Words of a Child

I asked the boys how they feel about having a baby sibling. Here are a few reactions:

Deep Thinker: “I want a brother, not a sister. Then we can have a boy’s club. With a sister, we definitely cannot have THAT.”

Rowdy Rebel: “I want a girl or a boy. I will hold her.” (He calls every child “her,” girl or boy.

Then I asked the boys if they would feel jealous of losing Mom and Dad’s attention.

Rowdy Rebel: “Yes, I will feel bad if I don’t get attention. I will feel NERVOUS if she SCREAMS while I’m TALKING.” (As he said this, his eyes were open very widely, and he was nodding.)

Deep Thinker: “It’s okay. You can take care of Rowdy Rebel and give him attention. I’ll take care of the baby.”

I LOVE it. What you ask is what you get–no filters, no “making it pretty” for the person their talking to. And so cute to look at too. I feel really lucky.

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Deep Thinker is now taking guitar lessons. His teacher is named Phil. I could tell on day one that these two were going to study well together. Phil is really polite, serious, and diligent about where the last lesson left off and where the new one begins. Very patient guy and excellent guitar player (of course).

So, after lessons today, I asked, “Hey, do you still feel like you and Phil are studying well together?”

Deep Thinker responded, “Oh, yeah. We make a good team. Phil is a quiet and serious man, and I am a quiet and serious man. It works perfect.”

On a side note, shortly after this, another God question. (Mind you, it has been at least 7 months since we’ve been to church. I don’t really talk about God at home with them, but I should try. We say the blessing at dinner time, and that’s pretty much it. Deep Thinker is just a big God lover of his own making.) SO, he asked, “Hey Mom, do you think God plans out our whole life when we’re a baby in our mom’s belly? Or does he just plan it day by day?”

He’s a little deep for age 6. Hence his blog nick name Deep Thinker.

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Deep Thinker was talking about marriage again.

He was saying that his teacher, Ms. Blackwell, has a boyfriend.

I asked, “How do you know he’s a boyfriend and not her husband?”

He said, “MOM, she’s only 29. How could someone that young be married?”

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Deep Thinker really loves playing volleyball and kickball after lunchtime. The kids get to choose what they want to do. He always chooses to play ball. I would guess that he’d prefer to play alone, but that’s not what he wants to do.

SO, there are frequent scores, outs, and every once in a while he comes home and tells me about a run-in he’s had. (Or, more precisely, something mean someone did.)

Two days ago, he said that one boy, Ryan, was slapping and kicking the ball out of his hands each time he managed to get the ball! Boy that made me MAD.

(As I have mentioned, Deep Thinker has always had a tendency to be passive. He has worked hard on learning to speak up, tell the teacher, or tell people to stop doing mean stuff when it happens.)

Well, I told him that he needs to do something to address that problem with the ball, or Ryan would end up doing it more often. Deep Thinker sure doesn’t want that–it’s hard enough to get the ball in the first place. He’s not giving it up that easily. So, we talked about telling the playground supervisor, maybe doing the same thing back to Ryan if it happens again, or just telling Ryan that he can’t do that anymore. Deep Thinker decided on that last option.

Today after school, I asked him if he had a chance to talk to Ryan. Here is my son’s story about the conversation: “Yes, I talked to Ryan. But he was already playing a game. So I went over to him and said ‘Hey Ryan, I didn’t like the way you were slapping the ball out of my hands yesterday. You can’t do that anymore.'”

Sounds good so far. He continues, “But Ryan ignored me. So I said it again. But he kept ignoring me. So I followed him and said it many more times.” And I asked, “Well, then what happened?”

He said, “Oh, the last time I said it, Ryan finally turned around and looked at me and said, ‘OK, OK, I heard you say that a million times already!'”

So, I guess Ryan’s little strategy was to pretend he couldn’t hear Deep Thinker. Apparently, it didn’t work very well:)

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Deep Thinker is fascinated with religion and the afterlife. He constantly has questions about it (and has since age 4). He must have heard about reincarnation somewhere. He just came and said, “You know, maybe when you die, you are born again as another person. And you just live on earth forever.”

So I said, “What do you think? Do you think that’s true?”

He said “yeah” and nodded his head. I think if I’d asked questions about God, he would have delved right into them and probably changed his mind several times, but I didn’t have a chance because he had another thought.

He said, “Maybe when a baby is born, that baby was living in another family and died.”

And I said, “Could an old lady die and be born as a little boy?”

His answer: “No. She can’t just DIE and then become a BOY.”

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Deep Thinker wrote the funniest story for school. The teacher lets them write anything they want, and usually he comes up with some pretty gross boy themes that seem to involve … sorry, but burping and things of this nature. (This is only during their free writing time–at other times they write about more standard topics.) This story didn’t contain any gross parts, but was funny nonetheless:

“Once upon a time I made a snowman. His powers were squirting milk from his zuzu’s [This is the word my boys use for “chest” or “breast”]. One day an angry chicken tried to get the snowman, he was too powerful to get him. Also, I taught the snowman kungfu to defeat his enemies.”

He also explained that his teacher asked “What is a zuzu?” I don’t think I want to know what that conversation sounded like.

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Rowdy Rebel has a part-time nanny, Katia. They talk and play non-stop–literally from the time she comes to the time she goes home. He’s a lucky boy. Anyway, Katia has 2 daughters who are already a little older (and in school). So she brought over their old Barbie’s the other day. There were also Barbie motorcycles and Ken dolls. I was very interested to see how Rowdy Rebel would react.

First he played with the Ken doll and the motorcycle for a while. That didn’t surprise me.

Then, he picked up the “prettiest” Barbie in the bunch. The only one with super long hair and a really pretty dress. And I thought “oh, it’s true, boys do like dolls!”

Rowdy looked at the Barbie for a few seconds. Then he proceeded to slowly pull her skirt up and inspect the Barbie. Next, he pulled her blouse up and looked around carefully and noted that she has large zuzu’s (boobs).

Then he put the skirt and blouse back down and said, “She has really pretty hair.” I know this is normal at some point–any input welcome here–is this suppose to start at 3.5 years of age?!?

PS. I strongly recommend clicking on this doll to get a close-up–but brace yourself, she’s not very, uh, pretty.

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Rowdy Rebel (my 3.5 year old) was sitting on the toilet, and screamed “Mommy!”

I said “Yes?”

He answered, “Wait a second. I’m concentrating POOPING.”

So, I waited, confused as to why he called me.

And after a few minutes, he asked, “Mommy, do all mommies have crooked teeth?” (Yes, that means, do all mommies have crooked teeth like mine. THANKS.)

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Rowdy Rebel was getting ready for his bath.

As he was getting ready to take off his pants, he reached into his pockets and pulled out HOARDS of fake Spiderman dollars. (I assume these are from a game the kids played at preschool.)

So, I explained, “Honey, we can’t take things home from preschool. This money belongs to the school. Why did you take it?”

He looked at me like this was the most ludicrous thing he’s ever heard. Then he responded, “I took it because the teacher wasn’t LOOKING when I put the money in my POCKETS.”

Then he threw his hands up in the air in frustration at my stupidity.

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Deep Thinker has been really interested in China since one of his classmates and her parents did a Chinese New Year party for the class last year. I also am very interested, and we are dreaming of going there someday and learning Mandarin over a summer.

Anyway, my husband and I are now planning to have a 3rd child and talking to Deep Thinker and Rowdy Rebel about having a little brother or sister. They are very excited about the idea and clear that this is the plan.

So, yesterday Deep Thinker started talking about China again. “MOM, when are we going to GO to CHINA???” I told him it would be fun to go one summer all of us together, maybe I could teach English and we could all study Mandarin.

And he said, “Well, we aren’t going to be able to do this if ya keep GROWING BABIES.”

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