Beanbag Chair

The kids like to sit in the beanbag chair and play video games with Adam before bedtime sometimes. Caliban likes sleeping on the beanbag chair all the time. The past few times the kids have played with Adam, the cat has refused to be uprooted from the spot, so the three of them have shared the chair, with Gwen and Xavier jumping and thumping and working the joystick while Caliban dozes (since no one has offered him a joystick.)

All the same, the kids are getting bigger, so that chair is really getting small to hold all three of them. The kids won't take it out on the cat or make him move (although Adam thinks they should), but they do snap at each other. Last night after playing games, Xavier was sullen afterwards. "Gwen mashed my foot -- it was under the bean bag chair and she pressed down on it with all her weight."

"Xavier, will you give it a rest?" Adam groaned. "It was an accident!"

"No, it wasn't," Gwen replied coolly.

Misnomers

Sigh. You know you've been an inactive blogger when you log into blogger and find that your profile picture is gone. That is just sad.

A bunch of my friends are having babies (and soon you, too, can flood the Information Superhighway with funny stories -- well, once you start sleeping again.) I noticed on Facebook that my friend Joel is expecting his first with his wife Lorree who has a five-year-old son named Ian from a previous marriage. Ian has made a lot of funny observations about the pregnancy, such as "I plan to be a daddy someday, so I think I should get presents now," and "I'm glad I'm not a girl so I can't catch pregnancy." Yep, Joel, there's a lot of bloggable material right there!

I read these posts to Adam the other morning and had a good chortle while Xavier was choking down an early breakfast before going to Cub Scout Daycamp. The Daycamp is over half an hour from town, so we have a car-pooling arrangement with the parents of three of the other boys from the pack -- Ben, Nick, and Ian.

The morning in question was our turn to drive, so after finally getting Xavier into the car, we arrived at the rendevous point a couple minutes early. Ian was there even earlier because his mother needed to take his teenaged brother somewhere and she was in a hurry. Ian, clearly drowsy, plopped down in the seat next to Xavier.

Xavier turned to Ian, and said casually, "So ... I hear your mom is having a girl."

Ian (not Lorree's Ian) started bolt upright and cried, "WHAAAAAAT?!?" Fear of another sibling is clearly more invigorating than a double expresso.

I wonder if hinting at the arrival of another child would help wake my husband up in the morning.

PS Joel, I have no idea where Xavier got the idea that you guys are having a girl (of course, he has a 50% chance of being right.) Still, I wanted to make that observation before rumors get started ...

Perspectives

Xavier seems very mature for an eight-year-old sometimes ... then again, sometimes not so much.

He has taken to reading Adam's cast-off "Funny Times" magazines (against his mother's somewhat Victorian better judgment -- nothing like having your son ask you to explain a cartoon about a woman who ends up causing all her lovers to have heart attacks), and it turns out that this has proven educational in ways I hadn't expected.

"Those Gawps are hysterical!" he laughed one night. "How stupid do they think we are?"

"Who?" we asked.

"The Gawps!"

"Who?!?"

Impatiently now. "The GAWPS!"

"How do you spell it?"

"G-O-P."

We explained that G.O.P. stood for the Republican party. He pondered this for a minute. "Then why are the cartoonists all Democrats?"


Today I took him to the endocrinologist (everyone there gushed about how cute he was. I told them that was why we were there.) Afterwards, rather than take him to the babysitter's, which was a little out of our way, I took him with me back to the office. While we were there, one of my coworkers, Brad, stopped in to answer some questions I'd emailed him.

When we picked Gwen up today, we were talking about scheduling because both kids have camp but at different times. "Do you want to go to the babysitter's, Gwen, or would you rather come to work with me while you aren't in camp?"

"I don't know," she replied.

"Aw, Gwen, you should go to work with Mom!" Xavier said. "You get to drink all the soda you want, you can draw on the white board, and talk on the phone to Dad. Also, this guy came while I was there, his name was Brad, and he has a nose earring that was so little that at first I thought it was a little silver pimple ..." Yeah, silver pimple -- just the look Brad was going for, I'm sure.

And -- for the record -- I only bought him one can of soda.