Jr. is in 1st grade and is really good at math. It isn't surprising, but with his constant motion, some times we think he might not be getting certain things that he should. Also, he is fascinated with time. He runs the stop watch on the iPad and constantly tells me how many minutes until the next hour. So yesterday, we were having friends coming over for a few hours. The kids really like these friends and were impatiently waiting on them to arrive. Jr asks me really early in the morning when they were coming. I told him 1:00. So at 12:53, he came to the living room and said "only seven minutes until they arrive". I said "if they are on time you are correct". Now these friends are driving about 45 minutes to get to our house and are picking up lunch for us too. So, them arriving exactly at 1:00 pm is a long shot at best. Jr leaves the room and continues running a muck destroying everything in his path as usual for the next few minutes. At 1:03, Jr enters the room I am sitting in and proclaims "They are not on time!" with a disappointed look on his face. He then leaves the room. The humor comes from the way he said it. He was right, they were not on time.
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For all the people who do not have small children in school, I need to explain the main education they are getting. Apparently, today's schools are really business schools. They are teaching the kids how to sell everything and raise money. We are almost finished distributing the cookie dough products that Lu sold for her school. Do you know how hard it is to deliver boxes of frozen cookies to people when your 11 year old didn't write down their complete address? I don't know all of my neighbors' names or addresses. I am sure the police were called the other night because I was slowly casing the neighborhood trying to figure out where we should be dropping off these cookies. Same applies for DP and Jr. Apparently, last night was school night at the local Papa John's pizza place. Whichever class in each grade that sells the most gets a pizza party. These kids tell us we have to go to Papa Johns. Jr doesn't even like pizza. So DP comes home and explains to SuperMom about it being pizza night and that we need to buy seven pizzas so his class can win. Two cheese, two pepperoni, one meat lovers, and two hamburger. I am not sure how he calculated seven as the winning formula. I am also not sure what he thinks we are going to do with seven pizzas. It did remind me of this Oprah segment though. We only bought one pizza. However, if we would have bought seven, I would have been Oprah for a day. "YOU GET A PIZZA, YOU GET A PIZZA, YOU GET A PIZZA, YOU GET A PIZZA, YOU GET A PIZZA, YOU GET A PIZZA, AND FINALLY YOU GET A PIZZA!"
DP is disappointed that I am not as rich as Oprah. I am fond of parodies. I like Weird Al and think it takes some talent to create a song in this fashion. I often like to show my subjects these parodies. One person that is very good at doing this is Jimmy Fallon. So the other day, I stumbled on the parody below by Jimmy Fallon and Gabrielle Union.. So after I watched it, I showed it to SuperMom. Of course, once the subjects thought we were looking at something funny, they wanted to watch it as well. Therefore, we played it again for Lu, DP, and Jr. The first song they parody is OMI's "Cheerleader" followed by "I can't feel my face" by The Weeknd. I am not sure why he doesn't have the last e in his name, but who am I to judge. The last song is a parody of a Song called "Watch me Whip / Nae Nae" by Silento. However, the song before it is the one of interest. It is a song by Rhianna with roughly the same title. And that is where our story begins. Last weekend was DP's last football game and SuperMom had Lu and Jr in the stands while he played. If you are unfamiliar with Pop Warner football, it is an all day thing for some families because they have multiple kids playing back to back. It is very festive and the PA announcer tries to pump up the crowd by doing cheers, playing songs, etc. The fans are not sitting on top of each other but are near by and are enjoying the games. After a period of songs by the announcer, the stands were somewhat quite. Maybe because they some times play "Watch me Whip / Nae Nae" during these games because it is popular for some ungodly reason, Jr thought of the parody and yells out "Mitch better have my money!". To this, several of the members in the crowd looked over at Jr. We are not sure what their thoughts were. Did they see the parody and think it was funny? Did they think he said "Bitch better have my money" like the regular version? If so, how bad do they think our parenting skills are? I guess we will never know. However, Jr did get the crowd laughing at least. You never know what is coming out of his mouth or why. So last night we were all eating dinner at the house. If the subjects are acting right, which isn't often at dinner time, we really enjoy this time. Last night was one of those nights. Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs which each of them will eat something from this meal. Jr eats the meatballs only; Lu eats the noodles only with no sauce; DP eats noodles, meatballs, and sauce. So DP had finished eating and gone upstairs. Jr who was not wearing a shirt; I know it is a shock that he was half naked, took everyone's plate to the sink. SuperMom commented on his stomach and thus we tried to get him to flex his stomach muscles. This was a difficult and hilarious task. He grunted and made some of the strangest faces. I started laughing and unbeknownst to me, I had some pepper in my teeth. Now SuperMom looks at me and lets out the biggest laugh ever. In a deadpan manner, DP from upstairs says "We have a witch in the house"! See SuperMom cackles when she laughs hard, and it did sound witchy. But once DP who has an odd sense of humor, said this, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Some times this experiment we are conducting is incredible. So last night was open house for Lu's school. Being the first year she has gone there, both SuperMom and I attended along with the three subjects. I was not aware that I was taking a night class however. The schedule for the meeting was 10 minutes in each of her classes separated by five minutes to get between classes. Total time of 2 hours. This started at 6:00 pm and thus lasted until 8:00 pm. Since I am still working to keep the lights on and the AC running, I got home in time to make the night class but not in time to eat dinner. So at 8:00 pm, I was starving. If you know the subjects, they can rarely agree on anything but they never agree on where they want to eat. So I decided that I would pick the environment for this particular experiment. I picked KFC/Taco Bell. In case you are not familiar, it is two fast food joints under one roof. I knew that DP would order cheese roll-ups, Jr could eat chicken strips, SuperMom would do tacos and nachos, I could get grilled chicken, and Lu would probably just be mad and eat a biscuit or something. I wasn't far off. Lu wanted only nachos but ended up eating one of DP's cheese rollups too. Jr got the $5 box. If you don't watch TV, you may not know the commercial talks about this $5 box. It includes 3 chicken strips, mashed potatoes, a biscuit, a drink, and "A Big Ol Cookie" (you must sing it like they do on the commercial which is above). Now Jr only really likes cheeseburgers and sweets. We try to add other things to his diet and thus required he eat at least one chicken strip. He had to choke it down before he ate the cookie. After squirming, fidgeting, and trying to weasel his way out of eating one, he finally finished it. Now it is time for him to eat the much anticipated cookie. Now for people who don't really know Jr well, he is the jokester, the comedian, the one that thinks he is so funny. He takes a couple of bites and sings "I don't like it. I love it, love it, love it. Uh oh." For the older generation that may not know, these are lyrics from the song "I don't like it, I Love it, by Flo Rida. Listen to the song (it is below) and then imagine Jr singing this after taking a couple bites. The reason it is so funny is he never skipped a beat. He took two bites and then broke out in song. No pauses, no laughter, just I am so happy about this cookie I must sing. Of course, SuperMom and I supplied the laughter. So as one of the lead researchers in this experiment I call fatherhood, it is important to try and find a way to properly motivate the subjects to finish the experiment and get the results desired. This is one of the many trial and error, correct mistake, retest portions of this experiment. DP was easy in this regard. As a gifted child, he wants, dare I say needs, to be the best. We do not have to motivate him. He is self motivated in every manner. He has other things we need to address, but this is not one. He believes in being the best and constantly wants to know how good he is at things. Lu is a little harder. She is 11 and has accepted her role as the only female subject with great pride and enthusiasm. Half the time, I am not sure if I am in trouble or if she is, based on how she interacts with me. Any way her main focus in life is being social. She loves to talk, interact with people, go do many exciting things, and in general re-live my freshman year in college. The last thing on her mind is completing her homework, cleaning her room, or any other routine thing that needs to be done which will take away from her social time. So with her, we have to motivate my restricting her social activities until we get the response we desire. Now Jr. This has been a hard nut to crack when it comes to motivation. I commonly say He just doesn't give a damn. He only likes trains, trucks, and construction equipment. I have tried to get him into sports; no interest. I have tried to bribe him to do stuff, no interest in most of them. When I help him with his homework, I feel like I am retaking differential equations. I get so frustrated and confused on what is going on. Most of the time SuperMom does it with him, so I know she has it worse. All that said, we have found his motivation. This came about because his school is having a fun run. Thirty five laps for donations, etc. You know the deal where the school makes you do more work to give them money. He wants to do it. I was recently telling a good friend of mind that I donated $0.25 per child per lap of his money for this event, and thus he will owe $17.50 later this week. He replied, there is no way Jr will run 35 laps, because I saw him at football practice and he wouldn't run 1 lap. So I thought about his statement and agreed. I told SuperMom that Jr won't run 35 laps so why does he want to do it so badly. Apparently, the principle has promised to eat a cricket if they reach some goal and Jr wants to see him eat a cricket. So now I am deciding if I want to start enjoying the taste of crickets during homework time or continue to pull my hair out. I really think I might start eating crickets if it will get him through homework. I just hope I don't grow gills and start doing the fish lips all of the time. So my three subjects are very different as I have stated many times before. I am very excited and interested in seeing the final product these subjects develop into. Lu and Jr are a like in at least one way. Both like to make noise. Lu loves to talk, and Jr is either talking or hammering at all times. I think he is afraid of silence. The other day DP, Jr, and I were going to a meeting at their school. Jr was nonstop babbling about everything. Then all of a sudden, he says let's go through the car riders' lane. I ask him where is the car riders' lane. He replies, It is over by the "Pork a Potty". I start laughing, but DP is almost crying he is laughing so much. DP keeps saying "Pork a Potty" followed by a goofy 7 year old's laugh. Now after the meeting, Jr is asking can we go on a trip. He always wants to go on a trip. I ask him, where do you want to go. He states that he wants to go by the road that he is named after. So, the back story on this must be explained. Jr's middle name was selected because it is the first name of my favorite uncle. He spells his name in a funny way, and we also spell Jr's the same since he was named after him. On our way north on I-75 we pass a road that has the same name and we have always pointed it out to Jr. So apparently Jr thought he was named after this road. So on the way back from school when he said this, I corrected him and told him that he was named after his great uncle. Apparently he didn't hear me correctly because he yells out, "I am named after an aardvark?". Once again DP and I are laughing like little school girls. Now DP is saying "aardvark" over and over and laughing. We had two 15 minute conversations and never made it past Uncle Aardvark and the Pork a Potty. I fear I am losing brain cells daily. September 13, 1935; eighty years ago. How things must have been different than they are now. No internet, no mobile phones, in fact the wired phone was still getting started. In between War World 1 and War World 2. Gas was 10 cents a gallon, unemployment was around 20%, bread was 8 cents a loaf, the Hoover Dam was completed. Many of other great accomplishments happened that year. One common event also happened that year. I guess by now it has happened more than 10 billion times. But the one time it happened in 1935 was special to me although I am positive it was special to many of people. That was the year that one Charles Leo Marcellino was born. As I stated above he would have been 80 years old today. I only knew Charlie for 12 years, but they were some of the most fun years I had. Yesterday on the way home from my oldest son's football game, my phone reminded me that it was his birthday today, although I already knew it. The timing made me start thinking how much Charlie would have loved to see DP play football. I was only able to laugh at the thought. He sure loved life and he loved kids; all kids and I was lucky enough to live near him when mine were born. They were fortunate to get to enjoy his love for kids. As the preacher stated Charlie "Doubled down of life". He was one of my Five and I miss him. I will close this by saying I miss you Charlie and "Growing old is not for sissies". I do miss his sayings and his stories. So with the completion of the dock, the kids have decided that fishing must happen everyday. For this I blame both Poppy and Uncle Perry. See both visited recently and worked with the kids on their fishing techniques. Now, as much as one would like to think it was mainly because they wanted to work with the kids, I know that these two guys love to fish and teaching the kids was just an excuse to help them facilitate their fishing. Even though that may be true, it does't change the fact that the kids have learned to fish and love doing it. We fish off the side of the dock and mainly catch small bream. Poppy used hot dogs, but Uncle Perry brought out the big guns and used crickets and worms. Now Bill Engvall introduced us to the Dork fish many years ago during one of his first comedy routines. Recently, Lu, DP, and Jr introduced me to the Jerk fish. What is the Jerk fish you ask. Well since the kids use a cork and drop their lines right next to the dock, the bream are extremely small. These small bream nipple on the bait and often take the bait without taking the hook. This led Lu to declare "I found a Jerk Fish" the first time it happened. Now the kids think that all fish that don't jump on your hook but instead decide to just eat the bait are Jerk Fish. I have yet to catch one of these Jerk fish, but I have caught a lot of small bream. This weekend, Uncle Perry caught a smallest large mouth bass on a spinner. This amazed the kids especially Jr. So every time Uncle Perry threw out his line and reeled it back in, Jr would ask "Did you catch anything?". After the tenth time of Uncle Perry saying no, he finally said yes. Jr asked "what is it?". Uncle Perry replied it is a lily pad fish. The kids thought this was also very funny. Now when I get home I have to go to the dock, usually in the dark and bait some lines while trying to avoid getting hooked by one of the three that is not paying attention. If I don't lose an eye this month, I will be lucky. So this morning, Lu got up early to cook breakfast for the family and the visiting guests. This is abnormal for her because she has hit the age when kids start sleeping until noon. Since she is out of practice with getting up so early, she didn't let the dogs out. She did however let our visiting dog out of her sleeping crate. DP who is the early riser gets up, lets the dogs out, fixes himself breakfast, cuts on the TV and quietly watches a show until we awake. Jr sleeps all over the house although he goes to sleep in one of the upstairs' bedrooms. As often is the case, he was sleeping on the couch this morning when we got up. So Lu got up before DP, almost set the alarm off, and starting cooking breakfast. I came out of my room and let the dogs out and went to have a spot of the couch waiting on my wonderful breakfast to be finished. To my surprise, I step in a recently deposited treat from a dog. So as everyone who has done this can imagine, I did the limp to the bathroom on the side of my foot walk. As I am wiping the gift off of my foot. Jr yells out from his sleeping spot, "Dad, you stepped in poop!" I yelled back "I know but thanks for the information." Our house guest thought this was quite funny. No one ever said Jr was being hunted by NASA. At least not yet. I think he is just a late bloomer. |
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April 2018
CategoriesAuthorPracticing medical physicist trying to raise three kids in the south. |