Doubting Seth

I had a very strange conversation with my three-year-old last night.

Sethie is still allowed to have a pacifier at bedtime. I learned my lesson when I took Thomas's pacifier away when he turned three and the child never napped again. I'll milk the napping as long as possible. But Sethie is a little too cognizant of his. He hides them around the house. He has special spots for them and if I take one away because it isn't bedtime yet, he will occasionally produce another one unexpectedly. He's like some kind of binky pirate--he has booty stashed all over the house.

The only official spot for the binky is what we call the "bink box", a little tin box that sits on a shelf in his room. It's where I deposit all the hidden binks I unearth around the house. Because the binks get spread out, it's often empty and at bedtime we end up doing the binky scour, so I try to locate at least one before we head upstairs to avoid the binky search-and-rescue operation. Last night, I spotted a bink that Sethie had left by the couch and dropped it in the bink box. As I was reading Thomas his bedtime story, Sethie stopped by the room--it was just like the look-in from the sergeant in all those police procedural shows: he stuck his head around the corner with a hand on the frame and gestured toward the stairs with a thumb, but instead of saying, "Captain, there's someone here to see you", he said, "I need to get my bink. It's downstairs."

I told him, "No--I grabbed that bink and put it in your bink box. Go look in the bink box."

Sethie paused and actually tilted his eyebrows. Then he said, "Mommy, I left it by the couch. It's downstairs. I need to go get it."

Ok, sergeant. "No it's not. I picked it up and brought it upstairs. Go look in your bink box."

Once again the eyebrows. "I don't think so, Mommy."

Mind you, Sethie is under three feet tall and weighs less than thirty pounds. He was wearing superman pajamas and holding his favorite green blanket. And I was having a discussion with him in which he was being SKEPTICAL I had actually acquired the bink and placed it in the box.

He was doubting the veracity of my statement. Is he supposed to even be capable of DOUBT at this age? Where is that developmental milestone listed? Age 3: "Speaks in complete four or five word sentences. Can throw a ball overhand. May doubt you are telling the truth and be determined to follow his own gut instinct."

Thomas was staring at me. I stared back. He started laughing into his shoulder. Finally, I said to Sethie in my Don't-Mess-With-Me-I'm-the-Mom voice, "IT'S IN THE BINK BOX. GO LOOK. NOW."

Sethie shrugged and walked out of the room. "Ok, Mommy, but I don't think so." I heard him head down the hall, uttering a few more, "I don't think so"'s as he went.

Of course a few seconds later, I hear him shout from his room, "Oh, right! It IS in here. Thank you, Mommy."

Next time, kid, I'll take a lie detector test.

Sethism Redux

Sethie, trying to get himself out of his car seat the other day: "Uh, a little help here?"

Sethism

Me, in the car, on the way to preschool: "Sethie, do you want to go to preschool this morning?"

Seth: "Yeah!"

Me: "Are you sure?"

Seth: "Yeah!"

Me: "Are you really sure?"

Seth: "Yeah!"

Me, realizing my giddiness at his new adventure is making me annoying, but I can't stop: "Are you sure you're sure?"

Seth: "Mommy, let's not speak anymore."

Thomism

Thomas came up to me today and said, "Mommy, I saw a cartoon that said math was only for ugly people."

I was a little startled and said, "Well, T, you understand why that statement is really wrong, right?"

He said, "Yeah. It's also for grownups, right?"

Freak out

To you stay-at-home moms out there, ever have one of those moments where all your kids are somewhere else while you're at home doing whatever and then you COMPLETELY FREAK OUT BECAUSE WHERE THE @#&#%*! ARE MY KIDS? You think for a second that maybe they're napping, but wait, it's morning, or they're outside, but wait the swing set is empty, or OH NO I HAVE LOST THEM! But then you remember. They're somewhere else (like a friend's house or something) and you, while crazy, are not a bad mother who has misplaced them somewhere. I mean, I've tried explaining that one to Nate and boy, it never goes well. "So wait...what happened to the kids?" "Uh, I had them just a minute ago. Let's see--I was in the kitchen and I think I set one of them down on the counter. I could have sworn the other one was in my bag..."

So I'm having a quiet morning here with my poptart while T is at summer camp and a good friend is having Sethie come over and play with her two-year-old and after about every third bite of delicious nutrition-free frosted berry sweetness, the quietness gets to me and I do the WHERE THE @#&^*! ARE MY KIDS? freak-out. All summer, I've always had one of them with me. While T is at summer camp, Sethie is at home. While Sethie is napping, T and I work on reading. After Sethie gets up, the three of us go bike-riding or pool-swimming or backyard squirrel-scaring--you know something appropriately summery--and then we have dinner and they trade bedtime stories for a little extra Wii Lego Batman action and then they go to bed and I take a breath and Nate comes home.

I AM NEVER ALONE.

What do you do when you're alone? I was going to clean my upstairs bathroom this morning. Oh yeah. To be clear, I'm not some kind of clean freak who gets excited to get rid of the kids for a moment so they will stop polluting my pristine environment. That bathroom hasn't been cleaned for at least two weeks. Maybe longer. The bathtub grout mold is sprouting condominiums. The soap has fuzzies. Yesterday, the leftover hair clippings from Nate's razor picked it up and walked off with it Lilliputian-style and I haven't seen it since. So yeah, I should probably clean the bathroom while there is no one around to bug me.

At some point, I am going to be alone a lot more. T is starting full-time school this fall and Sethie is going into a two day a week preschool and I will become, at least for six hours a week, unnecessary to their immediate well being. I can't clean the bathroom twice a week (okay, I probably could, but I'm not going to). Besides, the cleaning never really ends. Clean something once and in a few hours it has become uninhabitable again. (well, uninhabitable for humans over the age of 21. Pint-sized miters can live quite comfortably in heaps of dirty laundry for many months, so long as they have remembered to pack in crackers and peanut butter) So that's a waste of free time. I have other things I used to more aggressively pursue: writing, and reading, and game programming, and pastry-baking, and violin-playing, and etc. and furthermore and whatnot. Is that who I still am?

If so, why in my free time am I still wondering WHERE THE @&%#*@&! ARE MY KIDS?

Groundhog Day

Last year, we occasionally spotted a sneaky little varmit toddling around our premises. He was so sneaky, we never got a good picture of him, even though we concluded he lived in the woodpile next to our shed. We named him, for obvious reasons, Phil.

See if you can spot Phil in the one picture we managed to land of him:

Well, turns out we prematurely labeled Phil. Maybe he should be "Philamena" or something? Because as of a few weeks ago, Phil and his new household have actually been venturing out on the lawn in broad daylight to munch on our clover. And for once we got some good pics. The kids are all kinds of silly happy that we have these little friends sharing our space.

Good luck, Phil. And feel free to take the fam out for some clover any time.

My Sweet Dream

Thank you for eight wonderful years.