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| Micah: Mommy! Hey, Mommy, what day of the week can you touch the sun and not get burned??
me: Hrmmmm. Is it Saturday?
Micah: NO!! [cracking up]
me: How about Friday? I mean... not-Friday? haha get it? You don't get fried because it's not-Friday???
Micah, scornfully: Noooo. [Obviously, he doesn't get my high-brow humor.]
me: OK. Monday? No. Tuesday? NO?? Wednesday? Thursday? Not-Friday?? [Maybe he'll get it this time. Nope.] Saturday????
Micah, gleefully: No! No no no!!!
me: Hmmmmm. How about... Sunday??
Micah: YES!!!! You GOT IT!! [laughing uncontrollably]
I love kid jokes. At least for the first few hundred times. 
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| Micah is very interested in words and word games -- he comes by this naturally, as you might be able to guess from his mother's WordTwist stats (aaaand I just discovered I've played almost 9000 games since November 10, 2008. I believe an intervention is in order.). (Oh wait, that was 9000 rounds. Only 838 games. Should that really make me feel better about myself?) (Who is this post about, anyways?).
So Micah's newest love is homonyms. He gets very excited when he thinks of them, and is always asking me things like, "Mommy! How about 'two'? Is THAT one? Like 'two' the number and going 'to' Safeway??" (Yes, Safeway figures almost as prominently in my kids' lives as WordTwist does in mine; in fact, one of Shiloh's first sentences was, "Go Safeway! Get food!") I've been trying to explain the concept of root words, which is why "air" and "bird" do not count (as in air and airplane, bird and hummingbird). Micah accepts most of my nixing of his proposed homonyms, if a bit begrudgingly (deep down, he's convinced that he knows more than I do. Actually, he's convinced he knows more than most people do.). However, he would not budge on "light" -- as in light bulbs and Israelites. 
But at lunch the other day, just when I was starting to feel a little smug about my preschooler and his Precocious Delight In Vocabulary, Micah got bored with the homonym game, and moved on to, shall we say, greener pastures. He gazed down at his bowl of canned pears and animatedly asked me, "Hey, Mommy -- do you wanna see the butt crack of this thing??" It's always good to find connections between fruit and anatomy. Although, for the record, I did not see the butt crack resemblance.
Yesterday afternoon, I listened in, umm, pride, as he composed new lyrics to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it." Perched on the potty, while his brother laughed hysterically at the door, Micah howled, "If you wanna smell some poop, come in here (come in here)."
And I was just about to blame the scatalogical humor on DH, but then I remembered that my sister and I once spent an entire 4-hour ride back from church camp writing a multi-verse song about farts. It rhymed perfectly, the meter flowed smoothly, and we employed words of many syllables. So I guess we're all geniuses in this family.
Geniuses who believe in scapegoating, that is. Yesterday morning, upon hearing screaming from the living room, I stomped in and demanded, "WHY is Shiloh always getting HURT??" (I don't know why I ask stupid questions like this, by the way. Do I really think Micah's going to respond, "Well, I'm having a hard time controlling my emotions, so whenever Shiloh does something to annoy me, I attack him. I'm very sorry, and if we can come up with some appropriate coping mechanisms, I won't do it again.") Micah looked at me and said, "Oh, God." I was quite taken aback for a second -- where did he learn to take God's name in vain?? I don't have pristine language, but I don't do that! -- and then he finished up his sentence. "Oh, God. God made him get hurt."
It's good to know we're raising a staunch Presbyterian with a strong command of the doctrines of predestination and divine omnipotence. Of course, his applications tend to be a little on the self-serving side:
- "Micah, you may not have that book. Shiloh's looking at it. Stop badgering me about it -- no matter how many times you ask me, I'm still going to say the same thing -- and I am not going to let you take it away from him."
- "Wellllllll, I know something that can make you give it to me. GOD can make you give it to me."
- "Today is Friday, so tomorrow is Saturday. That means you won't have school again for 3 more days."
- "Wellllllll, GOD can make me have school tomorrow."
There's just no arguing with the boy.
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| I don't think either of them quite gets it...
Micah: Shiloh! Give that to me!!
Shiloh: NO! MINE!! One... two....
Micah: Three!
Just call him "Badger"
Micah: Mommy, I really want to get cereal that has toys in it.
me: We don't get that kind of cereal.
Micah: Whhhhyyyyyyyyyyy????????
me: It has too much sugar in it.
Micah: But I reeeeeaaaalllllly want to get iiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttt..............
me: We're not getting it, bud.
Micah: But WWHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?????
me: I told you. It's not good for you. It's got too much sugar
.
Micah: But I reeeeeaaaallllyyyyy want it. When can we get it Momeeeeeeeeee??
me: We're not getting it.
Micah: But whyyyyy??? Whhhhyyyyyyy???
me: I am no longer having this conversation with you. [ignore ignore ignore lalalala]
Micah: When can we get it, Mommyyyyy??
me: [ignore ignore ignore LALALALA]
Micah: Mooommmmmmeeeeeeeee I waaaaaaaaaaant iiiiiittttttttttttttttt.....
Finally, I distract him with the train set. Industrious activity ensues. I feel triumphant -- I have successfully redirected Mr. One-track-mind!! I am the queen of mothers!! haHaHA Micah James!!!
Twenty minutes later...
Micah: Mommy, when I'm older can I get that cereal?
We like to set expectations low in the emilymr household.
me: Wow, we've only got 2 weeks until preschool starts up again. We should go do something fun tomorrow.
Micah: I know JUST the thing, Mommy.
me: What's that?
Micah: We can go to Safeway ALL DAY LONG. We can bring a lunch and eat there.
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| Background: Mommy indulges in a small dinnertime meltdown over the constant, never-ending, circular, unfulfilling, infuriating, soul-deadening (yes, I could go on and on) battle to keep our house clean, culminating in choked sobs and a dramatic, wavering finger-point at the gargantuan pile of Thomas detritus in the living room. (And you wonder where Micah gets his, shall w say, flair for the dramatic.) DH, using some parenting techniques he's picked up from the Positive Discipline series, tries to engage Micah in a productive dialogue about what he could do to make Mommy less of a raving lunatic at family meals. Micah is less than enthusiastic about DH's proposed solution.
"I come from a land where kids don't clean up. They play with their toys all day, and then leave them there. People from another land come and pick them up."
Clearly, all these books glamorizing kings and queens are warping his perspective. We need to start reading him The Communist Manifesto so he learns what's going to happen to the people 'from his land.'
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| DH has been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Micah, and it's definitely making an impression. Today, Micah grabbed a pencil and waved it wildly at Shiloh, screaming, "Shiloh! Don't move! I'm turning you INTO STONE!!! Shiloh, STOP MOVING!!!!!" He then tried to turn me into stone while I was sitting on the potty (sorry, it had to be said in the interests of historical accuracy), but I informed him that my magic is stronger than his. I am The Mommy, after all. The White Witch has nothing on me.
Then, this evening while I wrangling the kids into bed (when Daddy's gone, bedtime starts a good 45 minutes early), Micah and I got into an altercation over whether or not he was going to stop running around and kicking his ball through the house. I won (see witch comment), and he collapsed into a wailing heap of sadness. When I told him that he was crying in order to manipulate me into letting him have his way, his tears stopped, his eyes narrowed, and he said, "No, I'm crying because you're not being nice. We have different lands and different worlds and..." His voice trailed off, as he envisioned a world where there were no superfluous adults bossing him around, kids could eat apple pie and then animal cookies and then chocolate kisses, and it was always time to get ready for bed but never time to turn off the lights.
Funny how Micah identifies with the witch.
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