Sometimes I wonder if people really know what I'm up against in my house. I mean, really? The J-man is a fun-loving, special little boy. He's growing into an extraordinary individual. He has wonderful opinions and a fantastic outlook on life. I adore him. Really.
But.
(There's always a "but" right? You knew there was one coming, didn't you?)
He is Mr. Contrary these days. Allow me to illustrate:
Exhibit One:
Every Sunday I make pancakes for breakfast, because I am the world's best Mommy. (Okay, some Sundays I make waffles, but we all have our flaws, right?) Further evidence of my World's Best Mommy status is that I specifically make the J-man a smiley-face or Mickey Mouse pancake using chocolate chips. I mean, really? I am awesome.
These days, J has words that he's supposed to practice every weekend – "sight words" they're called, or "wow words" as he calls them. They're words that he's supposed to learn to know on sight, rather than having to sound them out. Words like: "the", "I", "you", "go", "my", "and", "or", and so on. The first week we had the words to practice on the weekend, I thought it would be neat to do something special. So I made three little silver dollar pancakes and spelled out "t-h-e" on the pancakes with chocolate chips.
We called J up to the table to tell him his breakfast was ready and showed him his pancakes.
"What's that?"
"That's one of your Wow Words!"
"Which one is it?"
"It says, 'the'"
"Oh."
"Oh?"
"Well, why didn't you do 'go' or 'my' or 'you' or …?"
And my dear, sweet angel of a child spent the next 20 minutes critiquing my choice of wow words. Twenty. Minutes. No joke.
Exhibit Two:
For Purim, the kids wear costumes. J is old enough to have some input into what his costume should be now, so I asked him what he'd like to be. After a couple of ideas, he decided he'd like to be Batman. I spent some time searching around for the perfect costume, and finally found it:
He put on the costume, and said, "How come you didn't get me Iron Man?" What? Are you Kidding Me? This kid asked for Batman. I thought I was being the cool mom for getting him Batman. Finally I convinced him that he had asked to be Batman and this was a good thing. Seth got ready to go to synagogue and explained to him that since he was wearing all black, he needed to be sure to hold Abba's hand the entire way there because cars wouldn't be able to see him in the dark. I sent J with a flashlight also to make him more conspicuous.
And so, on the way to synagogue, J turned to Seth and said (are you ready for this?): "Abba, if I were Iron Man, I'd be Red and Gold and then the cars could see me so they wouldn't hit me!"
Argh!
Exhibit Three:
This morning, after breakfast, J asked if I would let him watch some Berenstain Bears on TV before it was time to go to school. Actually, he came downstairs and said, "Berenstain Bears! Patch!" and what he meant to say was "Mommy can I please watch some Berenstain Bears on TV and will you please get me my patch?" Once we cleared that up, I put on some Berenstain Bears. I had just pressed play on the remote, and it hadn't even started playing yet, when J turned to me and said:
"Why didn't you put on Transformers??"
ChezPerky 