Category: parenting

My routine at night goes something like this: around 7:15 I start to get things ready for the Little Man to go to bed. This is a process. I get his chocolate milk and bring it the small fridge we keep upstairs in our bedroom. I lay out his pajamas, stuff like that. Then I collect the Little Man himself. He says goodnight to Mommy and the Little Miss and we head upstairs together. I get him into his pajamas give him his chocolate milk, and let him pick a show on Disney’s ON DEMAND to watch. When the show is over, he lays down on the mattress on the floor in our bedroom right next to me. Why on the floor in our bedroom? Why with me? Long story¹.

I usually spend the time reading while the Little Man will toss and turn anywhere from 30-60 minutes before finally succumbing to sleep. Sometimes he is playful, sometimes mischievous, sometimes just curious. I recall being told as a child to “go to sleep.” This always frustrated me because if I knew how to simply fall asleep at will, I’d do it. So as the Little Man tosses and turns and tries to engage in conversation, I repeatedly tell him: “Buddy, it’s bedtime. You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to but you need to lay still and try to relax.”

Kelly came up earlier than usual last night with the Little Miss and the Little Miss had fallen asleep. The Little Man was his usual playful self and I’d reminded him a few times to lay still and relax. He has trouble with volume sometimes and was a little loud at one point, so I said to him, “Buddy, come on now, you need to lay down and keep quiet because the Little Miss is sleeping.”

He was on his knees at the time, and I watched his face collapse, his lip turn out, tears start flowing down his cheeks. “My Daddy!” he said. Kelly has observed that he says this when he thinks I’m mad at him. Of course, I wasn’t mad. My voice was the same as I usually use at night. But in that instant, I could see in his eyes that he felt I was disappointed with him in some way.

I grabbed him pulled him next to me and said, “I’m not mad at you, pal. It’s just nighttime and I want to make sure we don’t wake up the Little Miss. Okay? I’m not mad.”

“Okay, Daddy,” he said. He rested his head in the crook of my arm, and I held him there as I read. Every few minutes I’d say, “Are you okay, pal?”

“Yeah, Daddy,” he’d reply.

Eventually he fell asleep. But the idea that he felt he had somehow disappointed me–and the fact that it made him cry–haunted me for the remainder of the night.

Sometime in the last few weeks, the Little Man crossed a threshold from rough sentences to compete sentences, including some clear abstractions. It’s fascinating to watch his development. Sometimes, when he is laying next to me at night¹ I look at him amazed, not so much that he is a person, but that he is my son. It’s an odd feeling, a good one, but an odd one that I cannot adequately express.

He speaks in full sentences now, although we sometimes have to slow him down to understand exactly what he is saying. He uses hand gestures to compliment his words. “Where it went, Daddy?” he’ll say (okay, so he’s still working on tenses). And in speaking, he’ll shrug his shoulders and turn his hands palms up.

“Are you ready to head upstairs, pal?” I’ll ask.

“Almost, Daddy,” he’ll respond. “Almost” is a new word for him. I’ve only heard him use it in the last week. Clearly an abstraction, but he also knows that by saying it, he can delay the inevitable for a period of time. To be honest, it sounds remarkably grown up, perhaps because I find myself saying this to Kelly quite often. (“Are you ready to go?” she asks. “Almost,” I respond, “I’m just finishing up this last email…”)

We were a little worried that he wasn’t picking up colors, but that too has changed. He still defaults to “blue” but it is clear that he knows what orange and red are as well. (At this point, he will call something that is yellow orange, but I’m not going to quibble with him.)

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Kelly had made a delightfully refreshing dinner: salad with salmon, and we were sitting in the TV room, eating our meals. The Little Man had a small dish of his own and was picking around his salmon, mostly eating the veggie, as he is wont to do. I can’t recall what we were talking about, but there we were, talking, when all at once, something that the Little Man was saying began to permeate my consciousness.

He was standing in the middle of the floor, with a smirk on his face and was saying, in perfect imitation of a frustrated adult, “Oh shit!”

It took another second and before that second was through, he’d said it again: “Oh shit!”

I looked at Kelly and could feel the instant loss of control. Barely able to contain my laughter, I said, “I have to use the restroom!” and I jumped up and proceeded into the powder room, shut the door and began cackling like a hyena. I took a few deep breaths and then returned to my meal.

“Oh shit!” the Little Man purred.

Kelly tried to distract him, “What did you do at school today?” she asked.

“Play toys!” he said. “Oh shit!”

At this point lettuce was coming out of my nose and I once again had to excuse myself. Kelly was smirking at this point, but at least she maintained her composure. She once again was able to distract him, and we successfully ignored his outbursts. And it must have worked because we haven’t heard him say those words since.

But it was hysterically funny, the kind of funny after which your cheeks and side are sore. I am laughing out loud as I write this post. Neither Kelly nor I can figure out where he heard this. I don’t use profanity often, but when I do, it is a George Carlin-esque stream of words that you can’t say on television, and I don’t think “shit” is included in that list any longer. It is a mystery.

The Little Man is a smart fellow. He talks quite a bit, you can see him making various logical connections and inferences. He knows his numbers from 1 to 10. He has at least the concept of letters. But there is one area in which he seems to be utterly confused: colors.

It’s gotten to the point where it is almost hysterically funny.

As the Little Man what color something is–virtually anything and he will answer at once: “Bluuuuuuuue! He really stretches out that word and he smiles when he says it.

“What color is the sky, buddy?”

“Bluuuuuuue!”

“What color is the grass?”

“Bluuuuuuue!”

What’s funny is that it’s moved over into other categories as well.

“What type of car is that?”

“Bluuuuuuue!”

It’s almost as if he has the word queued up and ready to go as the default answer to any “what” question.

He does recognize some colors. He know “orange” for instance. But otherwise he almost always answers with “Bluuuuuue!”

I’m not exactly sure why I find it so funny, but I dooooooo.

Walking to the park yesterday, we saw a chip monk running through the trees. I said to the Little Man, “See that, buddy? That’s a chip monk.”

“Chick monk,” he said. “Whas he doo’in?”

“He’s out getting dinner for his family,” I said. “Chip monks eat nuts.”

“Oh man.”

“Do you like nuts?” I asked him.

“I like donuts,” he said.

The Little Man can sing almost the entire rendition of the Bing Crosby/Louis Armstrong version of “Gone Fishin'” and it is absolutely adorable. As I’ve written before, I don’t sing traditional lullabies, but instead sing various Bing Crosby tunes to the Little Man (and now the Little Miss). I guess I’ve performed this one enough times for him to have it memorized. For some reason, this seems to impressive to me, but then I am coming at this from the role of doting father.

At some point, I will take a video of him singing the song with me and post it up on Facebook and you can judge for yourself.

So the Little Man has developed a hilarious new phrase and he didn’t learn it from us. It is a versatile phrase and he uses it with glee. He could be playing with a toy, for instance, and the toy will leap out of his hand and smash into the floor.

“Oh man!” he’ll say.

He could be eating his dinner and drop some food on his lap. “Oh man!”

He might be watching a cartoon and see one of the characters so something silly. “Oh man!”

I don’t know where he learned it, but I love it. I think it is hilarious. Now I’m just waiting until I tell one of my wry jokes. He’ll roll his eyes and say, “Oh man!“