This Suit Needs A Manual

Picking out a bathing suit for Ava this week reminded me of a cute story.

We were in South Carolina with the Tabasso family two summers ago. One day, Melissa and I decided to go out to lunch together and leave the kids with the husbands. The guys were going to take the kids to the pool while we were gone.

After our amazing lunch, Melissa's cell phone rang. Eric was calling to ask me to give him directions over the phone on how to do up the back of Ava's bathing suit top.

If I haven't mentioned yet, little girl bathing suits kill me. I search high and low to find Ava's bathing suit each year. One of her suits from the summer of 2007 was a Frankie and Daisy skirted bikini. The back of the bikini top was a veritable maze of straps and loops.

Apparently, Eric was having a hard time figuring it out. He had even called Michael in to get his opinion, and Michael tried his hand at it. Michael got on the phone with Melissa after Eric and I were finished talking, and he tried to take directions as well, but it just wasn't happening. Now, all of this was done very casually and quietly, as both Eric and Michael are super respectful of Ava's sensitivities. Even on the phone, they both were speaking very quietly and calmly, so as not to freak Ava out with the attention.

Melissa and I spent the rest of the drive back bawling our eyes out over the image in our heads. These two big tough manly men conferring with each other on how to gently lace up little Ava's bikini top, using their big old man hands to try to get the little straps through the little loops in the proper pattern, caring so much about getting it right for her, all the while keeping in the forefront of their minds her sensitivity to attention....


Melissa and I have lucky daughters.

(We solved the problem by just telling them to get her one-piece bathing suit. We could feel their relief through the airwaves.)

You Have The Luxury Of Not Knowing What I Know

Cole and Ava have been getting annoyed by having to do things for Zachary. The two things that annoy them most are buckling and unbuckling him into/out of his car seat, and making him a bowl of cereal in the morning. Eric and I were starting to get tired of the constant bickering over whose "turn" it was to do these chores each day. They'd each whine that they "always did it" and it "wasn't fair".

One day, I the kids and I were out running errands. When we got home, I pulled the van into the garage. The usual procedure upon arriving home involved me choosing one of the big kids to unbuckle Zach, to avoid the inevitable argument. This particular day, I decided not to do that, in order to see what they would do. So I just got out of the car and walked into the house.

As I walked in, I could hear Cole and Ava beginning the argument over who was going to unbuckle him. I ignored it, and went into the kitchen. I started unloading the dishwasher, and even from the kitchen could hear Cole and Ava yelling at each other inside the car. Funny enough, Zachary wasn't chiming in. Normally he'd be yelling back at them to just unbuckle him. But it was as if he sensed that they were hanging themselves, and he was just going to sit back and watch the show.

After about 5 minutes, I heard Ava say, "I'm just going in the house, you do it". And sure enough, a minute later she waltzed into the house, shoeless, and walked right past me up to her room. She had no idea that I'd heard the whole thing. I didn't say anything to her yet, because I wanted to see how the entire situation would play out before I played my hand.

I couldn't hear anything from the van for another 5 minutes. Again, Zachary was playing this super cool, he hadn't yelled once. After 5 minutes had passed, Cole walks in with his shoes off. He says hello, and then proceeds to walk upstairs.

I let him get all the way upstairs before I calmly called them both to come downstairs. I made them both stand in front of me. I asked Colson to go unbuckle Zach, and made Ava stand there until Colson came back.

When he came back, I bent down and got real close to their little faces, looked them both dead in their eyes and said, "What you both just did was h o r r i f y i n g..........." I then gave them the leave-no-man-behind speech. "In THIS house, we don't leave our family behind, no matter how we feel about them. You don't have to like Zachary, you just have to feed him and let him out of his car seat". I told them that their behavior was disgusting. I asked them how they thought Zachary felt knowing that his brother and sister had left him all alone in the van with no way to get him out. (Of course, I left out the part about how much I knew Zachary had LOVED the whole situation, knowing somehow that it would all play out in his favor.)

I preached that the word "fair" has no meaning in this house, especially when it pertains to taking care of each other. I told them I'd wiped their butts every time they crapped in their diapers, and that certainly wasn't fair. When you love someone, you don't think about fair.

Cole and Ava were properly moved by my Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men speech. I was dying to tell them that they couldn't handle the truth, and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to them, saves lives. I decided that might be a bit much.



The next day I called them both into my room. I was ready to dole out my King Solomon judgement. I said, "I have made a decision about the cereal and seat buckle situation. Colson, you will ALWAYS make Zach's cereal. Ava, you will ALWAYS buckle and unbuckle Zachary. Ava, if Colson isn't here for some reason, you will make Zach's cereal AND buckle him. Colson, if Ava isn't here, you will also make Zach's cereal AND buckle him."

I haven't heard a peep about either task since.

Talk About A Bad Hair Day

Ava and Zachary were playing dollhouse together. I heard her say to him, "Don't touch the girl on the roof, she's dead". Of course, that piqued my interest. I poked my head in and asked, "Why is the girl on the roof dead"? Ava answered, "When her hair sticks straight up like that, I don't like it, so I make her be dead. But we put flowers by her grave".



Moral of this story? Make sure your hair looks good when you see Ava. Apparently you're dead to her otherwise...

Monday Mornings With Zachary

In today's interview, Zachary speaks on fears, math, and the meanings of words.

Ungame Sunday

Today's Ungame question is:


Share a time in your life when you were embarrassed.




Don't everybody comment at once....take turns, people...

Fallen

They say you never forget your first love. People assume "they" are talking about romantic love. People are wrong.

Eek, A Mouse!

My kids have always been drawn to the computer. All three of them started playing on the computer before they turned two. I stocked up on all of my favorite toddler game series, Putt-Putt, Freddy Fish, Pajama Sam, Reader Rabbit, and I taught them how to go to certain websites to play games; pbskids.org, nickjr.com, and the like. From a young age my kids have always known computer terminology, since I always used proper terms when explaining to them how to do things.

When Cole and Ava were maybe 2.5 and 3.5, I noticed something. When we would be driving, they would point out "mouses". As in, "Look! There's a mouse!"...."Another mouse!"...."Ava look! A mouse!".

It took this happening a few times before I figured it out. It only happened on major roads, never on back roads. And they would be pointing to street signs when they said it, such as this one:



Do you see the "mouse"?



I loved so much that they called arrows "mouses" that I didn't correct them for the longest time. My mother finally made me tell them, and it was a sad, sad day.