A conversation between E- and J-: Pleading the Fifth at Two

The following is a conversation initiated out of the blue by my 2-year-old son E- (who's lately been known to loudly demand to know "why you put me in trouble?!?" and to order us to "[not] talk to me again, ever!") with my wife J- one day after she got home from work:

E- (very seriously, as if honor-bound to tattle on me for an internationally recognized crime): Daddy yell, at me.

J-: Daddy yelled at you? Were you being naughty?

E- (mildly offended): I NOT, be... naughty.

J-: You weren't naughty? Then why was Daddy yelling at you?

E-: ...

E-: ...

E- (happily, aborting the plan and going for a distraction): I can jump, jump, jump around! I jump around your bed!

J-: Were you being naughty? Was that why Daddy was yelling at you?

E-: ... (runs from the room)

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You may enjoy my previous J- conversations, (2YO son) E- conversations, (9YO son) D- conversations, and (6YO daughter) M- conversations.

One-line movie reviews

I know how it sounds when I say it, but there's no other way: my kids watch almost no TV at all. (At least, not at our house.) However, rest assured, they do watch movies quite regularly. So by this stage they're all savvy enough to cut right through the verbose ramblings of old people like me, to create movie reviews for the Twitter generation.

For example:

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
[About halfway through this, one of my favorite movies]
[9YO son] D- : This is definitely NOT a 'wonderful life'.
[6YO daughter] M-: Yeah, it's depressing!

The Tigger Movie (2000)
[2YO son] E- (disappointedly, throughout the movie): ...Where Pooh-bear go??

And I may as well include this post from the vaults, with another similarly pithy movie critique from D-, back when he was a mere 5-year-old: I think I've broken my kid (June 2009)

These less-than-effusive summaries are most notable just because as kids, their standards are so low that they seem to think any moving pictures put in front of them are "awesome".

It's a bit nauseating sometimes, when they (or worse yet, "we") are subjected to some terrible bit of would-be entertainment for any length of time, and they sit there clearly making no distinction between, say, an animated car insurance commercial and the finest creations during this, the Golden Age of Children's Movies.

Some day, I tell myself, they will appreciate what Pixar has wrought for them. Comments like these are the only real hints that I might live to see that day in person.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 17

Here are a few of the things that have been amusing me recently:

1. Almost every time* I log in to eBay lately (or when they send me a "tantalizing" daily e-mail trying to draw me back to their site), they suggest that I might be intensely interested in purchasing a scale model of Vin Diesel's head. No matter what I shop for. Do I have to break down and buy one just to make it go away? Is that their twisted strategy to move odd products after being listed for too long?

2. Only when your 6-year-old girl stays home from school do you get to find out exactly how lovely your 2-year-old son's head looks filled with many sparkly hair clips.

(Despite the look on his face in this picture, he couldn't be happier about the attention, or the accessorizing.)

3. I am astounded by the logic of a PR rep (for something I still haven't paid attention to, on principle**) who decided that I, like everyone else who received her e-mail, likely did not pay the proper amount of attention to it, so she forwarded it to everyone all over again within the span of a week.

Now, of course, such an annoying action is far from uncommon, and it results in many, many e-mails coming in to bloggers' inboxes every day, but where this lady goes beyond the call of duty is by including this explicit and cringe-inducing opening sentence in her followup: "I know you must get a million emails like this daily, so I wanted to resend and ensure you received the info below."

...Make that a million and one.

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* The rest of the time, it suggests an equally creepy "Jason Statham" head.

** See that? You got your wish, lady-- I'm writing about your e-mail!

A conversation between E- and J-: Heaven in a handbasket

Now that my 2-year-old son E- is astronomically more verbal than he was just a few months ago, he can actually hold up his end of many straightforward (generally needs/wants-oriented) conversations. Of course, that doesn't mean he always chooses to do so.

Occasionally, he strikingly decides to barrel on in true LiteralDan form, hoping to wear down his opponent by sheer force of will. Exhibit 437 (of Thousands):

E- (to my wife J-, reaching toward his inconveniently hard-to-reach Easter basket): MY back-ket. My back-ket. MY BACK-KET!

J- ((patiently, while making dinner): Yeah, E-, that IS your basket. It's up high because you kept taking candy when you weren't supposed to.

E- (as if she hadn't said anything at all of import): ...My back-ket! My can-nee.

J-: Yes, it is your candy, but that doesn't mean you can eat it whenever you want...

E- (before she even finished her sentence, as if his point was too urgent to wait): Jehwy, beeeeeeans!!

J-: ...

E- (almost exasperated, trying to communicate with a simple foreigner): EAT! Can-nee! Jehwy beans!

Suffice it to say, he continued to be frustrated by everyone's inability to understand that, unlike most children, he quite enjoys eating candy, and would strongly prefer to consume it in place of, as well as alongside, any other foods he's offered. No one said it wasn't lonely being the outlier.

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You may enjoy my previous J- conversations, (2YO son) E- conversations, (9YO son) D- conversations, and (6YO daughter) M- conversations.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 16

Here are a few of the things that have been amusing me recently:

1. It may cement my status as a Nerd* that it bothers me a little when I see an object called a "cube" (meant to turn a cubby into a drawer) that measures 10.5"x10.5"x11".

2. Funny pictures of things on the Internet.**

3. Great news on the "Evolution of a Plastic-Consuming-Organism" front... our cat seems to have really developed a taste for Legos.

4. It might take nine or so years as a parent to realize this, but children are secretly Very Small People, with wants, needs, flaws, and habits much like the rest of us. Also, they often get less small over time.

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* Or is it just everything else about me that accomplished that already?

** This one's not so much "recently" as "continuously". Sure beats whatever I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment.

Classic quotes, Vol. 44

Here's a selection of recent quotes from my 8-year-old son D-, my 6-year-old daughter M-, and my 2-year-old son E-*:

E- (pointing to his stomach, when asked where someone else's food had disappeared to): In!

D- (apropos of nothing, laughing as we walked out of the bank): Remember "Uranus"??

M- (when asked why she was wearing two very different scarves at once, as if it's self-explanatory): Because I have two scarves I can wear...

D- (after I pointed out several hairs on the jelly toast he'd made me while I was sick): Oh, I forgot to tell you..... it fell on the floor.

E- (when told he had to wait for more crackers till we saw how his tummy felt): Don't, WIKE, tum-mee!!

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* Still yet to claim his place on the blog banner! I am terrible.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 15

Here are a few of the things that have been amusing me recently:

1. A handy microcosm of my 8-year-old son D-'s personal hygiene and neatness (as well as our relationship in more and more moments of more and more days), can be found in his answering shrug and total lack of action in response to my helpful observation at least a half hour after he'd eaten lunch one day: "Hey buddy, you've got dried chili spatters ALLLL over your face..."

2. Cats are a living reminder that nature truly abhors a vacuum.

3. I saw a news headline recently called "Pictures of celebs who hide their kids in photos"... I think as you write that headline, you should realize you've got a sign you should just delete the article and the pictures with them. Also, possibly change your line of work.

4. I'm guessing the reason that only one out of the dozens of annual e-mails I get from my alumni association was filtered into my spam folder is that it 1) asked very clearly for money for a very specific effort, 2) included a special link to a page for that campaign, and 3) gave me a "personal web code" to enter that included "FAKY" as one of its alphanumeric clusters...*

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* Also, I am a proud alumnus of the University of Nigeria - Fakeymundia campus. That seems to trip people up sometimes.

Things my 2-year-old son has recently licked

After a bit of a lull in such explorations, my 2-year-old son E- has lately rededicated himself to the cause of more fully probing this world of ours through every sensory-input-gathering device available to him.

This noble effort often results in him putting many things in or on his mouth-parts that lesser men would likely fail to even consider attempting.

Here's a selection of some of the most noteworthy just from the past week or so:

1. The floor, many times

2. The underside of the counter where the kids eat most often*

3. The bottom of his shoe

4. The bottom of a few other people's shoes

5. The strap of his car seat**

6. The rim of a garbage can I'd just bought from a thrift shop***

7. The bristles of our small hand broom that has seen a good ten years' use, in all conditions, in several states***

8. An old plastic fork he found in our garage

I shudder to think what else he'll think of tasting without us even realizing we needed to warn him not to.

That's the advantage of being a world-changer instead of a nay-sayer, I guess. Good luck, little buddy! You are a worthy opponent.

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* Thus making it the grossest part of the counter.

** This one, like the first one, kind of goes without saying, but it's worth including anyway just because a kid's car seat is among the more germ-infested places in the world, including the toilet (which gets washed much more frequently), especially for a family that takes as many car trips as we do...

*** These two were in the same day, only about an hour apart!

Classic quotes, Vol. 43

Here are a few more recent quotes from my 8-year-old son D-, my 5-year-old daughter M-, my 2-year-old son E-, and my wife J-:

E- (politely sticking only the tip of his finger in his nose): In!

J- (after pausing mid-sentence for about a full minute while talking to me from another room): Huh? Oh, I was eating ice cream and then I forgot I was talking...

M- (speaking of her newest baby doll, as a girl seemingly primed for monarchy): And this, is GOD's sister! That makes her a "princess".

D- (apparently falling under the spell of a commercial for a Hardee's Thickburger): I can SEE it's a "thick burger", you don't need to tell us!

J- (while driving down the highway, marveling at the car's ability to go under the speed limit for a short while): I'm going SLOWww.  (a Cadillac immediately rolls by on the left) See! Even old people in HATS are passing me!

E- (pulling himself forward in his car seat, after I'd pointed out a truck sculpture we were about to pass on the highway, meaning he had no way of seeing anything noteworthy yet): Whoaaaa, truck!! ...Wow..... windowww!!

2012: The Year We Make... Stuff Up

Well, as you may or may not have already observed, we're all still here, living and breathing. Even waiting a couple weeks to factor in some rounding errors that might have skewed things a bit, the world seems much the same as it was not that long ago, and it seems safe to say that the world stands as much chance of ending as it ever does, just like we found out after hitting the year 2000 without planes falling from the sky.*

Are we all that hard up for some real, guilt-free drama and plain-dealing in our lives?

Yes, yes we are.

Sometimes it feels like we've peaked, at least here in the "First World", and the only productive way to go is sideways, to something more elemental, and beautiful... a place and time where all these idle things we've created don't really matter, all the filters we've built between ourselves as humans dissipate. A place where the person shuffling imaginary sums of money from one place to another finds the bulk of her life's experience suddenly useless, and the man with the hand-dug fallout shelter, fully stocked armory**, and decades-long supply of canned food is king.

But then the movie ends, we walk out with our heads down, and we forget all about that nonsense while scrolling through Tumblr pages for updates on our favorite memes, or while monitoring comments on our pictures of food we were about to eat at some point.

But hey, sometimes it just takes a minute to shake out the cobwebs and remember what's really important, right? Here and now, or there and then, and family, and not... stuff... or whatever somebody else reposted on Facebook once that sounded really deep 'n' shit.

Here's to another new year of more of the same! But moreso!

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* Good thing, too, because I was on one that day, off to meet my future wife for the first time. We'll never beat those plane fares!

** To finally get a chance to protect his toothless, malnourished children with the finest matériel tens of thousands of dollars can buy!