Skip to main content

Unpredictable

 It's always risky to take a shower while the children are loose...unsupervised.  I walked out of the bathroom the other morning to be met by one three-year-old in her underwear wielding a hammer and a badminton racket while the other three-year-old was covered from fingertip to forehead in Smokey the Bear stamps.  

I gave them the only logical response in that moment, "Out of my room, please."  And locked the door.  

After a five minute pause, I reentered their world to learn that the tennis racket and hammer were for destroying monsters.  Naturally.  The stamps?  She just wanted them.  The big brothers?  They made their exit as soon as they heard me coming.  

Kids are infinitely unpredictable.  

The boys are treasure hunters as of late.  Fischer's prize: rocks.  He is confident he will discover gold, but in the meantime, pretty rocks are a close second.  He found some real gems the other day...well, not real gems, just colorful rocks that he cleaned up.  He negotiated with his brother on their worth.  Sawyer confidently told him he would pay a thousand for the largest one, although Fischer felt it was probably worth substantially less.  It's hard to argue with nine-year-old confidence when you're seven.  

Turns out, Fischer is a salesman.  After he cleaned up his cache, he met up with a neighbor friend who was in the market for a nice Christmas gift for his mom.  Fischer showed him his precious stones and gave an account of their supposed market value, "they are worth thousands." But this was a good friend, so he was willing to make a deal.  For the low, low cost of five dollars, he'd part with the best and brightest of his collection.  His friend, knowing to take advantage of a steal like that, quickly emptied his piggybank and returned with a ten dollar bill.  Seeing as he didn't have change, Fischer didn't some quick thinking, made a couple of calculations and determined he could actually part with two of his best rocks for $10.  They made the exchange, both very happy with their end of the bargain.  Fischer tossed the rest of the rocks over the friend's fence just in case he needed a couple more later and ran home to tell me about his generous exchange.  Meanwhile, his friend explained to his father how he had made a purchase of precious rocks worth thousands, for just $10, and excitedly explained that they were for his mom for Christmas.

To the dad's credit, he didn't immediately call me.  

I gently told Fischer not to make any more sales without first clearing it with Ross or myself.  After, having him assure me he would not, I texted the friend's family, apologized for my son selling their son our yard debris, and we came up with a plan to return the $10 without diminishing the generosity of the gift to his mom.  It was a bit of a dance.  In the end, it all worked out, and hopefully we all learned a lesson about good commerce, prudent sales, fact checking, something!

...This kind of stuff never came up in parenting classes.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sheltering in Place

In the past three months Corona Virus has more or less turned the world on its head.  I feel almost guilty for not being more stressed or put out by the whole thing.  We have been extremely fortunate. What we thought was a most impractical move on our part, wound up being a huge blessing.  With our two boys and our two newborns, we moved out of our house with no yard in the city limits and into my parents' house in the country while waiting for our new house to be completed.  The weekend we moved "quarantine," "social distancing," and "shelter in place" became the new mantra of our state.   Moving in with my parents meant ten plus acres of play space and two extra able bodied adults to help even out the score with the four kids.  Win for the St. Clair's!  Unfortunately, my parents are beginning to realize they may have made an error in judgement.   Yesterday, Sawyer gave their cat swimming lessons.   Last week th...
1 comment
Read more

Bump in the Road

 If your kids aren't annoying you at least occasionally, then they probably aren't doing childhood right.  Ours are winning at childhood.  Actually, we came to the conclusion the other day that if they are annoying you all the time, then you probably aren't doing parenting right.  And when I say "you," I mean "we."   We weren't enjoying our kids recently, and we wondered if that meant other people were also finding them unenjoyable.  It made us finally pause and take a long hard look at what was bugging us about our kids.  We felt like we were in a perpetual state of irritation.  Once we made our list, and it was lengthy, we noticed a theme: attention.  Our kids were begging for our attention with every behavior.  It was annoying, but it was our fault, and it was fixable.   We started putting down phones and brooms and laundry and giving undivided and intentional focus to our kids throughout the day.  It wasn't a huge...
Post a Comment
Read more

Advanced Placement

 Not to brag or anything, but I think we are raising some very advanced children.  At two-years-of-age, our girls have already worked out the art of manipulation and deflection.  It's the antithesis of endearing.   They went missing the other day - the girls did.  That's never a good situation.  They were in the house, and I knew they were in the house, but I couldn't see or hear them.  Silence is the loudest alarm system.  Fischer took action and found them both in my bathroom.   "MOM!" I met them in the hall.  Carter was covered in clumps and blobs of hand cream. "Emi did it," was her unsolicited response.   "No," I told her.  "I think you  did it." That night I got ready for bed and pulled out my one "self-care" splurge - my face cream .  It was in my drawer where I always keep it.  The lid was screwed on.  And it was empty, wiped clean.  "EmmmeerrrrrSON!" Guilty.  They were both ...
2 comments
Read more