Mommiest Moments: August, 2009

“Oh! So in my fan, the electricity runs the motor which creates wind, and in a windmill, it's backward. The wind pushes the motor which creates electricity...”

--Daniel. We were doing a homeschool unit about nuclear and wind power.

“Oh, that is an alpha particle. I remember it is a helium nucleus without any electrons.”

--Eric. So, okay, yes, I had taught him that the day before. But still, scary.

“No, I want a homeschool lesson about What to Do If You Encounter a Troll.”

--Eric. I turned it into a lesson on how to design a flowchart.

“Are you an authorized government troll?”

--Eric, playing “toll troll” with me later that day, referring to his flowchart to decide his course of action. Yet another way to help an Aspie learn pretend play...

Gail: Slap my wrist.

Jon: [Does so quizzically]

Gail: Heavenly Father was a Drama Major.

"Bear in a Box" -- Bear practices his miming and performance art skills.

“Oh, I am so excited!”

“I hope it's not too bossy.”

“Even though I'm only allowed three cups of milk a day, when the baby comes, I will only drink two cups of milk and give it one so it can have milk.”

Daddy, if the baby wakes up in the night and you and Mommy do not hear it I will come Report it. Or I will go Troubleshoot the baby myself!

--Danny, reacting to the news of an impeding sibling.

Sister L.: He is so adorable! I could just eat him up!

--After Danny made a very serious comment in Primary.

[Registering Danny for school]

Mommy: Danny, how high can you count?

[Danny starts and keeps counting while I fill in other blanks.]

Danny: 98, 99, 100. 200, 300, 400...

Eric: No!!! You're doing it wrong!!!

Danny: 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106...

Mommy: Ok, good, you have the pattern. Now if you were to go back and count by hundreds, instead, what would come next?

Danny: [stubbornly insisting on doing it the 'right' way] 109, 110, 111...

Mommy: [tries a few more times and gives up] I'll just put down 100+

--The secretary also seemed impressed when Danny started reading the forms. “Why does that say, 'your child must...'” :)

--Oh, and once again, they had a survey about “How often do you read to your child” and “Does your child know 1) none of his alphabet 2) some of his alphabet or 3) all of his alphabet?”

I LOVE having smart kids.

"We are pretending we're baby electrons and so we don't know any better so we are not repelling each other, instead we are attracting each other."

--Danny, playing a version of “chicken” with Eric, which involved them crashing into each other.

“Aha! I was too nimble for you, Luthien!”

--Danny. The obvious question is, why was the unicorn trying to gore him with her horn?

“It's disturbing to think what a little boy could do to make a unicorn that cranky. I think you need to have a father-son talk with them...”

--Gail, to Jon

“I didn't know it was possible for a unicorn to have a bad hair day.”

--Mommy

“Come upstairs and play sabotage with me!”

--Eric. For some reason, this fills Mommy with fear and trembling.

“Mommy, will you sing me a song?”

--Awww. Even if the songs are all “I stuck my head in a little skunk's hole” and “Twas a dark and gloomy day in spring/when the farmer's house burned down.../His wife and kids were caught inside/and all the crops turned brown...” Occasionally I get to mix it up with some Mikado. (“As the saber drew/cut cleanly through/his cervical vertebrae...his vertabrae...”)

Left: An outbreak of Poetry Pox on the dryer. Right: Eric's first attempt at magnetic poetry.






“So, Eric passed off one part of the 'Skip to My Lou' duet with me playing the other part. And then he taught himself the secundo part. And then he started transposing them...”

“I shouldn't have snorted derisively. Slap my wrist. [Jon does so] I need to keep telling myself “I'm breaking in a new school system...my mother used to do this every few years.. It's a pride issue, I know....I really shouldn't have snorted derisively. [sigh]”

--After talking to the QUEST teacher, who explained very kindly that mere academic acceleration might not be enough to get Eric into their version of a gifted program.

“Danny wanted to build a house out of legos, which was fine. We played together and I helped him. But the next day, naturally, we had to take the entire thing apart because he had forgotten to run the infrastructure lines through the walls. We added blue water pipes, red hot water pipes, brown sewer pipes, yellow electricity wires, and an air-handling system...”

--He really reminds me of his grandpas. He was so meticulous in his design and installation.

“Eric, we need to be in our room for the rest of the day. Good thing we already have a playroom tent and a puppet show in there...”

--Danny, cheerfully. Eric was less sanguine.

“The next time Michael [the babysitter] comes over I will let him do seven puppet shows even though the limit is six because he needs the practice.”

--Daniel

Danny: “...and the story is about... [Danny describes the story]...and that is the sequel and tomorrow I will tell the other part!”

Mommy: You mean, tomorrow's story will be the sequel?

Danny: No, tomorrow will be what happened before today so today is the sequel.

--He was right, naturally. I taught him the word “prequel” which satisfied everyone. :)

“I understand now. It's not the 'sandinista stomach' or the 'terrorist tummy.' The baby has kidnapped my stomach and is holding it hostage...I'd happily embrace a policy of appeasement, but Q is refusing to make any coherent demands!”

--Gail, bemoaning her pregnancy-induced nausea and vomiting.

Nurse: ...and we'll do a urine test to make sure you are pregnant.

Gail: Let us devoutly hope I am pregnant. Otherwise you'll have to find an alternate explanation for the fatigue, queasiness, nausea, vomiting, hormones, weepiness, mood swings...”

--The test, by the way, returned a most definite positive.

--I've been telling people “I'm pregnant! And sick! And vomiting!” I enjoy watching them say, “Um...congratulations?”

"Q, quit, quits! Question, query, cue, cute...quit it, Q, I'm already too queasy! Plus, really immature non-corporeal being with godlike powers who throws temper tantrums...I like it!"

--Gail, responding to Jon's suggestion that this baby be “Q” until quits gender is determined.

--Jon and I maintain that all babies have gender, we just don't start off knowing which. We dislike calling an early pregnancy “it,” so we invent our own pronouns. :)

---Eric, before he was named, was B for baby. This inspired puns about “be” “bit” “bits” “bytes” and so forth.

----Danny was C for child. This inspired puns about see, sea, sit, sits, and so on.

-----Marian was I for infant. This inspired puns about “me, myself, and I,” “eye,” “aye,” and “no -Ites among us” etc.

"I finally realized I needed to count, not the number of calories I'd ingested, but the number I'd successfully digested. Taking my net, not gross, consumption, I decided I really was hungry..."

--Gail

“We were playing Capture the Habitat.”

--Danny

“...but, after I woke up, I realized that joining the music team of a freaky cult really would be a great cover identity. Especially if the cult leader changed his sermons around erratically...I would have the perfect excuse to be in headquarters all the time, practicing my entire repertoire...”

--Gail, after a fascinating dream about infiltrating a weird cult for the government.

Pirate Bear. Danny made the eye patch all by himself. (Bear's eye had fallen out and he was awaiting surgery.)

[At our nightly family scripture study]
Jon: Danny, what's your favorite scripture story?
Danny: The one about the pirate!
Jon: That doesn't sound like a scripture story.
Danny: It is a parable!
Jon: Oh, uhmm...okay...
Danny: [Puts Bear inside a ring of duct tape, and puts the duct tape on a brown paper lunch sack. That's Bear's pirate ship. Danny also scatters the labels he's been making lately all over the living room floor. They are 8 1/2 x 11" pieces of printer paper with words like "entertainment center" and "piano bench" written on them. Danny has been labeling the world lately.] Once upon a time, there was a pirate. And he wanted to steal everything. He sailed around in his ship. He went to one land, where he stealed a piano. Then he went to another land [Bear's 'ship' sails across the blue living room carpet to the next label] and he stole a rocking chair. Then he [pause] stealed a piano bench.
Jon: [interrupting] He already stole one of those.
Danny: No, first he [brief hesitation] stole a piano, then he stole a piano bench.
Jon: [subdued] Oh.
Danny: [continuing, irrepressibly] Then he went to another land and he stole a entertainment center. Then a missionary got on his ship, and the pirate didn't hurt the missionary at all. And the missionary said, "You need to give back all the things you stole or else your ship will sink. And then the pirate putted all the stuff back--
Jon: Did he put it back in the correct places?
Danny: --on the land it came from. The End! [pause] Daddy, do you know what was the point of the story?
Jon: Repentance? Don't steal?
Danny: No...
Mommy: Always give the stuff back after you steal it?
Danny: Yes!
Mommy: I must say, the pirate looked very naughty at first, but now he looks very penitent.
Eric: What does 'penitent' mean?
Mommy: It means sorry for doing something bad. It's related to the word "repentance" and also shares a root word with "penal" and "penance" which mean "punishment"...Aha! We should call it 'The Parable of the Penitent Pirate!'
Danny: Yes! The Parable of the Penitent Pirate is my favorite scripture story.
--The child has a natural narrative flair. He sequenced nicely, I note, and didn't include lots of unnecessary detail.
---I recall being shocked in a college folklore class when I learned that most people retell a story exactly as they heard it. I am constitutionally incapable of not trying to fill in a plot hole or make sardonic commentary when it seems appropriate. I think Daniel will be another such.