What He Hears

From the Sometimes-He-Hears-What-I-Say Department:

#1

"Look, Mommy. Look what I did!"

Sam is at the dining room table building with Tinker Toys. He has built a locomotive that looks almost exactly like the one in the picture on the instruction booklet.

"That's cool. Where'd you learn to do that?" I say.

"It's because I ate that avocado and my brain got bigger and now I'm smart," he says.


#2

Sam is sitting at the kitchen counter drawing and paying no attention to me. After discovering that we're out of coffee, I am desperate for caffeine. In the back of the cupboard I find a few packets of chai black tea that are at least ten years old. I say to myself that I should look up on the internet how much caffeine is in black tea and I sit down to the computer next to Sam. Yahoo is telling me that there is a must see video of Lady Gaga having her Marilyn Monroe moment with Bill Clinton, so I start the video and Sam actually looks up from his drawing.

"I like that music, Mommy. Is it about tea?"

#3

Sam has been in bed for ten minutes when I sink myself into a hot bubble bath. Just as the bubbles reach my collarbone he opens the door and tells me he has to poop. I tell him to get his potty seat from his bathroom and bring it into Mommy's bathroom so I won't have to get up to clean his butt when he's done. After he is settled on the potty seat he tells me he needs something to read so I hand him the Scholastic Parent & Child magazine that came home from pre-school last week. He thumbs through it looking at pictures of Halloween costumes and toys he wants for his birthday while I read the Time magazine about the new silent majority.

"This is awesome. I love this magazine!" he says. "This magazine is awesome! I need to make more time to read it."