Vintonville - The life and times of a guy, his Lady-Friend, a Little Dude and a Little Sis.

Another installment of the ongoing adventures in the lexicon wonderland of Little Dude Vinton. Little Sis Vinton is totally on the cusp of entry here, but “Oooooh… maaaaaaaaan!!” and “Papa! Lesgo! C’mon!” while super cute, don’t need much explanation. Until then…

Little Dude had a bad day at school yesterday. And you know as much as it sucks to hear that as a parent, that’s just part of being a kid… and if I can remember those kids on the bus making fun of my drawings and grow up to talk about it without having served time and still thinking I’m awesome, I know he can too. So I relayed my bad day experiences in Elementary school to make Little Dude feel better, including the time Some fro-headed kid named Jamie beat my head against the pavement and pushed me into a ditch like a sissy. Little Dude wasn’t down with that:

“If someone tries to hurt me where I’ll be in the hospital I’ll definitely knock them out. They won’t even wake up for 10 days because I’d definitely knock them out.“

Little Dude likes a little time alone when he wakes up. I’ll usually hear our door shut very quietly and a minute later hear a chair sliding across the kitchen floor as Little Dude raids the “treat cupboard” for cookies. Unfortunately for him, the other day Mama was up before he’d had his fill of wandering the house unsupervised.

“Mama! I didn’t want you to wake up! You just give me rules and I want to be Free!!”

Whenever I’m about to drop the new hotness (aka- some movie scene, trailer or new song) on Little Dude, I usually tell him I’m about to let him see/hear something that’ll blow his mind. I’ve been on a Hans Zimmer kick lately and both Little Dude and I bob our heads and pretend we’re AWESOME to “Retreat and Revielle“. Still, I snuck in a little of Michael Kamen’s “Band of Brothers” theme song to even out Zimmer’s swarthy machismo. While the BOB’s theme moves me to chills virtually every time I hear it, Little Dude wasn’t impressed. At all.

“How can this song blow my mind when it’s a church song?”

Little Dude’s been on a carrot kick. On a recent drive through a low-cloud covered Sardine Canyon, he let us know why; Dude can see what the normal human eye can’t:

“I can see super good because I’ve been eating lots and lots of carrots. I can even see the mountains through all that fog.”

Spring soccer season is in full effect. In a recent game, Little Dude was battling another player for the ball and went down. As he got up and trotted away he was limping and wincing in pain. The coach called out, “Hey- you OK?”

Little Dude’s diagnosis: “Shew! Yeah, I just popped two blood vessels.”

The other day I was sitting in the living room doing something (probably) totally important as Little Dude went off to use the potty when I hear this man-sized thunderclap come out of the bathroom “TRRRRRRRRT!!

Me: Holy Cow! Was that you!?

Little Dude: “Yeah! And it bumped me up and down!”

Little Dude wants pets. Before the chickens we’re now raising, Little Dude would take ANYTHING. Caterpillars. Wasps. Spiders. A few days before taking on chickens, Little Dude was chasing a fly around the house.

“Papa! I caught the fly. I’m going to turn it into my pet. A fesity, fesity, feisty pet. It’s name will probably be Joshua.”

Pause…

“Yep– Joshua.”

Five-year-old sassafras continues. Lady-Friend asked Little Dude to use the bathroom and he refused. “I’m gonna stand out here in the hall until you turn into a Gramma!”

Getting ready for church at 8 in the morning isn’t fun. Especially when you have to put on a cold “church shirt” that’s been hanging in a closet: 

“It’s like it’s made out of straight snow and sewn into a shirt then icicles were broken off and rubbed all over it!”

Spring has been rainy. And cold. And rainy. And floody. Still, there’s a positive spin for almost anything, so I tried to throw a little positive action in on a cool and rainy day with the “April showers bring May flowers” line. Which was great and all, but Little Dude is a realist:

“April showers bring may flowers and and April thunderstorms bring scared people!”

Little Dude sometimes likes when I come home from work. The other day he was playing with his planes and wanted someone to play with… so he tried some enticement:

“You might want to come home right now, Papa… because there’s a huge airplane battle going on here.”

When I was a kid, I never got to sit in my bed and read (not that I wouldn’t sneak it out anyway). So by crap… when it’s bedtime around our house, it’s bedtime! At least in theory. I usually cave. So on nights where I stand firm, it doesn’t keep Little Dude from trying: “Papa I’m as bored as a person can get. I’m stuck in bed here doing nothin’.”

The other night we were saying prayers when Little Dude sent this gem out: “Please bless the rich people to share their money with people who don’t have anything. And that they can get a job and buy stuff so they can be rich and share. And please bless everyone. Except the bad guys.”

Every night before Little Dude hits the sack, we “talk”. It’s about five minutes where he asks questions about four categories he’s officially chosen: bones, airplanes, movies/video games (not that he plays any) or science. The other night, I got this one: “Hey Papa– are turtles reptiles or Februrarians?”

Little Dude has a weird phobia of two things: obese and old/wrinkly. I’m not sure where it came from as I was pretty “fluffy” for his first four years and as a baby he used my moobs as a pillow on too many occasions. That and we don’t make comments about weight in our house– especially about others. Maybe it’s his Mama’s skinny hotness– I dunno. But the other day we were talking about girlfriends and I asked if a heavier set girl I saw him hanging out and talking with would be a good girlfriend. “What? Why would you want a fat girl friend? A big fat girl would take up all the space in duck, duck, goose.” Oh.

I’m a sucker for mushy proclamations and tell my kids and Lady-Friend what they mean to me. Maybe too much. The other day I told Little Dude “Man, I’m so glad you’re my boy.”

“Yep- I am everything you wished for.”

So after working out in the morning I came upstairs to see Little Dude dutifully playing with his Star Wars guys. It’s great that he can happily play by himself, but sometimes I feel guilty and realize I need to be taking moments to get in there with him. His response kinda drove that point home:

Me: Wanna play a game?

Little Dude: “I’d LOVE to. Why wouldn’t I want to!?”

Of course, for every bit of cuteness that springs from the mind of Little Dude, there’s also a fair amount of crankitude.

“Want some pancakes?”

“No.”

“Ok, wanna make your own breakfast?”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t even know how to MAKE breakfast!”

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