Ryan to Stephen:      Where’s the mustard?

Stephen to Ryan:      We don’t need any mustard.

Ryan to group:          What kind of a dinner is this?

Ryan: “Dad…!  What the heck are you doing?”

A week ago, Michelle went in to check on Alyssa, because Alyssa usually kicks off her covers before finally going to sleep, and then she’s ice cold in the mornings.  Alyssa is also not a very sound sleeper, so she half-woke up when Michelle covered her up.

Alyssa: “Oh… hi, mom.  I was dreaming.  The sprinkles are getting checkmarks.”  (very serious face) “They are getting checkmarks for the rest of their lives.”

Yesterday, Santa Claus called the house to talk to Ryan and Alyssa.  They talked for a while about what Ryan wanted for Christmas, and then:

Santa: “Ho, ho, ho… that’s wonderful.  Would you like to talk to Rudolph now?”

Ryan: (not missing a beat) “I don’t think reindeer can talk, Santa.  They’re not people.”

I’m feeling very blessed these days.

But in the last few months, he’s really just powered through, and gotten to the point where he’s really reading.  He can sound out unfamiliar words, getting the sounds wrong only sometimes (mostly vowels, because English can be tricky like that), and once he’s seen a really unfamiliar word that appears more than once in a story, he can recall it for the rest of the story without trouble, and can remember it the next time he reads the book.  His current favorite book is about a caterpillar who spins a cocoon and who at one points eats a salami, and although some of those words gave him trouble on the first read, he doesn’t even hesitate on them anymore.

Even letter combinations I’d classify as ‘really tricky’ no longer trip him up.  I taught him how the gh in night doesn’t make any sound (“N-I says nye, G-H says <mouth open without saying anything>, T says tuh, so N-I-G-H-T says nye, <pause>, tuh.  Night.”), and he immediately picked up on the obvious words like fight, right, and sight — but it was still startling to see him not trip over bought, only making the slight mistake of pronouncing it like boat.

It’s not just reading comprehension, either, it’s also spelling.  He can take a word he’s never heard before and pretty quickly guess at how it’s spelled, which amazes me when you give him a word like amaze and he comes back with A-M-A-Z.  And he can do the reverse, and he can take a string of letters spoken out loud and turn them into words, which startled Michelle and I when we were talking about having I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M, and Ryan said “I want ice cream too!”

(Of course, being a child of the Internet Age, he also makes some pattern-matching mistakes when sounding out words; his initial attempt at saying the letters in the word welcome resulted in “W-E-L-dot com-E”.)

All of the above is just to give a little more insight into what happened yesterday.  The whole family was outside; Michelle was cleaning the big dog’s ears, I was just hanging around, Ryan and Alyssa were alternately chasing and being chased by the little dog.  When I went inside to clean up from dinner, Ryan followed me, initially to ask me how I came inside (he’s got ‘how’ and ‘why’ confused a little right now), but then he helped a bit and dawdled in the kitchen.

Not too long after that, the microwave switched on.  I whirled around to see Ryan standing right next to the microwave, his eyes wide and his finger still hovering near the buttons.  He didn’t say anything, which is pure Ryan (Alyssa would have said “I didn’t do it!” almost immediately), just stood there with a cross between a mischevious grin and abject horror on his face.

More laughing than angry, I crossed the kitchen and turned off the microwave.  ”Ryan,” I asked, “what on Earth are you doing?”

“I was wanted some popcorn,” he said.

I got what I’d imagine is that look of utter bewilderment that I get when my son says something that is perfectly reasonable and still makes no sense.  I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “What?”

He points at the microwave, where there is a button I have never seen that says POPCORN.  ”Popcorn, dad.”  He says this in that patronizing tone he gets sometimes, as if I’m a bumbling but lovable buffoon.

After a moment, I laugh.  ”I’ll get you some popcorn later, Mister Guy.  Don’t play with the microwave, ok?”

He says “Okay!” and then he’s off playing outside again.

Me: “I love you, little Mister.”
Ryan: “I love you, big Mister.”
Me: “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ryan: “All right.” (or “I’ll see you in the morning.”)
Me: “Night night!”
Ryan: “Night night!”

Then he decided we should ‘tease’ by repeating the last word of every line, so it became, for example, “I love you, little Mister Mister.” We did that for about a week, and one night he broke out with this:

Me: “I love you, little Mister Mister.”
Ryan: “I love you, potato.”
Me: “… I’ll see you in the morning morning.”
Ryan: “I’ll see you in the morning, swingset.”
Me: “Night night night.”
Ryan: “Night night, lampshade.”

He insisted I tease with him like this, so we did that for about a week, coming up with new silly names to call each other every night.

Now he’s settled us down into the following sequence:

Me: “I love you, french fry.”
Ryan: “I love you, salad.”
Me: “I’ll see you in the morning, cheese.”
Ryan: “I’ll see you in the morning, salad.”
Me: “Night night, McDonald’s.”
Ryan: “Night night, salad.”

I don’t know what to make of the fact that he calls me ’salad’ constantly.

VeggieTales are the new obsession for my kids.  We watch them over and over and over… If you don’t believe me, just hang out with Ryan for a little while.  He’s likely to either sing you a song from one of the shows, or recite the dialogue – with his dad.

Tonight we were watching one we’d never seen, called “An Easter Carol.”  It teaches the story of Easter (though oddly it never mentions Jesus’s name).  Near the end of the story, Ryan says out loud – to no one in particular – “I love Jesus.” 

Yeah, okay, I got teary.

As Stephen turned to take her upstairs, I turned back to the kitchen… Just in time to see Ryan at the door to the pantry, a bottle of Hungry Jack Lite syrup rising to his lips.

The most I could do was gulp “UH!” as I doubled over in laughter.  He jumped about a foot in the air and looked at me sheepishly, the syrup bottle hovering a few inches from his mouth. 

We now store the syrup on the top shelf.

Tonight, though, there wasn’t anything going on.  We elected to goof around on our computers in the den, which is removed slightly from the staircase.  Michelle was researching one of her favorite subjects — Josh Duhamel — and I was working on one of my various software projects.  It was pretty quiet, and we hadn’t heard a peep from the kids since we put them to sleep.

As it happens, we got up together.  Michelle wanted to get something to eat, because apparently a couple of bite-sized mini corn dogs doesn’t make a full meal; I had to let the dogs out, because they were starting to whine at the kitchen door.  So we both headed to the kitchen together.  When we got there, we heard Alyssa start to cry in her room, so after I let the dogs out I headed upstairs to see what the problem was –

– and almost tripped over Ryan, who was laying on the top two stairs, sound asleep.

I took care of Alyssa, who had apparently had a bad dream, and tucked her back into bed, then went back to check on Ryan.  Michelle was in the process of picking him up.  He didn’t really even wake up that much, just let out a long sigh and snuggled into his mom while he got carried back to his bed.

Little ducky Duddle
Went swimming in a puddle,
Went swimming in a puddle quite small.

Said he “It doesn’t matter
If I splash or splatter;
I’m just a ducky, after all.  Quack quack!”

Of course, Ryan didn’t have it all down, so he sung the following abridged & revised version:

All duckies live in puddles;
We’re living in a puddle.
I’m just a little ducky after all, quack quack!

Personally, I like the modus ponens feel of Ryan’s version, even if it’s not a rigorous proof.  And his audience didn’t mind one whit.

When I watch TV downstairs, I sit where I have a line of sight to the top of the steps, but it’s usually so dark that I can’t make them out.  Tonight while Stephen and I were watching TV, we heard the floor creak.  We looked at each other.  I peered into the darkness, but didn’t see anything moving.  So Stephen asks into the darkness, “Is somebody on the stairs?”

Out of the dark, quietly but matter-of-factly, the answer comes from Ryan.

“Nope.”

Ryan also stated rather matter-of-factly that he also got two checkmarks today.   We weren’t sure what that was all about, so Daddy asked.  Apparently Ryan received his checkmarks for not listening and not cleaning up.  Wow.  All I can say is they sure are tough in preschool.

I tried to find out what happens when you get too many checkmarks.  In my fifth grade class, if you got your name on the board it was a warning, but a checkmark by your name and you had to copy dictionary words.  Yes, the dreaded dictionary words – where you choose one word beginning with each letter (25 total, since you get to skip X) and write its pronunciation, full definition and all variants.  (I hated that assignment, but since my 5th grade teacher was also my cousins’ uncle, I had to grin and bear it.)

When you get too many checkmarks at Ryan’s school, however, the punishment is quite astonishing.  Ryan looked Stephen straight in the eye and said, “When you get three checkmarks, you have to go upstairs to the little babies’ room and change their poopy diapers!”

Oh my!  (A complete fabrication, but disturbing nonetheless!)