Tag: the lass

Santa Claus I wood like
All Blingles
All project runway and fashion angels, Doll, doll cloes,Scoters, Bike, tabea tablet, angry birds, super mario bros2, hocebag, Xbox 360
Love, the lass
how’s is Sparky Santa Claus?

There’s also a picture of, I think, Sparky with Santa Claus, and perhaps a self portrait and a cat bag, or something. Perhaps it’s a cat in a cage.

The doll and doll “clothes” are a bit of a surprise, and I’ve no idea what “Blingles” are. I guess it’s this stuff?

No idea about he “hocebag” either. In fact, I can’t even figure out how it should be properly spelled.

So now they’ve both written their letters to Santa. Guess we’ll have to see how accommodating the big guy is this year.

As I tucked the lass in to bed tonight, she had a big smile on her face and told me “Daddy, we’re going to live across the street from you and Mom when we grow up.” By “we”, I’m assuming she meant the boy as well. (The Wife informs me I’m incorrect- she was referring to her husband. Also, she told the Wife they’d be living with us.)

I suppose every parent’s reaction to this kind of thought is different. Some might think it’s really sweet. Others less so. For the most part, I figure there’s a long way to go before we get there.

Which gives me plenty of time to influence that outcome.

The lass has been on a roll where she likes to nitpick things to the extreme. I suppose she thinks it makes her look clever. Mostly, it comes off as annoying.

So today, she comes home with a birthday invitation, which she was excited about. Then she noticed that the inviter had misspelled her name.

“Dad, look,” she said. “It’s for someone else because my name isn’t spelled like this…” She gestured to the invitation with a smile on her face.

Rather than shrugging her off, I decided to play along, but not like she really wanted.

“I guess that means you’ll have to return it,” I told her.

“Huh?” Her brow was furrowed and she had a confused look on her face. She clearly hadn’t expected me to take her quite so literally.

With her off balance, I pressed my advantage.

“Well, like you said that’s not how your name is spelled so that invitation wasn’t meant for you. You’ll have to return it so it can be given to whom it really belongs.” I stated this all as matter-of-factly as I could, making a simple logical argument based on her own words.

“But it… it’s meant for me,” she stammered.

“No it’s not,” I replied. “It’s meant for someone else with a different name. Like you said, the name on the invitation is not spelled like your name is.” I continued with the game.

“Dad, the invitation was in my mailbox at school,” she stated flatly. “The teacher put it there.” Apparently, in her world, teachers don’t make mistakes.

Silly girl, such a simple logical error.

“Just because it was in your mailbox doesn’t mean it was meant for you. The teacher obviously made a mistake,” I replied. “Like I said, you’ll just have to return it so the proper person can be invited. Just save it for Monday and you can bring it back then.” I was trying to twist the knife a bit, just to see what would happen.

“Alright Dad, that’s enough.” She was talking like an adult now. At least, she was trying to. “Obviously, it was meant for me, but she just didn’t know how to spell my name. OK? Can I go?” She had her hand on her hips and her head was cocked over to the side. I suppose this was her I’m-not-playing-anymore pose.

Oh well, game over. She wasn’t having it anymore. But it was fun while it had lasted. I guess a birthday party invitation is not the sort of thing a 6 year-old messes around with.

Last year, the lass was so excited about homework that she would come home and complete it as soon as she received it, despite the fact that as a kindergartner, the assignments were due whenever the kids chose to finish them. The Wife and I were very impressed.

Now that’s she’s in 1st grade, her only real homework each week is reading and studying for her spelling tests. After a couple of weeks, she’s decided that studying for her spelling tests is not so much fun. She typically has only 8 to 10 words to work on.

So she has her test coming up tomorrow and I sat going through the words with her. This weeks words are: trip, trap, grass, grab, crab, crib, grand and craft. The final two are bonus words. I guess the emphasis is on learning blended sounds like the “tr” and “cr”.

She didn’t like the way I went through the words because I didn’t do them in the order on the sheet. I told her that if she really knows them then the order won’t matter. She struggled a bit, but managed to get them all correct.

Since she struggled a bit, I decided to go through them again. She rolled her eyes at me after I said one of the words again and said in an exasperated tone “We’re not going to go through these like a million times, are we?”

“I promise we won’t,” I replied. “We’ll just do it as many as it takes for you to know them well.”

She did much better the second time around.

I snuck out for awhile tonight to get in some sparring practice at the dojang. At the time, the Wife was helping the boy finish his homework set for the week (things went much better this time around) and, naturally, wanted some focus time with the boy. This meant the lass needed to be kept busy.

She’s been playing on the computer making pictures using the Paint program on Windows. So I told her if she made me a picture, I’d post it on a website somewhere.

She made me a picture, called Sunny Cat. So here’s me, keeping up my half of the deal:

The Wife wanted the kids to vacuum this morning. The lass immediately volunteered to do the hardwood portion, leaving the area carpets for the boy.

So the lass did her ‘vacuuming’ while the Wife ran an errand with the boy. I was poking around on the intertubes at the time, so I wasn’t exactly paying attention to quality-of-performance on the lass’ part.

When the Wife arrived home, I was quickly updated on that point when the Wife asked me “Did she vacuum? It doesn’t look like it…” Sure enough, dust bunnies rolled like tumbleweeds across the hardwoods. Somewhere in the distance, that whistle from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” quietly sounded. A mouse in a serape and a hat appeared riding a cockroach. Across the floor, another mouse stood precariously on a wood chip with his head in a noose fashioned out of dog fur hanging from a corner of a baseboard heater…

Back in reality, rather than get upset and start yelling, I opted for a more direct approach. Inconvenient to me, but more likely to get a point across. I went upstairs and retrieved the lass from her room where she was listening to one of her audiobooks that she’s heard approximately 100 times. By the hand and without a word, I led her down the stairs.

She didn’t like that one bit. She wasn’t sure what was up, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it. She fought me a bit even on the steps, but I didn’t yell and attained a bit more cooperation when I calmly told her that she could get hurt acting that way on stairs. Her brow furrowed, she trudged downstairs behind me. While she’d stopped physically resisting, her verbal resistance, “I don’t need you to hold my hand!”, served to inform me she was still not liking this one bit.

I walked her over to the still setup vacuum, placed her hand on the handle, placed my hand over hers and assumed a position behind her. We then turned on the vacuum cleaner and I slowly and methodically demonstrated how to vacuum the whole floor, with her present the entire time.

She fought me the whole way. Complaining I was holding her hand to tight; telling me she already knew how to vacuum (I merely replied “All evidence to the contrary.”); saying she’d already done that part. At one point, she spied a dustbunny across the room and wanted to go right over to hit it with the vacuum. I gently redirected her and explained we would get there in a bit. Finally, she said she got it so I let her try a small area.

Clearly, she didn’t get it, so I resumed my training.

I’m not under any delusions that she can now properly vacuum the floor. But if I continue to make the job so pleasant for her, I figure the message will sink in sooner than later. At least, that’s the plan. If one of us has to vacuum anyway to get the job done properly, we might as well make the most of it.

Until this morning, the lass had woken up in an abysmal mood. She was short tempered, uncooperative and generally not a child anyone in the house wanted to be around.

After I returned from bringing them to school yesterday, I told the Wife that I’d be damned if I was going to have to put up with that behavior all year. We sent her to bed early last night and told her we’d continue to do so until her morning behavior improved. Our rationale was that the long day meant she was too tired and therefore she needed more sleep.

She pushed back, worried that she’d never have a normal bedtime. I said she’d go to bed at a normal time as soon as her morning behavior improved. Next, she blamed her morning moods on not being used to getting up so early. I laughed at that and told her she’d been up all Summer long at the same time and hadn’t been unpleasant in the mornings. She considered this, then asked me “Why was I able to be in a good mood during the Summer, but not now?

I chuckled at this and as I left her room last night, told her she should ponder that question.

So this morning, she was good enough that she didn’t earn herself another early bedtime.

The boy, on the other hand…

This morning actually started last night.

We spent the day yesterday running around, basically. I had Cub Scout duties as well as landlord duties. For the Scouts, I was picking up popcorn for the Fall fundraiser and my landlord duties involved checking out the installation of a new floor in the kitchen of our rental. I got back around lunch time. The Wife, for her part, took the lass to sign her up for this year’s dance lessons.

The rest of the afternoon we spent at a local fair.

We got home and lazed the rest of the day away. The kids weren’t hungry, so I eventually just made the Wife and I a simple dinner.

Shortly after that, the lass put in her breakfast order- she wanted potato pancakes.

Shortly after that, the Wife informed me that we’d be making blueberry pancakes in the morning because the blueberries were starting to show their age.

Shortly after that, I decided I’d cook bacon. Yum.

One thing about the lass is that once she makes up her mind about something, she’s not shy about reminders. Constant, reminders. So it was for the remainder of the evening, with a final “Remember Dad, we’re having potato pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.”

When I came downstairs, this morning, both kids were already up and watching cartoons. The lass waited about 5 seconds and then asked when I would start making the potato pancakes.

At this point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she was disappointed by the blueberry pancakes that we made.

Actually, disappointed is what happens when you call heads and it comes up tails. Disappointed is what happens when you don’t win the Sweepstakes.

The lass, upon seeing that she would not be eating potato pancakes for breakfast, threw her arms into the crossed position, harrumphed loud enough to wake the dead, then stomped off towards her room.

“I will not dignify that with a response,” I told the Wife. She harrumphed in agreement. I smiled inside.

As it turned out, the lass never went to her room. Instead, arms still folded and a scowl etched into her face she stalked back into the kitchen. She made the grunting noise she typically does when she’s upset.

Still, we ignored her.

She then picked up her brother’s inflatable bat that he’d won at the fair yesterday and started futzing with it. I told her to stop, since it wasn’t her bat. Finally having received some attention, she looked at me and said “I’m not having that.” She also put the bat down.

We didn’t respond to that either.

By this point, the boy was wolfing down his 4th or 5th pancake, along with some strips of bacon. The Wife had several more pancakes cooked up and ready to go. The lass moved in and sat at the breakfast bar. She told us “I didn’t want blueberry pancakes, I wanted potato pancakes.”

Still, the Wife and I ignored her.

After several more seconds, during which I snorked a couple pieces of bacon and the boy continued to destroy pancakes and the Wife continued cooking up more pancakes, she got down from her stool and stalked around to where the Wife was. She not-so-delicately inserted herself into the area and said “What, am I supposed to eat these without syrup or something?”

The audacity of 6, in all it’s glory.

The Wife informed her that the pile of pancakes the lass had taken were for anyone who wanted them, so nothing had been done to them. If the lass wanted some of them, she was welcome to her own plate and to prepare the pancakes however she’d like.

Without another word, the lass prepared herself a plate of pancakes. Then, quietly, went back to her seat on the breakfast bar.

She ate, without further complaint.