First Threat

We had to run some errands after dinner this evening and in order to speed the process along, I elected to stay in the car with the kids while McMoose ran inside. Our longest stop was to sign Luke up for a little gymnastics/sports class, so McMoose took Luke in with him so Luke could meet the instructor. Weston was most displeased with being left in the car with me instead of getting to go into the brightly colored building. After asking to go in about, oh, three-hundred-and-fourteen times and being told no about, oh, three-hundred-and-fourteen times, he decided that he needed to change his tactics.

Weston: Mama! Get me out! I need to go potty!
Me: Seriously?
Weston: Yes, get me out, get me out! I need to go potty inside the gym building!
Me: Ok, ok...but I think it's more that you want to go into the building than that you need to go potty.
Weston: Yes, I do want to go into the building.

So we run inside, I take him potty, he squeezes out a couple of drops of pee and then gleefully says he's done, knowing full well that he pulled off a major shenanigan.

About five minutes later, we stopped to get gas on the way home and he wanted to go into the gas station building.

Weston: Mama! I need to go potty again! I need to go potty in the gas station!
Me: You do not. You just peed.
Weston: I need to go AGAIN!
Me: We will be home in five minutes and you can go again there.
Weston: I NEED TO GO RIGHT NOW!!!
Me: No.
Weston: Then I will pee in mine underwear and in mine pants and it will be messy.

Oh, good. I'm so glad we're at two-and-a-half already. Now the real fun begins. (That was sarcasm. Heavy, overhanded sarcasm. In case you were wondering.)

Working Hard

The kids were heading out to play in the snow for 30 minutes between lunch and nap/quiet time and I mentioned to Luke that they could shovel the back stairs if they wanted. I am a person who frequently asks my children to help with things--folding the laundry, picking up toys, making meals--because it's important to me that they know about and participate in the work of keeping a family going. At the same time, I was fully expecting the gentle request about shoveling the stairs to go in through one ear and out through the other because I wasn't invested in making them help. It really was just some information--"The temperature is going to drop soon, which means that all that snow on the porch stairs will probably freeze into ice and make the stairs slippery by this evening,"--coupled with a suggestion--"If you boys are looking for something to do out there, you might consider shoveling the snow off the stairs."

Imagine my surprise when, five minutes later, two little boys were surveying the stairs, plastic shovels in hand, and discussing where to start. (Background: The back stairs consist of exactly five stairs.) In the end, they decided to start at the bottom stair and use their shovels to break up the ice and snow and then scrape it off the stair. Except that instead of pushing it off the side of each stair, they were pushing it down onto the stair below, so they had to re-do the whole set each time.

Oh, dear. This would take forever. Maybe I should go help. I could let them do the bottom stair while I quickly did the rest. Or I could go and suggest that they start at the top stair, or at least that they push the snow off the sides so they didn't have to keep repeating their work. Or at the very least, I could go out there and monitor more closely.

See, even though I ask them to help me with other tasks all the time, this felt different. Bigger, somehow, like a job that should be done by a pre-teen rather than a preschooler. They would have to break up the ice, push the snow off, and do it all while keeping their balance on the stairs. And, perhaps the most difficult part of the task, they would have to communicate and work together to avoid being conked over the head--either accidentally or intentionally--by a shovel-weilding brother.

And then, I took a deep breath and picked my knitting back up and hoped that I was making the right call. Yes, this was a hard job--but it was one that they chose, either because they thought it would be fun or because they thought the work was valuable and worth doing. And if it got too hard, I trusted that they would either walk away or ask for help. Yes, they were hanging out on stairs--but there were only five stairs and they were sitting down, so they were pretty well balanced. Yes, their snow-clearance plan wasn't the most efficient, but it was getting the job done. Yes, I could have stopped a couple of little squabbles about whether someone was infringing on someone else's space, but they will spend the rest of their lives working out little (and big) misunderstandings with other people--and in most cases, I will not be there to help. Might as well practice now, when the stakes are low and I'm watching from the other side of the window to step in if I'm really needed.

I stayed inside and watched as the job became fully their own. Their ideas, their process of trial-and-error in implementing those ideas, their laughter as they both tried to work on the same stubborn patch of icy snow, their attention to detail as they made sure every speck of snow was off the stairs. We have clean stairs now...and more importantly, we have two little boys who came inside, red-cheeked from the cold and the work, and exclaimed with great pride that the stairs were all clean. Two little boys whose faces shone with the satisfaction of doing a job their way from start to finish. Two boys who got to feel capable and helpful. And a Mama who got to see two boys grow up, just a tiny bit, right in front of her eyes.

Platypuses

You know how kids are supposed to ask lots of questions and parents are supposed to have (or be able to fake) the answers? I think there's a bit of role reversal going on around here.

Luke: You know, platypuses have a stinger.
Me: They do?
Luke: Yes, I read about it in a book. Scientists are not sure what it's for and some scientists think it isn't really functional.
Me: Oh?
Luke: But I think that it is functional. Like if a lion or a tiger tried to eat a platypus, I think it would sting them.
Me: Hmm.
Luke: Except platypuses live in Australia and lions and tigers live in Africa and Asia, so...ok, maybe if a ball of lightning came into the platypus' path, then it would sting the lightning.
Me: Would that help the platypus though, to sting a ball of lightning?
Luke: Well, no, because lightning is not a living creature. So ok, if a crocodile or an alligator came to eat the platypus, it could sting them.
Me: True.
Luke: Except alligators only live on two continents and one is North America, but I don't remember the other one. Maybe it's Australia, but I'm guessing not. There are crocodiles there, though. Maybe in the ocean.
Me: I don't think crocodiles tend to live in the ocean.
Luke: Well, salt water crocodiles do.

I find myself in the curious position of needing to fact check my preschooler. Here are some of my questions (and their corresponding answers, as revealed by the wealth of knowledge that is nationalgeographic.com.)

1. Do platypuses really have stingers? (Male platypuses do, indeed, have a stinger on their foot and that they are venomous.)

2. Do platypuses really live in Australia? (Yes, they do.)

3. I was kind of under the impression that platypuses are extinct. But maybe I'm thinking of the Dodo bird. (Platypuses are not extinct. Dodo birds are, which I already knew. Dodo birds are also entirely irrelevant to the rest of this post. Why am I still talking about Dodo birds?)

4.  Do scientists really think the stinger is non-functional? (Um...No? I don't know where he got this bit of information, but it sounds so much like a quote from a book that I have a hard time believing that he made it up and phrased it that way. I mean, functional? Does he even know what that means?)

5. Do alligators really only live on two continents? And if so, which ones? (Yes. North America and Asia.)

6. Are there crocodiles in Australia? (Yes. I actually thought that this was the case, but when I started questioning everything else about this conversation, I realized that I wasn't 100% sure.)

7. Do saltwater crocodiles live in the oceans around Australia? (Yes.)

I feel like I've just written a grade-school report on Platypuses. Also, I should clearly introduce him to nationalgeographic.com.

Snow!

It's snowing tonight and this is by far the most snow I've ever experienced in Raleigh. Luke was too tired and ornery to go out to play in it, but Weston and I spent the better part of an hour traipsing around our neighborhood.

"See the snow-drops, Mama?"

We had to go get the shovel from the sandbox so he could "dig" the snow.

Catching snowflakes on his tongue. He learned pretty fast that it's a good idea to keep his eyes closed.

We made a few snow angels on sidewalks around the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure they're already covered up by new snow, but he liked talking about how our neighbors would find the snow angels in the morning.

He loved the snow so much, he didn't want to come in even after he started saying that his nose hurt from the cold. Happy, red-faced boy.

At some point in my life, I became the kind of person who, upon realizing at 9:30 pm that all the kids' mittens are dirty, decides that making new mittens would be easier than doing the laundry. Also, the kind of person who has enough fleece sitting around my house to make that happen. Huh.

Weston Says...

Every time we drop Luke off at school, Weston and I have the same little discussion. [Background: parents and siblings say good-bye to the preschoolers in the lobby and a teacher walks the kids upstairs to the classrooms. Halfway up the stairs, there's a window and the kids wave to the parents as the parents leave the building.]

Weston: I want to go upstairs!
Me: Let's go wave to Luke, instead.
Weston: Nooo! I want to go upstaiiiirs!
Me: West, we will come and help them with their morning Centers again soon and when we do, you can go upstairs. Not today, though. [More background: we've gone upstairs a few times to "help" with the first part of their day, which is basically free play. So helping in this case means hanging out, chatting with preschoolers, and letting Weston get accustomed to the surroundings since he'll start school there in August.]
Weston: I want to go today! Luke-bear, I want to go with yoouuuu! Let me goooo! You go home, Mama. I will go upstairs and plaaaayyyy!


Weston discovered a toy screwdriver and has been carrying it around everywhere. This morning, when we were on our way to pick Luke up from school, we had this conversation in the car...

Weston: I bringed my screwdriver in the car.
Me: I saw that. Are you planning to fix things in the car?
Weston: Oh, no! There are no screws in the car! I wonder why I didn't bring any screws.
Me: I wonder, too.
Weston: Ohhhh, it's because there are no little screws in our house.


And later this afternoon, the kids were finishing up their lunch while I re-filled the bird feeder. When I came back inside...
Weston: Mama! You didn't see me!
Me: I what?
Weston: You didn't see me. I saw you from the window and I waved and waved and waved. I want you go back out there and wave to me.

Magical Thinking

Sometimes, I go about my day, talking to the kids and carrying on like normal and I forget that they're still really very little. And that they have very little concept of how the world works.

Luke, trying to poke a magnolia-cone (like a pinecone, but from a magnolia tree...what are they called??) into the ground: Nothing's happening!
Me: What were you hoping to have happen?
Luke: I'm planting it, so it should grow into a magnolia tree and it's not doing that.
Me: Well...trees take a long time to grow. Remember?
Luke: I don't HAVE a long time! I want it to grow right now! Just plant it for me so it will grow!
[Life lesson: I cannot make things grow instantly. I am not magic.]

Weston, trying to get blocks to stay up in an impossible configuration: My tower falls dowwwwnnn!
Me: Bummer! How disappointing.
Weston: Tower! Stay up! I telled my tower, "stay up!"
Me: Yes, I heard you. You said it very loudly. Do you think it will help?
Weston, stacking them back up and watching them fall back down: Mama! I want you make my tower stay up!
[Life lesson: I cannot defeat the law of gravity. I am not magic.]

Someday, they'll learn that plants take time to grow and that you must consider center of gravity when building a tower and that I'm not magic. I hope that day is a long time coming.

Cute Things

On Tuesday night, we had some snow (keyword: some. As in, a very little bit. A dusting, perhaps.) and on Wednesday morning, it was still on the ground, so the kids went out in the yard to play with it. When we witnessed some snow during our Thanksgiving trip to Virginia, they were excited about it for all of two minutes before declaring that it was too cold, so I was expecting more of the same. Instead, they stayed out for about 30 minutes, which is impressive considering that they complain about being cold when it's 60 degrees out. (I do, too, come to think of it.) Finally, Luke came back in because his face got too cold...

Me: Is your brother coming in, too?
Luke: I told him he should because his face might get cold, too, but he told me he wasn't cold.
Me: Oh, ok.
Luke: But then, he took off his mittens and his hands got cold, so he wants help putting his mittens back on. I assume that means he's still planning to stay out there because why would he want to put his mittens back on if he's coming inside?

(I really like it when he narrates his thoughts like that. Especially when he does it using phrases like "I assume." It makes me want to smush-and-nom him, which, I assure you, is much more loving than it sounds.)


Last night, we decided to have movie night and since Luke and I had just finished reading Charlotte's Web for the second time, we thought it would be fun to watch the movie. Weston was fine until the end, when Templeton (the rat) took the egg sac and brought it down to Wilbur (the pig) so they could carry it back to the barn because Charlotte was dying at the fair. (Um. That was a terrible summary, I know. Sorry.) At that point, he started trying to climb out of his chair and was doing his "I'm trying to keep it together, but I really want to cry," snuffle.

Me: West? Are you ok?
Weston, starting to cry: Pick me up!
Me, picking him up: Of course I will. Are you sad about the movie?
McMoose: Are you sad that Charlotte died?
West: No! I sad because the rat bit Charlotte's web and the pig put the web in his mouth.
Me: That was the egg sac, West. There were eggs in there with baby spiders inside.
West: Oh.
Me: The rat was helping. He was doing a good thing so they could take the baby spiders back to the cozy barn.
West: The rat bit the egg sac. I saaaad.

I find it fascinating that he can be so empathetic and concerned about a fictional spider, but has no problem spending all day manhandling his brother. (Then again, what good is a brother if you can't poke, push, climb on, tackle, and generally annoy him?)