Dude, you were schooled

We are watching The Princess Bride for the second time in a few days. The boys love it as much as I do; especially Jackson. He's been running around saying "my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, PREPARE TO DIE" all said with a really bad Spanish accent.

At the point where Dread Pirate Robert and Princess Buttercup are making their way through the big scary forest that has a real live name that I can't think of and they have survived the shooting flames and the lightening sand and are talking about the unusually large rodents (Jackson says they are a cross between a wart hog and a large rat-perceptive boy I think) and Dread Pirate Robert is telling Buttercup that he doesn't believe they exist. So, of course the rodent attacks just at that point. And both times we've watched that Jackson says to the screen, "dude, you were schooled!"

And each time it made me laugh.

Camela

My son the wordsmith

Breakfast is over and Brad is trying to get Teddy to clean up some candy mess he made before we woke up and the attitude was starting already.

Brad: "Ted, you need to pick up that trash right now."

Ted: (absently as he heads, as if in a trance, towards the computer) "I'll be there in a minute!"

Brad: "No son, I mean right now. Don't sit down!"

Ted: "I said I'll be there in a minute."

Brad: "No. Ted. Now."

Begrudgingly, Ted got up moaning and groaning the whole way with half the trash in question to put it in the trash can. Brad hot on his heels with the part he missed to which Teddy mumbled indignantly again as he threw away the final piece.

Me: "Teddy, none of these requests are unreasonable; chill out."

Ted with an attitude laced voice: "Some of them are!"

Me: "Teddy go up to your room right now and write down all the requests that were unreasonable. I'll be happy to discuss them with you when you're done."

There was a bit more.. 'aww mom, come on', and 'stop talking, keep your mouth closed and get your butt upstairs' -- and up he went.

A few minutes later he called down. "Mom, I'm all done."

"Okay, bring it down." I can't wait to see what he's come up with. I'm totally expecting a list that is going to completely annoy me. But I'm ready, bring it on little boy.

He hands me a piece of paper that has one sentence on it:

"What I meant was that some requests are unreasonable but you have never asked me to do one."

What do you say to that?

Camela

Heredity - a powerful thing

Teddy's teacher is about to have back surgery and will be out of school for several months. She wanted to touch base with all the parents before she left since she will miss the parent - teacher conferences. She called one evening and the wildly paraphrased version of what she said was that he's doing great academically, though it would be nice if he remembered to follow through and turn his stuff in more often. But socially... well... if he doesn't learn to tone down his strong personality and start using better basic social skills he's going to get picked on by bullies in middle school next year.

Okay, I might be exaggerating, but really -- not by too much. And I can't say I disagree with her. Teddy comes across as an extremely confident kid. He is very assertive. If we're in a store, for example, and he has a question, he doesn't have the slightest issue finding an employee and asking whatever series of questions he needs to figure out what he wants to know - up to and including asking who else would know if the one he asked doesn't know enough. Adults absolutely love him - they think he's so mature and that it's so cute coming out of his little body. But the reality is Teddy is very sensitive and unsure of himself. He masks this by coming across so confidently - which works better with adults than with kids. With kids; sometimes it works, but sometimes not as much. (This is yet another example of how Teddy got all of Brad's good qualities and all of my bad ones. I continue to hope that the good will outweigh the bad in his case).

He sort of walks in with the assumption that people want to talk to him and want to hear what he has to say and he doesn't do a good job of laying some of the groundwork needed to make friends and connect with people - he's just magically already there. When that doesn't work out and the kids don't want to play with him or aren't just exactly on the same page as him - he not only has his feelings hurt, but he's just plain confused. Brad and I are working on basic social cues with him.

Anyway - this post took an odd turn along the way... Now back to the heredity thing...
So his teacher was trying to give me an example of how he is unbending and so sure of himself, but unknowingly for her the example she used is Teddy's poor (or wonderful depending on the day) genes and nothing more.

She told me that the class was broken into groups and were to be pantomiming different ways people react when they are stressed. So it gets to be Teddy's turn and he just sits in his chair and doesn't do a thing. He's not moving in any way, just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. The kids in his group were guessing things like 'you don't care about things' and 'you are tired and don't want to do anything'. Teddy just sat there saying 'no, that's not it', 'nope', 'no', 'uh un' - but he never did another thing, just kept sitting there in that chair, not giving the other kids a single thing to help them out. Finally she called him over and found out from him that he was trying to show "losing your appetite". They discussed things he could have done and ultimately he picked something else more demonstrative and went back and did it and they guessed it with no problem.

The problem with this story being an example of his overall social cluelessness is that he gets that particular trait so darn honestly..... A story from my past.

One Christmas many, many moons ago, we were at my paternal grandparents house and after dinner we were all downstairs playing pictionary. My grandparents had pulled out all the stops with this game. There were easels and colored markers and we broke into two teams and off we went. So at some point it was my Grandma's turn and she looked at her word and her face showed pure confidence - whew this would be easy, if she looked so confident. She got up and grabbed a yellow marker as she commented conspiriatorily that having the colors would make this one really easy and drew a very small yellow rectangle in the middle of the huge piece of paper stuck to the easel. She took a few steps back so we could all be awed by her masterpiece while she waited for us to all shout the answer out in unison.... uh. hmmmm. "rectangle?"

She looked at us like we were morons. She pointed to it, "it's so clear." Ok, what could that be. uh. yeah. I got nothing. There were 4 or 5 of us guessing, but it was pretty consistent across the board. "Grandma, we're obviously not getting it. I understand we're the stupid ones, but we need something else, anything else." "But Cammy, that's it. There's nothing else I can draw. That's what it is." And she sat there mutely for long minutes as we struggled with what on earth this little yellow rectangle was possibley the exact replica of. Luckily the other team was also struggling, though don't think we weren't hopeing to gleen clues from their guesses. Finally my dad looks up at his mom with confidence and says "Gold Brick", and my grandma looked at the rest of us - her moronic opinion of us all proven correct as her beloved son proved her point that her masterpiece was all that was needed.

So poor Teddy never had a chance with 'loss of appitite'.

Camela

Unmature

So as I was putting Teddy to bed tonight he told me that a friend of his has reported that his older brother gets detention in middle school almost every day. This led to a very analytical and pragmatic discussion, as only Teddy can have, as to exactly how many detentions he might get throughout his middle school career. Of course this took several minutes and lots of back and forth to get to the final answer of three or four; five at the absolute most. I told him I could probably live with three or four, but would not be happy with any of them.

But this detention discussion led to him wanting to let me in on some very important information.

"Mom, I'm getting older."

"Yes you are"

"As I get older and get to be a teenager, I might just become unmature for a while."

"Really. Why is that?"

"Sometimes teenagers do stupid things, so I guess they become a little unmature, like Steven who gets all those detentions."

Aaaahh. I've decided this is good information to have.

Camela

Thank God for Ninjas and plastic swords

"Mom, can you make my Halloween costume?" "Uh...sure I can sweetheart, what do you want to be?" How lovely of him to ask me to make it for him. I'm thinking I'll be able to buy some sort of costume and embellish it in some way and viola costume made.

But no.... Teddy wants to be Iron Fist for Halloween. Iron Fist, I mean - really?!! What the heck is Iron Fist and how many 10 year olds who aren't Brad's son actually know what or who it is? It turns out he's some sort of super hero; complete with big, huge, and absolutely imperative chest tatoo. Let me repeat that.... chest tatoo - it takes up nearly the whole chest and Teddy is SO excited about it - see an image here.

Did you look? Did you see that big, huge, collar thingy that is sitting there defying gravity? Okay, let's think about this. I can do this. I can do anything. I need... what... tights? Okay, tights might take care of the legs, but what about the upper body part? And Halloween, in case you've forgotten, is on October 31st and it can be pretty cold on that day, so how do I keep him warm when the Iron Fist's 'shirt' is basically opened to the waist and let's not forget we have to be able to see the tattoo. My first thought is, I can paint the tattoo on his chest. I'll use acrylic paint or even Halloween make up and it'll wash right off the next day. But what about keeping him warm? I know, I'll get a beige colored t-shirt and paint the design there. Now, how do I do that collar? Am I going to actually have to buy lycra fabric and a pattern, OMG, when is that possibly going to happen.

Wait, wait, wait. I know, I know, I know. I just need to put something else in front of him and hopefully he'll fall in love with something else.... right? So under the guise of going to get Jackson a costume we took both boys to a costume store, and sure enough, Teddy's eyes bugged out at the red ninja. And then when you added the plastic swords that go with the outfit.... well game over. So I bow down to the ninja gods and am ever so grateful to the plastic sword goddesses as the balance of my October just got a heck of a lot easier.

Camela

Me and the garage

As has recently been pointed out to me, the garage is not my friend. Or maybe it's that I am not the garage's friend. Or maybe it's that when the garage is involved, I am not a car's friend - yeah, that's the one.

Me: Honey, I scratched the bumper of your van. I didn't pull it in far enough so the van was perfectly placed so that the little thingy that sticks out of the garage door below the lock managed to scrape itself along the bumper. I was really surprised that it didn't just bounce back up once it encountered the bumper.

Brad: No (shaking his head) it wouldn't do that.

Me: Of course it would, that's an important safety feature and besides it went back up the last time it hit the bumper.

Brad: (eyes bugging out of his head) The last time?

Me: Uh yeah, the last time. It hit the bumper and popped right back up. (big grin)

Brad: I'm so glad you have developed a pool of knowledge from which to draw your information about this (totally glaring at me). We should go inside and stop talking about this now.

I decided that we didn't need to discuss the time I opened my then pretty new convertible inside the garage and put a bit of a gash in the top - oops.

Camela

Only when Brad's away....

All the crazy, annoying, time consuming things that are going to happen at the most inopportune moment happen when Brad is out of town. Some past examples inlcude;

-the fire alarms that go off at 4am because someone, ehem, forgot to change the batteries

-the bird that the boys and I found sitting on a curtain rod in the sun room one day after work - the boys tried to sell tickets to see our new 'pet' and the dogs were intent on trying a new and tasty snack. Meanwhile I was trying to get the boys to keep the other kids out of the house and corral the dogs to the basement (no easy task given our guest). I then spent at least half an hour getting the bird to leave while the kids cheered wildly. I opened all the doors and many windows and tried to shoo it out with a broom. (yes this was even more ridiculous than you can imagine) I think because of our high ceilings, the bird just wasn't that impressed with my efforts and just happily flew from one curtain rod to the other until finally he grew bored with our game and flew out the front door. It's a wonder I didn't just follow the damn bird that day.

-The 6 foot snake sunning himself on our 2nd story back deck. Come on now, it's 12 feet off the ground; how the heck did he slither his way up there? Bandit was losing his mind barking so hard in circles around the thing. I guess I should be happy because it was bandit that alerted me something going on. Ultimately I was able to push it off the deck and my neighbor tried to impress me by managing to pick it up and throw it into the woods behind our houses. (how I dislike being impressed by my neighbor) And I figured the snake must have climbed out on one of the tree limbs that extend over our deck and then jumped (or was pushed) onto the deck.

-The dead turtle found upside down in the living room - no doubt a present from Bandit. "Mom, can we keep him, can we huh huh, he's so cute??"

But this time during Brad's absence we had a three-fer (is that a word?) First there is the mouse we have living in our kitchen. We often have a few mice that try to take up residence with us as the weather turns colder and this year was no exception. But we really, really thought we'd taken care of our little guests last week, but apparently a search party was sent to look for the original missing friends because... uh here we go again. And these little guests of ours this year have proven to be very clever in avoiding the surprises we have waiting for them in all the usual places and they are very, very brazen. In the middle of the afternoon twice now I have seen him scamper, no that's not right, saunter is a much better word, across the counter top in search of something to eat. I am doing my best to not freak out about this. I'm fine when he's right there, I have no problem in the moment. But later when I'm thinking about it... Okay I've got to think about something else or I'm out the front door in search of my bird friend.

Then second, on Saturday Jackson comes running into the house. Mom, we have a baby snake in the garage, it's so cute, you've got to come see it. There is much excitement and glee in his voice and I can only imagine Teddy and his friend Matthew are just as excited outside; probably torturing the poor thing. I take a few deep breaths, curse my husband for his absence and head out to take care of it. In light of our last snake visitor I was prepared for a big ol' thing and the possibility that I would need help, which I hate, but luck was on my side in this instance as it was truly a baby (I am absolutely confident he was an only child!).

This little guy was maybe a foot long and a quarter the width of a pencil, if that, and he'd managed to get himself stuck on a piece of packing tape so he wasn't going anywhere - oh joy. So after checking with the boyscout in residence, Matthew, to get his opinion on poisonousness, I explained to my 2 boys that no, we coudn't keep him as a pet no matter how cute he is and that in fact we have to help him out and put him of his misery. He was so stuck to the tape and so small that I didn't think I could get him off the tape without it being grosser than I cared to fully contemplate - that his only option at this point was to starve to death and since we all live on this planet together we shouldn't make a creature suffer uneccessarily. So I had to kill it, before I disposed of it. 'Teddy go get me a pair of scissors...' Once the deed was done, three boys went off to tell the world that they'd seen snake blood - woo hoo.

And now we get to the trifecta; Lice. You've got to be kidding me, right??? Jackson has been saying his head itched for 2 days. I've been telling him it was because he was filthy, yet still I didn't clean him (example 457 of my being a bad mother). He said, I must have lice, that's why my head itches. I'm thinking... how do you even know what that is or would feel like, you are just filthy little boy... But as I'm about to dump him in the shower this morning, I decide, the least I can do is check his head right? I'm thinking I'd see little bugs crawling around if he had it - wouldn't I? How the heck should I know. But I look and I look and... dun, dun, dun, I find a single little bug of some sort. We have 2 dogs, could it be a flea? It's about that size, maybe a bit smaller. I have no idea, but well... ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick. Being a prepared human I have a lice kit in the closet and clean his head with lice shampoo and run the tiny little comb through it and am in the process of washing and or spraying anything and everything his head might have come into contact with -- Did I say the laundry was done??? Silly woman. Oh and I'm cursing my husband's absence again.

And that boy loves to sleep in my bed and when he wasn't feeling well on Thursday night I let him fall asleep there. And of course ever since I found the little bug in question, my whole body itches, I'm sure they're crawling all over me. So I'm also cleaning everything in my room too and I'll use the same yummy shampoo on my hair just in case and the same teeny tiny little comb on my ultra long curly locks; now that should be fun. But this is just a normal day in the life without Brad.