A Serious Interview for a Silly Boy

BooMama recently interviewed her 5 year old. It sounded like a fun excuse to play 20 Questions with my own 5 year old, so here goes:

Liam, what do you want to be when you grow up?
“A Daddy.”

No, I mean, what kind of job do you want to have?
“A baseball coach. For the Aggies.”

Where do you want to go to college?
“A&M.” [Insert the tone that tells me I just asked a stupid question.]

Where will you live after college?
“With the Aggie team.”

When do you think you'll get married?
“30.” [This answer deeply satisfied my soul.]

What kind of girl will you marry?
"Her name is gonna be 'Ami'. She's gonna live with me in College Station. A brown girl." [Incidentally, we don't know of another 'Ami', so I am yet again deeply satisfied.]

What’s your favorite place in the whole wide world?
“Pizza Garden!” [I really tried to not roll my eyes at his choice of the pizza buffet joint.]

Besides that?
“The zoo."

What’s your favorite thing to do with your daddy?
“Read books.”

What about with me?
“Play toys. Like Chutes and Ladders.” [Once again, I had to fight the urge of rolling my eyes. That game will be the death of me.]

What are your favorite books?
“The Crab. Bob.”

What are your favorite toys inside the house?
“Foosball.”

What’s your favorite thing to do outside?
“Baseball. Football.”

What’s your favorite song?
“A Hard Day's Night. Bulldog.” [Both by the Beatles, of course.]

What are your favorite movies?
“Lightning McQueen. Balto.”

What is your favorite game?
“Chutes and Ladders, silly.” [That game really will be the death of me. Do you think he would miss it if I 'misplaced' it?]

Do you know why we help Brian in Uganda [with Compassion]?
“Get him food. Maybe some toys. Like $100 for a toy.” [I reminded him that we pay for Brian to attend school and to buy food.] "Oh."

What do you know about God?
“He loves us. He takes care of us.”

What do you think about kindergarten so far?
“I love school very, very much. I like to be a kindergarten boy. I like to work with Mommy."

Ahh! The innocence of a 5 year old.

In a nutshell, he wants to marry a "brown" version of me, coach the Aggies baseball team, and in his spare time, take me to eat Pizza Garden and play Chutes and Ladders. Well, as long as I'm at the top of his list of loves, I'll take the buffet pizza. But I need to introduce him to some different games.

Stay tuned for Jack and Garrett's personal interviews....

Friday Funny

Do you know what my boys call cheerleaders?

"Booty girls!"

And I do not correct them.

I Feel Like Such a Liar

Learning to read English must be so darn hard.

I don't remember learning to read, but I'm enjoying teaching Liam to read. With his curriculum, he is learning to read short vowel sounds first. The A says a such as cat, the E says e such as egg, etc.

The curriculum has been moving too slowly for my eager learner, so Rick and I have been adding some easy readers along the way to keep him interested. We have also taught him some blend sounds such as oo, ch, th, and sh.

The other day, Liam came to me with a huge grin on his face and said, "I know how to spell 'soup'."

"You do? Tell me."

"S-O-O-P."

I praised him for the effort and gently corrected him.

Not a minute later, he brought me a book to read. I can't remember the title exactly, but one of the words in the title was 'all'.

He pointed to the word and said, "I know THAT word!"

I cringed, because I knew where he was going with this. He said, "It says 'Al'."

Once again, I praised him and gently corrected him. I also said, "The A says ah, but sometimes it also says ahh like the word 'all'."

His mouth dropped open and his eyes searched my face for further explanation.

"But YOU SAID, 'The A says ah'," he shouted.

"I know I did, and the A does say ah, but sometimes it says ahh."

I didn't bother explaining that it can also say aaa like my very own name.

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Motherhood does call for some lying along the way, doesn't it?

Wordless Wednesday: Aggies

Brainwashing

Evidence that I have brainwashed my boys:
They CHOSE to wear matching shirts yesterday!

I had nothing to do with it. Honest to goodness!

The Purchase

Fall seems to be a busy season for us, as I'm sure it is for most families. Weekdays are filled with school and whathaveyou. Weekends are filled to overflowing with football, church, family time, birthday parties, and more whathaveyou.

By Sunday afternoon, I can think of nothing more than a nap. Jack and Garrett take a nap seven days a week and will continue to do so until they're ten years old. Liam's days of napping stopped sometime last year, and I have mourned that loss ever since.

However, every once in a while, I can see an inkling of fatigue creep upon him in the late afternoon, and I seize the moment, oh yes I do, and put him to bed. Yesterday, was one of those days! Hallelujah!
He must have learned in church how God rested on the seventh day. We do teach him the importance of obeying God and parents. And this moment of obedience was cause for a photo.

I wanted this post to share about our weekend, but I've already gotten out of order in all my excitement over Liam's nap.

Before the day of rest, there was Saturday, which was definitely not restful. Rick and Garrett went to the Aggie game, and I won't even pause to discuss the game, because we are not surprised one bit by our loss.

Those who are left at home on game day are very sad. And the boys are forced to wipe my tears and entertain me all day. No, I mean, I scramble to come up with fun ways to pass the time until Daddy returns home.

We had a birthday party to attend Saturday afternoon, so I only had to fill the morning hours. In a moment of insanity, I decided to take the boys to buy bean bag chairs.

Actually, to say it was a moment of insanity would be a lie. This plan actually came to mind about nine days prior, which means that I must have been insane for the past nine days.

My mother-in-law bought my two nieces bean bag chairs recently. When she told me about them, I said, "Oh that sounds so fun! I should get the boys some, and they could read in them or take catnaps in them."

All of you sane people out there are already laughing at my stupidity, but let me continue my story before gratifying you with applause.

When my mother-in-law heard my excitement over the bean bags, she immediately wrote me a check for the cost of three chairs. She's very generous like that.

Anyway, back to Saturday. When I woke up Saturday morning, I wanted Liam and Jack to think "What a fun mom we have!", instead of "Gee, Dad, thanks for leaving us behind with this old hag again." So I knew that bean bag shopping would do the trick.

And I was right. As soon as we walked into the Heavenly Sleep Shoppe, they were in heaven. (No, I am not kidding about the name of the store. I wish I were that clever.) The boys immediately began hopping from chair to chair and telling me exactly which ones they wanted.

"I WANT THE BLUE ONE, MOMMY, THE BLUE ONE, THE BLUE ONE!"

"I WANT THE SOCCER BALL, MOMMY, THE SOCCER BALL!"

"GARRETT WILL WANT THE BASEBALL ONE, MOMMY, THE BASEBALL!"

"BOYS! If you don't stop this SCREAMING, we will walk out of here without a single bean bag!"

They did quiet down, but the noise level should have been another moment where I snapped out of the insanity and realized that this idea of buying bean bag chairs for my boys was not such a good idea after all.

But purchase I did. I did talk the boys out of the soccer ball and the baseball chairs, because their quality didn't seem as durable as the solid colors. We settled on red, yellow and blue.

Now, when we bought them, I imagined that their main residence would be the game room upstairs, but have they made it up the stairs yet? No. Sigh.

When I bought them, I imagined my boys reading books in them. Has that happened yet? No. Sigh.

When I bought them, I remembered taking catnaps in mine as a child. Has that happened in this house yet? You guessed it. Sigh.

In the nine days of insanity, I forgot one minor detail.

I am a girl. My nieces, who read in theirs daily, are girls. My children are not.

Maybe that's 3 details.

And the fact that I've been the mother of BOYS for five years didn't seem to cross my mind. Clearly, I've lost my mind.

Do the boys love their bean bag chairs?
Of course! But this photo of them SITTING in them...that was posed. I'll bet you never guessed it.

This is more like it.
And this.
Or this.
And I haven't caught any of it on camera yet, but the bean bag chairs have provided quality entertainment along the subjects of jumping platforms, boxing matches, sliding, as well as games called "Bury the Brother".

Now, go ahead and applaud yourselves for seeing what I could not imagine for myself prior to the purchase. Clearly, I was not in my right mind.

I was really hoping for more of this this afternoon:
It isn't meant to be, because he is busy making a train of bean bag chairs and calling me to join him. I better go see how much fun this purchase really is.

Friday Funny

The boys enjoy picking out their own outfits every morning. Some of them are better at it than others. Ahem.

Jack is...how shall I say this...well, he doesn't quite have the knack for choosing shirts and shorts that, you know, coordinate. Because he needs a little help in this area, he has learned to show me his choices before taking the time to put them on.

One day he brought me a brown dinosaur T-shirt and blue soccer shorts. Because we were going somewhere that day, I explained that he should find some jean shorts to wear with his favorite dino shirt.

"Okay, I will wear some ingenious," he replied.

He might need help choosing his outfits for many years to come, but ingenious, he already is.