never trust a calvin

We've already mentioned Calvin's shady racing strategies, but this determination to be best/first/chosen at all costs is spilling over into other venues as well...

This past Sunday in junior primary, the kids were playing a game for music time. One boy/girl was chosen to hide our "musical dinosaur" beanie baby while another boy/girl, who was to find the dinosaur, waited out in the hall. The rest of the children's job was to help the finder know where to look by singing louder the closer he/she came to the hidden toy.

Of course Calvin was dying to be chosen the entire game and only in the last round did I finally give in and pick him to be the "hider". He was so excited and stated that he was going to find the "best spot ever!" to hide the dinosaur. After it was hidden he then sat in the front row to make sure he could watch every move of the "finder".

The rather timid little boy who was chosen to "find" slowly walked back into the room. He was having a rough time figuring out which way he should go and looked to some of the singing children for more help. Of course every child was very eager to divulge their exciting secret and most started then to point exactly to the hiding place. Calvin however, took it upon himself to throw his perceived competition off the trail- because how good of a hider are you if the person looking actually finds it- and so very loudly said "It's somewhere over there." Of course pointing in the opposite direction of the sought after musical dinosaur. The little boy obediently followed Calvin's loud and confident directions. (I'm pretty sure that act went along with our message of trying to be more Christ-like.)

Calvin, you can thank your daddy for those genes... or maybe Grammy.

back to the ozarks

We were able to sneak down to West Plains last week to see the family - we left strategically at 3 am so the boys would sleep during the car ride. Our feeble attempt at planning ahead was thwarted, however, when Calvin woke up in the transfer to the car and, once realizing what was happening, began chanting "Missouri, Missouri, Missouri" with a gleam in his eye. It's pretty hard to compete with Uncle Willy.

Pit stop at the arch.

Benefit of months of flooding is that everything turns unbelievably green.

Itch was back to help teach the little guys how to play.

Opa took everyone fishing, and everyone had wiggling fish to reel in soon.

Carolee in her snazzy mud boots was up to the task of trying to keep Noah
from charging the herd of cows.

Louis and Noah traveling in the bus - armed with plenty of crackers.

Willy and Calvin only had to be bribed with one bag of rainbow popcorn to cheer Louis and Sidney on in their respective soccer games.

busy, busy...

Here are just a few of the things we've been up to lately:

finding out that dots ice cream may look pretty, but they are too cold for some little boys

enjoying a visit from Grammy and Grandpa to celebrate his 51st birthday by running a half marathon with me and then (sharing)...

banana cream pie from a great restaurant called Schmidt's we discovered on their visit

RB having ankle surgery and being stuck on crutches for two weeks

loving every second of Ohio's spring

Little Boys

Today started with a visit to the Franklin Park Conservatory. They have an amazing exhibit that features "hundreds of butterflies from more than 100 species from around the world". To my dismay, there were lots of class field trips going on and the garden walkways were pretty crowded.

The boys were not in the least bit hindered by groups of students and teachers and managed to worm their way to the front of a class. This particular class was attentively listening as their teacher described the Blue Morpho butterfly resting on a nearby plant. As the narrative continued, the unfortunate insect decided to go once more into flight - directly into the airspace of a certain little Noah. Before I could react, and to the shock and horror of all the students and teachers watching, Noah proceeded with his best Karate Kid imitation to catch and squish the butterfly in his fist. Embarrassingly, it only got worse as I had significant difficulty wrenching open his clenched, dimpled fingers.

RIP

After nap time, we took a short trip to the library. We have wonderful libraries in our area and they are apparently a huge hit with the retired community as well who were filling the atrium's sitting/reading area. En route to the checkout desk, we had to pass by the comfortable reading chairs- or as Calvin calls them "thinking chairs" (they really do resemble the Blue's Clues chair).
I must quickly interject that I have never seen Calvin do anything like what happened next, and I'm pretty sure I can't even blame this one on RB...

As Calvin passed by an empty "thinking chair" he pressed his face against the arm, and, maintaining contact, continued walking... effectively wiping his nose against the entire length of the nice piece of furniture. The little old lady sitting in the next chair watched with disgust as I, for the second time today, grabbed my boys and quickly left the area.

We Love Noah

In case anyone[else] is worried about our lack of Noah posts, I assure you that this little boy is in no way overlooked. While he has added a few additions to his vocabulary, he still communicates mainly through gestures and looks, and these just don't translate to blog posts.

His latest accomplishments include shoving an entire banana into his mouth, holding five monster trucks in his little chubby hands at the same time, finally throwing a ball up onto the top bunk, and hiding everything that is dear to RB- car keys, xbox controller, and the tv remote.

Here are just a few of his looks- see if you can translate...

"dog"

Mermaid

I've never had to worry about Calvin getting into fights or hurting other children- usually he just runs to mommy. As we discovered last week however, apparently he can only be pushed so far.

One of Calvin's friends was over for the afternoon and they had been playing nicely on the porch for quite some time when I noticed their voices getting louder. Before too long, Calvin was calling me. As soon as I reached them he then instructed me to tell his friend that he was NOT a mermaid. I told them both that of course Calvin wasn't a mermaid and that seemed to end the conflict... or so I thought.

Three minutes later I heard a little boy howling in pain and ran to see what happened. I found Calvin holding his toy lacrosse stick behind his back and his sweet little friend in tears and grabbing his head.

"He kept calling me a mermaid" was Calvin's only reply.

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.