A Funny Thing Happened

Humorous things of late: I walked to the school and picked up Will one nice day and let the boys play at the park for a while. For a while until I sat down to feed the baby and they wandered away and then I looked over and saw that Sawyer was doing his best to break branches off the newly-planted tree while Will watched. If you are at the new park by the school and see the sad tree with the twisted down and broken branch say hello for us. There were about 5 other moms sitting nearby watching too. Embarrassing. Then I told them they were in trouble and made them go home. We started walking home and Will was throwing a fit about how mistreated he is. He told me he was going to run away. I told him to go ahead and see if he could find any one else that wanted to take care of him when he's naughty. We were at a cross street so he turned right and started walking while I continued going straight. He made it about half the distance of one yard and then turned around yelling "Oh! So, you're just going to allow this?! You're allowing this?!" and then he turned around and caught up with me. Hahahaha.

 Sometimes I pretend I do things like exercise. One day I was doing an exercise video and I had been at it for all of about 5 minutes when Sawyer walked in with a Poptart and waved it under my nose saying "Just take a break Mom. Just take a break and have a niiiiice Poptart." Then last week I was doing another exercise video and Sawyer asked why the lady was saying "Don't stop. Keep going." I told him that she was just trying to help you keep exercising. He said "But Mom, you don't have to listen. You can just stop. You can just turn it off because they can't see you!"

 Sawyer also cried, with real tears, when he caught me pulling out dandelions last week. He was sobbing "You're hurting them! They don't like that! My flowers! We aren't going to have any more flowers!" (Don't worry, there are still about a million in our park strip alone.)

 He also cried when he saw the pile of debris I swept up in the kitchen and knelt down to try to pick bits of things out of it. This happens almost every time I sweep. Also, if he sees me removing a bag of garbage from the house he will run along beside me and look through the bags for things that he wants. He is amazingly talented at this. He can spot the corner of a paper he colored three weeks ago at church from 5 feet away while in motion.

 I'm realizing that Sawyer is a major demotivating factor in my life.

 The other day I got up, made Will's lunch, gave Will and Sawyer breakfast, fed the baby solid foods and nursed her, did my exercise video, packed lunches for Sawyer and I, packed the diaper bag, and got showered and dressed and left the house by 10 a.m. I felt very accomplished. And thanks to the power of television I kept thinking all day that I deserved Arctic Circle.

 Will happily told me the other day that he has a new seat at school and that he is "the only person at his table who doesn't speak Spanish!" Hmmmmmm. This was followed a few days later by him telling me that he "didn't even get in trouble at school today!" I said "Do you usually get in trouble?" to which he enthusiastically replied "Yes!" I asked why he gets in trouble and he said "Because I talk to people and I don't remember to raise my hand and I just say answers out loud!" I'm not sure having Spanish-speaking tablemates will deter him.

 I have come to the conclusion that Sawyer doesn't understand much of what he sees and hears around him. I mean, he thinks he understands, but really he must end up with a bizarre view of the world. I suppose most four-year-olds probably have a bizarre view of the world. Some examples: he told me they learned about agency at church = Ah, smart. And then continued to tell me that he "is a spy or something and his name is Agent C." = Ah, well, not quite. Or: "Mom, did you know that Adam is the first person every one meets on Earth?!" Hmmm... really. And then 3 days later I hear him singing a church song - "Adam is a prophet, first one that we know, in a place called Eden, he helped things to grow." And it dawns on me. "First one that we know." Ohhhh.

We won't even get into his theories on how Addie got here and "when she is going to turn into a boy" and how she eats "the milk that [I] drink and store inside" of me.

 Sawyer calls hand sanitizer "hanitizer." I think it is an improvement.

 Addie doesn't like to sleep alone in her bed. It is a rare event. The other day I actually got her to sleep by herself in her bed. Then Sawyer went upstairs and shouted "Mom! Addie is in here ALONE!" He was very concerned. And then she wasn't asleep any more.

 Sawyer built something out of Legos and asked me if I knew what it was. I said that I did not. He said "It's an antique gun!"

 Will told me he wrote Grandma a letter and asked if I would mail it. I thought that was nice. Then I read the letter: "Dear Grandma, Can you send me some Easter cookies like the Halloween cookies? Will." I told him I wasn't mailing it until he wrote a letter rather than a demand note.

I asked Will to go get in the car to go to school. He said he had to get something from his room. He ran upstairs and came down with a piece of paper which he handed to me. On this paper he had written "100 strikes and you are out" and then he had drawn a bunch of boxes. He gave me the paper and said "While I'm at school will you mark off a box every time Sawyer is naughty?"

 I asked Sawyer if we should take him to get a haircut. He said "Uhhh no. I was just about to make it cool and it needs to be long."

 I have more to report on Sawyer than Will because he is home with me all day. Also, I usually instant message Bryce the funny things the kids say during the day. So I did a search for "Sawyer" and found all the things I told Bryce over the last few months. Doing a search for "Will" is not helpful. The downsides of having a name that is also a commonly used word.

 Everything Sawyer says starts with "Anyways..." I have no idea where he got that from.

 Anyways. That's all.