We got some sad news this week. My grandfather passed away, or as Jude put it, "Grandma Mincin, the boy one, died."
He began to ask questions about death and Heaven. (The last time we was interested in Heaven before was when he was when he played with our Nativity set and decided that Jesus was the most powerful superhero.) I began to explain about Heaven and how everyone would be up there with God.
At that point, his eyes got big and round, and his voice--which sounds less and less like a preschooler and more like a big kid--got outraged as he shouted, "Wait... God's dead?!?"
Later at bedtime, he asked more questions about Heaven.
"Where is Heaven?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"What does Heaven look like?"
"I don't know," I told him, "I've never been there."
"Can you show it to me on your computer?"
Jude was asked to clean his room Thursday night before he could play. It looked terrible; there wasn't a spot of floor that was safe for walking.
Naturally he was overwhelmed with the task, so I came in and helped by telling him how to break it down: first, picking up costumes; then, toy tools; then action figures; etc. Karenna just watched and echoed her "half-a-mommy" routine.
It took a lot of prodding...
Sometimes, he'd forget he was cleaning and play with each toy. (That's the kid curse: "May you get what you are." Chris was someone who had to play with every item every time I helped him move to a new place. Now Chris's punishment is to see things through my eyes watching Jude do it.)
Sometimes, he'd argue. "How many more times do I have to clean my room anyway?" I gotta tell you kid, it doesn't stop. It doesn't get easier when you get older, either; you just get a bigger place to clean--and maybe a few small whiny minions to help you clean it. Mwahahaha!!!!
Sometimes, he'd fake an ailment. "I'm sick. My head is really hurting me bad."
"Oh," I'd say feigning concern even more deftly than he could feign sickness, "Well, maybe when you are done cleaning you can go to bed early." Mwahahaha!!!!
"No," he'd fake a cry with crocodile tears, "I think I need purple medicine."
"The only thing that fixes a headache is rest," I insisted, "so let's hurry up and clean so you can get rested."
"I don't think it's a headache," he whines as he lowers his hand from his head and begins to clutch his stomach as if someone shot him there, "My stomach hurts!"
"Well, I think you really need to go to bed then!" Gotcha! With that he was reduced to a few complaints about cleaning for a few minutes before the whining resurfaced...
"When are we going to be done cleaning already?" he whined.
Enter Karenna's melodrama, "Ugh! Jude, I am sick of your whining!"
"Karenna, if you're sick you have to go to bed early." Jude told her in his best "half-a-daddy".
"No, I mean you're giving me a headache..."
"Karenna, if you have a headache, you..." (Well, you get the picture from there.)
At dinner Jude got up from the table and asked politely if he could be excused to go to the bathroom. When I told him he could, he put his hand on my shoulder, leaned in closely, got a devilish look in his eye, whispered, "When we're in the bathroom, we can say bathroom words!"
TSR peeps, I wonder where he gets this from.
Karenna (concerned): Why are people born if we are just going to have to die anyway?
Jude (puzzled): Why do we have eyebrows?
This weekend Karenna had a ballet perfomance, which means she gets to wear a bit of make-up. She used to be very excited about the idea, but this time she was in a particularly silly mood.
I tried to round her up from outside play to get her costume and make up and she complained, or rather overacted, "Oh, the torture!"
As I tried to make up her face, she kept up the accusations of torture, alternately looking into the mirror and expressing her dissatisfaction by proclaiming, "I look like a duck." (I'm not quite sure why she thinks ducks where make-up and to be honest, I forgot to ask.)
Further into my torture techniques, I decided to add a bit of my black eyeliner, so that her eyes could be seen from farther away, and used some steel blue eye color with the eyeliner brush over top of it to lighten it. Apparently, this is what finally broke my subject:
She looked int to the mirror, and in her best imitation of an outraged teenager, told me, "You made me look like I'm from the 70s!"
Where does a five-year-old learn about 70s blue eye shadow anyway?
So I have this running joke where I like to tell the kids I'm going to trade them in on monkeys. As in, "Let's go to the zoo, so I can trade you guys in on a couple of monkeys?" Or, more recently, after the circus...
Me: Hey, did you see those cute little monkeys. There were four of them. I bet I could get a good trade for you guys.
Karenna: No you wouldn't.
Me: I could probably get like two monkeys per kid by weight.
Chris: Monkeys are pretty smart. Maybe you would have to trade in two kids for one monkey.
Me: I thought I'd have to exchange by weight.
Karenna: You can't trade me!
Later this week...
Me: You know I could still trade you in on a monkey if you don't listen.
Karenna: And I could trade you in a gorilla!
I was up late folding laundry last night and I heard a kid get out of bed.
I figured that it had to be Jude.
Typically if someone gets out of bed and comes to the living rooms, it's Jude coming to ask why he still has to sleep, how many more times in his life he has to sleep, or if I will come back to his room with him.
Nope. Karenna came out, walked right past me and down the first set up steps on our split entry. Then I realized she opened our front door.
"What are you doing?" I asked her.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she told me.
"That's not the bathroom." I realized she was sleepwalking right out my front door.
After I got her safely back to her room, I settled into my room and found a battery on the floor.
I picked it up and found teeth-marks, "Jude!"
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