The Family Room

Fun for the whole family

Yesterday was much better. Isaac was back to his chipper self, assisted in part by Daddy's awesome display of QAP.

Here's the new game he invented. We're calling it "The Don't Game":

Daddy: Don't...stand on the bed/and touch your head!
(Isaac stands on bed, touches head, grins.)
Daddy: D'oh!

Daddy: Don't...growl in the towel!
(Isaac runs into the bathroom. A brief pause follows.)
Isaac (muffled): Grrrrrrrrrrrr!
Daddy and Mommy (in unison): D'oh!

Much hilarity ensues.

*
I came home tonight to find this enchanting little tale typed on my laptop:

"Once upon a time Isaac saw his friend Rust. Rust was a big girl with red hair. She had a red dress on. Rust peed in the girls’ room."

It's sort of a collaborative work. The first three sentences were authored by Daddy, while the fourth is Isaac's unique contribution.

A literary dynasty, we are.

That's some quality-a** parenting

J. and I have a running joke: whenever one of us finds a creative solution to a particularly heinous parental challenge, we take the opportunity to smugly remark to the other, "Now THAT was some quality-a** parenting."

[Oh, and lest you think I am too delicate and ladylike to replace the above asterisks with a double s, let me rush to reassure you: not at all. I just don't want to contemplate what it'll do to my Google searches. It was bad enough when I wrote about potty training.]

So, in today's news, we achieved some serious QAP here at The Family Room. Young Isaac had spiked a fever this weekend, and spent most of Sunday lolling in the bed in a hot, drowsy stupor. Even though he seemed perfectly fine and (mostly) cool this morning, I do not ever want to be THAT MOM--YOU KNOW--THE ONE WHO BRINGS HER SICK KID TO SCHOOL AND RUNS AWAY, so I obeyed the rules and kept him home today.

What is it about fevers anyway? Why don't they ever hit on Friday night so that said young person is well and happy by Monday--never a good day to take off? But I digress. This morning, Isaac was, thankfully, much cooler and felt much better. Unfortunate side-effect: he was also into EVERYTHING.

I try, I really do, to be a good (working) mom, but days like this fray my last nerve. I have meetings, I have a sick kid, I have guilt. Luckily, I also have a "mute" button on my phone, which comes in handy for those conference calls when certain people show up, loudly demanding another episode of Dora the Explorer, just as I am moving to the next brilliant slide in my PowerPoint.

So I did what I hate to do (but rationalize when Isaac is ill): I let him play on the computer. A lot.

Finally, I hit the limit of what I thought he should have and what I could endure, and I gave him the five, three and one-minute warnings.

No dice.

A big meltdown ensued, in which Isaac yelled through his tears that he wanted Daddy to come home. I told him Daddy was at work, and wouldn't be home for several hours.

Wrong answer. And then...Eureka! "Okay," I replied calmly, "Then I'll be Daddy." And I put on J's trademark yellow baseball cap and his red fleece, and said, "See? I'm Daddy!" Oh the hilarity. We took turns "being Daddy" for a good long while. We played I Spy. We wrestled. And we got some good imaginative play in there too.

Now I ask you: is that some serious QAP or what?