This morning Taylor came in and proudly proclaimed: "Dad, I untied my shoes before I put them on." Like many fathers before me, I often extol the virtues of this simple procedure. When one does not untie one's shoes prior to putting them on, one runs the risk of smashing and ultimately breaking the material on the back of the shoe. Such an untimely demise requires the father to open his wallet and see more of his hard earned money sucked out as a new pair of shoes is purchased. (I don't say it quite like that to the kids.) Anyway, Taylor made this declaration, for which he was duly praised. I then asked Parker, who was standing right there, "Did you untie YOUR shoes before you put them on?" Parker smiled his goofy grin and said "Uh, I don't know. Well, no." So I again extolled the virtues of this simple procedure. Parker replied with, "But Dad, I always put my finger in between my heel and the shoe, so the back never gets smashed down." Ignoring the obvious sense of his argument (as a father is wont to do when his wisdom is questioned) I quickly came up with this comeback: "That will stretch your shoes out." Without missing a beat, he turned to me and said, "Then they'll last longer!!!" How was I to argue that?
A couple of days later, Christi and the 4 oldest kids were in church (I had generously offered to sacrifice and stay home with sick little Elli.;) In the middle of the service, Jesi was sitting on Christi's lap, tummy to tummy. Before Christi had any idea what Jesi was doing, our little angel pushed Christi's nose up (like someone imitating a pig), stared up into her nostrils and said (again, in the middle of our church service), "Mommy, you have hair boogers." Christi quickly whispered in her ear that it isn't nice to talk about such things, to which she replied, "But Mom, you DO have hair boogers!" Christi, of course, was grateful to be enlightened.:)
That night at Sunday dinner, Jesi stood up on her chair and said, "GUYS! GUYS! Shhhh!!!! Listen to me!" After everyone quieted down, she announced in her very important voice, "Parents have hair boogers!" She thought she had made the discovery of the century. Thanks, Jes.
I learn so much from my children in so many different ways. In spite of the many challenges that come with parenthood, I not only wouldn't trade them, I'm excited to face the new challenges, joys, lessons, successes, and everything else that will come into our lives when we adopt Chu Chu next summer. By the way, we're very grateful and touched by the kind and excited comments so many of you have posted regarding our upcoming addition. Many of you have asked questions about Dang Xu Chu, and we promise to answer them. Right now, it's a little crazy around here, but we'll post some more details about him soon.
Merry Christmas!
Jeremy
Morning Jer - yeah - kids and the things they say / do - oh and the unflappable logic....kind of reminds me of when my Mom would just say 'so' - that was all, just 'so' - she'd leave us to fill in the blanks around it....smart woman my mother!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas back to you and all of yours as well -
aus and co.
haha. Thanks for the outloud laugh at two fifteen in the morning when I can't sleep because my "boogers" are draining down the back of my throat and making me cough. I'm way too excited to see what Jesi will come up with when we're all together in ferron. Love ya!
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