Beginning Reading

Jackson learned his first two sight words this week. The first word is
"Toy" as in Toy Story. (Thank you Disney/Pixar logos). The second word
is "Joy", also pronounced "Toy Story".

"The Mother of all Curse Words" --blog post #200

A few weeks ago, I was buckling the kids in the car. Jackson picked up some card, then said, "this is a pain in the f-ing a-." I said, "what did you say?" and he repeated his previous statement. His statement was so random, so deliberate, and said in such a way that I knew he was trying the new words out, testing my parenting, and aware that he said something that just maybe was outside his current boundaries--something that I as a parent couldn't just let slide and hope it would go away. I took a deep breathe, snapped Jonah's buckle, and started my quickly conceived speech about that not being a nice thing to say. I was told, "well, Daddy thinks it's a nice thing to say" 
So great, he ratted his daddy out.  Of course he had learned this from daddy. I don't use this kind of language in front of my child and even if it had come from me, I leave the f- out of this particular phrase.  Then there's the dilema of how to punish him. My stern lecture would only go so far, time out was insufficient and uninforcible since  I clearly wasn't going back inside for 3 minutes on the stair. I couldn't see any other recourse besides the threat of soap.
I told him again that it wasn't a nice thing to say, not for little boys and not for mommy or daddy either. I told him those were dirty words and the only solution was to clean his mouth up by washing it with soap (trying to convince myself that it was a real connection and very reasonable punishment). I told him if mommy or daddy said it to remind us that it wasn't a nice thing to say and we would be in trouble too. Then I got in the car myself, hoped my speech was impressionative, and wondered how to break the news to my husband in a way that would serve to put him on notice as well.
A few days later, Jackson was bouncing around the house, and told me he might "fall and break his f-ing head." I repeated my speech and again listened to his arguement that daddy thought it was a nice thing to say. I repeated my speech with emphasis on the soap. 30 minutes later, Jack was jumping on the bed chanting about falling and "breaking his f-ing head". 
I put Jonah down and let out a deep sigh of disbelief. Disbelief of what I was hearing from my 3 1/2 year old, disbelief that I was really going to have to get the soap out, disbelief that my husband hadn't tempered his own language. Visions of that scene from "The Christmas Story" flashed through my mind as I picked up my sweet baby boy and carried him into the bathroom, his fate sealed. I gave him a longer speech. He was unphased. I showed him a bar of soap, then had to explain just what it was since we use a body wash with the kids and liquid soap at the sink. I had to hold him down to attempt to put it in his mouth. He grimmaced, and I touched the tiniest bit to his tooth. He ran away complaining, but did not repeat his chant. I took the next opportunity to again chastise my husband.  Jason has since been moping around, wearing his 'worst father in the world' medallion.
Those of you who know my Jackson know he loves to play with my iTouch. He calls it "mine game". If I take it to work, I come home hearing "mom, do you know where mine game is?" in the most pleading little voice. I have it loaded up with toddler aps. He plays them all, but mostly he plays Pocket God. I recognize that torturing pygmies is a little mature of a theme. I'm a little embarrassed that when we visited Utah, he showed everyone as he said, "see the zombies eat the kidneys brains and that makes more zombies". I rationalize that playing Pocket God is good for him because he has to take multi-sequenced steps to a given reaction, it's bigger than just cause and effect.
 He also uses the YouTube ap to watch videos of his own giggling self, muppets singing 'Ma Nama Na', or Donald Duck shorts. He saved a video of someone playing a Roger Rabbit video game to the YouTube favorites. I saw him watching it a couple times, and it was boring so I tuned it out after a few seconds. Normally I let him use the iTouch on his own. He likes to play it when he's "boring" because I'm cooking or taking care of Jonah or whatever.  A few nights ago, he was sitting next to me playing with the iTouch. He turned on the Roger Rabbit video. About 3 seconds beyond the point I'd been tuning out, the narrator said, "This right here is a pain in the f-ing a-". I think a "fall and break my f-ing head" might've been in the upcoming dialogue. Instead of waiting to listen for that, I snatched the itouch from Jackson's protesting fingers and erased the link from the memory.
Jason is relieved that he's no longer the worst parent in the world. He handed that title to me for letting my sweet little boy have unsupervised access to the Internet. YouTube. What was I thinking?! It could've been much worse, right?! So now we're both on notice, paying a little more attention to our language and to our little parrot's viewing habits. This parenting thing is gonna be a long looong road, sigh.  

documenting life in motion

Here are some videos from the last couple of months.  We had some after dinner silliness on the last barbecue-able day of the year (or so we thought at the time).



Here is some dancing from Jackson.  Just the first 30 seconds are watchable.  The last minute involves trying to get the skeleton to glow in the dark. I think this is a different night than the previous video.




Jonah crawling.  This is about a month ago, when he only used his left leg.  You can tell by the grunting that it took considerable effort to propel himself.  Now he's moved on to using both feet.  His range tripled, and the grunting has passed.



Jonah taking a bath last week.  He splashes the daylights out of the tub, but on this night could not splash without holding the crab in his teeth.  By the way, I LOOOVE this tub.  It has always kept him upright and no slips.  I put him in it dry every morning when I get ready for school.



















And one more, from tonight..

Making pie

Me: Jack, we've got work to do tonight. We've got to make pies.
Jack: yay! Is it gonna be bacon pie?! Or frosting pie with cookies?!

Adventures at Sea

Two Sundays ago, it was both "Wife Appreciation Day" and "Talk Like a Pirate Day".  Coincidentally, we already had made thematic plans.  Jason got out of bed in the morning and made a big breakfast including bacon and hash browns (for him) and french toast (for me).  After breakfast, we loaded up the car, strapped our canoe to the roof, and headed to the lake.  "Arr, we be settin' sail."

It was a beautiful day, and there was hardly anyone at the lake.  Seemed perfect.  We got the canoe loaded up with the boys.  Jason suggested that we just take Jonah in his carseat.  This didn't seem like the best idea, but he was so chill in his chair that I went with it.  Jason sat at the front of the canoe to paddle/steer, I sat in the middle with Jonah, and Jackson sat at the other tip. 

Jason pushed us off the dock and as soon as we had cleared land, our yellow canoe became a yellow submarine.  "Arr, we be ship wrecked.  Marooned!" OK, it didn't actually sink.  It just dumped us all overboard.  One of those moments where a fraction of a second seems to take an eternity and yet you are powerless to do anything to help yourself in that eternity.  I fixed my eyes on Jonah who was dumped upside down in the lake, still strapped to his chair.  I quickly grabbed him and stood knee deep in the lake watching Jason pick up Jack and carry him to shore.  Seeing that we were all safe, I laughed.  Guess it was too soon, and Jason let me know just how funny it was NOT.   He went back in the water to rescue our stuff including our camera and his blackberry. 

We hauled everything on shore, dried off the kids, endured humiliation from the 4 groups of cars we saw, and decided to get the little ones home and come back for the canoe.  Jason made all sorts of threats about how he was taking his shotgun out to take care of the canoe.  We've never liked that boat.  It was supposedly a racing canoe, and always felt unsteady.  I'm surprised it had never dumped us out before, but it is a canoe and supposedly its hard to capsize those, right?

It was about 2 in the afternoon when we came home, and Jason went back for the canoe around 4.  He came home empty handed.  Someone had stollen our canoe in the middle of the afternoon in our quiet neighborhood.  Acts of piracy committed against us!  I drove by the lake in the morning to see if it was returned.  Maybe some kids had just taken it out for a ride and left it on shore.  Nope, it was definitely stolen.

We are taking heart in the knowledge that the boat is cursed, and hope Karma sees fit to visit the real pirates soon and often.