Great moments in parenting

It's 9:30 pm and Tessie is not asleep. Not only is she not asleep, she's not in bed, nor even in her room. No, she is in the kitchen doing her homework*. She is doing her homework because, in search of something to keep her occupied while "not at all tired" (her all-too-frequent words) and therefore not at all interested in going to sleep, she found herself in the kitchen and started filling out her job chart** for the afternoon/evening. When she got to the bottom, she discovered a blank space in the "Finish homework by Thursday night" row.

I had just banished her from our bedroom (another place she often finds herself when avoiding her own bed) and so she called to me tentatively from the end of the hallway, "Mommy, I have to tell you something."

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"We forgot to do my homework!"

Since sleep is clearly not going to happen before the homework is completed, I find the packet, Tessie retrieves her pencil case, and off she goes. Trace the upper- and lower-case U's, circle the larger number in each pair, cut out the pictures and glue them in matched sets; all the while singing, "You are my sweet tart sweet tart sweet tart."

We'll see who falls into bed, exhausted, first.

(Any guesses? Hint: She just hopped across the living room on one foot, proudly bearing the homework for inspection. She then grabbed the user guide to the "Learn To Play Chess" DVD she recently received*** and skipped back to her room to peruse it further.)


* Homework, you ask? Yes, every Monday she and her pre-school classmates get a packet of 4 worksheets to be completed at home and turned in on Friday.

** The job chart is an ever-evolving tracking sheet for encouraging Tessie to complete her daily/weekly duties, ranging from "get out of bed" to "set the table before dinner" to "go to bed on time." When we forget to complete it, she does it herself, and to her credit does so quite honestly (with frowny faces for items she failed to do).

*** Thank you to my chess-playing attorney friends -- you know who you are! :-)

False Modesty?

So Tessie and I were looking at photos together when we came across a few of her.

Tessie: Aww, cute!
Me: Don't say that about pictures of yourself, it's immodest.
Tessie: What does 'immodest' mean?
Me: To be immodest is to be too proud of yourself. It's like showing off.
Tessie: But I am proud of myself.
Me: You should be, but don't be too proud of yourself.
Tessie: I'm proud of myself but not too proud of myself. I'm perfect!

That backfired...

Theology by Tessie

It started with Tessie and me in the car talking about the weather...

Me: We're going to Legoland Friday. Hopefully the weather will be nice. [as compared to the deluge of almost Biblical proportions that was in progress]

T: Why hopefully?

Me: Well, all we can do is hope. We can't control the weather.

T: Why not?

Me: We just can't.

(pause)

T: God controls the weather.

(pause)

Me: Really, now? Tell me about God. Where does God live?

T: God lives in the sky, near the sun. God has a house near the sun made of dried raindrops. She has a spaceship attached to the house. God is a girl.

(further pause while I absorb this)

T: God made life. The first Mommy and Daddy. God created them.

--

As anyone who knows Tessie's Parents can guess, she's not learning this at home. And, I doubt she's learning it at the school that just hosted "Holiday Shows" rather than Christmas concerts. Fascinating.

Not what I expected to hear from the back seat

In the car on the way home from work today:

Tessie (iPhone in hand): Mommy, I don't like the maze game. It's too tricky so I got rid of it.

Me: Got rid of it? You mean you deleted it?

T: Yes. I deleted it.

Me: Um... how did you know how to delete it?

T: I just clicked on the "x."

Me: Tessie! Do NOT delete apps from Mommy's iPhone without asking.

T: Sorry, Mommy.

Me: That's ok, that was a free one anyway. But next time, ask before deleting anything.

T: Ok, Mommy.

[some moments later]

T: I really like moving things around. It makes a new dot each time I move something onto another screen.

Me: Please do not move my applications!

T: Ok.

[a little later]

T: I moved the calendar, is that ok?

Me: No!

T: Sorry, Mommy.

(I also had to learn the hard way to disable in-application purchases after Tessie spent $7 buying extra coins in TapZoo. Sigh. This kid knows my phone better than I do.)

Legoland! Day Two!

We did the math: it actually works out economically to purchase park memberships, so long as we plan on coming back again at least one more time within the next twelve months.

We do not anticipate any argument from Tessie about return visits.

Having thoroughly covered the park on the previous day, we went back to some of our favorite rides early. First up: the Miniland boat cruise. Dinosaurs, construction workers, African wildlife, Mount Rushmore, the New York skyline... you can see a lot from the boat.

Not only is there a Lego reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty in front of the reconstructed Manhattan skyline, there is also a Lego reconstruction of the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty in front of the reconstructed Manhattan skyline in front of the New York New York Hotel in the reconstruction of Las Vegas.

Confused yet? There's also this model of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory within view of San Francisco's TransAmerica Pyramid. They take a bit of license with the geography, but the models are excellent and, fortunately, there is adequate signage identifying the various landmarks.

Of course, some of the constructions are pure fantasy,

while others represent full-scale objects in remarkable detail.

This "Volvo" was parked outside the Volvo Driving School, which Tessie had visited on the previous day. We went back because she wanted another try at it. She ran into the same difficulties -- and walls -- as she had before, but still thought it was great fun.

Busy with the rides on the first day, we didn't take in any of the shows available in the park until our second day. First up was a singing, dancing, slapstick review about firefighters that Tessie enjoyed.

Tessie met Bob the Builder, the star of the next show, outside the theatre. He must be a very busy guy, with both his construction job and his position as Minister of Propaganda in the Obama cabinet*, but he still found the time to put together a 3D movie about building a roller coaster. Tessie sat through it, but found some of the 3D effects to be a little too much to take.

[*In case you don't get the joke, they use the same catch phrase: "Yes we can!"]

Right after the show, we discovered the "Build and Test" pavilion, and there went the rest of the afternoon. In "Build and Test," visitors get to assemble race cars from great buckets of Lego bricks and assorted components, then set them atop a ramp with a starting gate and race them against other cars.

 

After racing, Tessie decide to make some modifications. Some of those bricks were hard to reach:

Some were really hard to reach:

But Tessie was able to hang with the bigger kids, and put together a successful, if top-heavy, racer.

Before the park closed, we managed to extract Tessie from "Build and Test" in time to get her back on the Miniland cruise, the same ride on which we had begun our day. Not too long after closing time, they dimmed the lights and we got the signal to head for the exit after another full day.

But not before Tessie ran off to explore just a little more of Miniland...

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