More from Mr. Bossy

Sometimes the things we say to the boys come back to haunt us. During the period when Connor was sick, he had some tummy issues that precipitated a bit of a regression in terms of the potty. This got a little frustrating for us because there were times when it seemed he was making no effort to get to the potty. When we would gently remonstrate him about this or betray some frustration, he would often answer that he had tried. Given that he evidently hadn’t, we sometimes told him to “try harder.”

So yesterday we’re walking home from the pool and Sarah asked him, as is often our wont, “Do you know how much I love you?” He gave the standard answer “So much,” a little wearily. Then he asked, “Why do you always ask that?” “Well,” Sarah said “because we love you so much.” Here Jamie chimes in with an eye-rolling, “We already know that.” Sensing she was being reproved, Sarah said “OK I’ll try not to ask that so often.” What was Connor's reply? “Try harder.”

Mr. Bossy

Poor Connor has been suffering over the past couple of weeks from a variety of illnesses. He is only just now recovering from a series of ailments whose cause was much less certain than the symptoms. On the early side of this, I'm afraid some rather impressive vomiting was involved. I'll spare you all the ugly details, but suffice to say Connor has not quite learned to keep himself out of the way of his barf. Not pretty.

The second half of the illness featured a fever that spiked at a shade over 106! This happened while they were at the doctors office as a matter of fact and the nurses were rather impressed, though not as alarmed as one might have expected. What's curious about Connor when he's sick is that our normally laid back second child turns into something of a Napoleon. When they got the 106 reading the nurses brought in some cold towels to cool him down. One might well imagine that this would feel good, but Connor did not like it one bit. Screamed his head off in fact. When he had endured this for a while, Sarah asked nicely him he would like them to take the towels off. "No," he replied angrily, "I want you to throw them in the trash. Gotcha.

He had been promised a lollipop to make for the indignities of being poked and prodded. The doctor, in a misguided attempt to be nice came in at some point, however, with the offer of a popsicle. He first politely declined, but when she insisted it might feel good to have something cold he said firmly, "No!!! I want a lollipop! And I'm taking one home for my brother Jamie!!" She took the popsicle away. Finally, as things were wrapping up, the doctor, who was extremely gentle and kind with Connor, was doing a few last things. Connor beheld her with a steely gaze and then turned to Sarah and said, as if the doctor weren't there, "When she gets out of here can we go home." He did not find this as amusing as Sarah and the doc.

Tooth #2

Jamie lost his second tooth a couple of days ago. It's his other front bottom tooth, and like the first one the permanent tooth, about twice as large, had already come up behind it. The baby tooth had been wobbly for quite a while, and this filled Jamie with pleasing anticipation of tooth fairy visits and dollar bills to come, but also periodically made him a little nervous. As before, we went back in forth about him wanting us to pull and being afraid, but in the end it just popped out. This time he kept a hold of it though so we put it in a little pouch under his pillow. Anticipation was high. The pouch had a little snap on it and that night before he went to bed, Jamie expressed some anxiety about whether she would be able to get it open, but we agreed the tooth fairy was strong and could handle it.

We're with alacrity!

One of the ways Sarah and I spend a lot of our time is in "encouraging" the boys to do things they don't want to do: getting out of the door, getting into the car, getting into their car seats, going to the bathroom, washing their hands, getting their pajamas on, getting into bed...You get the idea. Pretty much anything we want them to do they drag their feet as much as possible.

You can well imagine that after pleading, begging, cajoling and bribing them to get a move on in a variety of ways we get a little punchy and begin seeking new ways of saying the same things. Now Sarah usually likes to needle me, not without good reason, for the way my sometimes esoteric word usage and over-elaborate sentence structure finds its way into the boys developing speech. In this case, however, it was all her. One day, exasperated while trying to get the boys out the door to school, she said, "Come ON boys! Let's move with alacrity!" She didn't think too much of it until the next day. As she again exhorted the boys to get moving Connor started off cheerfully and looked back and asked, "Am-am-am- I wiff....a-la-cri-teeee?!!!" Sarah almost fell over. Since then he continues to use his new word, when it suits him, to highlight his compliance, always pronouncing it carefully: "Look mommy! I-I-I'm doing a-la-cri-teee!"

Let's play chest!

Jamie's latest obsession is chess. He's actually doing great with it. For once I am forcing him to play by the actual rules as opposed to the Jamie-always-wins rules Risk and Candyland we usually play, so I wasn't sure how he would react the very rigid rules about piece movement. As soon as we started playing, however, it was clear it would go well because he said, "Dad, is this like war?" Then before I could nuance a reply he said "I think it is, so I like it." He's actually picking up the rules pretty quickly, too. The only piece he really can't figure out is the knight. But he has some of the lingo down after watching the chess scene is Harry Potter, so he likes to refer to his "queen-side castle" whenever possible. This makes up for the fact that he is still working the name of the game out and often calls it "Chest."

It's funny watching him learn strategy. He's been very into Tic-Tac-Toe lately, but he is still totally unable to think in terms of defense. He plays straight ahead to win and doesn't try to block the other player. On the other hand, he's very into rock-paper-scissors and shows a sometimes spooky ability to guess what you are thinking and react accordingly. Of course sometimes he still waits to see what you play and assure himself victory.

Little drummer boy?

So we are moving Jamie to a new school next year. This has been the subject of much hand-wringing over the past couple of years but we are really settled and comfortable. The school is right in the neighborhood and is great. The only issue is that it has a special music curriculum. We like this of course, but Jamie "doesn't care about that stuff." Really he couldn't be less interested in music, even Johnny Cash these days. I thought we might have had a little breakthrough recently, and maybe it will prove to be so. The boys and I were at home playing in the living room and listening to the Master and Commander soundtrack. There are are a number of pieces featuring big booming drums and Jamie perked up immediately and asked "Is this war music? I like those drums." I told it was indeed war music and now he officially likes it.

So later that day I told Sarah about this and we thought, aha! here's our chance to break the news to him about not going back to his current school, and to maybe get him enthused about the new place. So we told him he was going there and could perhaps learn to play the drums like that. He paused and said, "So I'm not going back to my school?!" "No?" we said hopefully. He immediately burst into very genuine tears and sobbed for about 5 minutes.

Of course at this point we both wanted to just say OK, never mind you can go back, but we managed to stifle the impulse and interestingly, he got over it fairly quickly and hasn't said a whole lot else about it since, except for the occasional negative comments about not liking music. We haven't even yet been able to tell him that his best buddy won't be there either so I think it may get easier in time. We've also been trying to play the "you'll get recess now" card, which is making some headway I think.

Drivin' and eatin'

As you all know, anything related to food with Jamie can be a challenge. Occasionally, very occasionally, he can get an eating on him and just go crazy. Other times, if he's somehow distracted in a way that doesn't make him want to leave the table he can very easily polish off a meal before he's even aware that he's done it. I think it must be that he gets enough nutrition at these times to cover himself because the rest of the time he sure doesn't eat much. We've been working out for a while why this is because it's clear that all things being equal he doesn't actually dislike food, and I think a couple of things are in play. The main thing is that he simply doesn't want to sit there, when he could be doing something else more fun. Whatever hunger he has just generally isn't enough to overrule this impulse, at least for very long. He would be perfectly happy eating if we would let him bring the food to where ever he's playing, or even if it could stay at the table and he could come back and take a handful when he wanted. But no, we're mean parents, so we don't let him do that.

The other piece to the puzzle is that Jamie now proclaims his hunger every time we are about to get in the car. This has been on the increase lately and has really been confounding us. In part we can recognize it as just a time-honored delaying tactic, one also mobilized when it is bedtime of course. But I started to figure it out one night when he was refusing to eat a dinner that consisted of entirely foods that we know he likes. I asked him if we put it in a bowl and gave it to him in the car, if he would eat. Without hesitation he said, "Yes! All of it!" "Why?" I asked. I was impressed that he was then able to pretty much vocalize clearly that it was because when he's in the car he's sitting anyway, so he might as well eat, there be nothing better to do. This explains too, that when he waits until the moment we say it's time for bed to declare that he's STARVING, it's more than just delaying bedtime, it's acknowledging that he really is hungry and just doesn't have a more entertaining option.