Where Do Children Come From?

You people with small children have no business doing anything. Anything at all. Except watching Nickelodeon. And coloring. And talking about gravity. And watching Nickelodeon. And blowing up balloons. And wiping up messes. And watching Nickelodeon.

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Sean’s six-year-old little brother was here informing us of these facts. This was information I needed, by the way. I once thought I knew a few things about children. I mean I have extensive formal training and some years of experience with children. But, as I look back, I realize that the bulk of my experience was with children between the ages of seventh grade and college undergrads. So, yeah. I needed to broaden my horizons.

First thing I did after lunch was took a nap. Don’t know how Tessa did it, but she stayed up and watched three episodes of an “iCarly” marathon instead of napping with me. She claims that she’s just happy to have a little Sean clone in the house again. But I think she was making sure the cat didn’t get flushed down the toilet or something. Gabe isn’t a destructive kid, but he does make mistakes.

After my nap, we went outside. Gabe always wants to practice stick fighting. See what I mean about mistakes? We always get hurt, but he always wants to do it. Then he wanted to break boards. His big brother and his daddy practice some of the karate breaking techniques, and Gabe won’t be left out. ‘Course, he uses one of my fighting sticks. Went pretty well until I broke my six-foot bo (staff) on a brick. It was Gabe’s idea. He still needs adult supervision is what I’m saying.

We came back inside and watched another episode of “iCarly” and had some apple juice. Then I got my ass thoroughly kicked in a game of Shrek Monopoly, after which we watched another episode of “iCarly.” Actually, I made supper and tried not to listen to the over-acting and under-writing.

I don’t know how it happened, but the daylight dwindled, and Gabe seemed to be calming down. I sat him in a chair by my computer and had him teach me how to draw a penguin. He’s really into penguins right now. He’s also a real performer. I showed him how my software could make the penguin’s mouth move, so he wanted to make it say something. I recorded a little song he composed for the occasion and animated the penguin here. This is Gabe’s motion picture debut.

Not bad, really. There’s a brief segment where he slips into jibberish, but Tessa said it was actually Antarctican. So I provided a subtitle with a rough paraphrase of the Antarctican.

I also learned that little kids who miss their daddys aren’t very hungry. I made so much food that went uneaten, our poor dogs are going to die of salt poisoning. I’ll try to space out dishing up the leftovers for several days. That may help.

Finally, if you have little kids, I don’t see how you have time for anything else, including bathing and bowel movements. I would just have to drop everything until they’re like twelve and able to take care of themselves.