Breaking the News

My good friend growing up had a sister who was 6 years younger than her and I remember asking her how her parents had told her that they were going to have another baby. She had no recollection of that conversation, but I was eaten up by curiosity--how exactly does one have that conversation with a child?

In our case, it went something like this...

McMoose, showing the kids an ultrasound picture: Guys, do you know what this is?
Luke: Me as a baby.
McM: No.
L: Weston as a baby?
McM: No...
L: Well, if it's not me or Weston, then who is it?
McM: Well....Mama's pregnant. We're going to have another baby.
L: Oh. Are we sure we want to do that? Because you know, we have the kitten. Do we want to have a kitten AND a baby?
McM: Yes, we're sure.
L: The kitten might attack the baby.
Me: Well, you guys will be the big brothers. You can help protect the baby.
W: Well...I'll help with stuff, but I am NOT going to be helping anybody wipe their butt.

 It wasn't exactly the magical conversation I'd envisioned back when I was questioning my childhood friend about how her parents told her, but it fit in very nicely with our daily lives. (And once the kids got over their initial skepticism, they did warm up to the idea! They're currently arguing over naming rights and trying to decide whether it's going to be a boy or a girl. Weston is also trying to convince me that I should consider having a carseat surgically inserted into my uterus to keep the baby safe. Luke is thoroughly annoyed by that conversation because "Weston, the baby is IN WATER. It's FINE. The water protects it. Besides, how would you make a carseat that would fit a baby the size of a lemon all the way to the size of a watermelon? It's not even possible.")

Fabulously Five!

Weston turned five earlier this month and it coincided so closely with the start of our school year that he's been going around telling people that hey, did you know that he is five-years-old AND a kindergartner? And oh, by the way, he's homeschooled. Did you know that too? No? Well, he is. And then he smiles very proudly at them as if he's expecting to be congratulated. (Most people do step up to the challenge.)

He still has quite the baby face, which delights me endlessly. Hooray for slowing down this crazy fast ride! Chubby baby hands, too. Which he mostly uses to build Lego contraptions and capture the cats. He still gets scratched and nipped by the cats on a near-daily basis. Of course, it doesn't faze him in the least. The other day, he was reading me a book about a cat when he suddenly paused, petted the picture, and said, "Aww, you're so cute, kitty! I just want to hug you!" You guys, it was a black and white picture of an angry looking cat. I don't even understand.

The other day, I took the kids to a roller skating rink for the first time. As usual, Luke went off on his own to figure it out, while Weston insisted on holding both my hands AND the wall, slipped and slid all over the place, and then told me, "This is the WORST THING I have EVER done; never bring me back to this place!" And then, he lay face down on the carpet in the reception area for a good 20 minutes in silent protest, just in case I hadn't gotten the message. Luckily, his ideas about such things aren't long-lived and he has already decided that maybe he'd like to try it again. (I predict it will end similarly.)

He is a child who loves everything and everyone while at the same time, being annoyed by everything and everyone. I'm not sure quite how he pulls that off, but he manages it well. As it turns out, the most common discussion question in his kindergarten curriculum is "What is your favorite..."  What's your favorite habitat? What's your favorite animal from this habitat? What is your favorite room in your house? What's your favorite pet? What's your favorite book? And so on. His answer each time is, "Hmm...let me think...Oh! All of them." The only thing he has a favorite of is a gold car in a dealership down the road from us, which he calls "MY gold car." He fully intends to buy that car someday and every time we pass the dealership, he looks to make sure it's still there.

He is obsessed with everything to do with Star Wars and usually, his introductory topic of conversation when meeting someone new is, "Have you ever seen Star Wars? I've seen all seven of them AND my brother has read the books." Lately, he's been bringing home Star Wars early readers from the library and whoever wrote these must not know the meaning of the term "early reader," because they include words like "federation," "eliminate," "cooperation," and "via." Which child who is just now learning to read can sound out these words?! So every time he shows up with one of these books in hand, I groan internally but--interest-based learning! So I fake a smile and we slog through made-up words and un-phonetic names and somehow, he manages it.

His birthday party was Star Wars themed, which mostly meant that 10 kids ran around a wooded park attacking each other with foam lightsabers and tripping over tree roots for 3 hours. It has since been dubbed "The Most Fun Birthday Ever," and both kids want to do exactly that for all of their birthdays, forever and ever, amen. It was McMoose's first foray into birthday party planning and clearly, it was a great success!

I'm looking forward to watching Weston learn and grow this next year!

They Call Me Cat Vader

Our adult cats are now over a decade old, so I had forgotten that kittens are insane little balls of fluff and energy. If I could bottle up kitten energy, I'm pretty sure I could solve all the energy problems in the world. Plus, then the kitten might take a nap instead of constantly attacking me around every corner of the house or pouncing on my face when I'm trying to sleep. The first time that happened, I was convinced that Death was imminent.

The other day, I was cutting up some carrots for dinner and every time a carrot piece ended up on the floor, Vader came dashing through the house, got the carrot stuck on one of his teeth, and proceeded to choke and gag, while running away from me. So of course, I had to go after him, fish him out from under whatever piece of furniture he had wedged himself, and get the carrot out of his mouth. You'd think that he would have been cured of this lunacy after doing it once or twice, but no. He now does it with every other vegetable that happens to find its way to the ground, too.

Perhaps due to his feral roots, he has no idea how to cuddle. If someone tries to pet him, he flips himself onto his back so he can bat at their hands. If someone (*cough* Weston *cough*) tries to kiss him, he bites their head. But miraculously, in the middle of the night, he becomes the coziest cat in the world and sits on me and purrs as loudly as his little body can manage. In theory, it's cute. In reality, it wakes me up and his razor sharp claws dig into me and I get very grumpy.

He climbs everything. He chews power cords. He tries to throw himself off the upstairs landing. He falls on his head. He attacks the adult cats, who are tolerating his craziness exceptionally well. And the only way to trim his little needle-claws is for one person to hold him up in the air and rock him slightly while the other person quickly lops off claw-edges.

All this to say: Dear Future Self, you're really not cut out for this kitten stuff! Stick with adult creatures, please! (Better yet, let's not add any creatures to the house for a while, hmm?)

Say What?

At a park with some friends:

Adult friend: Weston, do you want to walk over to the slip and slide with us?
W: Um...will my shoes be discovered?
F: Will your shoes be...what?
W: Discovered. Will my shoes be discovered?
F: I think it's okay to take your shoes off in the water area.
W: But will they be discovered?
F: I'm sure no one will be looking at your shoes...
W, sighing: If I step into the water with my shoes on, will the water be high enough to go over my shoes? Will the water discover my shoes?



Earlier today, as I was smelling some eucalyptus oil:

Me: West, wanna smell?
W, sniffing: Mmmm.
Me: It's eucalyptus. Remember what likes to eat eucalyptus leaves.
W: Ants? Oh, and also, Choo-alas.
Me: ....Yes....Koalas.
W, haughtily: I like to say Choo-alas.

Gardens and Dragons

• I have neglected to plant a garden this year. I did it on purpose because I know how previous attempts at gardening have worked out (spoiler: not well.) And yet, somehow, we have kale and possibly a tomato plant growing in our garden. I'm trying not to look at them very hard, in the hopes that reverse psychology might work on plants.

 

•  There was a spider in the bathtub. I liked him there. The children and I visited with him from time to time and nobody freaked out over the existence of said spider. I felt it would be perfectly reasonable to cede the bathtub to the spider, but McMoose disagreed and has moved the spider...somewhere. In the house. Now, I'm not opposed to spiders in the house, but I do prefer to know where they like to be because the worst moment with a spider is the moment of discovery.

 

• The phrase, "Do not breathe at him when he does not want to be breathed at," exited my mouth today. What is happening to me?

 

• A few nights ago, Weston put a gem sticker on me and declared me a dragon. It was a cute moment. The next day, I was at the store and a small child came around the corner, got wide-eyed, and said, "Whoa! A real dragon!" and then hurried off to tell his mother that he had found a real, live dragon. It gave me a bit of an identity crisis. I had to look at my reflection in the window to make sure I was still human.

Literal MInded

Violin Teacher: Your elbow is not invited to this party.
Luke: What does that mean?
VT: Think about if your friend invited you to a party and your parents decided to tag along, even though they weren't invited...
L: Well, unless the friend was my neighbor, I wouldn't be able to go to a party without my parents anyway because I can't drive yet. They would at least have to take me there.
VT: Ok...what if your friend's party was in a super cool fort that he had built and it was just big enough to fit you and your friend? And then, your parents not only tagged along to the party, they also got into the fort? And broke it? Wouldn't you be mad?
L: Well...no...I don't really like parties...or forts.

(I'm pretty sure he likes forts AND parties, he just likes bedeviling people even more.)




VT: You can use those crayons. All I ask is that you color on the wood floor instead of on the rug.
Weston, after frowning at her for a moment: Can I just color in the coloring book? It will be hard to clean the floor...

Splendidly Seven!

Luke turned seven a month ago--hey look, this might be my latest birthday post yet! He had his first "big kid birthday party" this year at one of those arcades with mini golf and go-karts. I think he smiled the entire 3-and-a-half hours (why yes, it was the longest birthday party in history and we should be hearing from the Guinness Book any day now) that we were there.

A few days before his birthday, a new kitten joined our family. Notice I didn't say we got a new kitten? Because we didn't. No, a new kitten got us. He found us in a friend's yard and climbed right up McMoose's pants, so obviously we had to bring him home. (Big mistake.) Luke is alternately terrified of and fascinated with the kitten, who was named Cat Vader at the children's insistence. (Luke has since decided that this is not how Sith naming works and really, he should be called Darth Cat, but too late.) Vader has the rather rude habit of greeting us by biting our ankles and a few times, I've found Luke perched atop his desk or the dining table, grinning and crooning, "Aww, you're so cuuuuuute!" to the ferocious little beast pouncing about on the floor in front of him.

When we go anywhere, I know that I should plan for some time to save insects along the way. A couple of years ago, we started moving earthworms from the middle of the sidewalk to the grass because he didn't like seeing all the ones squished by bikes and people. It has now progressed to moving every blessed insect he finds on the sidewalk or bike trail when we're out. Just today, we had to stop to save a roly-poly beside the car in the parking lot, a millipede from the violin teacher's driveway, and an caterpillar from the sidewalk. On the flip side, he feels no remorse killing ants that come into the house, citing the argument that when we're outside, we're in their home, so we should treat them with respect, but when ants come into the house, they might eat all our food, so they've got to go. (Other insects get a pass, apparently.)

Most of the time, he's patient with his brother, who admittedly takes advantage of that fact to annoy Luke half to death. He loves baby animals and tolerates baby humans, especially when their ages are compared with Another Baby. Anyone younger than Another Baby gets a pass for annoying behavior; anyone older is sighed at for their childishness.

His favorite extra-curricular activity this year has been to join Cub Scouts, with McMoose as his...adult-helper-person. (Sorry, but I will never remember what they're called. Pack leaders? Den masters? Troop wizards? Whatever.) He got to go camping with scouts a couple of times, which he loved without reservation. He enjoyed T-ball for the first half of the season, and then was mostly annoyed at having to continue to go. Instead of paying attention to the game, he and a friend mostly tried to push each other off the bench and engaged in general tomfoolery.

He's still enjoying violin lessons, as well--though he would very happily do without the daily practice. When he asked to take lessons, I said okay in large part because I wanted him to learn that some things are difficult, but with practice, they get easier (or at least more doable) and he's learning that nicely. His teacher asked him to practice a piece three times a day this week and he responded, "Just three? Wouldn't it be better if I did it seven times a day?"

So far, seven has been a pleasant, comfortable age and I'm looking forward to experiencing this year of growth and learning with him.