So uncool.

Soen and Sadie, sweating to the oldies.


My friend Nicole and I were talking about how our kids are growing up and how bittersweet an experience it is. I was telling her one of the things I'll miss most about this age is that Soen doesn't care about being cool. He's still at that age where he likes to be goofy and do things he likes to do, even if other people don't. For example, the other day he and I were at the playground and there were a bunch of older kids there. They all knew each other and were not at all interested in playing with him. Rather than be upset that no one wanted to play with him, he decided to pretend to be a baby squirrel fox (or some other imaginary creature) and he crawled around the jungle gym on all fours, yipping at the big kids as they tried their best not to trample him. He was quite content acting like a baby animal, pretending to build a nest and sleep on the ground. Of course, if one of those big kids had made fun of him he would have come running to me in tears. But luckily they couldn't have cared less about him. In a year (or less) he'll be too embarrassed to do anything like that. That's one of the things about this age that I want to bottle up. The whining and not listening... well, not so much.

Not much to report

Just some photos to keep the grandparents happy.

Paging Dr. Freud...

Sadie bogarting her Nook Nook Bear.

Quick aside about this photo: This bear that Sadie is holding is her most prized possession. She not only sleeps with it (in fact she won't sleep without it--we keep several on hand in case we misplace one) but her favorite thing in the world is to sniff it. It's like she's getting her fix on. Every night we put her in bed, hand her a binky and her nook nook. She puts the binky in her mouth and then sticks the nook nook in between her binky and her nose and inhales deeply. You know that you're "in" with Sadie if she shares her nook nook with you.

Anyway, my entry has nothing to with Sadie and her nook nook. Tonight I was playing soccer with Soen out back and I kept kicking the ball into wife's garden. Every time I did, Soen informed me that Mommy was going to be mad at me. Once, he kicked it into the garden and I said now Mommy was going to be mad at him, to which he said, "No way because Mommy's in love with me." He kicked the ball to me. "I think she's in love with me, too." I kicked it back. He laughed like this was the most ridiculous thing he ever heard. "No Daddy. She's not going to marry you, she's going to marry me." He then kicked the ball past me, which caused the automated soccer goal behind me to click on and say "Goal!" which, in turn, caused my son to say, "I win!"

Star Wars!

Rare moment when both kids are being good.

I don't know what it is about Star Wars but it has a magical power over kids. Soen and I have a little routine every night at bedtime. Once our kung fu fighting is over and his teeth are brushed, etc., I read him a book (usually some Peanuts cartoons) and then tell him a story while we listen to some music. (His new favorite song is "Have Love Will Travel" by the Sonics.) Anyway, I usually struggle for story ideas. Sometimes I tell fairy tales and sometimes I make up stories. The other night I was at a loss for a story but somehow Star Wars popped into my head. Usually he listens to my stories politely but for Star Wars he immediately latched on to it and wanted to know more. Maybe it's the names (Chewbacca is truly a great name) or the awesome combination of robots AND aliens. I don't know. But he knew right away that this was no dumb story that daddy was making up to teach him a lesson about why it's a bad idea to lie about whether he ate his broccoli.

The next day I found some Star Wars clips on YouTube, which only fueled the fire to see the actual movies, so I ordered the first one from Netflix and it arrived today.

Meanwhile, today was also the day my parents left, after having been here for a month. It was a great visit and the kids were thrilled beyond belief to have all the attention and all the spoiling that goes along with it. Of course we've found that every time a grandparent comes for a visit, there is a certain amount of deprogramming we have to do to get our good kids back. Maybe it's all the attention or the spoiling or the drugs, but over the course of this past month the kids (Soen especially) slowly devolved into these back-talking, non-listening, whining little creatures that only resemble our children thanks to their curly hair. Of course we're not blaming my parents (or wife's parents, since it happens when they come, too). After all, grandparents are supposed to spoil their grandkids. That's the rule. (And frankly, they didn't do too much spoiling anyway.) No, I prefer to place the blame solely on the children.

Today, when I was picking Soen up from his friend's house, I told him it was time to go home. He politely replied, "I don't want to," and then ran across the yard after his friend. Fearing this was going to lead to a minor war, the next time he ran by I mentioned that Star Wars had come. That stopped him in his tracks. "KATELYN I'M GONNA SEE STAR WARS!" When I explained that he could only watch it if he was an extra good boy, man did he shape up. It was like a movie. He ran to the car, buckled himself in, helped me gas up the car on the way home (even cleaned the windshield!), said please and thank you (and "yes ma'am") to everything, cleaned up his room (!), and ate his entire dinner all without one complaint. He even understood that he wouldn't be able to watch the whole movie tonight and didn't give me any lip when it was time to turn it off.

We left off right before Han Solo make his entrance. So far his favorite moment is when R2D2 gets shot by the Jawas and falls over. We had to re-enact that scene a few times tonight. Of course, he got a little whiny when it was finally bedtime and even came downstairs after he had been put to bed to tell me that his butt itched him. But all in all, I think Star Wars may make this the shortest deprogramming session yet.

Tune in tomorrow to see how this theory gets shot to hell.