re trying to keep a hold of what little influence we’ve still got. And at least for now, they’re willing to come to us with a few of the smaller questions of life.
“Hey, Mom, does eating sugar really make you run slow?”
We just keep shooting back those honest and direct answers.
“You bet. And drinking water will make you run really fast!”

And that’s All in a day’s work!