Make a list

Driving away after a lunch date with a friend, Matthew started rattling off everything he wanted to do once we were home: do a chore and a worksheet to earn a computer turn, have a computer turn, and play Duplo with me. I mentioned I had some things I needed to do, too. Then he got all excited and announced, "Let's make a list! Then we can see what we want to do in the order we want to do them!"

I didn't have a way to do that safely as I drove, so he patiently reviewed the list out loud over and over and debated to himself about which order was ideal.

We dashed into the house and got it down:

1. Play Duplo
2. Do chore and a worksheet
3. Computer turn while Mom does all her chores

We did just that.

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Matthew surprised me the other day. He's got a precocious sense of humor, thanks to his older siblings exposing him to all sorts of things. And maybe he gets more screen time than his siblings did at this age...I'm really trying to remember. Anyway, when the kids are chatting and laughing together, 99% of the time it's about a play on words or something that was misheard. They keep adding layers to the story and more and more twists to make it so, so silly.

Alice was programming a Mad Lib-style word game for computer science. At one point, the example sentence read: "You're so scared, that you clean your glasses." Matthew immediately acted it out sarcastically:

"Aaaagh!", reaching for imaginary glasses on his face and rubbing the imaginary lens with his hand, "Ee, ee, ee, ee!" He had made the sound effects! We all burst out laughing. That was so unexpected. It floored me. This kid. Sheesh.

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During dinner tonight, Robert was in the kitchen and yelled into the dining room where I was sitting, "Moooom, one of these tomatoes on the counter has a bad spot."

I replied, "Ok, thanks, I'll have a look at it later."

Robert walked over to me at the dining room table and said, "That sounded like your 'I already knew that but I'm saying thanks just to make you feel good' voice."

My eyes widened.

He was totally right, of course. I use that same tone to mean exactly that, even though that's not what I was thinking in this particular case. I'm not surprised that he notices my different tones, but I am agog that he 1) had the maturity and verbal skills to express his perception like that and 2) that it mattered to him if his perception was accurate and 3) he was actually asking me about it.

What I was ACTUALLY thinking when I responded to him was, "Aw, man, I completely forgot about those tomatoes. They were green when I brought them in from the garden. Do they even taste good? And if one is getting rotten I should check them all and decide what to do with them. Maybe put them into tomato sauce where their flavor matters a little less."

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James had a fantastic thought on the way home from piano lessons this week. He said, "Do you ever imagine what it's like to be in another person's body? I mean, I like my body. But I'm sitting in this seat and Matthew's seat is in front of me and I can imagine what it's like to sit there and look out that window. And wouldn't it be cool to go into other people's bodies and see if they see the same way you do and move their arms and legs like "whoa whoa whoa" (he's wibbling his arms and legs every which way).

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Alice can tell when I'm in a dark type of mood. She calls me out on it, too, with a tentative sort of suggestive sentence, "You seem quiet." That's my cue to be perfectly honest with her. She's a perceptive, intuitive sort of person, and will pick up on emotions and reflect them. The only way to ease her worry is to tell her the whole truth, "Yeah, I've got a few things on my mind: Matthew's asthma attack this morning, a friendship that is going through a rough patch, sadness that I didn't get to spend as much attention on Grandma and Grandpa as I would have liked during their visit, and I haven't eaten in 16 hours. I'm kinda spread thin right now." That's when she breathes a sigh of relief and smiles and asks, "What can I do to make any of that better for you?"

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