Stevenisms: 1-20-03b

driving along. baby is babbling. steven tries to make sense of it. "parker said, "daddy" and "typhoon.""

proud mommy says, "how many eight-year-olds know what a typhoon is?" :o)

hmm. maybe he doesn't know the exact definition.
better check. "steven, what is a typhoon?"

"something that hits things."

uh. close. next try is closer:
"hits the earth?"

sort of.
gotta call mom with the latest stevenism. after i tell mom the first answer, steven is offended that i didn't give him proper credit. "i said it hits the earth! i know what a typhoon is!" i think i may be planting the seeds for what will later be known as steven's "issues." i don't think i'm setting him up for a very ordinary existence. maybe i should bake him some cookies. could i borrow 6 cups of sugar? 

Stevenisms: 1-20-03

if you didn't know intuitively, bedtime with steven is no picnic. when we got home tonight we told him to go upstairs and brush his teeth. twenty minutes later i went up to brush my teeth and found him playing in the bathroom. big surprise. not.

so i told him to start brushing. he applied the toothpaste. and continued to dwaddle. i asked, "what are you waiting for?! a written invitation?" "no. christmas." ooooh. that was quick for one so small! mom get back in the game with, "merry christmas. ho, ho, ho. brush your teeth or i break your nose."

i called in reinforcements. step parents are good back-up. he quickly got steven in bed and lights out. almost smooth. scott soon joined me downstairs complaining, "i think that kid manufactures his own flashlights. he must have fifty!" they have an ongoing flashlight battle. scott takes away a flashlight. goes back a few minutes later and confiscates another. and another. scott stashes the flashlights. mommy finds them and gives them back to her beloved baby. for some reason, it is difficult to get steven up for school. i can't understand it.

mommy's other baby has his own battles with mean, old scott. teeny guy gets a stuffy nose. daddy goes for the "nose bulb." for those who are not familiar with the "nose bulb," it is a torture device developped by hitler to extract mucous from infant noses. "nose bulbs" produce much screaming. mommies learn quickly to avoid use of the "nose bulb." having a higher tolerance for baby screams, daddy battles the sick, shreaking snot nose. but today, daddy left the bulb within baby reach. little parker spends his days performing highly scientific experiments. (remember yesterday's hyothesis: mommies are too big to stuff in the drawer.) so parker starts to stick the bulb in his nose as he has seen daddy do. but this is no ordinary baby. his quick little baby brain decides it would be a better idea to stick the buld up daddy's nose. BABY POWER! oh, yeah! get that big bad daddy with the bulb torture!

earlier that same day:

mommy sleeps in. first mistake. wakes up and starts down the stairs. peels a soggy cookie from the carpet. enters the kitchen and puts the cookie in the trash can that parker believes is his toy box (for those of you who didn't figure that one out from yesterday's e-mail). mommy steps into the living room and sees the next soggy cookie mess mashed into her favorite cashmere sweater. hard to believe mommy was so naive that she believed her sweater was safe in the presence of mini monsters. removes some cookie remains from the sweater and deposits it in a delicate woolite bath. second attempt to enter living room. the tiny artist has been busy this morning. today's mmasterpiece is a post modernist soggy cookie and oyster cracker collage on cream carpet. various other items are added for texture. but mommy is not a fan of parker's work because she spent all day saturday viewing parker's work (and cleaning it up). mommy gives up and returns to bed. daddy emerges from his couch coccoon and utters, "don't worry, honey. i'll clean it up." right! i'm not holding my breath. daddy issues the order for steven to clean up his room in hopes that he can coax mommy out of bed. steven, of course, accomplishes this with the usual super steven speed.

an hour passes. steven is lying on the floor with his feet on the bed busily straightening his game boy. enter scott. "i told you to pick up your toys!" "but i'm playing with them all!" mercury rising, "PUT THE TOYS AWAY!" admittedly, this was not a clever line for an eight-year-old. but give him credit! he has been using it for six years now.

rewind:

even earlier than when mommy got first got up:

steven is once again playing chessmaster 9000.

fast forward:

steven is talking to his dad on mommy's cell phone since he is a deprived child and does not have his own.

"i can only win at chessmaster if i play against myself." i can't recount the next few minutes' conversation because it involved a bunch of 'bishop, d2. queen, h6.' etc. as steven rattled off all of the moves in the chess match. persistently proud mommy whispers to daddy, "he may not be able to beat the monkey on chessmaster, but he can rattle off all the moves in the match. see, he is a genius!"

the conversation illuminated me on why he is losing. he is not using pawns. he is using "ponds." all that water is shorting out the computer. better get that kid some pawns before he drowns.

steven pulled a loose tooth while he played chessmaster. fast forward to dinner at the olive garden. he pulls another loose tooth. the waitress comes by. standard line "can i get you anything else?" steven replies, "do i get free dessert for pulling my tooth during dinner." doesn't stop there: "my mommy told me to say that." waitress laughs and returns to the kitchen. steven asks, "can i see parker's toy?" "NO! and if you ever tell anyone i told you to something again, i will take away all of YOUR toys!"

back up:

waiting approximately 25 minutes for our table in the olive garden lobby. some kid who looks to be about 5 is being held by his daddy. aaaawwww. how cute. except for that the kid continuously punches daddy in the throat. daddy is apparently accustomed to this behavior because he only winces from the pain and does not tell the kid to stop! after watching for a few minutes, tactful katy decides to speak up. "you don't have to worry about anyone kidnapping him, do ya?!" geez!

i don't exactly have kidnappers lining up for me either. scott dropped me at the door to put our name in with the hostess while he parked the car. i studied the dessert tray while awaiting my family. steven walks up and i show him the tiramisu since i know he loves it. to demonstrate proper adult behavior, i shove his face in it. heee heee heee.

IT'S PLASTIC! hee hee hee.

aaaaaaaaaaa! the tiny one is calling me. 

Steven and Parkerisms: 1-18-03

everytime we turn on our computer now, a little dinosaur is walking back and forth on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. he is a pain because he uses system resources and slows down anything else we try to do. he is also an ancestor of the roach. he is almost impossible to kill. while his program shows up on the menu bar, clicking on it doesn't bring up anything. even right clicking has no effect. i have been hitting control-alt-delete to bring up the task manager to kill him.

when i turned on the computer a few minutes ago, steven was sitting next to me rotting his brain on nickolodean cartoons. i had just opened the task manager when steven said, "right click on the dino." when i did, i whole menu came up with a variety of thing to do to the dino like 'capture' and other options i ignored in my rush to click on the one that said 'exit.' i asked steven, "did you put the dino on the computer?" he said, "no. i guess it just knows that i want to play with the dino." he thought a moment and then said, "how does it know?"

i explained that it was probably a program that loaded when he did the setup to put one of his games on the computer. kinda like killing santa claus, huh? dino is a cookie and not an extension of steven id, ego or little wizard. hope you all had psych in high school on that last line will make no sense. if you slept through psych class, let me know and i will send you an explanation. if you care.

steven is balancing yin yang right now. he is rotting his mind on nickolodean cartoons while assembling a toy from about ten thousand tiny pieces. there is a set of direction as thick as an unabridged dictionary. the directions are all pictorial becasue if they even attempted to use words the directions would rival an encyclopedia set. he apparently has more patience than his mother who would have resorted to using a hammer to pulvarize every piece into dust after the first 6 hours of assembly.

if you haven't seen me lately, then i will fill you in. my head is twice the size it used to be in order to accomodate my motherly pride. steven spends hours upon hours playing chessmaster 9000. so cerebral. scott's mother bought the game for him for christmas. i'm not sure how good he actually is at chess. as far as i know, he can only beat the monkey. he usually plays against himself. but maybe quantity of play time will eventually result in quality of play. on chessmaster 7000 he beat the monkey and the little girl.

i fell asleep on the couch last night and woke up to chess coach directions. "you can only move your own pieces." "the king can only move one space at a time." "checkmate." i think every phrase is emblazoned in my subconscious. unfortunately, knowing all of the chessmaster quotes do not improve my game. i am still as bad as when my ex-husband refused to even play me because it annoyed him that i was so bad. he bought a chess video game so that he didn't have to play me. my dream is for steven to become a better player than his father so that i can vicariously kick steve's $#%*! at chess. i bore the child, i claim the glory of his genius!

as for the spare child:

i was in parker's room watching him make messes for me to clean up. he pulled a teletubby out of the toy box and put him on the rocking chair. he then climbed into the chair. i handed him the teletubby. he screamed and threw it on the floor. i apparently misinterpreted babble. he wanted me to make the chair rock, not hand him the stupid toy. my deepest appologies, sir. i noticed a spot on his teddy bear which sits on one of the two chairs at his little table. as i tried to get the spot off of teddy, parker slid off of the rocking chair and spent the next 10 minutes trying to get into a sitting position on the other little chair. i pulled one of the drawers under the table partially out and positioned the teletubby so he was sitting at the table with parker and teddy. parker spent the next 2 seconds getting off of the chair and coming to see what was up with tubby. drawers are so fascinating. open the drawer. slam it closed on tubby. open the drawer. slam it closed on tubby. grab tubby by the head. pull. fall over backwards when tubby suddenly pops out of the drawer. open the drawer. try to stick tubby in. miss. slam the drawer. open the drawer. mommy sticks tubby in the drawer. slam the drawer. open the drawer. grab tubby and slam him on the floor. close the drawer. open the drawer. study the empty drawer. notice mommy. grab mommy by the head and try to put her in the drawer. on the second failed attempt, fall over backward. lesson learned: mommies are too heavy to shove in drawers. close the drawer. open the drawer. try to climb into the drawer. fall. lesson learned: it is too hard to put the baby in the drawer. open and close drawer a few more times. give up on the drawer because it doesn't make enough mess to keep mommy busy. go in search of toilet paper. failing to find any toilet paper, resort to inserting more drool into mommy's phone which no longer rings. work really hard at putting in drool to see how many more functions baby can destroy before mommy loses it. note to baby self: remember to give mommy wet, sloppy kisses until she gives up on spanking the baby for all of the havoc he wreaks.