Thursday, March 15, 2012

Into the fire

Zeke was running around at the park, doing his thing.  Lately I've been letting him go off on his own and spending most of my time running after Ben, who physically must fall on his face ten times each hour.

There were other kids at the park, but the only kids his age were these three, adorable blonde girls.  Zeke found them fast and proceeded to chase them without asking their names.  The girls were happy to run away.  They played for awhile on the slides and then came into my zone of influence.  I glanced up from Ben and saw Zeke punch the air - very fast - right in front of a girl's face.  He made this plosive noise right as he did it - like a burst of air with lots of spit.
"Zeke!"  I yelled, even though he was five feet away.  "Get over here now," I said, pointing.
He came, smiling.
"I saw you just pretend to hit that girl.  That is not a nice thing to do.  She won't be friends with you if you pretend to hit her.  We don't hit.  Say, 'No hitting and no pretending to hit -'"
"-No hitting and no pretending to hit!" he said instantly, still smiling.
"Ten jumping jacks."
"One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!" he jumped with delight.
"Good job, I love you.  Now, go play."
And off he went, chasing the girls again.

A while later I heard once of the girls say, "No!  Don't hit me!"
I looked over and saw Zeke standing in front of a sad-faced blonde girl, spitttle still on his smiling lips.
I nabbed him, told him the rule, made him apologize, and he did 10 more jumping jacks.

The third time I was pretty much stuck inside the whale-tail staircase, trying to help Ben up the impossibly steep stairs.  A nanny was in the sand just a few feet behind me and said, "Tell me who hit you."
The third blonde girl was running over to her, crying.
"Que pasa, mama?"
Crying.
"Que haciendo?"
Crying.
"Quien?  Quien te mmmm golpeado?"
I was already searching the playground for him.
"Did that little boy hit you?" the nanny said loudly, switching to English.
I jumped in.  "Was it that little boy in the red shirt?"
The nanny nodded.
I caught him, scolded him, made him apologize (the girl said, "That's okay, we can be friends") and he did 10 more jumping jacks.  I told him if he did it again, we would have to go home.

Then I watched.  Ben somehow didn't die (although I did lose him briefly) and I watched Zeke run around, chase the girls and jump off things.  He was very happy.  I saw him jump down from the top of a slide and then pretend-hit the slide with his plosive noise.  He saw all three girls running up a ramp a short distance away and quickly pretend-hit each of them in succession.  Something clicked in my head.

He wasn't pretending to hit.  He was shooting.  He was pretending to shoot the girls.

I dragged him home, of course, because I had to follow through, although he knew (and I now knew) that he hadn't ever broken the rule of "No pretending to hit".  On the car ride home he confirmed that he was shooting the girls, not hitting them.  He said 'gun' 'shoot' 'bang' and made that plosive noise many, many times.  I have no clue what to do.

I liked it better when I thought he was just pretending to hit.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Abinadi's Song

On Saturday night, while Mom was putting Ben to bed, Dad got this awesome video of Zeke singing and accompanying himself on the piano.


Transcription:


Zeke (singing):
ROAR! To.. bang and bang and bang and bang and bang, and bang, and bang bang. 
See? The leopards are banging that against the floor. Bang, bang, bang, a bang! 
So the leopards can bang each other, with the crown, make bad choices, and Heavenly Father helped him to make good choices, and he made good choices, and he was there and he didn’t wear a shirt. 


And then they talked, and the crown says, “We are a tree, and we are outside”, and down will come baby upon the treetops. When the bough breaks, a bow bah but not bang against the wall, until leopards are banging against the wall. And then here comes baby, and then he will come by a tree top, and he will wake at the bridge by a lion and a crown has a very good knee and exercise, to then he never wears a shirt, when the bough breaks on the tree tops, when the bough baby, come down the leopards, and the leopards broke that sword upon the baby lifting hitting and banging and basings oh pee pear bow bow Hi Ben! [unintelligible] And down will come baby on the pee pops.

Just another Wednesday

We woke Zeke up at 4:27pm.  Ben was very excited to see Zeke and tried to climb up on Zeke's bed to tackle him.  Zeke cried, kicked, screamed, and insisted that he just needed to sleep all day.  Then he kicked at Ben several times to prove his point.
I left Zeke's room and took Ben to the bathroom to start preparations for a bath.  Ben loves bath time.
We found a silverfish in the bathtub and I accidentally said, "Ewe," before getting a shoe to smash it.  Ben immediately started up a lively round of, "Eeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.   EEEEEEEEEeuuuuuuuuuuuuu."  Etc., etc.  Zeke taught him how to say it, and Daddy thinks it's very funny.  Ben wandered into Zeke's room while I was killing the bug and cleaning up the corpse, and soon Zeke and Ben were rushing into the bathroom, laughing and saying, "Eeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuu, eeeeeuuuu, eeeeuuuu..."  (They're both social laughers.  They have no idea why they're laughing, but they keep doing it.  It's awesome.)
Zeke asked to see the bug and smashed several invisible bugs with the shoe I'd used.  But there was more - he was very energetic, dancing all around and running paces for no reason.  I knew he had to pee.  And I knew I couldn't mention it to him or else he'd go the rest of the night without peeing.  So I pretended that Zeke was fine and filled up the bathtub and got Ben undressed half-way.
Then Zeke started crying, saying, "Mama, come with me!"
"Okay," I said, "Just let me get Ben's shirt off."
"I have to pee," Zeke said urgently, jumping up and down.
"Okay, go pee," I said, feigning perfect calm.  "I'll come as soon as I can."
Zeke cried and ran out of the bathroom.  He came back quickly.
"Mama!  I have to go pee!"
"Okay.  Go pee!"
"No!"  he sobbed.  "Can you come with me?"
Well, it turned out that all he really wanted was for me to fetch the training seat from the front bathroom and bring it to the bathroom with the bath tub so he could pee in there and not miss any of the action.
Of course, he couldn't communicate that to me so I was left guessing - chasing him back and forth, being ordered into the bathroom and back out of it, pausing to stop Ben from playing in a toilet, and remembering to run back and stop the facet in the tub.
When we finally got the toilet seat where he wanted it he wailed for help and stopped jumping.
I put down Ben hastily and said, "No, Zeke, not yet!"
I pulled down his (now wet) shorts and underwear and an uncontrollable stream of urine issued forth.  He was too short and there was no stool, so I lifted him up and tried to aim into the pot.   But the pot had the trainer seat on it, making it a smaller target, and I was aiming by moving the boy's shoulders around and hoping he would keep his torso steady.  He didn't.
Ben came closer to have a look, naturally, and we narrowly missed peeing on him.  However, he was the only thing in the room we missed.
Then I broke Tina's Rule #17 and said, "Well, I guess you're both going in the bath."
I tossed Zeke's wet shorts and underwear down the hallway and took off his shirt.  He went to inspect the bath and protested that there were no bubbles.  Ben splashed around the pee puddles with one sock still on.
While I was running more water (the bathtub leaks) and stopping Zeke from dumping a half bottle of bubble solution in to the tub, Ben found Zeke's wet underwear and tossed it into the toilet.  I stopped him just as he was trying to fish them out.
Ben went into the tub immediately after that, while the water was still running.  He was very, very happy and stood up in the tub, splashing and kicking his feet in a happy dance that culminated in, what else? pee.  Lots of little boy pee into the nice, clean, bath water.
I drained the water, got it re-filled and put both boys in it.  Zeke then stood up, leaned out of the tub and said, "I peed all over your carpet," pointing and moving his hand in a demonstrative circle around the bathroom.  "Don't worry.  We can buy a new one at Target."