Sign 1: Not-So Casual Observation

Side A ["side" = team in the lingo] makes what looks like a great goal to me. Simon chimes in:

“Why didn’t they say he was offsides?” ["offsides" = rule violation relating to position of players on the pitch]

You know what? It just might have been. I still can’t always tell.

[After Simon asked, I rewatched that play and it did look like Thierry Henry was offside.  Later I found considerable Internet discussion as to whether or not he actually was.  Turns out he had just emerged from an "offside trap". -mgw.]

Sign 2: Mixed Metaphors

Simon is pretending to be Baby Kitten in the car, then lets a huge belch rip.

“Uh Oh!” he says, sounding more proud than contrite, “‘That’s a yellow card for Baby Kitten!” [yellow card = caution or disciplinary measure; two and you are out of a game]

Sign 3: Rogue’s Gallery

Simon walks in while Matt is watching Manchester City v. Liverpool.  “Where’s Balotelli?” [Mario Balotelli = star striker for Manchester City, Matt's favorite team]

Matt sighs.  “He’s out on a four-game suspension.” [Balotelli can be an idiot.]

Simon looks confused.  “I thought that was Kompany?”  [Vincent Kompany = Man City's skipper {"skipper" = "captain"}, who is also serving a four-game suspension. Kompany is not an idiot, but he made a stupid move the other day.  City is having a rough January.]

Sign 4: A Bedtime Chat

I’m in Simon’s bed giving him his night-time back-rub. Matt is in the room with us, and we all hear the sounds of heavy rain on our tin roof.

“Wow,” says Matt, “it’s really coming down out there.”

To which Simon replies, “You know where else I bet it’s raining? In Manchester.”

True that. Just about every game he’s watched, and there have clearly been many, has played out amid cold, gusty rain. It looks frankly miserable.

Sign 5: Goals

And the final sign your child has been watching too much English Premier League? When he states his life goals thusly:

“I think I’m going to be a professional [soccer player]…soon, I hope!”

I think we need to watch more NOVA from here on out.

“I sure wish our house were like theirs [the Kwais'] and we had a baby and a 27-year-old Mommy. But our family already has its baby, and it’s me, and I’m a five-year-old big boy now of course. Man! It took me a long time to get to five years old.”

My silent rebuttal:

1. She’s 28 now.
2. I (kind of) wish you had a 27-year-old Mommy too, although I wouldn’t have been a very good Mommy at 27 or 28.
3. Speak for yourself; I think the last five years have flown by.

That seems to have changed. Simon awoke yesterday at about 7:30, having enjoyed less than five hours of quality sleep: two before he began throwing up, which included bouts of intense stomach pain,  and three after the dry heaves finally abated. This child needs 10  to 11 hours per night, and I’m sure his stomach was a right mess after all the upheaval. In fact, he told me several times that it felt “like it [was] dancing.” Ipso facto, Saturday should have tried everyone’s patience.

It didn’t at all. When faced with the prospect of nothing but Gatorade, one teaspoon at a time, ten to fifteen minutes apart, Simon watched the clock and played along. When given only bland food and not much of it hours later, he nodded in agreement instead of being upset. And when he got tired, which happened a lot, he took himself off to bed. Well, the first wave of fatigue caught him by surprise and resulted in a 1.5 hour snooze on the couch, but for the next two he announced, “I’m tired now; I think I need to go upstairs and take a nap” and then proceeded to do just that.

Less than two hours after his third nap of the day, we had this exchange:

“Would you like some dinner? Or a bath? Or some stories? What can I do for you?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I just want to go to bed now.”

We made him hold out until 8:00 owing to fears he’d awake bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00. Instead he partially awoke at 6:30, then went back to sleep until a respectable 7:30. Honestly, he was a little trooper the whole day. Very cooperative with our requests, very sweet, and able to joke and play some board games when he wasn’t sleeping. The greatest emblem of this came when I walked downstairs yesterday morning and found him seated on the couch with a bucket by his feet. He smiled weakly and said:

“I’m on the couch, but it’s ok. I’ve got a bucket with me so if I need to barf, I can just lean over and barf into the bucket. I might need you or Daddy to help me hold it, but with the bucket I won’t barf on the couch. So that’s the good news.”

The better news was that he didn’t need that bucket all day and appears to be well on the road to recovery. Well, that and his being such a trooper all day.

“Hi Zadie, you’re 74 now. You’re older than my Bubbie. You used to be one year older, but now you are two years older. You’re older than my Grandma and Papaw, too.”

He’s been telling pretty much everyone in the last few days about my birthday, too.

“My Mommy’s birthday is tomorrow,” is how he’ll start. But that’s not the part he’s really interested in. “She’s going to be 42 years old.” THAT’S the part he finds interesting.

Thus, this morning, my birthday began lying in bed with a curled up Cambria purring beside me. Then I heard Simon call for us (he only rarely gets out of bed on his own; he usually summons us), yell out the time (another number!), do a little run into Matt’s and my bedroom, and excitedly proclaim:

“You’re 42!”

At which point in time Matt whispered a prompt in his ear.

“Oh yeah,” he continued. “Happy Birthday.”

And I’m sure it will be. Matt has the day off, so we’re going to Hillbilly Tea (really!) for lunch, then will pick up Simon and have a fun afternoon together. If we stay in, Simon will want to play round after round of Mancala, and if we go out, he’ll make sure everyone knows my age. Either way, it will be an early night because tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. is the start of spring training. Turning 42 goes down a lot easier when you realize that you got into the best shape of your life at 41. Having my hair restored to it’s natural color—minus the grays—yesterday goes a long ways towards helping, too.

“Mommy, what’s 3 plus 2?”

“You tell me?

“Um, 6?

“No, use your fingers if you have to.

“Oh! 5!

“Right.

“What’s 2 plus 2?

“You tell me. (hereafter “)

“4

“What’s 4 plus 4?

“”

“8

“What’s 10 plus 10?

“”

“30?

“No. Forget the zero. Both numbers have them, so hide it for now. So what’s 1 plus 1?

“2

“Now add the zero back.

“20!

“What’s 20 plus 20?

“”

“40!

“What’s one hundred plus one hundred?

“OK, same thing as before, only now hide and then add back two zeros.

“200!

“What’s 600 plus 600?

”

“No Mommy, you tell me.

“Twelve-hundred. Or one thousand, two hundred.

“What’s twelve-hundred  plus twelve hundred?

“Twenty-four hundred.

“What’s twenty-four hundred plus twenty-four hundred?

“Forty-eight hundred.

“What’s forty-eight hundred plus forty-eight hundred?

“Niney-six hundred.

“Wow, that’s as high as I can go. Is this the third song? (We play a CD at bedtime, and I’m usually kicked out of the room when the third song begins.)

“It is, it’s ‘Michele’.

“OK, I need to go to sleep now. All this talking about numbers has made my brain tired.”

At this point, he rolls over into bed with Dirty Dog, who makes a monkey and not a dog sound “to joke [me].” Prior to this conversation, he hid something down his pajama shirt with a sly grin  and explained that he was being “like when Grandpa took Ringo’s card [invitation]” (“A Hard Day’s Night” reference).

Have I mentioned lately that talking to five-year-olds is awesome?

“Simon?” he asked. “What happened? This feels wet.”

“That’s from my tears.”

Oh boy. But he seems to arrived at a better place by tonight:

“I shouldn’t have chosen that toy, Daddy. It looked so good and I really wanted it, but I shouldn’t have chosen that toy.”

Then, while decorating the tree, we got this gem:

“This ornament is beautiful—like me!”

And perhaps most in the holiday spirit, this exchange over his Chanukah present.

“Are you getting me the Mega City [Japanese toy train] set? I really want it.”

“Do you know how much it costs?

[After several guesses.] “A hundred dollars?”

“More, even. That’s really expensive. Do you think we can afford it?”

“Of course we can. We’ve got money all over this place! There’s the piggy bank in my room…”

Glad he’s got this all figured out! For the record, the train set is in the trunk of our car. We’re pretty grinchy around here, but he’s usually worth it.

On his birthday and turning five:

“I could just sit here and look at my presents all day…”

“I’ve waited all my life to be five.”

Sportsmanship upon winning Cars Monopoly:

“I”m the king! I’m the king!” [accompanied by dance moves]

Song lyrics commentary:

“I’m sending all my loving to Caroline and Ruby.”

On career plans:

“I was just joking about being a fire fighter. When I grow up, my job is going to be to help you and Daddy. Like with new sheets, when you need help putting them on. Cause if I don’t do it, who will?”

On the mystery of ontogeny:

“How did my body know to make two eyes and put them where the eyes go?”

And finally, a clever justification for ice cream:

“I need some ice cream. My tongue is getting kind of warm.”

• “We Should Have Known Better.” (“Not ‘I Should Have Known Better’, ‘We Should Have Known Better.’ It’s hard to play of course.”)
• “She Wants to Get on the Train” (“Ticket to Ride”)
• “She Wants You” (“She Loves You”)
• “Mommy and Daddy, I Need You” (“Help!” or “I Need You”)

You know what they say about imitation, right?

And it was really sweet. Matt taught Simon a C chord on this ukulele, which we bought in Hawaii back in 2005. He struggled a little with the hand placement (“That’s not right for me. I’m left-handed.”) but got the hang of it just fine after a while. He might have put his fingers on the wrong fret a few times, but it was his first try, and he’s only five.

After this session, he explained his future plans to Matt:

“When I’m 19, I’ll go to band practice with you.”

Matt’s got his own plans. As he explained to me last night:

“Two more chords and it’s Ramones time.”

What do you suppose the Ramones sound like on a uke?

Or, in Simon’s case, being scared to death and jumping in the pool anyway. As Simon progresses through the skills in his swimming class, only two items remain before he advances to the next level*: (1) rolling over from his front to his back unassisted and (2) jumping in the pool and then floating on his back unassisted.

Today was the day we were going to work on these last two items, but not before a drill on his unsinkable back float, an exercise in which Simon floats on his back—and, crucially, stays floating—while the instructor splashes his face, makes huge waves in the pool, and yanks on arms and legs. Simon did this on Wednesday with no problems at all, but today, for reasons unknown, buckled under the pressure, sat up in alarm, and promptly sank underwater. At which point he wailed in some combination of fear and disappointment. While Blair consoled him in the water, a second instructor whispered in my ear:

“Uh oh. He’s such a perfectionist that this is going to freak him out for the whole rest of the lesson.”

Those were the words of wisdom of Julie, a 17-year-old swim instructor who has the insight and maturity to glean this about my son based on three 30-minute lessons.  She was right, too. Simon got cold despite his wet-suit, a reaction to fear I’m sure. He rallied for the middle of his lesson, a review of skills he’s got down cold, but then grew apprehensive at the notion of jumping in the pool and not being caught.

“Will Ms. Blair catch me?”

“If she needs to. But first try to roll over and float on your back.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“You’ll never know until you try. If you can’t, I’ll be proud of you for trying. And if you can, well, that would just be icing on the cake.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Simon, honey, the only way to learn is to try. It doesn’t matter if you can do it or not. You just have to try, and Ms. Blair will be right there to help you. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

He still wasn’t convinced. So Ms. Julie hopped in, putting the lifeguard-to-child ratio at an amazingly safe 2:1. He hemmed. He hawed. He shook from cold and fear. And finally, after what seemed like an hour of agonizing wait-time, he counted down from three, jumped in, …

… rolled over, and floated on his back. All with just the teeniest bit of help from Ms. Julie, who nudged him along on his roll. There were hugs and cheers and high-fives. Later, in the car, I asked him:

“Simon, what am I the most proud of you for today? Is it that you jumped in and floated?”

“No, Mommy, it’s that I tried.”

Actually,  it’s that he understands enough of what I’m telling him to say that without my providing the answer for him.

*Lest I sound like a Tiger Mother here, the reason I am eager to have him advance is two-fold: (1) I want him to get the feeling of reward that comes from graduating to the next level; (2) He’s so close that part of his current lessons are repetitive and boring; he’s ready for a lot of what they do in the next level, and he’ll have fun with it.