Some Kevey-isms
Kev likes to help at the grocery store by putting food on the belt at checkout. Once, while putting a box of crackers on, he said to the cashier, “Here you go, Worker.” Sounded like such a snob. He sorta made up for it by then turning to the bagger and asking, “How are you doing today?”
While getting buckled into his carseat, Kevey was telling me a story. I interrupted to ask him to put his book down so I could get his arm through the strap. He grabbed his ears and said, “It is MY turn to talk and YOUR turn to listen.”
We think he has a future working for a radio station. If we’re listening to a cd he’s familiar with (OneRepublic’s latest is his current obsession), he makes sure to yell out the name of each song once it begins. “Mommy! It’s ‘Secrets’! ‘Secrets’ is on!! ‘Secrets’ is on right now, Mommy!” And with each song he asks the same questions every single time. “Why does he say he has no family he can blame?” “Why does he say that about truth?” “Is he playing the cello right now?” The rest of the time he strums his cardboard (or invisible, in the case of the car) guitar and sings along.
I think the Kevey-ism that we hate the most is “Actually…” (which he pronounces ash-she-lee). He will find a way to correct everything we say, starting or ending with that dreaded word. Bern and I just can’t seem to stop being idiots, so we’re thankful that Kevey can tell us how things really are. Here’s an example of how this works (with 4 options as Kevey’s response):
“C’mere and get your shoes, little guy.”
“No, I’m BIG actually!” or “Actually these are boooooots!” or “I have to get socks first actually!’ or “Actually I want Daddy to do my shoes!” As you can see, my request was moronic on so many levels, and poor Kevey has to settle on only one aspect to rebuke me about. It’s stressful for me to be so dumb all the time, but it must be even more stressful to be 3 and already decades smarter than your parents.
And the grand finale. We were chatting about how it will be nice to visit the Carbos in LA. Kenzi said, “When I go to Los Angeles, I will tell Penn that December is Diciembre in Spanish.” Kevey said, “When I go to Miss Angeles, I will give Buster [their super-silly dog] a hug. And then I will kiss him on the…….buttcrack!”
January, part 1
(That title is to encourage me to write a part 2. We’ll see.)
Kenzi started back at school on Jan 3rd and it was almost harder to send her back to school than it was at the beginning of the year. We’d adjusted to our routine of having her at school from 9-2 (aside from a sick day nearly every other week) and it had become the new normal. Then she had two weeks off for winter break and it just wasn’t nearly long enough. I loved having her around all the time. I loved that Kevey had someone to entertain him. I loved that we could have playdates involving both kids. And let’s face it, I loved having lazy mornings. Maybe when she’s in 5th grade and starting to think she’s too cool to hang out with me, then I’ll be the mom who’s relieved that school’s starting up again. But for now, it’s grudgingly that I took her back to school.
I’m thankful that Kenzi loves her teacher and loves her class and it’s so fun to see how much she’s learning. From what her teacher says and from what we’ve seen, the academic stuff is a breeze for her but the social/emotional aspect is an issue every now and then. She sometimes panics and overreacts if things aren’t working like she thinks they should, and I could take a lesson from her teacher on talking her off the ledge without getting upset myself. I also think sometimes she gets a little overwhelmed by the physical size of the school; when we drop her off, she usually just wants to stand at the wall until the bell rings instead of going off to play. She doesn’t act nervous or anxious necessarily but just doesn’t feel comfortable approaching a group of friends to play. It sounds like she does fine interacting with classmates for the rest of the day so maybe it’s just the size of the playground and number of kids, bringing up the small-fish-big-pond insecurity. I was a supershy kid so I may be oversensitive to how she’s adjusting – overall she’s a much friendlier and outgoing kid than I ever was so I probably don’t need to be concerned. It’s just that temptation to compare your kids to everyone else’s kids, and depending on the area of comparison you either come away thinking you’re kid’s way better than everyone else’s or your kid’s extremely weird and in need of an emergency intervention.
In other news, our beloved Carbos moved to Los Angeles last week (is that it? just a week ago?) and we miss our buddies like crazy. I’m thankful they’re close enough that we can see them a couple times a year but supersad about not getting to see them all the time anymore. Probably didn’t help that in their last two weeks here, we saw them more than we normally would in a year. Instead of getting sick of them, we just realized more intensely how awesome they all are. And of course it’s after they move that Keves decides that he’s going to marry Indie. Don’t know what he’s got ’til it’s gone, that boy. He also said they will have two kids, named Lamby and Rhino. Bern gave him a hard time about it, but really, Hebrew-speaking folk would think we’re calling our son Lamby so it can’t be that weird of a name.
And in other other news, today is our anniversary. We will celebrate by dropping the kids off at Awana and rushing to dinner before we have to pick them up again. But it’s free childcare and we will take what we can get! Until part 2…
