Brad-isms 4/16/09

Just a few more funny stories from Brad for you. He cracks me up every day.

We're in a bit of a frustrating stage with Brad where he thinks that when he doesn't get his own way he just needs to say what he wants over and over, louder and louder. It can be infuriating. The other morning he wanted to get in the bath tub before I left for work. We simply did not have time so I told him no and that he could do it later. He got very mad and just kept saying that he wanted to take a bath. I replied "Brad, you don't get everything you want!" and he screamed, "Yes I do! I'm the king of the world!!!" Awe, wouldn't that be nice?

Last Saturday the kids and I went to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum (pictures to come in a later post) with my mom. On the way there in the car we were listening to the radio and suddenly Brad said, "Mom, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I told him I thought I would like to be a mom and he said, "No, you have to be something with a costume." I wasn't sure where that came from but I thought for a minute and said maybe I would like to be a queen. Again Brad said, "No" and then he said "Maybe you should be an Uptown Girl." You can guess what was playing on the radio. I busted up laughing and then asked Brad what exactly an Uptown Girl was and he said, "It's a girl that a boy wants to marry." I figured that was an ok thing to be.

Later that night we had a fun Easter activity with some friends at our church (again, pictures to come). Immediately following dinner our babysitting co-op was taking place and we had told Brad that we were going to leave him while we went on a date. When it came time to go I didn't want to make a big deal out of it in front of Lucy, so Joe and I kind-of slipped out without really saying goodbye. Apparently Brad forgot we were going because about half an hour later he approached my friend Angela who was one of the adults watching the kids. He said, "Angela, can I get a ride home? I think my parents left me." What other 3 year old do you know who reacts to thinking he's been left somewhere by simply asking for a ride home? I'm just glad he didn't try to walk.

I also wanted to record a couple of the cute/funny things he says:

He has nick-named Lucy "Little" and calls her that a lot. It's really cute.

Instead of "Upside Down" he says, "Side Side Down"

He calls dreams "TV Dreams" and we haven't quite figured out why. I think it might be because seeing a dream is a little bit like watching tv?

That's all I can think of how...I'll have to see if I can come up with some more later. Oh - and he's officially potty trained now! Yeah! He's only had 2 accidents in the last 2 weeks, so I think we're on a roll!

Blast Off!

For about a week now Brad has been telling Joe that they need to build a rocket. Joe has a tendency to sometimes just agree with or placate Brad just to get him to be quiet (as most parents do) which is fine except that Brad remembers EVERYTHING. If you tell him you're going to build a rocket, you better build a rocket. Brad wanted to build a rocket that would actually fly him to the moon, but Joe was able to get by with a little contraption given to him by his parents. It's made of PVC pipe and hooked to an air compressor. You put a soda or water bottle on the tube pointing up and when the air pressure builds you press the launch button and the thing flies 40 feet into the air. Brad absolutely loved it. It kept him entertained for a good 20 minutes, which is a lot.

Here they are getting it ready

Brad was very excited that he got to launch it.

He would count, but the number on which he launched was totally arbitrary and changed every time.
Getting it read to go again.
Here you can see how high it goes - it's that white blob over the house.
Waiting for the pressure to build
"Look, I have the power!"
Again, and again.

It was a really fun activity for Brad and the rest of us had fun just watching him. I think their next project is going to be to decorate the bottle so it really looks like a rocket and then launch it. If anyone else wants to come over and try it just let us know! It's probably good Brad doesn't know how to hook up the air compressor himself.

Brad-isms 4/4/09

I haven't posted any Brad-isms for a while and just thought I would share a few stories from around here lately.

There will be ducks
I have no idea if anyone else will think this is funny, but it was funny at the time. Brad was headed to a sleep-over with my mom and his cousins Chelise and Corbin. Grammy had promised them that one of the activities that evening would be feeding the ducks. Brad was very excited about that because it's not something his mother would EVER take him to do. :) Anyway, my brother, Alex, was there with a friend and Brad asked if they were coming and Alex said no. Brad looked at them like he had the best secret in the world and slyly said, "There will be ducks!"


Joe's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, day
Two weeks ago we had a very sick family. Lucy was the worst. She had a stomach virus, a cold an ear infection and was cutting four teeth at the same time. It was bad. One day I had been home with the kids all day and was very glad for Joe to get home from work. Not 5 minutes after he sat down and took Lucy from me she threw up all over him. He went and changed and 5 minutes after that Brad yelled from upstairs "Dad! I Pooped!" so he got to take care of that. We decided to put them in the bath which led to an inevitable discussion with Brad about the difference between the anatomy of boys and girls. He asked Joe if girls have a penis and when Joe said no he asked, "then what do they have?" I'm pretty sure if Joe had known that's what he was coming home to he would have stayed at work.

Hey Julie!
This story relates directly to the one above although they happened about a week and a half apart. On Sunday Matt and Julie were at our house for dinner and I was in the kitchen with Julie and Brad was sitting at the table. Out of NO WHERE Brad says, "Hey Julie! Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina." Seriously?!?! Out of NO WHERE! I suddenly realized he's going to be that kid. The kid who knows way too much for his own good and wants to share it with everyone. I'm just glad that this time it was just his aunt who is very familiar with human anatomy and that he didn't decide to share that gem in Sunday School.

Puppy Names
Josh and Jo-Elle have a dog named Molly who is about to have puppies. Brad is at their house every day and is quite excited about the puppies. Last night in the car Brad told us he was going to help name the puppies. I asked him what he thought were some good puppy names and he said, "Arthur (from the tv show), Lisa (no idea on that one) and Foster (the name of a friend's dog)." I told him those were all very good names and I was impressed that he came up with them. He then broke the streak by saying if there were four puppies the last one should be named "Dog Biscuit House" and that if there was another one it would be "Dog Biscuit House 2". I hope for Josh and Jo-Elle that there are only 3 puppies!

Brad has also been really into singing this last week. He can sing the alphabet all by himself along with other classics like Twinkle, Twinkle, The itsy bitsy spider and Little Bunny Foo-Foo. Be sure to ask for a concert the next time you see him.

Gender Rolls

In our house we don't strictly stick to traditional gender roles. We share household chores with Joe doing the majority of the cooking and a lot of the cleaning. I do all the laundry and always do the bathrooms. Joe and I have both always worked outside the home and at various times have both worked full and part time. We both try really hard to do things as a team, and for the most part it works really well.

We have also tried not to inflict a specific gender role on our kids. We don't go to great efforts to avoid them, but if Brad wants to play with a doll he can and I find myself often handing Lucy a truck or a ball because it's handy. I'll be honest that if Brad wanted to grow up to be a dancer or Lucy wanted to race cars we might flinch a little, but I like to think we would support whatever makes our children happy.

I've noticed that they seem to pick a lot of these things up anyway. On the rare occasion that I watch a tv show containing commercials with Brad (I can't STAND commercials) he will often ask me if certain toys being advertised are "for boys or girls". Usually this comes up when a particular toy looks like fun to him, but is obviously directed toward girls. I generally tell him that anyone who wanted to play with that toy could, and the discussion ends there.

The reason for this post is that we recently watched the Disney movie Wall-E with Brad. This movie has 2 main characters who are both robots. They are Wall-E:
And Eve:

There's very little dialogue in the first half of the movie and the only thing the robots ever really say is the other's name. The movie does not specifically define either robot as being a 'boy' or a 'girl' but to me it was obvious. I came away from watching it knowing that Eve was the girl and Wall-E was the boy. That's why I found it so very interesting when Brad kept refering to Wall-E as "she". I said, "Brad, Wall-E is a boy" and he said, "No mom, Wall-E is a girl. Eve is a boy."

When I really thought about it I couldn't put my finger on why I thought it was one way and Brad thought it was the other. Obviously Eve is a feminine name to me, but to Brad it was close enough to "Steve" to pass. Eve is new and clean, one might say more fashionable whereas Wall-E is older and dirty or tough, but to Brad those didn't lend themselves to one gender or another.

I've asked a few people who had seen the movie what they thought and have found that they all agreed with me. I also found this interesting becuase everyone I spoke with had assigned a gender to the robots although technically there's no reason to. Obviously it's something we do naturally.

I don't think I'm qualified to draw any conclusions from this. I did think it was a good reminder to look at things through a child's eyes and not to judge people (or robots) by how they look or what their name is. I don't know that it matters whether Wall-E is a boy or a girl. Wall-E is a loving character with a pure heart who gives everything when he falls in love with someone who is opposite him in many ways and therefore compliments him well.

We should all be so lucky...and I am.