A New Home

 The Wagg Shaw's have moved to a new home and so has this blog. You can find us at  https://www.waggshaw.com/

From the Back Seat (November 2015)

My favorite Russian is learning the difference between fiction and nonfiction literature. This morning on the way to school, he interrogated me on all the book titles of which he could recall and I helped him sort them into the appropriate category. He then proceeded on to television shows, then things people had told him. When we got to the urban legend of there being crocodiles in the sewer, I sighed and informed him that the concept was undoubtedly fiction. Despite the fact that we were driving in the blinding snow with temperatures hovering at freezing, he wasn’t willing to accept the fact that there were no giant reptiles living in the sewers of Denver, Colorado.

 

This is why I pity the people that try out reason my son:  “Mom, is Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs a fiction or non-fiction guy?” I explained that Mike Rowe was a real person not just a character on a tv show. The voice in the back seat then suggested that we call Mike Rowe and ask if he thought there were crocodiles in our sewer. I reiterated my views on reptiles in the snow. The response was “Maybe we can send an email and invite him for a cup of tea and a cracker, to be polite, and then he could look in our sewer for a crocodile.” At this point, I said “Sure, we can give that a whirl.”  This is why it might be MANY YEARS before we give this child open access to the internet.

The Voice From The Back Seat

D: "When you take Spruce for a walk, and he poops, how do you pick it up?"

Me: "Yes, responsible dog owner always pick up after their dogs. It's pretty gross, but I use a plastic bag on my hand to pick it up."

D: “If your pet is a cat, do you have to pick up its poop with your hands?”

Me: “Well, in the city, your have to train your cat to poop in a litter box and then you have to use a little shovel to scoop out the cat poop.”
D: “Do you have to pick from poop from a horse?”
Me: with a sigh “Well….if the horse lives outside in a pasture, you don’t have to, but if you horse is in a stall or small pasture, you might need to clean it up, but you get to use a tool with a long handle.”
D: “Can horses swim?”
Me: “Yes, they can swim.”
D: After a very long pause, “If you take your horse in deep water, does he need one of those special masks and that tube thing in this mouth?”
Me: While biting my cheek, “No, horses don’t need snorkel masks.”

Children are the reason we are crazy!

This picture has nothing to 

do with the post other than it 

is of the reason I am crazy.

As we were getting ready to head out the door to soccer this morning, I asked by darling child if he had brushed his teeth. After a long pause, he hesitantly said yes. As the mother of a seven year old, I know that most answered must be verified. My follow-up question was “If I feel your toothbrush, will it be wet?” This resulted in a big sigh, a hanging of the head, with a negative shaking motion.

Although he has been practicing his skills of deception lately, he is a horrible liar (thankfully!). I proceeded to pitch a bit of a fit about the fact that lying is not tolerated in this house. I will admit to getting a bit carried away with the topic and was possibly more dramatic that needed (maybe). I marched him into the bathroom and stood there like a drill sergeant, prepared to glare at him throughout the brushing. He reached for the tooth brush and touched the bristles. He turned to back to me with an enormous smile and said “Hey Mom, it’s wet, maybe I already brushed.”

And, that’s why my left eye was twitching before noon today.

My own mother often blamed my siblings and I for making her crazy and I always thought, she was just being irrational. I now get it entirely.

The Voice From the Back Seat

D: “Hey Mom, who is the guy singing this song?”

Me: “I don’t know the singers name, but the band is called the Scorpions.” (Rock You Like a Hurricane, was playing on the radio.)

D: “This is my new favorite song. I bet when this guy grows up, he’s gonna be a real good rocker.”


P: With a big smile, “I believe you’re correct.”

The Things You Learn on the Way to Work

Here's a list of the things I heard this morning from the voice in the back seat:

Dad is slow because he is even older than the Spruce (the dog).

If summer day camp caught on fire and the firemen came, it would be fire camp.

If a milk tanker would pull up next to the Royal Dairy home delivery truck, they could stick a big pipe in the delivery truck and fill all the jugs really fast.

If you don’t watch enough TV, you will get a headache.

Last but not least - “Hey Mom, you know why I talk so much?  I splain lots of things so you can understand things better.”

Big Sighs From The Back Seat

D:  Hey Mom - I need to grow really fast.

Me:  Why do you need to grow fast?

D: Cause I was born in a different country.

Me:  Why does being born in a different country necessitate you growing fast?

D:  (Big Sigh) That’s just the way it work, and you not get a vote.

Hmm - wonder where he gets that attitude??????

The Things You Hear at the Dinner Table

There were many disjointed bits in the middle, but here’s a synopsis of tonight’s dinner conversation:

Dennis: “Mom, you know what’s been on my mind?”

Me: (thinking - there’s a loaded questions, if there ever was one) “No, what have you been thinking about.”

Dennis: “It is very windy today.”

Me: “You are right. It was very very windy day.”

Dennis: “It was, and today we not take our who whos outside in the wind.”

Dave’s chin was instantly buried in his chest. I laid my fork down in an effort not to drop it while containing the insane urge to giggle.

Me: “That certainly sounds like a sensible idea. What sort of who whos do you play with at school?” (sometimes, I can't stop myself)

Dennis: “The big round kind that you twirl around.”

I lost my ability to speak while holding back tears of laugher.

Dave: “Dennis, do you mean hula hoops?”

Dennis: “Yeah, that’s what I said. We not take our who whos outside in the wind, cause they will blow away today.”

That’s gonna be funny for a long time.

From the Back Seat

 On our 7 minute drive to school, I was listening to a news story on the radio that mentions the White House and from the back seat I hear......

D: “I see that white house”

Me:  “That’s not the White House they were talking about.”

D: “Where’s that white house she talk about?”

Me:  “It’s a special building in Washington DC, where the President of the United States lives.”

D:  “Have we been to his house?”

Me:  “You haven’t been there, but I was in the White House once, a long time ago.”

D:  “Are there Army guys there?”

Me:  “There are lots special guards there.”

D: “Do they have guns?”

Me:  “Yes, some of them have guns.”

D: “Did the guy that lives there come and talk to you.”

Me: “No, I did not get to talk to the President of the United States.”

D: “That not very polite.  You should talk to people when they come to your house. Is that right, Mom?”   

Is it spring yet?

Last week was a rough one at our house, Dennis and I were both sick early in the week and he wasn’t feeling up to snuff throughout the rest of the week.  By Tuesday evening the fever was down and when he asked permission to remove the railing from the basement stairs, I decided he was well enough to go to school the following day.  Off to school he went, but the notes I received from the teacher each evening indicated that Mr. Personality might not have been up to his usual charming self.

On Wednesday, the teacher reported him as “wild” and not a good listener.  Thursday’s report was that he had shoved another student to the floor.  Upon cross examination, the defendant reported that the victim has said that he wanted to be a cat and that the action was justified because “We not like cats. So I pushed him.”  Not being a big fan of felines, I respect his point of view, but we had a long talk about not judging someone’s ideas and never inflicting injury.  When I picked him up from school on Friday, the teacher reported that when it was time to line up and leave the library, my son had leapt into a canoe that was part of a display and attempted to paddle away.  I’m hoping the teacher had a few glasses of wine on our behalf this weekend; although I did have a couple of extras just in case.

If all that wasn’t enough, Dennis received an invitation to a birthday party which he refused to attend because “That kid yells a lot and I think we can go to the beach instead.”  During the course of the weekend, any time we asked Dennis question, he replied “No, I wanna go to the beach and build sand castles.”

It’s been a long first winter in America.

More often than not, I could not tell you what I was thinking when I decide a child sounded like a good idea.  It’s not that I regret my decision, but it often crosses my mind that I have NO business being a role model for a small child, let alone be a parent.  The thought that saves me is that I’m not parenting just any child.  Somehow, some way, the stars lined to bring Dennis and I together. Call it karma, god, destiny, fate, providence, what have you, there had to be a master plan that put the two of us together with ever patient Dave.  Most days, I just hope that when the evil genius that we are raising takes over the world, he looks back fondly on the crazy old people that raised him.

Here are few of the reasons my eye left twitches:

Dennis recently asked if we could eat at the White Fence Farm restaurant. I asked him why he wanted to eat there and he replied, "They have a playground and they feed you chicken food." I told him that I wasn't interested in eating the same thing that chickens eat. There was a BIG sigh from the back seat and in total disgust he said "They not feed you corn there, they feed you dead chickens."

While listening to Lady Antebellum, Down Town
D: What's down town?
Me: It's where you go to dance and listen to music.
D: If you take girls there, will they kiss you?
Me:........maybe
D: I take girls there.

After being in bed for a half hour, Dennis came into the living room and said that if he put his hand on his chest he could feel his heart beating and it was really fast and might pop put of this chest. I assured him that his heart would be just fine and that he needed to get back into bed. About half way up the stairs, he yelled "I not have a banana today, maybe I eat one now." Since my heart was then beating rapidly and my left eye was twitching, I strongly urged he get his bum to bed - without a banana.

As the week progressed, my child had gotten slower and slower in getting ready for school. I was hounding him to hurry up to the breakfast table, hurry up to finish breakfast, hurry up and brush his teeth, hurry up and get dressed. Five minutes before we needed to walk out the down, I went upstairs and discovered him standing in there in his Super Hero undies, marvelling at the circuitry inside an old cell phone. I strongly recommended he get some clothes on and he responded with “but Mom, there’s some really cool stuff in here.” He went to school that day with uncombed hair.

As my foot hit the bottom step, the voice from the living room yelled, "Hey Mom, I watching News 9 and it’s a Bronco day today, there a volcano in Matra (Sumatra) and good thing we not there live there cause it hurts you a lot and they have a big boat on a big lake that breaks big ice. What we have for breakfast?"

From the back seat

I know it's been way to long and I won't bother to make excuses, so here's a snippet from a recent drive time conversation.

From the back seat

D:  “Hey Mom, can you do that thing outside?”

Me: “What thing?”

D: “That special thing. You not do that special outside, right?”

Me: (trying to keep my mind out of the gutter) “I don’t know what thing you’re talking about.”

D: “That special thing that you do with Dad.”

Me: dead silence

D: “That special thing where dad gived you that ring.”

Me: “Do you mean my wedding ring?”

D: “Yes!  You not get weddinged outside, right?”

Me:  “Yes, you can get married outside.”

D: “That not a good idea.”

Me : just because I had to know “Why isn’t it a good idea to get married outside?”

D: "Cause you drop the special ring in the grass and you not find it anymore.  That not good."

This is why I don't listen to the radio much these days.

 

Some things NEVER change

We have returned to the USA and have finally surfaced from the pandemonium of an international relo with 5 weeks’ notice (more about that later).  In the 3 weeks since landing in Denver, we have bought a house, two cars, and a whole lot of clothes. Having survived 3 snow storms in as many weeks, we’re starting to find a new normal.  Just to prove it, I thought I share the following with you.

I know many of my friends and family find amusement if not outright hilarity in the wacky escapades of me and the Russian.  It now appears that total strangers find us entertaining as well.  While we were in the grocery store recently, a lady informed me that she’d like to follow us through the store listening to our conversation.  Here are the highlights of what she overhead:

P: Dennis, please stop reorganizing the shelves.

D: But mom, they very messy.

P: They are not messy; the shelves are just not fully stocked.

D: I can fix it.

P: I know you can, but I would like to get done with the shopping SOON and it’s not your job to straighten of the shelves.

D: Whose job is it?

P: There are people who work here that will fill the shelves up.

D: What his name?  Why he not do it now?

P:  I don’t know their names, but I promise you that this evening after we go home, the people with that job will come and fill up the shelves and tidy everything up.  Can we PLEASE keep moving??????

D: Hey mom, what’s my job?

P: (BIG SIGH) To be a good kid and do what your mommy asks.

D: Oh

Minutes later in the seafood section

D: HEY MOM, THIS FISH STILL HAVE HIS HEAD ON!  AND IT HAVE TAIL AND FLIPPERS ON TOO!!!!!!

P: Yes, it does.  That is a trout.

D: Hey mom, whose job is it to take their heads off?

P: The butcher

D: Why he not do his job?

My next stop was the wine section.