Legal Battles

Yesterday:

Theo: But I don't WANT to go to school!
Me: Sorry, buddy, you have to.
Theo: Why?
Me: It's the law.

Today:

Me: Theo, if you don't go potty, I guess you won't be able to go to school and get your award...
Theo: You HAVE to take me to school, Mom. It's the law.

Always fun when they throw your words back at you and beat you at your own game.

Literary Scholar?

I ordered Theo a set of 20 science/nature-themed mini-books from Scholastic. They arrived a couple of days ago, and I unwrapped them today. I handed him the first one and said, "Hey, instead of me reading it to you, why don't you try reading it to me? I bet you can recognize some of the words." He promptly read the entire book to me. And the next three in the series. While Chris and I sat there in somewhat stunned silence. We knew he was recognizing a lot more sight words lately, but we didn't know he was actually reading. "Theo!" I exclaimed. "You've been working so hard! I didn't know you could read books by yourself!!" He just looked at me calmly and replied, "Yeah, well, Mom...I *am* in kindergarten." Of course. They're probably starting War and Peace next week.

Intelligence

It's a good thing I have a thick skin. This morning, Theo and I had this conversation:

Theo: Mommy, Mrs. Jacobson [his kindergarten teacher] is very smart. She's smarter than you.

Me: She is smart. But what makes you say she's smarter than me?

Theo: Well, she's a teacher, so she's very, very smart.

True enough, though I am a teacher, too. I guess he forgets that. :-)

And then later today:

Theo: Mommy, Liz [his babysitter] is much smarter than you.

Me: What makes you say that?

Theo: She has better bread than you do.

Hmmm. Well, he's got me there. I make him eat nasty, gross gluten-free bread, and Liz gave him delicious, pillowy soft bread for his PB&J. Clearly she is smarter!

Artistic Sensibility

Theo doesn't really like school all that much. He likes parts of it, but in general I think he mostly just tolerates it. I was amused by his latest tactic to get out of school:

"Mommy, I'm going to tell you this one time. I am an artist, and artists don't go to school."

That would be much more believable if he actually liked doing art....

Everybody Loves Ice Cream...

...but maybe not these flavors....

At soccer today, the kids were doing a drill where they had to dribble the ball over to some cones, pick up a cone, place the ball on top of the inverted cone, and run back to the coach with it. This cone-with-ball-on-top was supposed to be an "ice cream cone," so all the kids were running back to the coach and saying, "I brought you chocolate ice cream!" "This one's vanilla!" "This is blueberry ice cream!" All tasty, yummy flavors. Except my kid, who ran up proudly with his "cone" and announced, "I brought you toilet flavor!"

As if that wasn't enough, he ran back with a second "cone" and proclaimed, "This is beer ice cream!"

Oh, Theo...never a dull moment!

Fred Astaire

Theo has a tendency to talk like a 50-year-old man. Such was the case today, when he mused, "I used to be quite the dancer back in preschool...."

Ah yes, those golden years back in preschool, so very long ago...

Every Problem Has a Solution

The other day, we were sitting in traffic on the way to Theo's school, and he spied a DVD player showing a Curious George video in the minivan in front of us.

"Mommy! They have TV in their car!" he exclaimed.
"Uh huh," I replied.
"Can we have TV in our car?"
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because we don't need TV in our car."
"Why not?" he repeated.
"Because you get plenty of chances to watch TV at home. You don't need to watch it in the car, too."

He dropped it at that, and I was relieved not to be nagged any further about it. About 10 minutes later, he announced, "Mommy, I had a dream about Grandma Diane last night."

"You did?" I said.
"Yes," he replied. She came to babysit me. And you and Daddy and Sammy left. It was just me and Grandma Diane, and she drove me all around in her car!"

I thought that it was rather sweet that he was happily relating this dream where he spent time with his beloved grandma...and then his true motive emerged.

"We were driving all around in her car," he continued, "and she had a TV in it! And then she told me we could put the TV in our car, Mommy! Because Grandma Diane loves to share with me, and she said she would share her TV with me and we could put it in our car!"

Ah. Clever, grasshopper. Very clever. But not clever enough—we're still not getting a DVD player for the car!

Milk Production

Yesterday, I chaperoned Theo's class field trip to the pumpkin patch. Along with all manner of interesting information about pumpkins, the kids learned about cows and milk production. They even got to milk fake cows, which was a big hit! In fact, it has sparked Theo's newest obsession: What can we milk? He tried to milk our pug last night--she ran away in terror, much to his chagrin. This morning, he demanded to know why we can't milk horses. Resigned to the fact that we don't have a cow and there was nothing else available for him to milk (since Zoe was rather uncooperative), he mused, "I need to figure out how to milk myself, Mommy." Then his eyes lit up: "Hey, can I milk my butt?"

I really don't want to think what sort of "milk" would come out of there. ;-)

Decision-Making

We're a pretty gender-neutral household as far as gender roles are concerned. Chris does most of the cooking, for example, because I work in the evenings and he's a better cook than I am anyway! And as for cleaning, whoever gets to it first does it. Handling the boys? Whoever isn't working at a given time does it. We're definitely not a patriarchy...more an oligarchy. So this exchange with Theo puzzled me:

Theo: Daddy makes the decisions in this house!
Me: Um...sometimes. And sometimes Mommy does. Actually, Mommy makes quite a few of the decisions.
Theo: That's good, Mommy. Because you're pretty smart.

I'm not sure whether to be flattered that he thinks I'm intelligent or appalled that his initial impression was of me as the "little woman!"