Calvinisms

"Excuse me Sir, I have a comment"

Now that Calvin has been in primary for over three months, I was hoping that his sitting-quietly-and-listening skills would improve. Sadly, this is not the case. He truly believes that if anyone is talking, it needs to be him.

Instead of fighting this behavior, our kind leaders asked Calvin to give his first talk a few weeks ago. Calvin was thrilled at the opportunity to finally get behind the microphone. When the time arrived for him to go up to the mike, I was right beside him getting ready to whisper into his ear word-for-word what he planned on saying. Instead of waiting to be told what to say, he lowered the mike directly in front of his mouth and started without me (though it had nothing to do with his actual talk).

After lots of help from teachers and discussions with mommy and daddy, we've finally gotten the point across to him that sometimes he just needs to listen to what others have to say and that if he wants to make a comment, he should to raise his hand. The only thing that seems to have gotten through to him is the raising hand thing. Of course, he doesn't wait until called on, he just raises his hand and says, "Excuse me Sir, I have a comment." (It's probably worth mentioning that all of our primary leaders are women.) This is usually amusing enough to the person speaking that they stop and listen to whatever random thought Calvin feels like sharing and thus the behavior remains enforced. Still, I'm going to say that it's a step in the right direction.


"You're my Best Player"

Calvin hates to say goodbye to anyone. Lately, right before we leave anywhere, he's started coming up with dramatic farewells. For instance, a commonly used one for RB as he's heading out the door is, "Daddy, you're my beeesssst daddy." He always delivers these lines with his puppy dog eyes, nodding his little head, making the most adoring/sappy look imaginable.

My favorite goodbye for the week came when it was time to leave after playing at a friend's house. At the appropriate time, the little schmoozer got all sentimental and said, "Thanks for letting me come over. You're my beeesssst player."

"I know, he's my fire hydrant."

Calvin loves firefighters. Yet for some reason, he can never remember the term "firefighters" and instead always refers to them as "fire-hydranters" (this could be because of the game we used to play in the car of spotting fire hydrants, but still, I thought the term firefighter would be cool enough for him to remember).

Today as the boys were playing, I overheard him explain to Noah that they were both "fire-hydranters". Calvin hates to be wrong, so as I started to correct him once more, telling him, "You mean fireFIGHTERS," he interrupted me and said, "No mom, I know, he's my fire HYDRANT." So then, just to save face, he acted like he meant to say hydrant and proceeded to attach a pretend hose to Noah, who of course just stood there and laughed.

"Mommy, I made a bad choice."

This line is one that is, sadly, used too often by Calvin. When he says it, I always have to take a deep breath and brace myself for something I don't want to see. The most recent use of it took place after he had colored all over our one nice rug with a black crayon.

The most memorable time happened a while ago on a trip with RB's family. The short version is that we suckered Uncle Itchy into watching Calvin and his Uncle Will. After Will fell asleep and Calvin was presumed asleep, he got his hands on the hotel's mini-bottles of shampoo and bubble bath and then dumped it all over poor sleeping Willie's eyes and face. When we got back to the room, the first thing out of Calvin's mouth, before anything was explained, was, "Mommy, I made a bad choice." Just a bit of an understatement.