What If You Laugh

My children carry on as if I am not speaking so often that I sometimes wonder if I am. One time I even took my son in to get a hearing test! His hearing was fine. Apparently they are not motivated to hear me. Or they prefer the tv. Or something.

At any rate it was my belief that they had selective deafness. When they wanted to hear me they did and the rest of the time my voice is sort of like an annoying buzzing in their ears. Today I learned I was wrong.

I was driving the kids to school, lost in a train of thought, when suddenly I heard myself talking from the backseat. I listened, and sure enough it was me–or at least my words, the voice belonged to my son. He was lecturing my daughter on the price vs value of the American Girl doll bed his sister wanted to purchase. My jaw dropped as I heard my words coming out of his mouth. (This from the child that begs for $300 lego sets. Apparently legos have a much higher value to price ratio in his view!)

Never fear, it was just moments later, when I heard myself coming from my daughter as she corrected my son’s behavior. The more I listened, the more it felt like I had two parrots in the back seat.

Some of the things were fairly impressive, some, not so much. Apparently I don’t always speak with brilliance. Or joy. I might even be crabby from time to time.

Plus it has me thinking, exactly what have I said when I thought they were not listening?! Oh dear. . .

Meanwhile, they are SO busted. “I didn’t hear you.” is no longer an excuse for anything in this house!

We just returned from a visit with my sister. She has no children of her own, so with no risk of retaliation, she is free to spoil mine rotten. She thinks of all sorts of activities and games to play; the other day she put on the Limbo song and they put together a make shift Limbo stick. Their rules were loose as to what form was acceptable, so when the stick was pretty low, she laid down on the floor and began to scootch. It became clear that her “Buttons” were not going to make it under the stick, so she said, “I can’t make it, I give up.” At which point, my dearest son said, “I’ll help you” and proceeded to place his hands on her Buttons and push down!

Game over.

As I said, he is creative and a problem solver.

P.S. Neither she nor I wet our pants from laughing. At least not much. He now thinks that her buttons are her ticklish spot.

P.P.S. Once again, difficult to come up with appropriate pictures!