Archive: The Fine and Right Education of the Young Doctor Benny

Oh my. So, I think the poor little baby is cutting another tooth. She just could not rest all night and there were periods of loud desperate crying and whatnot. Very hard for me and for her too. At 6:28 AM she finally went into a deep sleep and I got up, went to the bathroom, and got back in bed. At approximately 7:15, Stompy McThunder, or as he is known to his fans Benny, came bouncing down the stairs to obliterate what remained of my sanity by stumping around in the room saying, "Come on Mommy, let's go downstairs!" in the loudest whisper I have ever heard. I said to him quietly, "Please go quietly downstairs and I will be right down. Do not, under any circumstances, wake up the baby." Well he continued to canter about and "whisper" at me until the baby was gooooood and awake, and then we all went downstairs. Upon arriving here, I delivered a small and exhausted tirade about how when I ask him to do something, he might consider just doing it, rather than doing an entirely different thing that's specifically engineered to make me completely miserable. Then I came in the office and put the baby in the playpen and sat down. For a while he stayed out in the living room ruminating. Then he came in, VERY VERY solicitous, VERY VERY kind and patronizing and said, "Oh, Mommy. We can do something that will make you feel better! We can type together! Okay, Mommy? Okay?"

Except it sounded in his baby mouth like, "Bedder" and "Togedder" and it just was so sweet and dear that I accidentally forgave all the rest of it.

Oh my. So, I think the poor little baby is cutting another tooth. She just could not rest all night and there were periods of loud desperate crying and whatnot. Very hard for me and for her too. At 6:28 AM she finally went into a deep sleep and I got up, went to the bathroom, and got back in bed. At approximately 7:15, Stompy McThunder, or as he is known to his fans Benny, came bouncing down the stairs to obliterate what remained of my sanity by stumping around in the room saying, "Come on Mommy, let's go downstairs!" in the loudest whisper I have ever heard. I said to him quietly, "Please go quietly downstairs and I will be right down. Do not, under any circumstances, wake up the baby." Well he continued to canter about and "whisper" at me until the baby was gooooood and awake, and then we all went downstairs. Upon arriving here, I delivered a small and exhausted tirade about how when I ask him to do something, he might consider just doing it, rather than doing an entirely different thing that's specifically engineered to make me completely miserable. Then I came in the office and put the baby in the playpen and sat down. For a while he stayed out in the living room ruminating. Then he came in, VERY VERY solicitous, VERY VERY kind and patronizing and said, "Oh, Mommy. We can do something that will make you feel better! We can type together! Okay, Mommy? Okay?"

Except it sounded in his baby mouth like, "Bedder" and "Togedder" and it just was so sweet and dear that I accidentally forgave all the rest of it.

Benny: Mom, Benny's licking at water! It's inside my mouth! See? *drops mouth open*
Me: Wha???
Benny: My mouth broked open and water came out!!!

I think he's discovered the little glands under your tongue that supply spit and whatnot. Very exciting.

We're getting ready to go to the Stockley Gardens Arts Festival where Benny is doing a Suzuki performance and I say, "Where is Bad Child?" and Benny tells me that Bad Child and Beautiful Child are both at Lobsters (the grocery store) because they had to get milk. I said, "Oh, no! Bad Child and Beautiful Child will fight!" and Benny said, "No, don't worry. Bad Child is a friend now. He's not bad. He's just Bad Child."

So, apparently the threat to beautiful children worldwide has been neutralized. It has come to my attention that the whole bad child smashing thing is a little creepy but if you are seeing it come out of Benny's sweet gleeful mouth I promise you it's not creepy in the least. Quite funny. Bad Child and Beautiful Child are like those people that sit on your shoulders, one telling you to eat the cookie, the other to give it to the starving Armenians. But apparently they're friends now so it's all moot. :) :) :) Off we go to Suzuke.

Benny has a new imaginary friend. His name is Bad Child. It started a while ago when Benny told me in a funny voice that he is Bad Child and his job is to smash the Beautiful Childs. Charming, hey? Well Bad Child has become a friend like Big Brother Nemo once was (BBN is "away" and has been for a long time). Yesterday Bad Child went to karate with us and there was a big issue over whether he would sit in Sadie's car seat or whether he would sit in the back with no car seat. Just now Bad Child came in and asked me how to turn the keyboard on (which Benny of course knows) and when Benny came in and asked what was going on, Bad Child said, "Oh, don't worry Benny, I'm just talking to Lydia. I'm just talking to your mom." Heh. Then Bad Child went off toward the front door saying, "Goodbye! I'm going to smash some beautiful childs! But not yours!" Hehehe. Urrrrg.

I put together a mock-up for a web site for Benny's violin teacher's Suzuki association today during Sadie's afternoon nap. Yes, it is a little orange. What do you think? Here it is. In other news, Dan bought Benny the movie Aladdin and he LOOOOOVES it. He really likes it. I like it too.

Benny now knows ten moves of his first form in karate. The form is, I guess, phonetically, called Chee-gon One. Who knows. His blocks look a lot like his punches, but his feet are going the right direction and he's cute as a PANCAKE.

Two things.

1. Last night in the tub we were talking about Sadie growing up and I said, "Someday Sadie will be four just like you are. Do you know how old you'll be when Sadie is four?" And he said eight. Which is right. Good, but not astonishing. And I said, "Do you know how old Mommy is going to be when you're eight?" and he said, without hesitation, and I totally was not expecting him to even answer, "Thirty-five." Which is right. DOH.

2. Yesterday in Junior Church I gave each of the kids a turn to come up to the piano and do the "special music" while the rest of us sat quietly with our hands folded and pointed our noses at the performance. We are trying to learn how to listen to special music in big church, and also I thought they'd like having the chance to be the star, etc. So one by one the kids went up to the piano, and I had instituted a "one finger" rule so they could use one finger on each hand, and not bang and crash. Each kid spent a little time fadoodling around on the piano, some more melodically than others, whatever. Then it was Benny's turn, and he scootched up there on the piano seat and launched into THE MOST SPIRITED RENDITION OF THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE EVER. He played and sang with extreme drama, very loudly, both song and accompaniment, it was... so hilarious. And dear. The kids unanimously decided they wanted another turn, so when his turn came again he did the same thing. He was playing with more than one finger, but what could I do? He was approximating the rhythm correctly, and the singing... with the raised eyebrows and big facial expressions and the looking around to the audience cheerfully between verses... oh, I died. I died.

This is just the type of thing that I would have blogged, back when I was blogging all the time, so I'm going to blog it, and then I'm going to really try to keep blogging regularly all the time, even though it's gotten away from me severely in the last month.

Benny came in the door to the office with his hands behind his back and said the following: "Guess what I have? Guess what Benny has!? It's... a... *dramatic sound effect as his hand whips around in front* BOOGER. Look, here Mom. *hands it to me, thanks* It's not sticky, it's a dry one. Benny found it. Benny got it. *I put it in the garbage* Oh, what are you doing? No, Mom. Benny wants you to have it! Put it in you! Go on!

Uhhhhhh. I think I was supposed to take that lovely booger that he offered in such a friendly way and insert it in my own nose.

Now let's see what else is going on in Benny's life.

We had a severe conflict over his behavior in violin class. In his first and second lesson of this semester he was just acting like a little buckethead and not paying attention, laughing, fooling around, etc. So after his second lesson I took his ice cream bubble and taped it to the very top of the fridge and for ONE ENTIRE WEEK he went without ice cream. Very astonishing. Very hard to deal with especially at our playdate at pipes where we always end with ice cream -- there was none. All week we talked about how he could earn back his ice cream at his lesson by showing respect to his teacher -- respect means you look at someone's face when they talk, you do what they ask you to do or stop doing what they ask you to stop doing, and you answer "Yes Ma'am" or "No Ma'am" when you are asked a question. So he's been working on that. His next lesson he earned his ice cream back and that has been a very effective tool in keeping him on track. He's doing some very good practicing now and learning the finer points of the songs in book 1 up through Allegro. He had a play-in with Ms. Stevens at which he performed reasonably well, given that these things happen from 6-7 pm.

In karate, he's learning his first form. It's called "Chee Gone One" or something like that. We don't really practice karate at home since he has enough to practice with violin and school and whatever else, but we have practiced the moves to the form a little bit, so Mr. Odom can see some progress in Benny and be encouraged in a small way. He's behaving REASONABLY well in class, given that he's still the littlest one. He goes for about 40 minutes with reasonable behavior and then his attention kind of dissipates. He absolutely loves Ms. Jonelle who is Mr. Odom's longsuffering wife -- she arrives at 6 and spends the second half hour of the class just working on Benny. He's learning some self-defense moves and he's learning his stances and whatnot -- he very much enjoys himself and he appears to be not irritating Mr. Odom too acutely, for now any way.

Swimming class is going great -- he's learning the front crawl. Last class he swam the length of the pool without going on his back to rest. It's been GREAT having him in a group because he loves racing the other kids and it's very motivational. Ms. Raelynn is excellent and he's having a blast at his lessons.

Preschool is fine. I really love Ms. Meredith's art projects, and Benny always seems like he's having a good time. He's not very communicative about what they say and do but sometimes something pops up that he learned in preschool, and that's always interesting. We started a homeschooling co-op with Gabe, Zoe, and Michael and their moms. Each mom teaches for 30 minutes and we have snack and recess and whatnot. We meet at church. It's been very interesting, and we're still working out the kinks in the organization and execution of it.

With hope to blog more regularly again...