Run With The Fishes

I’ve mentioned before how much fun it is to watch some movies with kids. Friday night we watched Superman Returns. Allison hovered on the edge of knowing it was a movie and thinking it was real. She was way into it. Chants of, “Oh no, oh no”, “Go, Go, Go!”, “Yeah Superman!”. She was ready and willing to help Superman beat up Lex. If he let her help him, she would, “Kick Lex Luthar in the butt.” Allison was also convinced that if the little boy came over to our house she could teach him how to fly. Then she demonstrated how she would teach him by standing on one foot with her hands over her head in standard Superman pose.

This is the part where I should tell you that Allison thinks she is a Superhero. It’s not something we have given her any reason to doubt. Over Christmas when she introduced herself it would go like this, “My name is Allison, but my superhero name is Wondergirl.”

She has gotten more use out of Nathan’s old Spiderman costume, sometimes insisting to wear it along with her Spiderman tennis shoes to the grocery store. For Christmas she got the light-up mask to complete the costume. Spidergirl (her other hero name) is super strong. She also constantly tells us the things that superheros do and don’t do. Sometimes she is super-fast, others she is invisible. This morning after she woke up she complained to us that she hadn’t gotten to use any of her super powers yet.

Do you know the feeling where you dread the answer to your question, but you already know what it is?

Last night after going to the bathroom, Allison walked into the room with wet hair.

“Allison, why is your hair wet?”
“Because I put it in the potty chair”,followed by some giggling.

I thought to myself that it was pretty bad in itself, but maybe not so disgusting. Cats and dogs drink out of toilet bowls all the time right?

“Did you flush the potty chair first?”
“No”

“Ugh, that’s disgusting!” Followed by reasons she should NOT EVER put her head in potty chairs and a bath with big sister scrubbing her head.

Kids can be so entertaining. I don’t swear very much around the house so our kids don’t hear it that often. We generally don’t make that big a deal out of it, because really, they are just words. From past experience, when there is a bigger response from us, there is a greater chance of a 2 year old walking around saying, “Shit”, over and over.

Most of the time the kids can just tell the words are hum-dingers. When we watch shows (or listen to music) with swearing, we usually warn the kids first, “Just because they are saying it, doesn’t mean you get to.”. There are times, however, when it’s so hard to tell the difference between what is appropriate and what isn’t.

When Zoey was 3 or 4, Charlie’s Angels was one of her favorite movies. One day when we were watching it, she said, “Oh, look, here comes Bitch!”. When we asked what she was talking about, she told us matter-of-factly that it was the guys name*, Duh. We had to break it to her that the angels didn’t like that guy and it wasn’t really his name.

Nathan is a big fan of Professional Wrestling right now. They have recaps on Saturday morning that are more kid friendly than the tawdry night shows. Sometime right before Christmas, we happened to catch one of the night shows, the Heavy Weight Champion John Cena was talking, so Nathan had to listen. He was going on about how he found someone’s Christmas list and was getting every item on it for him. He then listed off things like: a hard salami, a picture of David Hasselhoff without a shirt and a bag of salty nuts.

The implications were obvious, unless you are my kid. After he said the salty nuts, Zoey said, “Yum”. It makes me laugh just thinking about it, because the kids still think he was totally serious and really getting this person those presents.

Last week sometime, we were watching Talladega Nights. There is a scene where Will Ferrell’s character is trying to decide what to call his dad. He settles on Professor Dickweed. This raised an issue with Zoey, “Why did he pick that? Professor Dickweed doesn’t make any sense. Does that have to do with racing cars or something?”.

*Crispin Glover’s character

If you leave comments, you’ll notice a new feature that I’m hoping will keep the junky stuff away. I always get my hopes up when I see I have a new comment, only to have them dashed 95% of the time when it turns out to be spam. All you have to do, is prove you are human and type an extra word in before your comment.

A special thanks goes out to Beth for pointing me in the right direction.

Nathan and Zoey both crashed before midnight but insisted that we wake them up. Midnight is still early for Allison. We all counted down the new year then ran outside to yell, “Happy New Year”, to the world. We couldn’t convince Nathan that he needed leave the warm comfort of our house to shoot some fireworks. We finally roused him in time to do a New Year’s toast. We poured the kids some sparkling grape juice then all chinked our glasses. Allison’s toast for us all this year, “STRAWBERRIES!”.

Happy New Year. May it be filled with love and laughter.