He still favors the left hand and holds his right as if the cast is still on. He says he wants to keep writing with his left. And I tell him not to worry about it; just see what happens naturally.

I'm afraid he needs another bath or two before the old shoe smell goes away.

And just before Spongebob time: "A E I O and U are boys. And Y is sooooo busy!"

He has been a good sport lately. Three weeks ago, he fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm. I had just signed him up for karate the day before! (They're extending the contract time while he heals.) He had also started in the running club. For every mile they run, they earn a little plastic foot to go round a necklace. For Seth, we're now calling it the "walking club" because getting tripped up in all those little feet might be bad for a broken arm. So imagine a seven-year-old, competitive little boy getting left behind, and then passed on the following laps, by all of his little competitive peers. He finally cried about it yesterday 'cause he wants to run with everyone else. I reminded him that his arm is getting better, at that very moment and that it wouldn't last forever.

Interesting consequence of breaking his right arm, he is surprisingly ambidextrous now. See an awesome example here!

Today after school he held my hand to the car and said sadly, "Whenever I think about the first Star Wars, I wanna cry."

Assuming he meant the so-far-forbidden-episode with the lava, I said, "You'll get older though, and be able to see them all."

He said, "No, I mean when Luke Skywalker.... Mister Luke Skywalker had to say goodbye to his mommy, never to see her again, and went into outer space."

Today was his second and obviously tiring day of (all-day) first grade.

On his own initiative he put the kiddie chef coat on, and cracked his first egg into a little pan of butter. He read, yes he's reading a LOT now, the egg carton said "organic free range". He learned what a range is, where animals can run and play. He learned the song "Home on the Range" which I got stuck in my head while we were cooking. He learned that even though the butter is salted, I like to add a bit more to our eggs.

He ate it and returned to the kitchen to fry Savannah's egg also. Funny that he cracked her egg yolk but not his own. He was not intimidated by the heat, which means I had to add a little fear to the recipe.

The memory of it cancels out their squabbling in the backyard later.

This sounded like superhero mythology to me, so I perked up. I could hear the capital "P" in what he said and asked him to explain.

"My Power is Strength." He loves making muscles with both arms. He's very lean. Even his tushy has about the smallest amount of fat on it that a six year old boy's tushy can have and still be a tushy. So he's all muscle, but there's no bulk in his biceps. Very cute.

He continued, "I've been getting a lot of boo boos." He showed me his latest boo boo, a scratch created by sliding on the tanbark at recess today. He reminded me that I'd once said the more boo boos he gets the stronger he'll be.

I remembered then the conversation we'd had a few weeks ago. With so much repetition, trying to get through their selective hearing, (almost always with orders) I never know how much children actually hear, my guess is, more than most parents realize. I believe they especially hear concepts, the little sponges. They can make the same request 3 and 4 times in the hope that I'll finally give them the answer they want. Then when I explain an abstract, albeit unsolicited, thought, they can grab on with their minds in the right phase of development to completely understand, and even make the practical application to themselves.

But tonight I had to correct him about our old conversation. The boo boos will make you tougher. He made his muscles. He told me that I could be tough too. I said, "Oh, no. I don't wanna be too tough. I'm a mama." He walked out of the room with arms flexed saying, "I wanna be TOUGH."

Seth, sitting with me in the van outside a Starbucks, upon seeing Army personnel in their camouflage: "Look! It's the Army!"

Then trying to call out to them through the closed window: "Did you fight for Lincoln?"

~~~~~

Conversation 2

Seth: "I know why you make cookies for Daddy to take to work.
Me: "Why?"
Seth: "So he can share them with his classmates."

I started thinking about how rock could be blown up, mining for coal or changing the landscape for roadways. And what words can quickly describe this while I'm trying to get them all to school on time?

But then he says paper can't kill rock. Aaahhh. Paper can't kill rock. "But dynamite blows up rock, Seth." I showed him a thumbs up and demonstrated. "Scissors cut dynamite. Dynamite blows up rock."

He said again, "Paper doesn't kill rock. Nothing kills rock." Then I realized he'd thought he'd found the surest way to beat all of his friends in a game of chance. I had to tell him, "Son, if nothing kills rock then everyone would use it all the time."

My sphere of influence seems small, but I like to think Seth's got something new and cool to introduce on the playground. By this time next year, children as far as Detroit will be using dynamite to blow up rock.

And for some reason he says, "Kill me I must be dreaming!" instead of "pinch me."

I don't imagine Seth ever had a moment where he thought, "Hey, I like the noise Daddy makes when he yawns. I'll start that." But it's at this age that boys have really begun to identify with their fathers. (The process of pulling away from the mother can start at about 18 months.) I think even this goofy, subconscious adopting of a trait seals the deal. We are destined to become our same sex parent, no?

Naturally, there are little troubles and stress (2) that you learn to let go of with each child. It may be the best reason to have three children. As Daddy has yawned loudly through our years together, I've learned to transpose annoyances into amusements. And there is the secret to a happy marriage!

~
1) Seth, not Daddy
2) As little as they are, they step on my feet and I still holler "Feeet."

Arwen is our slow child. It's a good, dreamy kind of slow. She's as sharp as the other two, but there's little to hurry her when she's not compliant.

When Seth and Arwen came in for "space gear" which involved Arwen's getting into her bathing suit, Seth got tired of waiting on her dilly dallying and shouted, "I'm blasting off without you!"

"Seth, they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. What do you think that means?"

My interesting tone took his attention away from The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and he said, "Doctors don't like apples?"

So now we see The Number 10 bus all over town, and Seth yells from the back seat, his little barbaric challenges, like, "I hate you, Number 10!" or "Oh, no! Not again!" or "I'll get you for this Number 10!"

He is in love with me and sometimes wants to marry me, although he usually says he'll marry his little sister. Savannah would tell him he might go to jail for that though.

I shudder to think how crazy and rough he'd be if Savannah and Arwen were boys. They keep him grounded, but he's due for a play date with his buddy Jack down the street. Jack is also the little brother of an 8 year old girl, so they hit it off well, jumping up and down and laughing at nothing obvious.

Anymore, he takes a lot of delight in doing the opposite of what I say, and he does this with a smile, but his elder sister did the same at this age. In fact, she's 8 and just did this, running into the bathroom when she knows I want 2 minutes of privacy please! So the orneriness is not gender specific. But when I tell the children to slow down with supper, enjoy your food, I say, the girls "get me." Seth stuffs his cheeks full of green grapes, (it only takes 3) grunting, pointing at his mouth, and, I'm pretty sure, smiling.

He is closer to Daddy than he used to be, as usually happens and should happen... bike rides and video games and a whole lot more rough housing than Mama can tolerate. Daddy is in Japan right now. Yesterday when I closed the garage door after the garage had cooled off. Seth jumped up and ran to the door saying, "Daddy's home!" No, not yet, in a few days :)

I like plain yogurt for myself, almost always with fruit, bluberries and bananas being my favorite, banana on the bottom, blueberries dropped on top.

Today we brought home raw honey from the grocery store. After their eggs at lunch, I put their little plates of yogurt in front of them with a spoon of honey drizzled on and around, their banana on the side. (Arwen got blueberries 'cause I know she'll eat them.)

After lunch Savannah got to call her girlfriend. She left a clean plate and bounced off to her room asking her friend, "Have you ever had white (plain) yogurt with honey?"

While the girls enjoyed it, I had a drama with Seth. I've also made the mistake of occasionally giving them their food during their tv time. But the pause button will help me fix that. The girls came to the table without a problem. Seth wanted his food in front of Chicken Run, and he whined until he was sent to his room. No whining while we're trying to enjoy our food. I've gobbled down two many bowls of cereal hearing crying babies waiting to be picked up. If I'm going to eat, I'm going to enjoy it. Then Seth trashed his room. He's just giving me ammunition. He can't go back to the movie until he eats, and he can't eat until he picks up the toys he threw.

He finally picked up and asked if he could eat at the kitchen table instead of the dining table. I gave in because I know he needs to feel as if he's won something. I sat with him and watched him enjoy everything. Plain yogurt is weird to people who've never had it. I had my first bite when I was 21 and thought it tasted like sour cream, only because I thought it would be like frozen sweet yogurt. Honey makes it slip right down. He even insisted on scooping up the yogurt with the banana slices. Do you know the milestone this is to a 4 year old boy? A boy who won't let his peas touch his pasta? At the end I showed him how to use the length of his finger to run around the edge of the plate to get the excess that the spoon misses :)'

Savannah was curious as to why I wanted so much to watch him eat it all? I said that when you're a mother, and your children aren't eating well, it makes you very unhappy. I can't describe it. I know the world won't end, but habits get formed so quickly, and often never broken. But when they're eating healthy, it will make you so happy.