Tia, Mago Elf Liam, Nem-nem Niamh, Lil' Bug, and I. (kid names are aliases)
//I’m thankful for the bugs
I’m thankful for the animals
I’m thankful for the world
And please bless my cold to die.
Uttered a hundred times on a hundred nights from his bed or bedside.
Incidentally, bug hunting is probably among his most favorite activities. I found a fat pillbug for him today. He found his own smaller one too. His comment later: “Dad, I think my pillbugs have made friends!”
//So, a few days ago I fairly lost my temper over something. (Surprise – I’m human! Shocked? Jealous?)
But within a few minutes Tia pointed out how I was being unfair, and I snapped out of it and apologized. I then apologized to the kids. In reply, Nem-nem again manages sweet and sour, (and plaintive, earnest, and emphatic), in her characteristic somewhat staggering speech.
Me: [Kids], I shouldn’t have spoken that way to mom. It was mean. I’m sorry.
Nem: Yeah, and I did say to you stop!
Me: Yes, and I should have listened to you.
Nem: Yeah, and you’re too heavy; I couldn’t put you in time-out!
Suddenly picturing this tiny 2-year old girl of mine hoisting me up, carrying me to a room, and informing me I was in time-out, I could only laugh. The kids realized it was funny, too.
But it’s also incredibly endearing.
(And sobering.)
//Me, revealing to Mago details about a toy he got from his friend for his birthday:
Oh, I think this helicopter is the main bad guy’s. See it has a cobra logo on it. The main bad guy in G.I. Joe is named Cobra.
What does he do?
I don’t really remember. Probably try to take over the world, which is kind of funny.
Why is it funny?
Oh.. there’s this cartoon called Animaniacs, with two mice that scientists do experiments with; these mice live in a science lab. One of them is an evil genius, and the other is an innocent goofball.
What’s an innocent goofball?
That means he’s wacky and he doesn’t know what’s going on. But every episode, the evil genius mouse does something to try to take over the world, to control the whole world, and it never works, something always goes wrong.
Later, Mago, already a fan of a cartoon he’s never seen (whoops! – on my part), relays this to Tia (who of course already knows all this, but is indulging Mago):
.. and one of them is an evil genius! – and the other is a hideous pitball!
//During sacrament meeting at our local LDS church, Nem will take cheerios out of a bag one by one, pressing them to my lips, looking at me intently, earnestly, expectantly. She pleasantly but fairly firmly instructs:
Eat it!
If I shake my head and say “No, thank you”, she presses the cheerio harder into my lips, and with a consternation that is somehow pleasant, insists:
No! – Eat it!
Until she is pressing the cheerio past my closed lips and I can’t refuse without spitting it out. Okay, thank you, I’ll say, amused.
This morning before my breakfast she hands me one of her chwakate chips (the same spoken of among recent “tweets”) from a little gumball machine she has full of them. She pleasantly instructs:
Here, eat it!
Me: No, thank you, I haven’t had breakfast yet.
Again she returns a consternation that is somehow pleasant:
No! – Eat it!
Me: Okay, I’ll have it after breakfast, thank you.
She is her great-grandfather’s great-grand-daughter.
I’m tickled, and I’ll accept gifts more often.
//I’ve just added a sidebar widget [update: that one turned out not to work so well.. this other one works better and does more] that imports “tweets” from a twitter account I opened just for this purpose.
None of this would be more convenient than logging in to either twitter, Facebook or wordpress (oh my), were it not for this great Firefox add-on called “twitter bar”, which lets you type any text into the browser’s address bar, click a special little button, and it posts it to twitter.
The reason for all this: often I’ll want to post something brief but don’t like the time it takes to log in – is this uber-American laziness, or what? It’s silly, but that’s a real limiter for me. And this will make posting short text and circulating it very snappy.
//Dad, why didn’t you buy a toy?
Do you have an idea that we buy a toy every time we go to a restaurant?
.. No.
Well, this is one of the times we didn’t.
Mago mopes and kneels face down on the bench.
Do you want this sandwich?
He shakes his head, sullen. After a few minutes and a few more invitations, he’s still sullen. Time for Harmless Distracting Untruth.
I happen to know you wouldn’t like the toys here.
He sits up and looks at me, slightly wide-eyed.
Yes I would! I’ve never had any toy I don’t like!
Hm. .. I think you wouldn’t like this sandwich either.
Mago is mildly alarmed, and his eyes grow wider.
How do you know?
Mm.. I just don’t think you would.
But maybe I would!
No, I don’t think so.
Why?
Because it has turkey, bacon, lettuce, cheese, and whole wheat bread.
Well maybe I would like it!
Mm, I still don’t think so.
I haven’t decided!
You don’t have long.
A minute or so passes, and I continue the reverse-pitch. Next I know, Mago is wolfing down the sandwich.
Cha-ching!
//This was my conversation with Nem-nem just now.
Nem, did you have a good nap?
Yes.
Did you sleep well?
Yes. I did go to sleep in my bed, and then princesses came in my room, and then I did wake up.
Did you dream about princesses?
Yes. And they did come into my room, and then they had babies, and they were mommies, and then I did wake up.
As I wrote this, I heard a whack and a loud scream, and found she’d hit her brother hard on the head with a play tea set plate. For that, you get to sit out on the front porch in the cold for a minute until you remember how much you like a warm room and your brother. It came back to her attention.
Princess training takes time..
//Nem-nem comes running to me.
Nem: Dad, [Mago] took a flashlight from me.
I pick her up.
Me: What did you do?
Nem: I did something mean. I said [scowls and yells] I! WANT! THAT! FLASHLIGHT!
Me: How are you going to fix that?
Nem: Um, hug.
She lowers herself out of my arms and runs off, calling her brother’s name.
//About a week ago Tia saw, late at night, a mouse run around the corner of the bed and toward a wall. We turned over everything we reasonably could at a late hour (in our tiredness) but didn’t find the mouse.
So the next day she bought some humane mousetraps, a type that merely shuts a door on its prisoner instead of smashing its brains out.
(I shudder – never mind such traps are far easier and less disgusting to manage.)
Over the next few days the kids eagerly awaited the capturing of mice (Nem: “More mouses, please”). One morning Tia found a trap set off, but it seemed so light, and the traps had previously been set off without capturing anything, so she opened the trap door to reset it – and a mouse scurried out and ran and hid in a corner, behind and under some things. She managed then to trap the mouse in a shoebox, which she taped shut.
We set off to Rock Canyon, the kids very eager to see the mouse as we would release it into the wild.
I videotaped this release, which (edited) footage follows, with some walking and playing with the kids afterward. After the mouse’s escape Tia asked me if I’d captured footage of something particular (and very remarkable) about it on tape. I hadn’t noticed, and thought I hadn’t captured it. But it certainly showed in the lens and on the camera’s video display. I only noticed by playing it back frame by frame, and for only six frames (at the frames per second rate multiplied by 5, and to put it more technically, that something like the “blink of an eye“).
You may also miss it on the first pass – this render will repeat the surprise in slow motion. Here is a still – please only show this after watching the video. [spoiler](Link to image file)[/spoiler]
(It also starts off with a relevant silly clip from a video game I played when I was a kid – exported from an emulator.)
For a higher quality video click the link that says “play in new window” after “(hifi)”.
//(10 Minutes 40 seconds. Download mp3, ~8MB)
I could edit this down substantially, but that would be like taking one bite out of a sweet pear and chucking the rest into a gorge.
//Says Nem at various times:
Opies. [Oopses.]
Getting dollies out of a bin in grandma’s basement:
Dollies now, please.
Singing and twirling around in her older brother’s batman shirt hand-me-down:
Princess, princess, princess..
In a rage of denial, most every morning:
Candy now! Candy now! Candy now! Candy now!..
After sneaking out of her room late at night and meeting me as I come to the top of the stairs; whispering, and imploringly nodding her head repeatedly:
Juice—Juice—Juice, Please—Juice—Juice, Please—Juice—Juice—Juice, Please—Juice, Please—Juice…
This evening Mago played at shooting
Everything in the whole world and fireballs!
out of his hand, as an attack (as always, towards yours truly, his dad, who amuses him with violent reactions). Nem joined in, issuing attacks at me the same way:
Moon, nose!
//At potty time, Nem-nem, making a situational comparison, declares of her absent brother, simply:
Nin-an. Poop. Big.
I tell Nem I’ll be right back, go to her brother’s room where he is settling in for bed time, and only repeat this as it was spoken; it is immediately understood. Mago bursts into fits of giggles, Tia laughs.
As Nem is later getting ready for bed, she babbles, and Mago, trying for Nem’s attention but failing, recites “facts” rather like the exaggerated ones we hear about fish..
Ah, these are the things that get at a father’s heart, stirring imaginations of a child’s future accomplishments..
Meanwhile, back at the church..
This afternoon as we drove home from church (I was at the wheel), Tia asked the kids about their Sunday School lessons. She asked Nem (who is 2 years old at this writing) what her lesson in Nursury was about. In reply Nem babbled something that sounded to me as if it had the words “hands” and “pencil” in it – drawing? – but Tia and I don’t understand. Tia runs a check:
Tia: Did you talk about Jesus?
Nem: Yes.
Tia: Did you talk about families?
Nem: Yes.
Tia: Did you talk about hippopotumuses?
Nem: (a bit incredulously) No.
//Me: (looking at a coloring template printout from the internet) ‘Sube?’
Tia: What?
Me: It says ‘sube’. Llama – home.. high mountains. Favorite food.. grass. Movement.. climb, sube.
Tia: Hmm..
Me: Maybe that’s a kind of movement?
Tia: Oh, it’s probably Spanish.
Me: But there’s no other Spanish word on here.
Tia: Welcome to the genius of those who create Dora.
