sarcastic fringehead

Hi! I keep writing complicated posts and thinking, “Oh, this will take forever, let me just write a short one,” and then that takes forever and… well, let’s just say my dashboard looks like those Russian nesting dolls now.

But what I *did* manage to do is build a new little site; it’s called Waterloo Sunset and is a tribute to the song of the same name. I’m rather pleased with it.

This morning, W. and I were playing in the courtyard of a closed museum down the street. Across the street, a church service let out.

“Mommy, are those Presidents?”
“Presidents? No, they’re people leaving church.”
“Oh.”

[After a minute]
“Why did you think they were Presidents?”
“Because they’re wearing President clothes.”

Suits.
President clothes.

I am so pleased with that.

Wes was in trouble at school today, for the fourth consecutive school day (in order: hitting, poking, kicking and teasing little kids after being asked to stop. Hey, no violence today – that’s something!).

We were talking about this, and the fact that the little kid in question (Justin) had teased him back. I was trying to make what I thought was a fairly subtle point regarding why he might get in trouble and J. might not, necessarily (hint: giant instigator). Not subtle enough, apparently; he saw it coming at every turn and blocked it relentlessly. Finally, to my “Did Justin get in trouble?” he unleashed this awe-inspiring response.

“YES. He DID get in trouble. And he lost his snack and his dinner and his dessert and all his rewards. And his bedtime stories and no bubble bath and no bath toys and no drying off, just straight into his pajamas and to bed. Wait, NO pajamas. He had to go to bed NAKED.”

Wes has been big on playing around with people’s names lately (we won’t talk about the unfortunate effects that has at school just now). This morning, as I was washing my hair, he came in and announced, “Mom-hair!”

So I said hello with my hair, as you do.

“No, Mom-hair is not just hair, it is a person with a smiley face. And it is a vegetarian.”

“Really? What’s Wes-hair?”

“Wes-hair is a meat-eater!” Pause. “And also there is a dinosaur standing on the lawn of the castle and he just loves the taste of princesses. So he ate them all up.”

“That’s a really sad story”

“Not for the dinosaur.”

Clearly, Mom-hair does not have the proper perspective on these things.

Everybody’s sick. The kid has been banging on a drum and singing “Yellow Submarine” past the point where it’s cute.

“Hey, do you know any other Beatles songs?”

“We all live in a yellow submarine…”

“Wouldn’t you like to sing another song?”

[Apparently not.]

“Hey! How about Johnny Cash? Can you sing me some Johnny Cash?”

“Oh! Sure!”

[A moment of silence, then the drumming resumes, then in a much deeper voice:]

“We all live in a yellow submarine…”

The first one was standard preschool stuff, but is necessary for context. While making out Valentines for all the kids in his class:

“OK, next is Joshua.”
“Joshua. I call him Dossy-wa.”
“You do? What does he think of that?”
“He doesn’t like it. He fights me to make me stop.”
“Well, don’t do that, dude! Would you like it if someone made fun of your name?”
[Deep thought]
“If he called me Wessey, then I would try to fight him to make him stop.”

The next day, in the car:

“I want all the kids in my school to come to my front door! Ethan can come to my front door, and Eliza can come to my front door, and Fiona can come to my front door…”
[This goes on until he starts having trouble thinking of names.]
“Can Joshua come to your front door?”
“Of COURSE Joshua can come to my front door!”
“Oh, so you guys are friends?”
“Of course we are!”
“I wasn’t sure, with all the funny names and fighting. So you guys are pretending?”
[With infinite patience]
“Yes. We’re like stuntmen.”

There I was, making a meal for the boy and me, when I saw it. Well, you couldn’t miss it: this big ol’ cockroach was just standing in the middle of my kitchen counter waving hi.

I did my best job at balancing “OH MY GOD there is a ROACH in my kitchen AUUUUGHHH” with trying not to freak out about a bug in front of a 3-year-old.

3-year-old: “What is it doing here?”

Me, with perhaps just a little more anguish than I’d have preferred: “Well… I don’t KNOW. I don’t KNOW why it’s here.”

“I fink I know what he’s doing.”

“You do? What?”

“He’s twying to decide what to do about you.”

That’s a strangely terrifying concept, isn’t it?

Unfortunately for Mr. Bug, he has a much smaller brain than I do and I decided what to do about him first. I’m quite certain there are no more where he came from. Right?

…that I am the only person who has ever had these conversations with an almost-3-year-old. (I’m not saying you haven’t have weirder or funnier ones, mind you, and in fact if you have, I feel strongly that you should post them here in my comments section.)

–

During a car trip:

W: I conducted my music very badly before.
Me: Oh, you did? Sorry. When was this?
W: This was when I was in my place called Pasadena. And I had a band, and I conducted Double-Decker Bus [one of his original compositions].
Me: That sounds great! Was it fun?
W: Yes! I had trombones, and a sousaphone, and tympani.
Me: Oh, cool! Where was I? At work?
W: You were not there because you were at your very own preschool!
Me: Wow, bummer.

[subject changes for a few minutes, and then]

W: Oh! There were snare drums in my band also!
Me: There were? Who played them?
W: What?
Me: Who was your snare-drum player?
W: [two beats] John Phillip Sousa.

–

Me: Do you want to watch some videos on the computer?
W: Yes!
Me: How about some Sesame Street?
W: How about Richard Thompson?
Me: Um… Richard Thompson? Really?
W: YES!
Me: Well, OK!

[I will provide the video for those of you who wish to fully experience the rest of the conversation in context.]

W: Why is he wearing a hat?
Me: Probably because it looks good on him?
W: Why is his guitar brown? I thought he had a green guitar.
Me: He does! He has a lot of different guitars!
W: What is this song called?
Me: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.
W: Whaaaaat?
Me: Would you rather call it Vincent Black Lightning?
W: YES! … What is he talking about?
Me: Well, it’s a story about a guy and his girl and his motorcycle.
W: Ohhhhh.

[long pause]

W: What’s happening now?
Me: Well, uh, he gave his motorcycle to his girl.
W: Why?
Me: [making mental note not to pick song about violent death next time] Because he loves them both a lot.

[The song's pretty much over, so I scroll down to see what other RT videos are available.]

W: Wait! Go back up! I wanna see the picture! Did his little girlfriend come over?

I love that he built in his own plotline, complete with preschool-level suspense.

So what strange behavior is your child exhibiting?

We’ve been fairly deeply immersed in the land of multiple identities here at the homestead. W. is turning out to be the Daniel Day-Lewis of toddlers, selecting a role and then not breaking character (or allowing anyone else to do so) for weeks on end. Why, for a full month, we were the stars of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast: I was Maggie, W. was her pig friend Hamilton, and R. was, of course, The Ferocious Beast.

Some dialogue:

“Come here and let Mommy put your shoes on.”
“You’re Maggie!”

“Hey, whatcha doin’, cute boy?”
“I’m a cute PIG.”

All. Day. Long. (Perhaps needless to say, the entry title also comes from this part of the story.) (Less needless to say, I had not called him a sweet, beautiful boy. He may have been saving up adjectives.)

But it really got special when you took into consideration that (a) he was referring to his father as The Beast, and (b) we have to live in the world, which has other people in it. For instance, the helpful lady who worked at the pharmacy and tried to do her part to stomp out toddler lollygagging by telling W. “Sounds like your daddy’s calling you!” He looked up at her, flashed his sweetest smile, and corrected her: “He’s a beast!”

Also, if you happened to be at Santa Monica Beach a few weeks back and saw a frazzled-looking redhead chasing a small blond urchin and hollering, “No, honey! We can’t keep walking! We have to go see the beast!”? There was totally nothing weird going on there.

For a while, he became a wrecking-beam clown. You don’t know what that is, do you? Neither did I, so I asked. A wrecking-beam clown is “a monster you want to stay out of the way of.” His father was also a wrecking-beam clown. Me? I’m “Puppet.”

There’s nothing quite so validating as putting a bottle of dip on the dinner table and having your 2-year-old exclaim, “Salad dressing! Good puppet!”

I intentionally steered him toward Jack’s Big Music Show then (“you can be Jack, and I’ll be Mary, and your dad can be Mel, and Grandma L. can be Laurie Berkner!” How could a kid pass that up?) because it involved less explaining – like, why we would name an innocent child Hamilton and how my husband is not actually a beast. It didn’t take care of the problem of having people think I let my toddler call me by my first name (no! he calls me by OTHER people’s first names!), but I think I’m still ahead.

The fun part is, every time he calls me Mommy is as exciting as the very first time was.

The lyrics to the song that W. composed to avoid eating dinner tonight:

Zo-e wanna be Elmo
Zo-e gotta be Elmo
AND
ELmo gotta beeeeeeeeeeee…. ELmo!

Me: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray/You’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away.”

W: “Actually, Mommy, I AM going to take your sunshine away.”