Posts tagged as:

preschooler

Ladies’ Man

July 19, 2009 · 2 comments

So here’s my David story finally…

David doesn’t need to read the book How to Win friends and Influence People. I think David could write that book.

There’s no question that he makes friends easily.

When David wants to rough house and run around he’s all about the boys, but when he wants someone to sit with and talk to, he can often be found with a girl. I’ve seem him do it often. Go from playing tag with the boys, to sitting with the girls during snack time at church or on the swings at the playground.

Then there was the incident at the doctor earlier this spring.

David just seems to have a particular knack for charming little girls.

At the fair last week David started talking to a little girl in line behind him while they were waiting for the Race Car ride. By the time they were ready to get on the ride, David had convinced the little girl ride with him. At first she got in the back seat. (I’ve hidden her face in the pictures. I don’t feel right about posting photos of stranger’s children on my blog without permission.)

davidcargirl1

But we told David he should at least scoot over and let her ride in the front, so he obliged.

davidcargirl2

They laughed and giggled together during the whole ride. David had so much fun that he talked her into going on the Motorcycle ride with him too. Back in line again, I heard them discussing which bike they should ride. When David said they were riding the silver one, I knew the girl had chosen. David doesn’t know the color silver yet. I think he might have picked up an older women.

motorcycle

David wanted to go on another ride with her, but I noticed that girl’s parents seemed a little annoyed with him following their daughter around. David can come on kind of strong. He does need to work on boundaries. But they were just little kids. I didn’t see the problem, but since it bothered the parents, I decided it was time for David to say good-bye.

He wasn’t happy, and we literally had to drag him away.

Breaking up is hard to do.

Later when we asked David what her name was he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I didn’t ask.”

I guess she was just a fling.

I hope in the future he learns to at least ask their names.

I didn’t notice until I started going through the pictures, but the Race Car ride wasn’t David’s first encounter with the girl.

Here they are earlier on the swing.

davidswing

It must have been fate.

Anyway, I’m now more convinced than ever that this is gonna be trouble when he’s older.

Trouble I tell you. Trouble.

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The One Where I Manage to Work in SpongeBob, McDonald’s and Bob Dylan and Still Make Sense

July 2, 2009 · 4 comments

I managed to cleverly avoid going out and about alone with Wade and David for seven whole weeks.

I had the handy little excuse that I wasn’t supposed to lift things after the C-section, and the baby carrier with Wade in it was just too heavy. Saying so with sad eyes as I dramatically clutched my middle was quite effective and convincing.

Really I was just terrified about what I would do if David was screaming in the store because, “No you can not have a SpongeBob balloon,” at the same time Wade was screaming because, “Mommie, I’m starving!”

But after a long, cold, rainy June day at home with David climbing the walls and attempting to pick up Wade while I was in the bathroom, I decided we needed to all get out of the house before someone got hurt or went nuts. Daddie wasn’t going to be home until very late, so I packed the three of us in the car and headed to McDonald’s for dinner.

McDonald’s because they have a Playland and WIFI.

I mean goodness knows I wouldn’t go there for the coffee. Ack! You could strip paint with that stuff. I don’t get why their coffee is rated number one over and over above other chains. It must be pure market share.

The Carmel Latte and their new Frappe are the only coffee drinks that are consumable as far as I’m concerned.

Not that you care how concerned I am about McDonald’s coffee.

Ahem…

So, anyway, back to the story –

Now, much to my dismay, when we arrived there we gaggles of parents and young children in line. I looked for the tour bus on its way back from the circus, but learned that it in fact was not a tour bus. I chose $1.50 Happy Meal Night of all days for our first outing.

And in our pit of an economy in Michigan $1.50 Happy Meals are like Christmas in July.

Or June.

It was actually still June.

So we waited and waited, and I wrangled David who was going to absolutely burst if he was delayed one minute longer from climbing to the top of the slide.

My other discovery that evening was that I do not have enough hands.

My super-cute pink and white polka dot laptop sleeve that does not have a handle is completely useless when lugging around a baby in a car seat, a diaper bag, purse and four year old. I managed to cram it into the diaper bag between the bottles and the wipes.

I also, in a moment of unusual clarity, had the where-with-all to ask for our food To Go even though we were dinning in. It’s easier to manage bags than a tray. There is your handy-dandy parenting survival tip for the day.

You are welcome.

So we ate, David played, Wade slept, and I tried to get on line.

Did you know the WIFI at McDonald’s is not free?

I know! Right?

It costs $2.95 for two hours.

Everybody on God’s Green Earth has free WIFI except McDonald’s.

But after all that work I was not about to be defeated by $3, so I anted up my Mastercard.

McDonald’s not-free WIFI is almost as bad as their coffee.

So. Very. Slow.

I was the only parent in the Playland with a laptop by the way, and I fielded more than a few sideways glances.

Come on, it’s called Parenting 2.0 People! Join the new millennium.

I woke Wade up to feed him so he wouldn’t scream in the store we were headed to after McDonald’s.

Then after pleading for several minutes with David to, “Come down here now. We are leaving!” (Like I could go up there and get him.) I managed to extract David from the human rat tunnel that is Playland, and we left.

We went to the store which was uneventful except for the predicted few minutes of screaming, “I want a SpongeBob balloon!” Wade, happily full, did not scream at the same time thank goodness.

Then home we went.

I survived. And we are about to venture out again today since Daddie is working three very long days at at huge music festival, and I know we will loose our collective minds if we don’t get out.

(Can I just mention how jealous I am that Daddie is listening to such famous acts at Bob Dylan and The Black Crowes while I’m listening to the umpteenth rendition of the ABC ‘s?)

O.K.

We’re Going, going, gone.

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Had A Bad Day

June 4, 2009 · 2 comments

I burned and crashed today like a 747 falling out of the sky on fire.

Wade was fussy the night before and kept me up for hours. When I finally got him quiet, I laid awake despite my exhaustion, the caffeine and erratic sleep patterns taking their toll me.

I cried at 3 a.m. and again at five just because I was so tired.

Then I was cranky all day today. I desperately needed a nap, but I couldn’t get David to take one. So no nap for me either.

I shouted at David when I shouldn’t have. I punished him for little things that didn’t matter.

I really lost it when he spilled red Koolaid on the carpet. It was an accident, but I acted like he did it on purpose, just to spite me.

The poor kid.

I prayed for patience, asked David for forgiveness.Wondered what Wade thought of this crazy woman who was yelling while he tried to sleep.

I’d held it together pretty well the last three weeks. But today was the breaking point.

Things got better in the evening. And even after all my shouting and carrying on David crawled up on my lap and said, “I love you Mommie.” Boy was that just the thing I needed. I was still tired, but my frustration melted away after that.

Well, tomorrow is another day. Tonight, another chance to sleep.

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Milk and Liquor

May 8, 2009 · 3 comments

We ran out of milk this morning.

That’s pretty close to a disaster in this house where we go through about 4 gallons a week on average. I figure we just need to move to a dairy farm once Wade starts drinking milk.

I didn’t want to drive all the way to town just for milk, so I took David with me to the little country store up the road.

O.K., it’s really a liquor store and bait shop that also happens to sell milk, but Little Country Store sounds less redneck, yes?

We got the milk and I let him pick out some candy. It was was 10 O’clock, and and I’m already starving for lunch by then these days, so somehow a bag of frozen Pizza Rolls also ended up amongst our purchases. I asked David if he wanted a soda too. I don’t let him drink soda very often, but I felt like playing Nice Mommie today. He said all he wanted was the candy. When we got up to the counter to pay he saw that I’d grabbed a soda for myself, and decided he wanted one too.

“Which one do you want?”

“I want the watermelon one.”

“What? I don’t know what that is.”

“The watermelon one,” he said exasperated with my ignorance.

“Well, do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“Hurry up and go get it, and bring it up here so I can pay for it.”

Since the store is small and we were the only people in there I wasn’t worried about losing him.

Thirty seconds later David came back and plunked a bottle of liquor up on the counter. It did have a picture of a watermelon on the label. His favorite fruit to eat.

It’s a good thing they card there.

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go

May 4, 2009 · 8 comments

I promised you more about David’s trip to the doctor last week…

After David finished wooing the little girl in the waiting room they called us back.

The nurse did the usual things like weighing David and measuring his height, which only confirmed what I already knew. He’s enormous for his age.

At four years and four months David weighs 50 lbs. and is 44.25 inches tall. He’s above the 97 percentile for both. Because he’s so big, it throws off the calculations on the BMI chart, and he registers as obese.

At one point the doctor gave David a strength test and asked him to pull on her arms. He almost pulled her over. She said he’s also more muscular and stronger than most boys his age which is why he weighs so much, even though he doesn’t look like it.

We’re raising a linebacker.

When the nurse was finished with her part of the exam she gave me a gown to put on David. He never had to wear a gown before. First he didn’t understand why he had to put on a dress, and wanted to just keep his underwear on. Which is what he always did before; diaper, Pull-up, underwear. I guess four is the age when they decide you can handle the humiliation of wearing a hospital gown.

It took a little coaxing, but I did finally get David’s clothes off and the gown on. The only problem, I put it on backwards.

See, at the OBGYN they always gives you those gowns that close in front. So I put the gown on David that way. David looked down at the big gaping opening in the front and said, “That isn’t right.” I figured it probably wasn’t, and switched it around.

The doctor came in and did the exam. Everything went fine, except the part where he almost knocked her on her rear end.

Then as we were finishing up she told me they wanted a urine sample.

They want a four year old boy who can barely hit the mark in a big toilet bowl to give a sample in tiny, tiny cup?

The thing is when a four year old boy hears that he gets to  get pee in a cup, to him it sounds like big fun.

David was ready to do it right there in the exam room.

I convinced him that he had to get dressed and go to the bathroom. Getting him out of that gown wasn’t easy. He took a liking to it and told me it was, “comfortable.”

We went in the bathroom, and I explained to him what the goal was. I held the cup. I wasn’t about to leave it all up to him. It was going to be messy as it was.

He did actually get a little in the cup. Most of it was on my hand. The things mothers are called to do for their children.

I took the cup away.

“Wait! I have to go more!”

“Just finish in the toilet.”

“It isn’t full.”

“It’s full enough. You don’t want it to spill.”

“Then dump that out so I can put more in.”

Yep. He was having too much fun peeing in that cup.

I wiped up the mess on the floor and toilet bowl. The we both washed our hands really well.

Checking out at the front desk David announced to everyone in the waiting room his triumph in the bathroom.

The little girl was gone.

It’s a good thing.

I dont’ think she would have been so smitten.

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David Hams it Up

April 1, 2009 · 4 comments

Yeah, I got nothin’ today so I’m posting photos. Here’s some obnoxiously cute ones of my kid.

davidcowboy

Does not every woman dream of having her very own cute cowboy that does dishes living in her house? Have a daughter around four years old? Want to arrange a marriage? Well, maybe you should wait to decide until after you see the next picture.

davidtailgate

I’m really not sure what his plan was here. Either he’s getting ready to backpack through Europe, or he’s pretending to tailgate at a college football game.

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