Recent Quotes from the Four-Year-Old Brain of Patrick

“Mama? Is Papa an ass?”

Patrick: Papa? Is our family senior citizens?
Me: No Patrick. Senior citizens are old, like sixty-five.
Patrick: Oh! Is Grandma Pat a senior citizen?
Me: Uh, yeah. I guess.
Patrick: Does Grandma Pat have a Life Alert?
Me: I don’t know. Why?
Patrick: Every senior citizen should have Life Alert.
Me: Well, you’ll have to ask Grandma Pat.

“Fine! You’re not my best friend for forty days and thirty nights!” (Said whenever he is upset at not getting his way.)

“She thinks my tractor’s sexy…” (sung)

Kate: Patrick! Why do you take your shoes off the second you get in the car?
Patrick: Because my socks make my feet all sweaty. It’s like they’re on fire!

Me: Patrick, did you have a good time at the Jazz game tonight?
Patrick: No.
Me: Yes you did. I saw you. You were standing up, looking down at the court and clapping.
Ard: Patrick was looking at the Jazz dancers.
Patrick: (batting his eyes at me) I was.

Patrick: Papa? Who is the goofy gay guy?

Me: Ask your Mom.

Aunt Melissa: Patrick, are you ready to go to Disneyland?

Patrick: Yeah. I just need to find my damn shoes.

We’re Gonna Potty, Like It’s Your Birthday

How is it that a child can go from being fully potty trained to completely incontinent in just a few days? Samantha went from being completely housebroken to being a chronic urinator. I don’t get it. She was even waking up dry (something Patrick still can’t do). We have tried everything we could think of. We started with positive reinforcement when she went pee-pee like a big girl. We tried more Draconian measures of threatening to throw away her Dora the Explorer underpants when she defiled them. We’ve even tried jelly bean and bubble gum rewards. It’s getting to be a battle of determination, and Samantha is proving to be a true mule-stubborn Shirley. She’s crapping in her drawers just to exercise her will over us. It really is an act of defiance. When she gets angry she screams and urinates all over as part of her temper tantrum. But we’ll win out. When she does it to me, I simply make her keep the soiled undergarment on. Eventually she’ll get tired of stinking….

A Sprouting Bean

Since I mentioned Lauren’s seizures many people have asked me how she’s been doing. We appreciate the concern. Since that one night she has not had any recurrences. She is still developmentally delayed, and has had a therapist coming out to work with her. Actually the therapist works with us. But Bean is starting to finally learn some words. I was excited when she crawled over, picked up her Cabbage Patch Kid and said “Baby.” I was less than excited when she threw her cup at me and said, “No!”

She is also starting to take a few steps. She crawls so fast that she has no need for walking. But she has shown that she can take steps when she wants to. She just doesn’t want to. We went swimming last night, and she found that the rough concrete around the pool is not comfortable on her shins, so she was crawling by placing her hands on the ground, and then walking on her feet. She looked ridiculous. Kate said that she saw a bit on the Today show about a whole family of people somewhere in Europe who walked that way. But Bean found that this way of crawling doesn’t work when she started to go into the shallow area of the pool. As she descended down the slope her face soon went under the water, while her bum was still in the air. I think the pool is helping her to stand, though. She tries to stand in the water and balance against the currents of the water. I think it will make her leg muscles stronger.

Speaking of swimming pools, check out the following picture. This is from a few years ago when I took Patrick and Whitney swimming at the rec center. Note the strange woman “posing” in the background. We have no idea who she is, but she clearly thinks that she is sexy.

Well I Guess This is Growing Up…

Whitney is finding out how mean little kids can be. A couple of the girls who were friends of hers told her that they don’t like her and don’t want to be friends with her. Later one of them told her “Well, we’re not friends, but those are cute boots.” On another occasion they stole her lunchbox. They also stole her glasses and threw them in the snow.

Though the girls are being mean to her, she is handling it pretty well. Last week she told Kate that she saw one of her classmates, Brittney, crying and that she wanted to call Britney and invite her to be friends. She did so, and the two are now friends. It will be amusing if Whitney and Brittney stay friends as they grow up. Whitney really is a good kid with a huge heart. She’ll always be my sweetheart.