Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Nipple-ation


There are things your kids say that just stay with you. You know those precious, comical first words. All four kids have said brekk-tust, icesk, and ore-da-ments.

When we moved here Spielberg was just 5 1/2 years old and there was a whole crop of boys his age (there still is, actually). One of them, Buster, had mastered the art of getting his way. He was always at the ready with a, "If you ...., then I won't play with you" or "If you don't let me have that, you have to go home."

Our son laid his 5 year old frustrations out for us one evening after we'd seen such a disturbing display. We explained to him that what this friend was doing was wrong and that it was called manipulation. We told Spielberg that if he was ever made to feel uncomfortable or pressured when this boy was around that he could say No and should not feel badly about coming home. (I was mostly worried about this boy using Spielberg to his advantage, ie, "If you don't get me those cookies from the kitchen, I won't be your friend," thus making Spielberg the scapegoat for his snack pilfering penchant).

Imagine our surprise when he turned and used our reasoning on us.

I reminded him, "Spielberg, if you'd like to play with something else you need to clean up the legos you've used first."

"But mom, you're just nipple-ating me."

Cue the questioning eyebrows.

"You know just like Buster does. That's nipple-ation."