Inventions

This morning Turtle asked me, "What is the sky made of?" Before I finished stumbling through my tortured explanation of atmospheric gases, she asked, "Who invented the sky?"

I groaned to myself - I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet and I had been called on to literally explain the universe. But I decided to go for it: "Well, some people think God invented the sky and the earth and everything on it. And some people think the sky and the earth formed by themselves through, ummmm, natural processes."

I held my breath, hoping she would not ask me what I thought, because I really was not ready for that conversation as I am still working out the details myself. But, thankfully, she asked, "What are processes?" I said, "Nature, I should have just said Nature, you know, how things grow and change over time?" She seemed satisfied with this. So the moral of the story is, if your kid asks you complicated questions that you're not ready to answer, fill your answer with big words to distract them from the main question!

Speaking of inventions, Monkey has developed some good ideas for inventions lately. A few weeks ago she told Twin Daddy that when she grew up she wanted to invent a car where, when you got in, someone popped out of the front seat and drove the car so that she could sit in the back with her babies. "Like a robot?" I asked. "No, a real person," she said. While she may have some details to work out, I still thought this was genius, and figured that she must wish we could sit in the back seat with her now. Twin Daddy had a different take, commenting to me that Monkey was truly her mother's daughter, always looking for a way to get someone else to do her chores. I think he may have a point, as I regularly fantasize about not only a full time housekeeper but also a driver.

She thought of another invention yesterday, a mask you wear so that you speak English into it but Spanish comes out the other side. She showed me with her hands how it would work. Again, genius. Or a way to get out of the hard work of having to actually learn Spanish. Either way, it works for me. I suspect, given all the translation devices in existence, this sort of thing may be in the works somewhere, but how can she know that? She's just brilliant is all I'm saying.

Another thing she did yesterday was build an x-ray machine. She got some first-hand experience with x-rays last week, after she swallowed a nickel. Yes, a nickel. The pediatrician has us go in for x-rays the next morning so we could make sure it was actually in her stomach and on its way out, which it was. I was instructed to look for the nickel every time she had a bowel movement, which was a lovely way to spend the weekend. Of course, no one was watching when she went at school, and I never found it. The doctor said it must have passed by now given her prolific production over the last several days, and that we could assume it was gone and not worry about it any more.

So anyway, back to Monkey's x-ray machine. She took a big box and put Turtle's baby doll inside it, then taped the box up and then taped paper over the box. I helped her find a toy that blinked to use as the camera, which she put on top of the papered-over box. She would come in and turn on the blinking light, then walk out of the room and peek around the corner. I would say, "beeeep, beeeep" and then she would come back in and turn it off. We did this for about half an hour. Finally, she unwrapped the box and took the baby out, and then proceeded to show me all the x-rays, which involved holding up a bunch of different pieces of paper and then holding a toy in front of the paper to show me what was in there. Apparently the baby had swallowed: yarn, a toy elephant, a toy cat, a lovey, and I don't remember what else but it was a lot. So then Monkey had to do surgery on the baby, both on her throat and on her belly, to get all these things out. She cut on the baby for some time using the cake cutter that came with her wooden birthday cake set, then covered the baby with silver stickers - these were the stitches.

Then, because the baby had been such a good patient, Monkey brought her a basket of "stickers" for her to pick something to take home. Turtle picked something for the baby, as she had been playing the patient mother/voice of the baby through all of this, allowing her doll to be closed up in a box for half an hour and then cut up for another half hour, while she occasionally made crying noises to indicate the baby was unhappy about something.

All in all, a good day's work for Dr. Monkey and Mommy Turtle.

What Four-Year-Olds Do

Monkey and Turtle turned 4 on October 22. Seems a little negligent to forget to post about their birthday on a blog devoted to them doesn't it? We did manage to get them gifts-new big girl bikes with training wheels-and it was really cute to watch them ride their bikes around the culdesac a few days later, singing "It's the Hard Knock of Life" from Annie at the top of their lungs. Riding brand new bikes around a safe culdesac in a nice neighborhood with a doting mother watching over them. Hard knocks indeed. Then Turtle started singing Miss Hannigan's "Little Girls," verbatim, including the following: "I'm an ordinary wo-man, with feeeelings; I'd like a man to nibble on my ear! But I"ll admit; no man has bit; so how come I'm the mother of the year??"

I suggested we start a new round of "Hard Knock."

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It seems like the day Turtle and Monkey turned 4, a switch turned on inside my brain and everything they did that seemed tolerable when they were 3 was suddenly completely innappropriate and driving me insane. It felt urgent to turn them into civilized people immediately, so we began a series of talks about "what 4 year olds do." I knew I couldn't present them with, "now that you're older, you have to do this, that and the other." Monkey, especially, can't stand the idea that anyone would have the nerve to tell her what to do (which is exactly what I was like as a kid), so I went with the more neutral, "Now that you're 4, would you like to know what 4 year olds do?" Yes, they did want to know, very much so. Here's what we talked about and what we are working on:

Four year olds:

- use a utensil for every part of their meal. (Monkey, who seems content to eat rice, beans, and just about anything else by smearing her hands around her plate and then licking her fingers, was introduced to a fork after this conversation.)
- take their plates to the sink.
- flush the toilet!!! I cannot stress this enough.
- use a tissue for their nose, rather than a finger and a mouth. Please, I beg you.
- get themselves ready on time for school in the morning.

The getting ready for school on time piece is a good example of the switch in my brain. Suddenly, I'm leaving the breakfast table after 20 minutes and getting myself ready for work, rather than sitting and coddling Monkey, the slowest eater on earth, through her breakfast. One week I can't stand the thought of my poor baby finishing her breakfast alone, the next week I'm setting the timer and totally out of there when it goes off, sure she can handle it. And she can.

So there is the "what 4 year olds do," conversation that I had with them, and then there is the "what 4 year olds actually do" experience they are demonstrating to me. Some parts of it are awesome. Complete conversations, logical reasoning, understanding safety issues, responding to consequences. Then there are things that throw me off. Like when Monkey asked me, "Do 4-year-olds get to have their own phone?" When I said "no," she began asking, and asking, when, oh when, could she get her own phone? Then there is Turtle, who won't get off my back with the questions about Santa. I swear that girl is on her way to being a trial lawyer. I don't like making up lies in response to her reasonable questions, so I'll admit that I won't be sorry if some other savvy kid spills the beans in a couple of years. But not this year, please.

Monkey tells me about once a week she is going to marry this boy she knows, Vishnu. Today I asked her, why Vishnu? She said it's because he wants to marry her. I almost tried to explain that you don't marry someone just because he wants to marry you, but I let that go, for now. But I do take every opportunity to remind them that the right age to get married is about 29 or 30, and when they ask when they will get to have their own babies, I say, "oh after you're married and you're about 31 or 32, maybe, if you've finished graduate school and started your career." I have no doubt this will totally backfire but I can't help myself.

So one last story. Today I took Turtle and Monkey to Target to buy a birthday gift for a boy in Monkey's class (not her fiance), and when I asked her what she thought he might like, she said, "maybe a race car!" Monkey seems really into race cars and I thought about getting her one for her birthday but never got around to it. I decided I'd let her pick one out for herself after we found the gift for her friend, a rare treat because I never buy them toys when I take them to the store with me. Anyway, as soon as we got near the kids' area, Turtle saw a pink sweater dress with silvery thread and asked if she could have it. I said, "Let's go look at toys first, and then we can look at clothes."

Monkey browsed all the cars and then we moved on to action figures. She eventually settled on a talking Spiderman for her friend. When I told her she could get something for herself too, and tried to take her back to the car section, do you know what she picked out instead? A walking Ironman! She said, "I like robots and I think Daddy will like it too." So, she got herself a robot that just happens to be named Ironman and she likes to watch it walk around. (She was watching so intently this evening that she literally just pooped in her pants rather than tear herself away to go to the bathroom, but that's not part of this story). Then, in the middle of the toy section, where I was nervously watching Turtle eyeing all the Disney princess stuff, I said, "ok, Turtle, you can pick something too." And she said, "I want clothes!" and ran straight to the pink sweater dress we'd seen earlier. I honestly did not know it was possible for a preschool-aged child to pick clothes over toys, but there you go. We came home with an Ironman and a sparkly pink sweater dress.

My 4-year-olds are awesome.