Here are some new terms, coined by Jack on our camping trip this past weekend.
Aerodymanic: Jack leans over the handle bars and pedals like mad to become aerodymanic on his bicycle.
Stun-scream: When you sneak up behind Jack to apply sunscreen, he emits a rage-filled stun scream.
Jack and I had the following conversation this weekend.
Me: We sure are having a fun day.
Jack: What did we do?
Me: We painted, played play dough…
Jack: And now we are talking…
Me: And we are going to a playground.
Jack: I’m sorry, did you say we went to a playground?
Me: No, I said we were going to a playground, because we are on our way now.
Jack: Oh. I’m sorry, I misunderstood.
Me: (thinking: big word for a 4 year old.)
Jack: You know, misunderstood is pretty hard to say…. with a banana in your mouth.
No need to go into the back story here. Without further ado, I present to you this:
At dinner, Jack said, “Who has two thumbs and his tongue up his nose? This guy.”
Merry Christmas.
Better mommy bloggers than I, have written more than I care to write about the Elf on the Shelf. But I will share this conversation that my little logician Jack and I had the other day.
Jack: Something about Pinocchio, blah, blah, blah, right Mommy?
Me: I’m not sure, I don’t know too much about Pinocchio because he freaks me out.
Jack: Mom! Look at the Elf on the Shelf! Is he Pinocchio???!!! No! The Elf on the Shelf freaks you out! That means you are not freaked out by Pinocchio.”
So there you have it
Yesterday, Jack said, “Some adults are weird. Not you, Mommy.”
Oh really, who is weird?
“You know, like Daddy.”
I recently quit a job that required that I work night and day, weekends, holidays, the whole deal. Dave really picked up the slack with the groceries, and the kid pick ups and drop offs, and the general all around parenting. Consequently, I missed some turn over at the day care and I don’t know some names. My strategy here has been to pick up Jack and then ask him which teacher was playing with him when I got there. But I wait until we leave, and at that point, he doesn’t remember. Yesterday we peaked through the windows on the way out and I asked names. The wonderful, friendly, loving teacher that we saw through the window? Jack told me her name was Hermonica. I said, “Could it be Monica?” Nope. Hermonica. The worst part is that I am going to have to be told about 10 times before I can remember, and I think he tells me a different made up name each time.
Guess I’ll stick with, “Hey, you! Thanks for taking care of my baby!”
Jack: Mama? Who invented the world? And Phones?
Me: Um. God and Steve Jobs.
We went to South Dakota for a long labor day weekend, and I was ecstatic to learn we’d be passing through Wheatland, Wyoming on the way there. Years ago, possibly 10 years, I had an Italian cream soda at Terra Grano in Wheatland, Wyoming and it was fantastic. (Terra Grano is Land Wheat in Italian. Possibly.) What better way to kick off a totally Americana trip to see giant heads in a rock, then by planning to have lunch where I once had a delicious drink a decade ago?
Dave was skeptical, and I have to admit, the cream soda didn’t change my life, like it did the first time. But we did have an laugh so hard you cry experience that made it more than worthwhile.
We ordered cream sodas all around, and two pizzas. Oh, and we got there after 1:00 pm, so we were all preeeeeetty hungry by the time the food arrived. Luke took a bite of his pizza, the cheese sort of flipped up onto his nose, he started fanning his face and yelling, “HOT NOSE!! HOT NOSE!!” Being the loving, nurturing, caring mother that I am, I started laughing. Then, Luke followed up with a giant belch before he got up to get some more napkins. Jack was laughing too, and he let out a world weary sigh and an, “Ooooh. This is tooooo funny for me.” The sort of thing your Great Aunt would say as she tittered and dabbed at her eye with a hankie. That made me laugh a little harder, when Luke got back with the napkins, I had already almost shed a tear. At that moment, Luke chose to say, “Excuse me” for the belch that happened so long ago, I had almost forgotten about it. Then it was all over. It was a laugh like the Big-Lebowski-quoting-coffee-spitting-great-partly-saying-wedding of 1998. The one where I had to put my head under the table so I could focus long enough to chew and swallow my food in order to fully laugh without the very real fear of choking.
We laughed, cried, pulled ourselves together, made eye contact with each other, and started again. Many times.
Hot Nose! The new family vacation memory.
Jack yelled “I WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE CAKE!” during a fit yesterday. I took a moment to savor the fact that I have reached the stage of my life where I am in charge of the cake. It’s a good place to be. Except when 3 year olds are freaking out about it. But even then, life is good.
I shared the story with a co-worker and he reminded me of this gem, The God of Cake.
Dave’s birthday cake was The Strawberry Margarita Cake from Kim and Jakes. It was either incredibly moist, or slightly undercooked. (Dave votes for undercooked and he let me eat the last piece, so…) The jury is still out, but didn’t concern ourselves with details. It was very pretty, a little too bitter for me the first day, but it tasted better as the days went on. Odd that it lasted so many days, I guess.
>The countdown to the end of school is in full swing and we are all singing our favorite song: School’s Out. Last year Luke was a precious first grader, who loved his teacher, so he was very unhappy about blowing the school to pieces, and teacher’s dirty looks. Unfortunately, it’s such a catchy tune, that it’s really hard not to sing the refrain all morning before the last day of school. We tried to modify it a bit, but I can’t remember what we came up with and I am too lazy/multi-taskery to look and see if I blogged about this last year.
But now that Luke is a too cool for school second grader, going on third grader in 5 days, he started the whole thing with a little Alice Cooper sing along before bed. Or maybe I started it. Regardless, I was very interested to hear what he had to say after, “I’ll modify this song so it’s more appropriate for me.”
School’s out for summer.
School’s out for evah!
School’s been blown to pieces.
No more pencils
Lots more books
Sigh. I just love my little bookworm.
On that note, did I mention that I updated the list of books read? (See above re: too lazy to look at yesterday’s post.) Hopefully Luke and I will spend the whole summer reading, if I survive this weekend.
MetaMegan 