My child is a snob, specifically, an ageist. Today is a rare holiday when Art, Alex and I are all off. It's a beautiful day, except for the wind. So I promised to take Alex to the park today. I'm in the midst of a cooking frenzy due to a combination of a day off and decongestant. (It came down to sleeping or breathing, and I chose breathing. Mainly because Art was suffering so, at least that was his complaints from the couch.) Anyway, I penciled in the park for a half hour between baking Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Banana Bread (which is wonderful) and a double batch of lasagna, an apple walnut cake and taco filling for the freezer. I must stress again, that I'm working at 1 1/2 times my regular speed because of the Claritin D. According to my husband I am also overly ambitious about my cooking schedule and my ability to multi-task when the stove is involved. Have no fear - nothing is currently on the stove top and the timer is set for the cake in the oven.
Alex and I set off for the park. I had a book to read, he was wearing his jaunty red Crocs. When we got to the park, it was packed. There seemed to be a group of stay-at-home moms with their preschoolers and a couple of school-aged kids. Alex had unbuckled his seat belt and was about to get out when he surveyed the playground situation. "I am NOT getting out." Why not? "I am not playing with those kids." Again, why not? The gist of it - they're babies. I pointed out two boys who seemed to be about 5 and 7. He studied them for a moment. "More like 6 and 4." I told him that he was 6 also, and 4 was not that far away. "4-3-2-1: baby!" So, we could not possibly play with them. I decided to drive home past the next nearest park to see if the in-crowd was playing there. Nope, all girls. We just went home.
It was probably for the best. After we got home he played outside for 5 minutes then announced it was too windy to stay outside. I'd force him to get more fresh air, but he's really right. It's blowing very hard now and we've lost several dead branches. Knowing my luck, if I made him go outside he'd get brained with a branch and never play outside again. We've almost talked him into getting a bicycle. We tried a couple out at Walmart yesterday. We'll need training wheels and a new helmet, too, and Art decided that we needed to research the bike brand before making a decision. (Decoded message: I will go home and forget about it and hopefully my wife will do the legwork.)
Alex had a really good week at school last week. Granted he was only at school two full days and two half days. But he didn't even make it to the first anthill on Thursday and Friday. That was amazing. I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened twice in one week before. This is the kid who when I got to his classroom to volunteer at 9:15 AM was already on the third anthill a few weeks ago. I was horrified. I thought it took him most of the day to work up to that much misbehavior. When I asked him what was going on, he told me, "It's okay, Mom, I've already gotten in all the trouble I can today." Like it's a quota system and I should be happy that he got it over with early. I'd like to say that he saw the error of his ways but I think the loss of television on 3rd Anthill evenings convinced him to behave.
No comments:
Post a Comment