More Conversations with a 7 Year Old

Sometimes the conversations in this house don't get beyond a one-word answer. And I'm not talking about the kids...

*Scene* Watching the football game last Sunday

Carter: Daddy, I can see those cheerleader's belly buttons

Hubs: Uh... yep.

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More conversations with the 7 year old...

So as I mentioned the other day, we had a family dinner at my place this weekend. Carter has become fairly "Holy" over the past 6 months or so, and keeps offering to say the meal prayer. It's terribly cute, and I have to admit the very first time I heard him say one I nearly laughed out loud because of the cuteness and what he was saying. When we do bedtime prayers, he usually wants me to go first. I usually start out casually saying "Hi God, thanks for today...." etc. So I know where he's picked up the first line in his meal prayers when he begins it with "Hi God!". First he insists that we all join hands and bow our heads. He will peek up and call you out on your head bowing and eye opening if he catches you not being fully involved - and prayer time comes to a swift halt until said guilty party has fully complied. Then we heard something like this:

Carter: "Hi God! Thank you for our family and friends. Thank you for our aunties and uncles and grandparents. Thank you for making us born and growing us up. Thank you for Grammy and Grampy's birthday. Amen."

Could he be any sweeter? Just a side note, Grandpa Dunk usually finds the perfect words to use in a prayer for whatever occasion. Carter has dubbed him, The Prayer Man.... "Grandpa, you're the best prayer man!" I'm glad Carter has such good examples to follow!

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This is a conversation for both sides of my family, that happened just after the prayer this weekend. The Democrats and the Republicans. We have several of both I might add.... Mom using her sense of humor to tackle the awkward silence that began to happen as everyone was passing the food around the table, began with this...

Grammy: "So Carter, what do you think about the state of the world today"
Carter: "Oh, it's fine."
Grammy: "Well that's good Carter I'm glad it's fine - do you know who might win for President?"
Carter: "Um, no Gram."
Grammy: "Well, you have Clinton, Obama and McCain to choose from, who would you like to win?"
Carter: "Oh, I think Obama will win"
Family laughter inserted here.... and chides of "He Might" and "Ugg!" echoed around the table...

A silent pause as everyone composed themselves....and Carter curiously asks...

Carter: "What's an Obama?"

See, a little humor for both sides of my family! :)

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Day 14 - More Conversations with a 7 yr old...

Sometimes conversations are pretty interesting around here. To quote Forest Gump, our conversations are like a box of chocolates; You never know what you're going to get.

Do you own a Swivel Sweeper? How about Oxy Clean, Kaboom, Orange Glo or Bowl Bright? I don’t have any one of those, and it’s making my son really annoyed. Lately, he’s been a walking infomercial. He memorizes lots of things, but this has got to be over the top. He’s allowed to have a little TV time after school before dinner, and for some reason, the commercials shown in between these children’s shows are mini-infomercials. You know the ones – the overly excited man that dramatizes everything to the max and tells you all the reasons you need a product NOW – or your life will be horrible. My son falls for it, and insists that I need to be reminded every day about these products. I don’t poke fun at him, I simply tell him about the products we use instead that do the same thing. I tell him maybe when my products run out, I might get Oxy Clean or the like. This doesn’t always satisfy him, so he goes into ‘infomercial mode’ and gets all excited to tell me about these products and what they can do to ‘help me’…

Let’s start with the Swivel Sweeper: I hear this so often from him, that I too have memorized it.

Carter: “Mommy, you need the Swivel Sweeper! It picks everything up! To crumbs, to paper clips, to hair, and fuzz and everything! Forward, backward, and side to side and even picks the crumbs up in any direction. And it doesn’t push it all around, it picks it up and rolls it right in. Let the Swivel Sweeper do the work. Call 1-800-5947. You’ll get 2 swivel sweepers, one for each room too, Mommy!”

Me: “Carter I don’t need the SS, I have a vacuum cleaner, 3 brooms and 2 different kinds of Swiffers.”

Carter: “But Mommy, I can have one for my room! It picks mulch up when it comes out of my sneakers! And you can have one for downstairs to clean up your dirties. It told me it picks EVERYTHING up! That’s what you need to get, Mommy. It’s only $19.95. Do you have that much money, Mommy?”

Oh boy...

Now, to Oxy Clean: Another one I wake in the night from talking in my sleep about.

Carter: “Mommy, you need Oxy Clean Laundry Stain Remover. Do you got extreme stains? Then you need Oxy Clean Laundry Stain Remover.”

Me: “Carter, I use Tide in our laundry, but I have Shout in case we have a tough stain.”

Carter: “But Mommy, it overpowers greasy hamburger stains, even tackles tough grass stains. Your detergent doesn’t remove all stains, and bleach may whiten your laundry, but it’s a disaster if you spill it on dark clothes.”

Me: “I’m very careful when I need to use Bleach. Hey Carter, why don’t we work on some homework so you don’t have to do it later?” (me trying to change the subject)

Carter: “No, that’s ok Mommy. Hey Mommy, we can go to Walgreens and see if they have Oxy Clean! Maybe Mrs. Vitale (this is my friend who uses oxy clean and he SAW IT over there one day and I thought he might FAINT!) got her Oxy Clean at Walgreens?

Me: “No, probably not at Walgreens Carter.”

Carter: “There is an easy way to fight stains and brighten your laundry Mommy. Just pour Oxy Clean in the wash to remove stains, brighten colors and whiten whites. I promise you won’t miss the stains.”

Me: Trying very hard not to chuckle because of the cuteness going on around me!!

Carter: “Mommy, you should get both of those oxy cleans. There’s even a small one that I can use in case I get a grass stain on my pants, I can just spray it on! You know you can get Kaboom Bathroom cleaner too. Oxy Clean is for the laundry, and Kaboom protects everything in the bathroom when you spray it. Kaboom! and the stains are gone, Mommy. Do you have enough money to buy all of those? Do you have enough money to by three stain removers? That’s what you need to get at the store. Maybe you can get it at Walgreens. Maybe Marsh or Target Mommy! Where do they usually have it? I will go write it on your list.”

Then he starts on his hunt to find a little stain somewhere on the carpet and says “seeeee Mommy! You need this!”

I think I need to stop allowing TV time after school, or buy those products. What do you think?

Well , there’s a little peek inside a day in the life of us….

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Happy Birthday, Nana.

I miss you. 11/14/29-3/22/07

Day 13 - Bento anyone?

Have you joined the Bento craze? Obento is what the Japanese call a packed meal, usually lunch. Bento boxes have internal cubbies, containers and dividers, so that different kinds of foods can sit in their own little pretty spaces. There are neat lunchboxes to use (or you can improvise). Black seaweed sheets are used to decorate with faces using punches or premade cutouts. There are special cookie cutters, shapers, presses, picks and other accessories that contribute to this madness. In other words, cute lunches! It makes sense really, those smart Japanese folks who have done this for years, to present your food in an appealing way for the senses. We are visual people, and something seems to happen to a child (and grown ups too!) when their lunch is all cute and neat and sectioned.

My friend Haley mentioned this latest fad that was sweeping through her school. My first thought was that there was no way I was going to spend time pressing sandwiches into teddy bear face molds, or making hotdogs look like octopus characters. It would take forever to make cute little vegetable flower discs right? Or create a picture on his plate with the foods I’m serving right? Then I researched (because I have my fancy degree from The School of Google) this whole maddening craze. Guess what, I began to change my thought process a bit. And it really doesn’t take long to prepare your items – and some can be done in advance to use for the next few days. So now I have a few friends that have jumped into this Bento Box thingamabob with such gusto and have found the changes in their kids’ eating habits to be revolutionary! Kids. Are. Eating.

I personally, have only done a Bento style meal for Carter a handful of times. I want to embrace this, and am trying to do it, but my kid is making this difficult on me! Funny thing about children with Autism (and probably some without), is they like things “just so”. And “just so” to Carter means to have his lunch consist of the same things, every single day. Not only the content, but the shape and size. He prefers the 4-way triangular cut method on a peanut-butter only, white bread (but I can sneak in the whole grain white) sandwich. He wants 6 pretzels and 6 grapes – because he’s 6 years old. His juice box has to be in his lunchbox on the left. Bah! I have to resort to hiding such foods and pretending we’re out of them, so that I can send along something different in place of pretzels and grapes. Sometimes the sandwich can be substituted with peanut-butter crackers (thanks, Nana) because eating peanut butter crackers is in the genes.

Recently, he marched off the bus, into the house – and before I could ask him “how was your day?”, he began his diatribe (hands on hips and crunched up angry face in full swing staring me down) about how he never, ever, ever, NEVER wants to have Snowman shaped peanut-butter sandwiches again! After I regained my composure of shock, then laughter, I attempted to convince him that it was hip and cool, and fun that he got a surprise in his lunchbox! He demanded to know what happened to the plastic Ziploc baggies I used to use to put his goldfish and grapes into. He wanted to know why they were in “gray cups” (I used cute tinfoil muffin wrappers) and why I wrote on his napkin! Oh my….. I was in trouble. It’s going to be a little difficult to try the Bento shtick on Carter it’s looking like. I thought it might help him to discover how to be a little less rigid about things in life. I will keep trying, but in the meantime I will have to live vicariously through my friends who are having more success. There are thousands of pictures of Bento ideas on the ‘net, but I’m going to include just a few pictures of very basic and simple Bento Lunch ideas I’ve found.

Maybe you might want to try this out yourselves – either for your kiddos, or for your own dining pleasure!

You can click on each picture for a larger, more detailed look!

Day 7 - Conversations with Carter & some pictures

On Monday, Carter came home from school and was enjoying his usual after-school snack, when he started asking some peculiar questions. He asked first, "is the smoke alarm in my room going to go off when I'm asleep tonight?" I told him I didn't think so, but I inquired why he was asking that. I don't know was his first answer. Then he paused to take another bite and told me, "if your door is hot, you never open it!" A-ha - we're on to something. Time to reel this conversation in. Fire. They must have discussed fire at school. Sure enough, after asking him the question in several different ways, he told me that a Firefighter visited his class today and taught them what to do in case of a fire at his house.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately anyway, because one project in his Tiger Cub handbook that we need to work on is coming up with a fire plan for our family. I worry about this plan we come up with, because Carter is so literal. Whatever we tell him the first time, will be what he stands by. He doesn't stray far from what he's been taught, as far as trying to problem solve. So my gut is to tell him to stay in his room and go to his window if he smells smoke or sees fire and scream FIRE! Never try and come find Mommy & Daddy. What if for some crazy reason, the fire started in his room? I'm terrified that he would stay there if he had the chance to get out. Anyway, I think I need to contact the fire dept or something to help me gather a plan for our family. I mean, yes I could say meet us at the mailbox outside which is logical, but there's NO WAY I would ever leave my kids to fend for themselves if there was a fire in our home. Not an option. We would run through flames to keep them safe! Needless to say, we do need a plan to talk about - it's important. And I think we all do better in a situation if we've practiced the 'what ifs' and came up with some options together. Do you have an emergency plan?

He's so cute. During this conversation, he was a little apprehensive about if there was a fire at night, would we be standing outside at the mailbox in our pajamas? And how would the fireman know to come to our house - will he smell the smoke? He also told me that pets sometimes hide. And so I told him that he's right, but we don't have to worry about that because we don't have any pets. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Mommy! Yes we do! We have fish!" So after I got my composure back from giggling, I explained that fire doesn't hurt water and so they would be pretty safe in their own home and we would not need to rescue them. He told me again that pets sometimes hide, and that "Oreo" and "Danny" (his fish's names) would probably hide near the filter or behind their rock.... Isn't that the cutest? Gosh, I want to bottle up these conversations sometimes because they are so precious! Anyway, he seemed satisfied with what we had talked about, and so the subject changed to if he could have some more graham crackers now.....

Which brings me to this picture below. I think he's officially sick of his Halloween candy! Yay! Now, what to do with it all. Time to send some in with Tom to work. Like I've mentioned before, I just let him eat it when he wants and pretty much how much he wants until he's tired of it. With the exception of after his teeth have been brushed of course. I haven't had the begging, whining, fussing and sneaking that a lot of parents go through when they ration out the candy. And it works. It's been a week and the tide has turned!

Here's a couple more cute shots I thought I'd share with you too. I think we have a Jr. Picasso on our hands. His latest art picture he brought home yesterday....

And here's my girl when I went to get her from her crib this morning. She was doing peek-a-boo with me through the slats.