On Thursday my four-year old daughter had dress rehearsal for her very first dance recital. It was an amazing day, and thankfully was permitted to be so by the fact that my husband graciously stayed home from work that day to watch our son. Our son is five, and bringing him to this five-hour-long dance marathon would have been an absolute nightmare. He would have been beside himself with boredom, yanking on my legs, beckoning me with “mama, mama, mama” every three-point-two seconds, and trying with all of the power contained within his teeny tiny 43″ frame, to steal my attention away from my little ballerina.
Upon arriving home from our wonderful girls’ day together, I walked in the house to find my son planted in front of the television staring trancefully and mindlessly at it. I am not a huge proponent of television so this alone is enough to ruffle my already sticky (because boy was it HOT outside) feathers. We broke the 100-degree F mark this day and my son was wearing black athletic pants and a dark brown tee shirt. I’ve been dressing him in tank tops and light shorts and he’s still been sweating like he’d just run a marathon. We do not have air conditioning and the ceiling fan was not on. A mistake when we built our house. Whatever you do, DO NOT skip the central air thinking you will add it later and save money on the builder’s mark-up. Huge miscalculation on our part because although we got an a/c-equipped furnace, we will likely never actually call an HVAC company to come in and upgrade us. There is always something more important…like a new swingset, a new transmission in one of our cars, a beach vacation, or a large vet bill…or quite frankly something more fun than a few ducts in the ceiling that are really only valuable two weeks out of the year max where we live.
Anyhow, I digress…sorry – tangents are one of my favorite pastimes while writing! So, my son, grossly overdressed and engaging in mindless activity while my husband is nowhere to be found. Awesome! Said hubby heard me come in and came downstairs to make a face-to-face appearance…err, to tell me how incredibly rough his day was, because after all, I have no idea what it’s like to care for kids all day. I’ve only been doing it 24/7 as my full time job for four years now.
I jumped headfirst into questioning what my boys did that day before I shared the details of our fabuloso day. “He was BAAAAADDDD!!!” says my husband sternly. Ahhh, welcome to my world, dear…welcome to my world! I was looking forward to hearing just what his definition of “bad” is because I was certain it couldn’t really be anything all that terrible. After all, it was just five short hours and he only had one child with him. As the conversation spun, I quickly learned that the lack of attention was the driving force behind this grave “misbehavior.”
Did you take him outside, I asked, ever curious because of the way he was dressed and the sweat pooling – nay, drenching, his poor blonde locks until they were dirt brown. I was then regaled with tales of how our son wanted to go outside…so they went out. So far so good. My husband then started watering all of the plants…since WHEN does he water my plants? Umm…this is a FIRST…clearly, he was not in the mood to entertain a wily kindergartener-to-be. Upon seeing the hose, our son asked him to fill up his pool. My husband complied, and while it was filling, took him inside, lathered him up in sunscreen, and put his bathing suit on. All responsible acts. I would have been pleased if not for the ridiculous act of peanut butter tree-ishness that came next.
Apparently my husband was frustrated because our son decided after going outside that he wasn’t really that interested in going in the pool. Hi…that’s how kids are; have you ever met one before?! Our little man then said he was going inside to pee (again…strange behavior as he always just whips his pants down to his ankles and urinates on a tree smack dab in the middle of our lawn. After quite a while, my husband went inside to see what was taking so long. A-HA…our candy caper was at it again…digging through the pantry for junk. And, apparently the little bugger thinks he’s clever as he recovered quickly after being caught and said, “do you know where the dog food is, Daddy?” Yeah, okay kid…like that’s what you were doing. You think you’re slick…just like your Daddy. No way…we’re on to you! Since when have you EVER fed the dog? Umm…make that a big fat NEVER! So the man of the house makes the man-in-training come back outside, at which time he returns to the chore of working on his outdoor projects…totally not paying attention to our son, who is now feeling slighted after not having gorged on handful upon handful of chocolate candy.
As the story goes, after a few minutes my husband walked back into the driveway where he noticed our son surrounded by bottles of motor oil and other chemical compounds he found in the garage and decided to bring into the driveway and empty out. #1 Rule: The Garage is Off Limits to the Kids. For this very reason. I seriously cannot believe he even told me this little ditty. I was LIVID, but…I was too darn tired to say anything more than, “are you insane not watching him? Men are the dumbest creatures on earth!!”
Our son was then sent inside, not told to wash his hands (that didn’t happen until God only knows how many hours later when I got home), and my husband plopped him in front of a movie to sedate him until mommy got home to take proper care of him! And he was eating nice red SALSA with cheese quesadillas over a GLASS plate on the family room carpet. More awesomeness! At least he was being fed though…and it was actually a lunch-appropriate meal, although non-chemicalized hands would have been a real treat.
NEXT TIME, looks like I’m just going to take the kid with me to the dress rehearsal, or whatever the next big event that he’d really be crawling along my nerves like a livewire happens to be. Not to mention that it will save my poor dog some headache too as her fur was plastered with stickers from our crazed little monster.
My daughter and I have this unspoken language…whenever my husband or son do something oddusual, we look at one another, roll our eyes, and then smirk, say “boys are weird,” and round it all off with a giggle. It’s our thing! Naturally the aforementioned incidents more than qualified for our boys are crazy with their oddusual behavior routine. Well, as I’m grooming the next great diva, she came up with the idea of the century! She does a diva mommy proud!
This moment of genius occurred two days later as I was curling her hair and primping her up for her first big dance recital. We heard the boys being nutty and did our aforementioned routine of total awesomeness, then she sighed and said “Boys are weird. We should call them something silly when they act like that.” What an idea! I jumped right on it, encouraging her to keep it top secret. We wouldn’t tell them what it means…it would just be for us to know, and we would call them that every time they were being crazy. “What do you want to call them, baby girl?” I asked with much delight in my voice at this conspiring. On her second try she said, “let’s call them peanut butter!” I assented and told her that was fabulous, but not crazy enough…”get a little crazier” I encouraged. “Peanut Butter Tree!” she exclaimed and we both cracked up laughing. Today is day three of Peanut Butter Tree, and it’s such a huge hit! Every time our boys doing something stupid, silly, or otherwise manly moronic – which happens repeatedly on a daily basis, we sigh and say, “Peanut Butter Tree!” then giggle to our heart’s content.
Laughter is the best pathway to a soul’s contention. Be silly and giggle a little! Life is short.
Please note: the chemical danger is no laughing matter and I have now moved everything and anything out of reach. Even when you think your children have passed the age of greatest danger, it is still there…lurking! While I’m certain, unlike a two-year old, our five-year old son would never drink the chemicals or motor oil, simply touching and inhaling these things while dumping them out is horribly dangerous. By no means do I find this funny, and I am completely and utterly unhappy about it. I keep saying it wouldn’t have happened on my watch, but you just never know, so PLEASE mommies and daddies, be careful and keep your chemicals up high out of reach or locked up away from your little ones.
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