Saturday, November 10, 2007

Greed, Graft and Corruption: Works for Me!

From time to time, we’ve been known to try and bribe our children into doing things they don’t want to do. With varying results. In the spirit of Morrissey and “some girls and bigger than others / some girls’ mothers are bigger than other girls’ mothers,” some kids respond well to this and others, not so much. Ellis has been learning her numbers and her alphabet at pre-school. She does fine on the alphabet, but has some problems with getting the order of the numbers correctly. And, as any mathematician will tell you, the order of the numbers is the whole reason the numbers go that way.

So we have a deal with her, get the alphabet down pat and count to 100 and she can take a trip to Build A Bear, a place which has been known to cause people (well, me mostly) to come down with gratuitously large rash on various parts of my body. The place gives me the creeps. Disembodied heads and stuffing. Ugh.

Thanks to the song, she has the alphabet nailed, but has trouble with counting. Mostly, and I swear this is totally true, she ALWAYS forgets the number fifteen. She doesn’t even stop, pause or think about it. She just flies from 14 to 16 without even a second thought about it. It may as well not even exist. It’s kind of cool, in a very strange way. “13, 14, 16, 17...”

And I overheard this the other day while I was upstairs, fretting about something and everyone else was downstairs loafing (OK, doing homework, but still):

“Ellis, you are doing great on your numbers, but ‘burp’ isn’t a number.”

I think if she could belch the alphabet or the numbers to 100, I’d buy her a pony as well as taking her to Build a Bear. We’d have the only four year old who could burp the alphabet. Totally awesome.

Though Reha doesn’t seem to think so. I’ll have to do some fast talking to get her on board with this plan.

1. I fell upon your blog at another blog (sorry, don’t remember which).  I had to follow you here, because you made me belly-laugh, and I hoped for more.  You did not disappoint.  I’ll be back, because I love a man who can write, makes me laugh, and loves his wife and kid.  (Don’t worry; I’m a very happily married woman and will not stalk you.  Just wanted to say I appreciate your talent and think your blog is great :)

   Posted by Barb  on  11/10/07  at  10:34 PM

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