Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Behaving badly . . . all of us except for Phil, that is.

Yesterday at approximately 6:20 a.m. Noah strolled into our bedroom and announced that Adam was sick. Adam is NEVER sick (we are blessed with very healthy boys) so I wasn't sure if Noah meant that Adam was sick or if it just meant that Adam was sick of Noah waking him up pre-6:30 a.m. every day. Phil took the initiative to check it out (thanks, dear), and it turns out that Adam really was sick. He brought Adam back into our room and deposited him next to me in our bed. Noah, never one to be left out, climbed in on the other side of me and told me to scoot over to make room for Dad. Dad wisely determined that he would be better off just getting his day started, so I was left to doze off again, sandwiched between my fever boy and my squirmy boy. Needless to say, the dozing lasted for approximately 1 minute and 47 seconds before I decided that Noah would have way more fun watching dad get ready for work so I suggested that he go knock on the bathroom door. I then listened from my bed as Phil started to quiz Noah on his letter sounds while he shaved.


Phil: What says "duh"?
Noah: "Duh, duh, double-U.
Phil: Nope. D says duh.
Noah: Duh, duh starts with double-U.
Phil: No. Duh starts with D. Whu starts with W.
Noah: Oh.
Phil: What says Ahhhhh, ahhhhhhh?
Noah: Ahhhh, ahhhhh starts with aaahhhhR.
Phil: Not quite. O says ahhhhhh.
Noah: Ahhh, ahhhhhh, Octopus!
Phil: Yeah.

And so on until Noah showed that after months of working with him on his letters and his numbers he still only knows 2/3 of the alphabet and he still counts to twenty like this:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 12.

Every. Single. Time. He has some fundamental aversion to 16 and he thinks that the last number that is stated when counting to 20 isn't 20 at all, but 12. He is a ridiculously smart kid, but there are some things that simply don't seem to compute for him. And I believe without any doubt that he takes some kind of sick pleasure out of seeing me get frustrated. Noah probably could have potty trained himself at 18 months, but as soon as he realized the fun he could have with me he decided to go another route.

I digress. None of that was the real reason that I started this post. Here goes the real point. Last night after running a fever off and on all day and sleeping for a good part of the afternoon, Adam was feeling well enough to watch the movie that I had picked up for him earlier in the day. That morning he had reminded me that Planet 51 was to arrive at Red Box that very day and being the great mom that I am I thought I would surprise him by bringing it home to help lessen the pain of his illness. With the boys settled into our bed with their movie, Phil and I thought it would be safe to finally watch last Sunday's episode of the Amazing Race. All was going along quite nicely, without interruption (which is critical for us when watching the Amazing Race) when about a half hour into the show our bedroom door suddenly flew open and two screaming boys emerged. And when I say screaming, I am talking about the bloody murder kind that your mom used to talk about when you were a kid. I ran to the stairs and scooped Noah up while Adam passed me in favor of his dad. I took Noah back upstairs and eventually got him to calm down enough to tell me that Adam had bitten him. Whuuut!!!??! I asked him to say it again to make sure and then had him show me where the bite was so that I could conjure up some of my magical mom saliva to kiss it better. Once the crying and whimpering stopped (which really only took a couple of minutes - that Noah is a toughie!) I assured him that his brother was going to be in big trouble and I tucked him into his bed.

Then I went back downstairs to find a red faced Adam sitting on the couch next to his dad is fetal position. I then proceeded to lecture my sick boy (who really was feeling better so I'm not a complete jerk) and tell him that no matter what Noah did, biting is NEVER okay. He just looked at me with giant tears in his eyes and didn't offer any additional details. I then sent him to bed and told him that the movie was off, ignoring the glare that he returned.

I sat there still steaming, wondering what in the heck was in Adam's head that would cause him to bite Noah. After all, biting is a problem for moms of two and three year old kids, and Adam is eight. Phil, obviously sensing my confusion and aggravation, calmly offered up the following explanation:

(paraphrased from Phil)
I know that biting is never okay, but there is a somewhat reasonable explanation from Adam's point of view. They were laying on the bed watching the movie and for some unknown reason Noah decided that he wanted to start the movie over. Adam knows that Noah is not allowed to push the buttons on the remote and he didn't want to start the movie over so he told Noah to stop it. Noah kept at it (have I ever mentioned that Noah is persistent?) until Adam decided to call us for back-up. Before he could get his yell out, Noah grabbed Adam's face and covered his mouth and told him that he couldn't tell us. After trying unsuccessfully to push Noah off of him (have I mentioned that Noah is also freakishly strong and Adam still barely weighs 50 pounds so it's usually a pretty even fight when they go at it?) Adam reasoned that since Noah had already placed his hand in Adam's mouth, he would go ahead and apply some pressure with his teeth. It was at that point that Noah reconsidered his position and the screaming erupted.

I stayed mad for a little while, but now that I have a little more than 12 hours and some sleep to give me some perspective, for some reason I'm finding the whole thing kind of funny this morning. Is that bad?

3 comments:

Kristi said...

Sorry but that is not funny it's HYSTERICAL. What is it with these little Haitian boys that makes them so tough - Kobe takes down Javien like NOTHING too. At first Javien would go limp thinking he couldn't fight back because after all Kobe was just two and a baby. Now they brawl and I have to get in between them because Kobe always comes out on top!

Nathan said...

I don't think there's anything wrong with finding humor in something, especially when it really is funny.

Oh, and our daughter refuses to say 8 when she counts. She skips right from 7 to 9, despite all our efforts to throw the 8 in whenever we can.

Ging said...

It is funny. I put way too much pressure on my 8 year-old to respond to his 5 year-old sister, well, like I would. I can relate completely. A nights worth of sleep is worth a days worth of perspective