“There’s nothing like Hot Pizza on a Hot Day!”

“Water makes me slow.”

You have to keep your sense of humor about you if you want to excel in motherhood. Sometimes it’s easy, like this evening -

Miriam is done with her shower and I tell her to get her things so we can brush her hair while I start the water for Simon to hop in. I stop in the kitchen for a quick drink of water, and then around the corner comes Miriam with the most pathetic sad face I have ever seen. She has her hair brush all twisted into her hair on the top of her head with the handle sticking out like a unicorn’s horn. I’m trying to suppress laughter as I begin to untangle while Miriam sadly says she thinks this is going to take all night, and then Simon yells from the bathroom. “Mom! Come check this out! Look how white my butt is!”

Miriam  ”Mom, do you know what?”

Me  ”No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

Miriam  ”Actually, I won’t.”

” Mom, Dad, am I part Irish?… because I know how to tap dance.”

- Simon

“Hey Mom, look there’s a cornfield!”

“And another one, and another one.”

“And another one, and look! another one!”

“Mom! Mom! Another one!”

“And another one, and another one.”

“There are just hundreds of them!”

“Oh! Oh! Mom! Look, look! There’s another one!”

Miriam, while listening to Paul Simon:

“Mom! He is saying the wrong words! She doesn’t love him like a rocket, she loves him like a rose. A sweet, sweet rose. He is silly.”

Simon’s writing assignment from school:

Title: Cats and dogs

Cats and dogs are mammals

and give no barth to no eggs. they

only give barth to live babes.

but they stay with there babes,

not like reptiles. They live

in caves, houses, and woods.

We were talking about GoBob in the car the other day. A motorcycle had taken off very quickly from the light and Simon was immediately convinced that he was going to get one as soon as he could. Aaron and I (as good sensible parents) began the tricky persuasive talk that parents often find themselves engaged in. Acknowledge your child’s request and validate it. But also provide details – inform but don’t terrify or brainwash so they can make a good choice. Only slightly slanting your comments to result in the decision that you really want your child to make. Something like that.

Aaron told him that if you got in an accident with a car, you would really get hurt. But of course Simon would just “steer away from them”. So I pulled out the story of GoBob – that he used to have a motorcycle before I was even born and he got into a terrible accident, split his helmet on a tree and had to wear a big metal brace for a long time. (Mom, if he asks to see these pictures, I told him you had them, and now you’ll know why he is asking)

Talking about GoBob led to the inevitable… but Miriam spoke out first this time.

Miriam “I just want to see GoBob”

Simon “Me too, I want to see him again”

Me “Well you know when we’ll see him”

Miriam “In the Kingdom!”

Simon “I want the Kingdom to come today”

Me “Yes, that would be nice”

Miriam “Ummm… I would like it tomorrow”

We told Simon and Miriam that they were going to go visit with Judah this evening. Oh, Judah! He’s so cute, says Miriam. Is Uncle Seth going to be there too? asks Simon. On being told yes, they both reply, Oh good, we can do our flips!

Miriam says, I was nervous the first time I did a flip. There were butterflies in my tummy.

Simon says, I was nervous too! I had buffalos running around like they were being chased by a lion.

We haven’t gotten Simon a haircut in quite  a while. It’s on the to do list. 

Today he came out of the bathroom smoothing one of his growing sideburns and asked me if he looked like Alvis. Then turned his head to show me the other and said, Look mom, here do I look like Alvis here? I told him a little bit, he did. Then told him it was Elvis, not Alvis. Like Elephant, not Alligator. He disagreed. No Mom, it’s Alvis. And you should have named me Alvis.

Later that evening he was getting concerned about the length of these sideburns of his. “Mom by the time I’m 8 these are going to grow all the way down and I’ll have a beard!”

I explained that beards don’t come from sideburns, they come from hair that starts to grow out of the skin on your face. He was completely horrified. “Do ALL men grow beards and mustaches, Mom?” “Oh, no. I hope I don’t grow any.”

Well my dear son, you just might get your wish. Much to the dismay of your father, the genes are in your favour.

 Have you ever tracked the amount of time you spend doing a certain activity? I would be very interested to know how many minutes I spend doing laundry, or picking up hot wheels, or little dolls…. Although perhaps it’s best not to know.

Simon has become an avid reader. That is an understatement. His teacher “doesn’t give any E’s for the first report card” yet he has one for reading. The past two months his school has participated in the Pizza Hut ‘Book It’ program. His goal is 300 minutes a month, which sounds like a lot, especially on top of homework and of course the time-consuming business of being a young boy. But he has had totals of 600 and 800 minutes! That’s just the minutes that I caught him reading and remembered to write it down. I was going to attempt to capture every single minute this month just to see if he could break 1,000. But it’s the holidays, and we’re moving, and there’s still laundry and cooking and dishes. 

I think these times of reading are the best though, and I’m certain his sister would agree.