My friend Emily had knee surgery today so we wanted to do something nice for her. My efforts involved lasagna and spinach salad. Laylee’s efforts were more on point. She offered to come and read to her since she can’t do sports for a while and created this highly topical card:

We were sitting down to a tasty hot-dog dinner a few nights ago, and Magoo was having a difficult time with the mustard. He simply could not squeeze it hard enough to get it to squirt.

“Let me help you, Buddy”, I said, “this mustard bottle is really hard to squeeze”.

“I know!” exclaimed Laylee. “When I put my mustard on, I had to use both hands and squeeze the bottle against my forehead!”

May that mental image remain with me forever.

As we drive around town, Magoo, smart kindergartener that he is, shares the facts with me. Sometimes I get the idea he’s making the facts up as he speaks. He’s learning about the world and he wants to instruct others, share the knowledge and the love.

Sometimes he says things like, “Two plus four is totally six,” and then stares out the window with a big grin on his face.

Today we sat parked next to a soaking lawn in the U District, because cars are always stopped in the U District. It is always rush hour there. And he said, “You don’t really have to worry about wet grass.”

“What?”

“Well, you always worry about wet grass and other wet stuff and it’s really okay.” Here I think he must be referring to slugs and I resent him suggesting that I have a problem with wet things when my real issue is with muddy wet grass on my carpet and slime on my feet.

A little later on the drive the song Cruisin’ came on the radio with Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s a section of lyrics near the end of the song where they sing, “Baby let’s cruise. Let’s flow, let’s glide.”

Magoo is really conscious of lyrics and likes to interrogate me about them/ come up with explanations of what they mean.

Magoo: Why did they say, ‘We’ll glide?’ Because persons can’t glide.

Me: I’m not sure Buddy.

Magoo: The only one that can glide is Batman.

Pause.

Magoo: Because he’s got a glide suit. I mean, come on!

Longer pause.

Magoo: Batman’s not real, is he?

Me: I don’t think so.

Another long pause as he looks very serious.

Magoo: You know what? I bet that guy singing is Batman. THAT makes sense.

Me: So he’s just singing about how he’s going to put on his glide suit and go flying?

Magoo: Yeah. He’s totally Batman.

Magoo informed me this afternoon that he wants me to change his name to J. J. I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen Lost or the new Star Trek movie so I assumed Mr. Abrams had nothing to do with this choice. I was right.

“There’s a boy in my class named J. J. and he’s my friend. His name is just J. and J. Isn’t that cool?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty cool.”

“It’s so cool. He’s my friend but he has way more friends than me. He hangs out with like 4 guys every day on the playground. I want to change my name to J. J.” [Read More at Parenting.com]

As we sat down to breakfast this morning, Laylee expressed her happiness with her situation in life:

“Everything is going great for me right now. My hair is turning curly, I have a loose tooth, and I brushed my teeth with my timer this morning.”

Right on, sweetie.

Today was May Day. It was also Saturday. Saturday is a day to rejoice.

Magoo is only allowed to play video games on Saturdays. He loves them so much that he refers to Saturday only as “My Lot of Game Day.” I’m not honestly sure if he even remembers what it’s actually called.

The other night he was getting into bed on a not-Saturday night and he said, “Mom? Do you wanna know something magical?”

“What?” I asked.

Sheepishly he pulled my Nintendo DS out from behind his pillow. “Look what I found,” he grinned. “It just appeared… under my pillow… like magic.”

Now he knows he’s not supposed to be playing and he knows he’s not supposed to take the DS without asking. He knows a lot of things but I looked at that magical muffin-head and wondered what I was supposed to do.

“Did you take it from my room?”

“No. It was magic… Yes.”

There’s sort of a parental gray area where misbehavior and honesty are concerned. On the one hand, you want to give your kids credit for telling you the truth and admitting when they do something wrong. You want them to keep confiding in you so you don’t want to come down too hard on them when they tell the truth.

At the same time, you don’t want them to think it’s okay to become a heroine dealer, sleep around, and kidnap other people’s pet gerbils as long as they fess up quickly after the fact. It’s a tightrope we walk, balancing the olive branch of honesty in one hand and the hammer of “YOU DID WHAT?” in the other.

In general, my balancing act looks something like this:

Notice that as the child increases in foreknowledge that what they are doing is wrong, the seriousness of the consequences increases. Also, if the child confesses quickly, the consequences will be less severe than if, for example, they reach a 10 on the graph which involves lying repeatedly, blaming a sibling for the wrongdoing and possibly swearing a blood oath of innocence before finally confessing to the misdeed after hours of intense interrogation, including but not limited to, denying the child food while eating Mike and Ikes 3 inches from his face.

All that being said, I think any child should receive one get-out-of-jail-free card the first time he uses Magic as an excuse, but only if he does it with a huge grin on his face.

Magoo recently told me that he wants to be Batman when he grows up. I can only assume he means Lego Batman because that’s the only version of the super hero he’s really been exposed to. He was real coy and shy about it. He said he wants to save people.

“When Bad Guys go into their houses at night, I’ll just go in there and say, ‘Wake up Bad Guys! I’m gonna take yeh to jail.’”

So, I guess the Bad Guys just go into people’s houses at night to find a place to sleep but since they are BGs and also trespassers, that earns them a trip to the joint.

I decided to use a teaching moment and explain that what I like about Batman is the fact that he doesn’t hurt good people and he doesn’t even kill bad people most of the time. He wants to help so he just ties the bad guys up and lets the police deal with them.

“Yeah,” Magoo replied looking thoughtful, “But I don’t even have a hat yet.”

Lesson learned.

We were sitting in the Safeway food court the other afternoon slamming some corn dogs when Magoo noticed some slightly-swarthy farmer-types sitting at a table next to us. He eyed them suspiciously.

“Are there any bad guys in Our City?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the farmers.

“Yeah,” I replied honestly, “There probably are.”

“No,” he said simply, “Bad Guys are only in Bad Guy Town.”

I might add that they are also made of Lego.

My kids like April Fools’ Day. It’s a festive time when they spend every waking minute lying their faces off and then saying, “Just KIDDING! April Fools!” Laylee said the best trick she played all day was to tell one friend that our grandma had died. I told Laylee that might be a mean trick and she said, “No it wasn’t. She wasn’t sad. She doesn’t even know our grandma.”

Magoo came up with the best trick ever. He used it all day long and I fell for it every single time. Here’s how it went:

Magoo: Hey Mom?
Me: Yeah Buddy?
Magoo: Just KIDDING! I didn’t really need anything. April FOOLS!

10 minutes later:

Magoo: Mom! Hey Mom? Excuse me Mom!
Me: What do you need?
Magoo: NU-THING! April Fools!

20 minutes after that:

Magoo: Mom? You know what?
Me: I don’t know. What?
Me: April FOOLS! I wasn’t gonna say anything. HA HA HA HA!

He spent all day changing it up, finding new ways to trick me with the same joke, which was basically my name. It was sweet. I mostly laughed but on April 2nd I stomped all over his fun. “It’s not April Fools’ Day today. That doesn’t work anymore.”

I’m not sure what “That doesn’t work anymore” really means. I think it means something like, “For real. If you keep doing that I will go mental and then you won’t be allowed to eat sugar ever ever again and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your plan so it probably won’t work for you to keep saying it.”

Magoo told me the other day that he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up. Then he self-corrected and told me that no, he just wants to be a “regular dad” who stays home. He wants to be a “regular dad” the same way I’m a “regular mom.”

He also said he doesn’t want to be a grandpa either because grandpas have to move REALLY far away from home, so far that they have to drive all day and all night to get home. And also they die sometimes and he doesn’t want to die ever.

I guess Laylee’s not the only one thinking about grandparental death. I’m not afraid of it. My parents and Dan’s parents are not allowed to die. I am also swearing off death. I still need plenty of time to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

I’m thinking about becoming a professional student. Maybe I’ll be a high school or college teacher. I’ll definitely be writing for a living. Perhaps I’ll get a black belt in karate. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Laylee’s been learning about letter writing at school. Here’s a transcription of a letter she recently wrote to her teacher:

Dear Miss Snop/Rachel,
I woke up early. It was 7:00. First I got dressed. Next, I looked at the clock. Then, I did my homework. Last, I played. Did you wake up early? What time did you wake up at? Do you know that I know that yar name is Rachel? Are yar perents dead yet? Can you come to my birthday party next year?

From,
Laylee

Dan thinks it’s funny that she’s come to think of her teacher as being so old and authoritative that it’s highly unlikely her parents are still living. I find it more amusing that she finds nothing insensitive about asking her about it straight out, followed by a birthday party invitation.

The juxtaposition suggests that she’s either trying to be sensitive – perhaps the party invite is a gesture of consolation in the event that the parents have passed away – or she is seven years old and the death of a parent and the event of a birthday party carry roughly the same level of importance in her eyes.