Jared

Perspective

Jared's lately started to show a few glimmers of a mature perspective. I almost feel like shouting "ooh! ooh! These are the kinds of 'moments' you read about in parenting books!" when he starts talking about these kinds of things.

A few weeks ago at bedtime, I was laying down with him. We were both silent for a minute, and then he said "Mommy, the other kids make fun of me at school and I don't like it." I asked what they do, and he said "They call me names like Jared Bared"[1].

We talked a little bit about kids who call each other names, and then I told him "Well you know, when I was a little kid, other kids used to call me names too." He asked what they called me, and I said "Spacey KC". He then covered his mouth and turned his face away from me and said "Mommy - I can't help it! I don't want you to see this, but I can't help laughing because that's funny!"

Then a couple of days ago, his class was performing a musical. We got there very early and so we sat on some chairs in the lobby waiting for the staff to arrive. I was bored, so I decided to start shopping for a backpack for him on Amazon while we waited, because he tore a huge hole in his existing one a while back and it was falling apart. I got to the list of backpacks for kids on my phone and was calling out "Do you like transformers?" "Do you like elmo?" etc. He would answer me for almost all of them except the elmo question, I asked him 3 times but didn't get an answer, so I gave up.

That night as we were cleaning up from dinner, he said "Mommy, when you were asking me if I liked Elmo, I didn't want to answer. Because I don't want the other kids to make fun of me." I asked him "So does that mean you do like Elmo?" and he said "Yes! He's so funny!". So we talked about Mr. Noodles and Elmo's silly voice for a while, and how kids who laugh at others are probably doing it only because they feel bad about themselves. It was just a great moment, I felt like I was in the middle of a Lifetime family special.

[1] Particularly ironic because I've been calling him this since he was born, him and his sister Audrey Baudrey.

Circular

Jared: "Mommy, how do you make CDs?"
Me: "On your computer. Why do you ask?"
Jared: "I want to make CDs."
Me: "Why do you want to make CDs?"
Jared: "I want to be a kid who knows how to make CDs."

Get 'em addicted young

He's been playing World of Warcraft[1] on my machine for a while, moving my characters around, sometimes creating his own with names such as "Babyhead" and "Oopsydoopsy". A few recent anecdotes:

• I wandered in one day to find that he had another player on autofollow and was just watching him run around. He said "It was really hard to catch that guy!"
• Another time, I looked up at his screen and saw that he had typed out "no" - and then a minute later, he asked me "Mommy, how do you spell 'because'", so I wrote it on a sheet of paper for him... then I went to look at his screen, and saw that another character had said "Why did the chicken cross the road?". Later on, he wrote the rest of the words on the paper: "because he wanted to play in the roide"[2].
• Later that day, he said "Daddy, why did the chicken cross the road? Because he wanted to play world of warcraft!"

 

[1] He no longer calls it 'horsey game', which means he's all growed up :(

[2] I assume he meant 'road', playing in the 'roids wouldn't be very fun at all.

The cutiest

While telling him he was so lucky to get to celebrate two holidays in December (hannukah in our house, christmas when we visit my family), Jared said:

"Not just two! Four holidays! Halloween is the treatiest, Thanksgiving is the turkiest, Hannukah is the Latke-est, and Christmas is the present-es!"

[no, that's not a typo - it's present-es, not present-est, as he explained to me]

*major* deja vu

Jared was just sitting on my lap while we shopped at amazon for his cousin's christmas presents, but he was tired so he laid back in my arms and closed his eyes. I said "Oh look, baby's asleep!", and David came over and picked him up and carried him up to bed, Jared giggling all the way.

As he pulled him out of my arms I was hit by a huge wave of deja vu... was it really over five years ago that he was an infant, sleeping on the boppy on my laptop after feeding, while I was at the computer? When did my infant disappear and get replaced with this huge kid who can walk, talk, use the toilet all by self, read, laugh... oh man.

November 2008

He can read phenomenally well, and is starting to get into it on his own - this morning I walked in to his room, Audrey was laying on his bed while he read to her out of a book he has of scary stories. My heart about burst. :-)

We've been to the book store twice in the last three weeks, buying gobs of books for gobs of money... so today, Savta took him to the library after school where he got his first official library card and checked out several books. He walked into the house and said "Mommy, guess what! I'm smarter than George Bush! I can read really well!".

BTW have I mentioned that his Savta is veeeeery liberal? :-)

Yes, it's a poop story.

So he had to go. And he went in the bathroom and no more than 30 seconds later, announced that he was done.

"That was fast," I said.

"Yeah. It was like one minute... It was half price!" he responds.

Problems

"Mommy, there is a problem with myself. I'm hungry."

The rules of dodge-ball, as explained by a five year old

They are simple. There are only three:

#1: If the ball goes outside the fence, you're out
#2: If you get hit and you cry, you're out
#3: If you get hit and you don't cry, you're out

So I asked him "The rules talk about crying?"

He says: "Yeah. It's a rough game."

Quotable quotations, circa June 2008

Well, our little boy turns five tomorrow. Frack - I feel old.

In celebration of this momentous occasion, here are some of the latest quotes:

Jared: "I want to be a dad when I grow up!"
Me: "Oh yeah?"
Jared: "Oh wait, no - a chef! So I can eat pancakes and cupcakes!"

--

We went to play with Magnatiles, and he pointed out three things he'd created - two ships and one house.

Jared: <pointing at house> "This one's for me" <points at one of the ships> "this one's for you, Mommy" <points at the last ship> "and that one's for the computer"

--

Jared: <pointing at ship again> "This shuttle is for merry people - that means it has lots of gold and silver rings in it!"
Me: "What does 'merry' mean?"
Jared: <points at my wedding ring>