Random Pensées

Report from the home front last night

My wife was late at the dentist last night so I had the kids all to myself. I got home, inquired into the behavior of the children, determined that they had been good, and gave them a small bag of University Alumni M&M's that I had picked up at a University Alumni function the night before (blue and white colored with a University crest on the bag). Predictably, the children were delighted. The Girl Child sat down at the table with them and shared them with her brother, very evenly and without any prompting from me.

Than she taught him how to eat them. She placed a couple, quite carefully, on the kitchen table, then suctioned them right up, one at a time. The Boy Child was charmed by this new trick and decided he had to do it to. He put his down, he likes to have one in each hand generally, lowered his little head to the table, got his mouth as close as he could, then picked it up with his hand and popped it into his mouth. The Girl Child patiently corrected him and they sat there, two happy little clams, sucking M&M's into their mouths. At the end, the Girl Child's mouth was pristine. The Boy Child, on the other hand, looked as if he had carefully crushed all of his M&M's, wet them down, and rolled his face over them. He was covered in blue and white dye and chocolate. The Girl Child wanted to wash him but took one closer look and handed the wet paper towel back to me. After I finished cleaning him up, he held out his arms to show me where he had been wiping his mouth when I wasn't looking. We washed those, too.

Then we went upstairs, where the Girl Child promptly spotted a spider on the wall in the Boy Child's room. I instructed her to go fetch some tissue while I watched the spider to make sure it didn't get away. She ran off and I heard her calling to the Boy Child, who by that time had gone into my room, "Boy Child, come here and watch Pappa kill a spider!" Back they came, with tissue. Did you know that spiders can jump? This one could and he did, right onto the floor where I could not find him. I looked for a bit and gave up. Not the Girl Child, however, who spotted him lurking behind the garbage pail. I moved the pail, killed the spider and disposed of the remains. After announcing the spider's position, by the way, the Girl Child made a hasty advance in another direction (points given for anyone who knows what this is a reference to) and climbed up onto the couch. I turned to her after the deed was done to congratulate her for locating the spider and we had the following exchange:

Me: Good job! Give me a high five!

GC: [stops bouncing on couch, gives me high five, goes back to bouncing]

Me: You sure are one mean old spider killing girl.

GC: [abruptly stops bouncing to look at me squarely in the eye] I'm not mean. [pause for emphasis] I'm nice. Also, I don't kill the spiders. I just tell you where they are and you kill them. I'm a nice spider finding girl.

All she left out at the end of that sentence was: So there.

Posted by Random Penseur at March 4, 2005 08:45 AM