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| J helpfully gives O his bottle of milk, while R watches on. |
1.
I was using the toilet when R barged in. "I need to go the toilet," he said, slightly desperately.
"You can't," I replied, stating the obvious. "Use mummy and daddy's toilet instead." That's the ensuite.
"Ok," he said. But then he asked, "are you doing a one, or a two?"
I was sitting down. "Two."
He looked at me angrily. "Can you stop doing those in my toilet? You make it stinky!"
2.
July is birthday month - O turned two, then six days later, R and J turned five. One of the presents the elder two received was Lego, a significant milestone for them as they move on from Duplo.
The assorted pieces came with a booklet of building suggestions. I had a look. The first thing was a green apple.
"What kind of lame kid is going to want to make an apple?", I asked my wife rhetorically .
R then walked into the room and looked at book. "Can you help me make the apple?", he asked.
"Yeah sure, that's pretty cool," I said.
3.
R likes Lego. But J loves it.
One morning he woke up, walked into the living room and said, "I had lots of dreams last night. Do you want to hear about them?"
I did. Five-year-old dreams are usually hilarious.
"In one," he began, "I got another packet of Lego." Then he smiled as he started into the distance, reminiscing about his Lego dream. I heard nothing further about dreams that day.
4.
Recent excitement - the pub near our house burned down!
As we walk past it all the time to catch the train to and from work/childcare, I thought I should have a conversation with R and J about it.
R asked a series of normal questions - how did it happen? Was anyone hurt? And so on.
J said nothing for awhile. And then, "I think I know what caused it. Maybe a meteor. No! Actually a volintano from, uh, what's the first planet near the sun?"
"Mercury," I said.
"Yeah, Mercury. They have volintanos. The lava could shoot to here. I read a book about it."
5.
The fire caused the pub roof to collapse onto the road, so for nearly a week there were partial road closures and the traffic lights were not operational.
Eventually, the usual Irish backpackers were employed to direct traffic, but for the first two days the police did the job.
After seeing this, J told me, "I don't want to be a soccer player anymore, I want to be a policeman."
I asked, "is that so you can help people cross the road?"
"No, it's so I can drive the police car fast."
Then R said, "I want to be a policeman too, so I can get a gun!"
6.
You may have noticed the use of the word volintano in the earlier part about how the pub burned down. Recently, I wrote about all the words my kids (mostly J) invent. There has been a new entry:
Gement
A calcined mixture of clay and limestone, mixed with water and sand to form concrete, used as a building material.
When he said it's actually 'cement', J started at me and then replied, "no, I say gement."
It gets better:
Cinnament
A grey version of gement, which is usually white.
7.
O is also learning a lot of words. He still rarely puts more than one at a time together, but his vocabulary is definitely growing. Sometimes I get surprised about the words he knows.
For example, the elder two were watching a TV show about dinosaurs, where the had massive bird-like raptors on the screen. O starting pointing at the screen and excitedly yelling, "E-MOOO! E-MOOO!"
It was a very good guess.
8.
O is also jealous and possessive of mummy in a way the twins never were. I think it's normal behaviour, but after not experiencing it the first time, it's funny to see him do things like pushing his brothers away when they are getting more attention.
The only time I think it has gone beyond normal behaviour was when R and J were wrestling, and J rolled off the play-mat and bumped his head on the tiles. Not very hard, he was fine, but I gave him a cuddle and rubbed his head.
O saw this. He then deliberately fell to the ground and lightly headbutted the floor. Then he stood up and ran towards me with outstretched arms for his hug.
9.
We're eating breakfast and R asks me, "what is seven plus seven."
"14," I reply.
He then puts his spoon down in his bowl of Weet Bix, holds up seven fingers and begins counting... when he gets to seven, he continues counting at eight on the first finger until he gets to 14. It was actually quite clever, but after initially being impressed, something else occurred to me.
"Didn't you believe me?", I ask.
"Sometimes I don't believe you about things," R replied suspiciously.
10.
There is a sandpit at childcare, which means we have to check shoes and pockets for sand so that the laundry basket and washing machine don't end up looking like a desert.
(Why do clothes for pre-school aged kids have pockets anyway? Nothing good can come from it. Literally.)
So mum asked J, "do your shoes have sand in them?"
"Well, one way to find out," he replied. Then he pulled off his first shoe and turned it upside-down over the dining room table.
11.
For about three days, J went through a period of calling everyone and everything mate. It's my fault, as I often call them mate, or matey.
I thought we reached peak mate, when at dinner, R accidentally dropped his (plastic) bowl of tuna pasta bake onto the floor. As well as covering the tiles, which are easy to clean, it also splashed up to cover the curtains behind him, which are not easy to clean.
J silently watched mum and dad cleanup for a few minutes while eating his meal. He then calmly suggested to R, "you have to be more careful, mate."
But somehow it got more annoying.
They watched a Harry Potter movie where apparently Harry and the red-headed one play chess, and one of them says "checkmate".
Checkmate is obviously different to mate. But not to J.
There was a whole day of him replying to questions like this:
Do you want lunch?
Yeah, mate. Check mate.
12.
Last story. Mum asked the boys not to do something.
I added, "yeah, you can never do that unless...", then my voice trailed off, as I realised how completely stupid and unhelpful it would be to go further.
"What were you saying?", R asked.
"Nothing, I was starting to say the wrong thing," I said.
"What? Were you going to say fuck?"
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