Fail blog

On our vacation this summer, we took a scenic and very winding road to get to an evening show at Mount Rushmore.  We saw a ton of deer, and we loved the view of the four presidents through several tunnels.  Spencer, however, did not like it quite so much, since he ended up getting car sick.

After stopping to clean up, find him something clean to wear, air out the car, etc., we were slowly back on our way.  Spencer was trying to make the best of it, and suggested that maybe he should write a letter to the President of the United States, telling him that there should be a requirement for roads to have less curves in them, thus preventing his car sickness.  Someone else suggested that he start a blog about it.  At that suggestion, Samuel (age 8) said something to the effect of, "Yeah, that would be a FAIL blog!"  We all got a kick out of his quick wit. :)

(David is convinced he blogged this previously, but I promise he never did.  I remember, because I asked him to, and I was annoyed when he never did it, but it wasn't worth making a fuss over.  Here is how I remember it.)

Riddles, Uncle William style

William: "What's the best way to throw a clock out the window?"

[Huh? That's not how it goes.]

William: "So we can see time fly!"

Scott thinks William's way of telling jokes is the best!

(William is Scott's older, down syndrome brother.)

Birds, Bees, and Lice?

[Dad is combing baby lice out of Spencer's hair that have recently hatched from nits that he missed combing out on Sunday.]

Sam: (eyeing a baby louse) "So the baby ones can't lay eggs?"

Dad: "Nope, not until they grow up. And I assume that there would also need to be a male and a female adult to end up laying eggs."

[awkward pause, Spencer thinking]

Spencer: "And all of this is going on in my hair?"

[all of us laughing]

Spencer: "When a mommy louse and a daddy louse love each other very much..."

Yep, he's 12!

Scissors Sister

A few years ago, Sierra was banned from scissors due to her tendency to see them as the be-all end-all of problem solving tools.

Someone pointed out to her (at church, I think?) that she had a tuft of hair sticking up funny, and so she solved the problem by getting a pair of scissors and cutting the offending lock off as close to the scalp as she could get. This worked at first, since the very short patch was covered by the rest of her hair. But as it grew, there was a period during which it was too short to lie flat against her head, but too long to remain hidden by the longer hair surrounding it, so she had a tuft of hair sticking up funny (which was the problem she originally intended to solve) for several weeks, until it was long enough to yield to some effort to style it.

Around the same time (and this was shortly after moving into a new--as in newly-built--home) Sierra succumbed to an urge to stick a pencil through the screen of her bedroom window. She immediately recognized that she had made a mistake and realized that she was going to get in trouble for the hole she had punched in the screen, so she reached for her favorite problem-solvers. With a pair of scissors, she deftly removed the evidence of her misdeed--by cutting a 1" circle around the 1/4" puncture, thereby removing the hole from the screen.

She's re-earned her scissors privileges since these incidents, with no other major mishaps, but the hole in her screen is still there, reminding us of her former tendency to cut first, think later. :)

4-Year-Old Soccer

[Sarah's been after me to post this for a couple of weeks now] [edit: apologies for the multiple posts, if more than one shows up in your feed reader... My posting tool was having technical issues...]

Simon's playing soccer this year. He's four. He's one of the youngest on his team, but nobody on the team is older than five. This makes the games interesting--at one point in the first game the entire swarm of players surrounding the ball had moved thirty yards out of bounds and was still gleefully kicking the ball back and forth--ignoring the shrill blasts of the whistles from both coaches.

Anyway... Simon had practices for two or three weeks prior to his first game, and of course in practice they took turns with the ball, learning to dribble and shoot. This became an issue when it came time to actually play, because suddenly there were no more turns--it was every (little) man for himself. Simon simply couldn't handle this, and spent the first half of the first game in tears, unable to understand why he wasn't getting his turn with the ball.

Part of the issue was that Simon and Samuel both play at the same time, so Sarah and I have to split up, with one of us watching Sam's game and one watching Simon's. That first game started with me sitting on the sidelines of Sam's field and Sarah with Simon--and unfortunately Simon doesn't respond as well to Sarah as he does to me. A short while into the game, then, we traded places, and I tried to explain to the sobbing Simon the concept of competition ("the red shirts will try to take the ball from you, and you try to take the ball from them") and teamwork ("all of the green shirts are helping you to get the ball to your goal, so if one of them has the ball you don't want to take it from them").

I thought that he finally had it, and he went back in to play. He seemed to be doing fairly well until his team kicked the ball out of bounds and the other team was getting set up to kick the ball back in to play.

At that point, I think that he decided that he hadn't had enough ball time, and that it was his "turn". He ran over to the ball, got behind it, and started dribbling it down the field--toward the other team's goal. He was three-quarters of the way down the field before his coach managed to catch up to him and convince him to stop, but he looked satisfied.

Finally he had gotten his turn with the ball.

Dust Bunnies

Simon was running around with the little duster, then swapped it for the big duster. Then he started running around and screaming, "Now I'm a big hoe(ho?)" over and over.

Problem Solving

Simon: "I want Sprite."

Mom: "No, not now. You already had some today. You may have milk or water."

Simon: (crying, throwing a fit, repeating over and over): "But I want Sprite."

Mom: (ignoring, starts playing a video game)

(Tantrum continues)

Dad: (sternly) "You cannot have Sprite, and that is it. Go to your room to cry."

Simon runs to his room screaming. Screams continue to be heard from down the hall for a while.

Screams stop.

Simon returns: "Mom, can I pretend that water is Sprite?"

Problem solved! :)

Oh, Snap

[Mom singing and helping the kids organize some seed-beads that spilled]

"To every job that must be done there is an elephant of fun..." [I start to giggle, and it spreads to the children as they all realize what I said accidentally...]

Dad: "Find the fun, and . . . oh, snap!"

Tiny Pasta

[Simon, yelling from the pantry] "Can someone please get me tiny pasta?"

(He wanted uncooked angel-hair spaghetti. We all found it rather amusing. :)

Priorities

ME: Simon, I'm going to make-out with Turtle. Is that okay?

SIMON: No.

ME: Aww, but I really want to. Why not?

SIMON: [tossing a blue bead that he's pretending is a dice] Because I want you to watch me.

ME: Okay, but when you're done I can kiss her?

SIMON: Yeah.

[gets the "double points" T]

SIMON: I got it!

ME: Sweet, now I can kiss Turtle, right?

SIMON: *nods*

[leans over to passionately kiss Turtle (not for reals)]

ME: Simon, was that hot?

SIMON: Yes.

ME: Should we kiss some more?

SIMON: No.

ME: Why not?

SIMON: Because it's your turn! [offers me the "dice"]

Where's the deck?

I told 4-year-old Simon that I was going out on the deck at the condo to watch the lightening, and wondered if he wanted to come. He said yes and took my hand. As we walked, he asked "Where's the dick?" I thought 11-year-old Spencer would die laughing.

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