Best Mommy Moments: March, 2008

Danny: But, Mommy, Eric told me to!
Mommy: Well, Eric is not in charge!
Danny: But, Mommy, Eric thought he was in charge!

"Eric! Cease and DESIST!"
--Danny. (I have no idea where he learned that, of course.)

I've been working on this Relief Society presentation (about the history of the Relief Society) a lot. Today I picked Danny up from school, fed him lunch, and then encouraged him to go outside and play. It was a gorgeous day. 70 degrees.
Danny demurred.
I pushed. "But look at that sunshine! And the playset is calling to you!"
Danny looked at me and then in a gentle, chiding voice--the one a parent employs when kid says something silly but insists that its true--"But Mommy, it only doesn't have a mouth!"
So I said, "It's using sign language! See that swing moving?" [There was a slight wind] "It's saying 'Danny! Come play with me! Danny!'"
Danny laughed, but didn't go out.
I sat down at my computer, and I had just pulled up my spreadsheet chronology when--
Danny wandered in and said, "Mommy? Will you push me on the swing? It is using sign language to tell me I need to go play on it!"
I was helpless against such superior logic. So I gave in and pushed him for a while. Yet another case of my brilliant ideas backfiring because of even more brilliant children.

"The Doctrine and Covenants was Joseph Smith's binder."
--Mommy, comparing a work of scripture to the boys' binders of Mommy-written stories.

Jon: [over dinner] Her former boss was awful. He announced publicly, "I expect you all to work an industry-standard 55-hour week." And she has two small children.
Eric: Did she go on strike?

Danny: I want you to work on Bear's Biography more.
Mommy: Do you want to sit in my lap and help me?
Danny: No, I want you to have a project so you'll let me watch movies.

Danny, could you go use the bathroom for me, please? I don't feel like getting up.
--Bear


[Background: Carolyn deadpanned the worst poem in the English language at a talent show, causing the audience to shriek with hilarity. Now Imagine my Aspie Eric reading the same poem in complete, oblivious seriousness. I almost asphyxiated, I was laughing so hard.]

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.

[At this point I had all but fallen out of my chair. Eric paused and said, "Actually, I don't think it's all that funny," and continued reading.]

And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."
…
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
…
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.
Plop.


"Danny is being disrespectful! He is using my name over and over in the song he is singing!"
--Eric, shortly after a lecture about not taking the name of God in vain.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all breakfast cookies are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Freedom from DISCRIMINATION."
--Gail "Mommy" Homer Berry, explaining to a very whiny Danny that he didn't get to "pick" one breakfast cookie out of the herd because they were all the SAME. (Of course, Danny eating the cookie deprived it of it's inalienable right to life. Ah well.)

"Sometimes when Mr. T-- gives me assignments that are too easy, I wish I were in first grade."
--Eric

"Okay Mommy. You and I will hide, and Bear and Thomas [the train] will look for us!"
--Danny, organizing a game of hide-and-seek.

"Mommy! There are wicked AND evil AND scary AND bad monsters in the backyard!"
--Eric and Danny

"Daddy, Noooo! Don't kill my character!"
--Eric, panicking at the threat that if he didn't shape up, Dungeon-Master Daddy would run his character as an NPC. And not gently.