Rocket Scientist

I’m not ready for serious subjects yet, so we’re going to the kids for this one.  Why?  Because my daughter cracked me up this morning.

I have three children.  A teenage smart aleck daughter of fourteen.  A precocious son of five (Alex), who still doesn’t talk and has some learning issues and a ten month old daughter (Roxy).

My son, though a rough and tumble kid with a great future in demolition, is genuinely attached to his sister.  He loves her toys more than most of his and will literally spend hours playing with her musical light-flashing toys with her (even when he ignored similar toys when he was younger).  He has learned not to knock things over on her.  He is vocally upset when she cries.  And, although he used to try to pick her up when she was first learning to crawl (which only knocked her about and made her cry), he gave up on this almost at once.  And hasn’t done it since.  He is not a stupid child.  The point is, he is extraordinarily gentle with her, patient with her.

And Roxy loves her brother.  He comes in and she lights up.  She follows him into his usually horribly messy room and only calls for us to rescue her if he closes the door and she can’t get out again.  And he’s stopped doing this, too.  Roxy is the youngest, the last, the baby.  She is beautiful.  She is precious.  And she’s in charge.  And she knows it.

Anyway, last night had been sent to bed without a bath (his favorite thing) because he’s going through an empty-all-the-toilet-paper-into-the-toilet-bowl phase that we haven’t broken him of.  And he did it to both the upstairs bathrooms at the same time.  So he was sent to bed early.

This morning, he got up and used the bathroom (without pulling his stunt) and then toddled back to his room.  He’s not good in the morning and it was early for him.  But Roxy was up already and rarin’ to go so she followed him back to his room.  She’s become a heck of a crawler the past two weeks, very capable.  I could here him from my room, whining/half screaming in his frustrated non-speaking way, clearly telling her that he didn’t want her in his room and to leave him alone.

Roxy don’t play that.  As I listened, fascinated, just outside the room, she sat back on her haunches and started to chew him out in baby talk.  The words were “nananana nom ba nanababadamama,” but the tone said, “Now listen here, bub.”  She’d jabber a bit, never backing down.  Every once in a while he’d come back with a little moan or a whine or a screech.  But she was telling him what for and who da what.  If he tried to argue, she’d get more imperious until, when she was done, she turned and crawled away.

And he didn’t whine again all morning.

I think I might be in a lot of trouble.

I have three pictures here, by the way.  If you look closely in Roxy’s close up, her eyes are turning brown, but she has this patch of gray on the inside portion (nearest the nose) of her iris on both eyes.  My daughter has like calico eyes, at least for the moment.  Aren’t my kids cute?

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