Ironic Mom

It’s not often my five-year-old twins end up in fisticuffs. For this I am thankful. It’s not that my refereeing abilities suck; it’s that if fighting were commonplace I’d have to actively parent.

The boxing matches have started the past three nights, after the good night tuck in. Evidently, William and Vivian, each surrounded by a menagerie of stuffed animals in their twin beds, thought this was a good time to debate what they’ve learned in their respective kindergarten classes.

I May Ban All Interplanetary Conversation

Night 1, Fight 1

So there I was sitting in the living room, drinking tea with a friend while Norah Jones crooned softly on the stereo. This peaceful tableau lasted about five minutes before being interrupted by murderous screams.

I climbed the stairs in three strides and started with my usual parenting question: “Hey, Hey, what’s going on here?” [For full effect, insert Canadian accent. If you don’t know how to do this, imagine the vowels are flat pancakes instead of perky cream puffs].

“He’s hitting me,” Vivian screamed.

“She hit me first,” William countered.

You know how this goes. The tennis game continues, with blame being volleyed over the net with surprising endurance. Then the time out, a metaphorical one, where I attempt to figure out what the real problem is.

“William says there’s lava on Neptune,” Vivian shouts.

“Lava?”

“I mean fire,” says Will.

“Fire?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no fire on Neptune,” Vivian says.

“Yes there is.”

“No there’s not.”

“Stop!” I shout.

I can’t remember how I resolved this, but I eventually got them into their beds and asleep. I do know that later my research assistant, Google, told me that an album by the heavy metal band Ancestors was called Neptune with Fire. I’m hoping that’s not part of the kindergarten music program.

Further research courtesy of my Physics friend revealed that one of Neptune’s moons, Triton, has volcanoes on it that shoot out something akin to frozen Nitrogen pellets.

But they couldn’t have covered this in Kindergarten, could they? What happened to learning about colours?

Night 2, Fight 2

Interplanetary Warfare, Take 2.

With both kids safely tucked in, I watched the Oscars, in spite of the fact that I’ve seen only one movie in the past three years. Somewhere during one of those categories that no one really cares about — like Best Make-up – the screaming started again. This time Vivian and William yelled and wrestled their way downstairs.

“Mom,” asked Vivian, “what’s the hottest planet?”

“Umm, I don’t know – Mercury?”

“See, I told you so,” said Viv.

“No it’s not! It’s Venus,” said William, clearly miffed.

“Well, Mercury is the closest,” I added, proud that I knew one scientific fact.

“But Venus is hotter!”

“No it’s not.”

“Okay okay. It’s a tie. They’re both hot. Now go to bed. Now!”

My husband later informed me that he thought Venus was hotter, something to do with the atmosphere. And he was right: Venus is indeed hotter as massive amounts of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere create a greenhouse effect.

Night 3

No fight, but both kids rushed into our bedroom to inform us that Pluto sometimes orbits closer than Neptune.

Now excuse me as I go scour Wikipedia, trying to prepare for tonight’s fight, which I’m predicting is going to be “Is Pluto really a planet?”

Not sure what I’ll do when they hit Grade One.

It seems fitting that International Women’s Day comes the day after Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director. Yes, the glass ceiling momentarily shattered last night at the 82^nd Academy Awards: one small step for the director of The Hurt Locker, one giant leap for women in film. Or so we can hope.

To annoy me on International Women’s Day, my five-year-old daughter pulled out one of her Barbie dolls. Now we’re pretty much an anti-Barbie household, but we accept hand-me-downs. It’s how my kids get swords, cheerleading outfits, and other toys of questionable morality.

Yes, Vivian is the proud owner of five Barbie dolls, all of whom come with anatomical proportions that are impossible. Vivi’s lost some of their clothes and shoes, so they’re looking even more suspect. But the one who looks most suspect my husband calls Stripper Barbie.

As you can see, Stripper Barbie is topless and she has this button you can press that makes her hot pink skirt light up and spin. Whenever the skirt twirls, I’m reminded of Linda Blair’s famous head spin in The Exorcist.

Last week, Vivian was playing with Stripper Barbie and her back-up quartet when she decided to do show and tell.

Vivian held up Stripper Barbie and said, “Isn’t she beautiful, Mom?”

I ignored the question. “Which one’s smart?” I asked.

Vivi held up a fully clothed doll.

“Which one’s funny?”

Vivi held up another fully clothed doll.

“They’re all in a movie,” Vivian announced.

“They are?” I asked. I looked back at Stripper Barbie. “But where’s her shirt?”

“She doesn’t wear one. Not in this kind of movie,” Vivian said.

My eyes bulged, becoming bigger than Barbie’s boobs.

Great. Stripper Barbie’s in a porn flick.

Later today, in honour of International Women’s Day and Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win, Stripper Barbie’s going to go to the Great Beyond, also known as the landfill. And to appease my recycling self, I’ll take out the batteries first.

R.I.P., Stripper Barbie.

It all started off innocently enough. William had brought home a school library book entitled, A Porcupine Named Fluffy. This is a picture book that we used to own, but my twins have a Bachelors of Loving Things To Death and a Masters in Destroying Anything Else. Given their two advanced degrees, I had recycled the remaining pages of this dear book a year ago.

A Porcupine Named ???

William has a penchant for things familiar. Even at age five, he still enjoys watching the Baby Einstein DVD on occasion. I liken it to my affinity for Kraft Dinner: I know I’m beyond it, but sometimes it reminds me of easier days.

So, there I was, reading A Porcupine Named Fluffy, seated cross-legged on the couch with a twin under each armpit. Rereading this once-favourite was a trip down memory lane for all of us, and the conversation about the protagonist, a female porcupine, continued even after I got up to unpack the dregs of Vivian and William’s school lunches.

“I think they should name the porcupine Prickly,” William said.

“No,” Vivian said, “they should name it Prick.”

“Prick’s not a girl’s name,” Will replied.

Nope, definitely not, I thought, scraping mushy apple core from the inside of Vivian’s lunch bag.

Later that day, I picked up the newspaper and read an article about the top baby names of 2009, at least according the vital statistics branch of my province, Alberta. William, my son’s name, ranks 9^th overall, as 197 Albertan boys were given that name last year. Vivian is more unique, with fewer than 20 babies sharing that name. Interestingly, more than two times as many girls were named Kennedy, possibly demonstrating that Alberta just might be the 51^st State.

But neither Kennedy nor Vivian are unique monikers. You want unique? Try these for girls: Peanut, Epic, Fyre, Mischiefs, Twinkle, Comfort.

And for boys? Bison, Chaos, Whip, Mystery, Draco, and – for all you NHL fans out there – Ericlindross (yes, one word).

After reading the lists of bizarre names, I’m starting to think that Prick is sounding pretty good.

There are stories that become part of a family’s lore. These are the stories that are pulled out at dinner parties like an old, time-tested joke. Even if people know the punchline, it’s a guaranteed laugh.

The story of my husband taking our five-week-old twins for a stroll in our Bangkok neighbourhood may be one such story. I wasn’t present, but somehow it’s become my story too.

*             *             *

August 2004 — To give me an hour alone in our apartment, my husband decides to take our twins out in the stroller. After he ferries them down in an elevator smaller than our refrigerator, he deposits Thing 1 and Thing 2 into the limousine stroller (which is too long to fit in the elevator).

It is important to note that Bangkok is not stroller – or wheelchair – accessible; it’s barely even pedestrian accessible. If you’re on a fairly quiet street (relative to Bangkok traffic, that is), you push the stroller on the actual street. If you’re on a busy street, you brave the sidewalk and steer around street stall vendors and over two-foot curbs.

On this fateful day, my husband opted for the middle-of-the-road approach, literally.

Deep-Fried Duck, anyone?

So they’re off, bypassing the Chinese-duck-soup woman, the fruit guy, the truck with the squawky loud speaker selling vegetables, the traffic, the elevated sewer grates. You get the idea. It’s mid afternoon which means, like most other times of the day, the sun is relentless and the air is heavy. Breathing can cause you to perspire. If you do the push-the-twins-in-a-stroller obstacle course, a full-scale tourist sweat is guaranteed.

Now my husband is generously proportioned. Plus, he’s in Thailand. To put this in context, I generally wear a medium shirt at any Gap. Plop me in Thailand and I can’t even fit into an XXL top from any Bangkok department store. So, my husband, being big, is supersized in Thailand. This is our fifth year in Bangkok, and –nice as the Thais ares — we’re both more than a little sick of looking out of place.

It’s minute forty of the stroll. My husband’s dodging another tuk tuk and turning the corner, which is as easy as trying to steer an overloaded supermarket cart that has two locked wheels. His shirt is stuck to his back, he’s squinting in the sun, and he’s trying to ignore the jingle of the ice cream bike that’s never quite out of hearing distance.

He’s approaching the motorcycle taxi drivers. On this corner, there’s about twelve of them, outfitted in matching vests, joking with each other, playing the odd game of checkers with bottle caps. They’re doing what they do: entertaining each other while waiting for customers.

Bangkok Motorcycle Taxi Drivers

Smiles on, they watch as my husband heaves the twins past them. They look at the stroller, and chat to each other in Thai.

Then, as my husband trudges further along, one says, “Hey, farang! Fat!”

My husband pauses. He knows farang means foreigner. And he’s sick of the fat jokes.

“Ya,” chimes another, “fat!”

My husband stops and looks back. “What did you say?”

“Fat!” one repeats.

My husband yells obscenities at them. I would exceed the word limit of this blog if I bothered to list them all.

He takes a short cut home.

Later that day, we share the story with a Thai friend. She proceeds to tell us that “fat” (or something very near to that pronunciation) means twins in Thai.

Cultural confusion 1, Cultural harmony 0.

For our remaining months in Bangkok, my husband avoids the motorcycle drivers…especially when he’s pushing our fat.

I thought I was done with tantrums.

I mean, my twins are nearly six, and we’ve had one year free of embarrass-mom-in-public moments.

Most tantrums I barely remember, my body activating the Parenting-Amnesia reflex, the one that enables moms and dads to crawl out of bed the next morning at 5:45.

There are some vague memories of tantrums floating around my hippocampus, though. I can recollect fireman-carrying my son out of a bookstore when he was three, screaming and kicking through the Children’s Section, the Self-Help Section, and then the Fiction Area (how I wished it were fiction). I can remember dragging my daughter’s arm through the library turnstiles, knowing the rest of her body would follow….all to that two syllable Meltdown Soundtrack of “Mommmmeeeee,” screamed with the urgency only children can.

So needless to say, I was gobsmacked by my son’s twenty-minute tantrum at the mall last week.

After post trauma analysis, this meltdown revealed a cause-and-effect relationship:

KNUCKLEHEADED PARENTING IDEA = TANTRUM = OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTIALLY-REDEEMING PARENTING MOMENT

Allow me to elaborate.

Knucklehead Parenting Idea, Part 1:

My kids were quick enough to potty-train during the day, but ultra-slow to demonstrate bladder control at night. I should have left well enough alone: they’re water drinkers, their doctor said not to worry, and the pull-ups did the job. But, tired of spending 50 cents a day on diapers, I introduced The Reward. In this case, Build-a-Bear: you know, that chance to spend $40 on a stuffed animal wearing a baby shirt?

Of course, Vivian, being extremely competitive, rose to the challenge. She was night-trained months ago, and never forgot the Build-a-Bear promise.

Knucklehead Parenting Idea, Part 2:

Take both kids to Build-a-Bear to purchase a reward for one kid. Yup, this follows much the same logic as opening a can a beer in front of a newly recovering alcoholic. I explained to William that we’d get him a Good Brother Award somewhere else (“At the Dollar Store?” he asked, genuinely excited). But when he saw the machinations of Build-a-Bear and the menagerie of stuffies, he freaked out. A good mother would’ve predicted this tantrum. Not me.  If I once saw the glass half full, it was now empty and cracked.

Tantrum:

Full-on, writhe on the floor, scream, beg, jump-up-and-down, cajole. The thing was, I partly agreed with him. It was unfair. So I called my husband for moral support – or to ask for permission to get William a Build-a-Bear too. My husband encouraged me to stand firm. More tantrum. Screaming. To one passerby mother, I said, “Want another son?” She looked at me with schadenfreude. I called my husband again. He said he had no idea what to do. But that brief adult contact gave me my idea.

Opportunity for Good Parenting:

“We’ll go buy you two toys, William!” I said, mustering as much enthusiasm as I could. He stopped writhing and said, “You’re not listening to me, mom.”  Fair enough. I paused, trying to repress my solve-all-conflicts gene. He continued, “It’s not fair. And I’ll never get Build-a-Bear. I still pee in my pull-up. I try not to, but I still do.”

What a freaking awful mom I am I was I sometimes am. Epic fail. On so many levels here.

Like this is fair

So I listened, so we went to a department store, so the Patron Saint of Stressed-Out Mothers smiled upon me: we found an $8 stuffy with the name “William” on it. There was no Vivian teddy bear, nor was there a Leanne bear. But there was a William. Finally, he felt special and appreciated. A chocolate mini-egg rounded out Toy 2. And when we returned to Build-a-Bear, the kind worker (who witnessed the tantrum at her store front) did a give-your-bear a heart ceremony on his stuffy too.

Good to know that I have to go through this one more time…when William gets his Build-a-Bear after his nighttime pull-ups are history. Not to mention every night when he sees his sister’s gigantic pink bear named Heartsy.

There are days when I feel that half a day has passed and it’s not even 8:15 a.m. Usually that thought hits me on the drive to school. Usually it’s in winter, after an endless search for a missing mitten.

It’s a miracle if we all make it into the minivan without me threatening to sell the children.

And then there’s the drive.

Driving: A Struggle To Arrive with Kids Alive

A couple of years ago, in a good parenting moment, I started playing Math with them while driving. I gave them number problems, and they figured out the answer (or not). The game went like this: “If Mommy, Daddy, Vivian, and William are home, and Grandma and Grandpa come to visit, how many people are in the house?”

They’ve become pretty good at it, too. So good, that I’ve started taking creative license with our problems. On a recent family outing, the scenario was this: “If Vivian and William are throwing Cheerios at each other and Daddy is still sleeping, how many people are left when Mommy runs away?”

Nothing like passive aggressive behaviour to make me feel better.

Lately, there’s been even more numbers swirling around our minivan. Every day for the past three months, Vivian and William have been telling me how many days they’ve been in school. Apparently their teachers told them they’d have a 100 Days of School party, and they’re using this as counting practice. The idea of 100 days doesn’t sound too bad, but add to it the fact that I’m a teacher and I’m in a slow-mo time warp.

“We’ve only been in school 93 days?” I ask one January Monday.

The day passes.

“It’s only Day 94?” I ask Tuesday. I’m more than aware that I teach 190 days of school each year. My math is good enough to know that we’re not even halfway there. No wonder why experts peg the end of January as the most depressing time of the year.

100 Days: Protective Gear Recommended

Day 100 closes in. New problem: each kid needs to bring 100 of something to school that day.

“How about hairs?” I ask. “There’s more than 100 on your head.”

It takes a while to silence their mass protest.

Vivian decides to bring her shell collection. William decides to bring 100 wheels (also known as 25 toy cars).

The 100^th day – yesterday – goes well enough. It’s over, and for that I’m grateful.

Now, only 90 more to go.

Photos courtesy of Mykl Roventine and Pascal, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Feel free to read Part 1 of What Reality Shows Can Teach You about Parenting, or feel free not to bother.

American Idol may not seem like a primer in parenting, but it is. Where else can you learn that everyone judges you? That lesson became apparent on a recent trip to IKEA. I had just plopped my children onto an IKEA dolly meant to carry flat-packed pieces of furniture while you search for a set of allen wrenches and 6000 screws. A woman wearing Ugg boots approached me. I noticed her footwear because I was looking down, trying to ensure the strings on my daughter’s hood didn’t wind around the wheel. No sense being totally irresponsible and hanging your own child. “Excuse me?” she says. “That’s not safe.”

With my back safely to her, I swear like I’ve dropped a sledge hammer on my baby toe, lessons that I’ve learned from Hell’s Kitchen. The kids will learn it anyway, so they might as well learn it in the safety of IKEA.

You think this is Fear Factor? Try Childbirth or The Years That Follow It

It looks like art till you have a newborn

The reality show that should be required viewing for expectant parents is Fear Factor. If lying down in a tub filled with snakes makes you up-chuck your crackers and brie, how are you going to clean diarrhea off your own pajamas? It remains a mystery how innocent newborns can consistently empty their bowels the moment you lie them on the change table, remove the soggy diaper, and raise their legs to wipe them. Liquid poo sprays from their anus to your pajamas, turning your nightgown into a canvas that resembles a Jackson Pollack painting. It ain’t art, though, if it smells like crap. I’ll take the tub-o’-snakes anyday.

Although it contains few bodily function references, The Amazing Race offers its own lessons for parents. Only unlike the actual show, the raising-your-kids version lasts at least twenty years and offers no million dollar prize. Roadblocks? You wanna talk roadblocks? Try driving with two-year-old twins across Canada …with no DVD player.  The fact that anyone on the car trip survived, especially the children, is in itself amazing. A second lesson this show teaches is about correlation: the more time a family spends together, the more fighting occurs. So, book a babysitter, and get some distance.

The adage, “Things Could Always Be Worse,” is easily learned from watching twenty seconds of Intervention or five seconds of Toddlers and Tiaras . At this point, it’s difficult to conclude which show is worse, but there’s something seriously wrong with making three-year-olds look like Lady Gaga, however cool she may be.

So, feeling morally superior, a switch to Intervention is in order. As you sit down with a well-deserved glass of Pinot Noir, you’re reminded that there are people suffering from serious addictions.  Then, when you realize your kids could become addicts, you turn off the TV and go back to the kitchen for a second glass. You take your wine out the back door to begin the search for the shoe your son lost. You step over Tonka trucks and skipping ropes, but trip over something, slopping your wine. It was the shoe, of course. As you head upstairs, you’re relieved: today’s reality shows are yesterday’s news.

As for tomorrow…

Photos courtesy of nugunslinger and Abby Lanes, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

I wipe snot off the wall and proceed to scrape the remaining crusty boogers with my finger nail. This is what my evenings have become now that I have five-year-old twins. I have no time to do DNA analyses to determine which urchin is guilty. I still have to pack lunches, reply to half a dozen birthday party invitations, and locate William’s left shoe which, according to him, is “somewhere outside.”

What I Should Do When Tempted To Watch Reality TV

No wonder then, when I finally flop in front of the television, I am incapable of watching a documentary about clubbing baby seals or trafficking children, the type of pre-parenting programming I once viewed. Educational TV once gave me anecdotes to offer to flat dinner party conversations around tables without high chairs. Now though, like many overwrought parents, I surf aimlessly, pausing occasionally to watch the drama that can be found only on Jerry Springer and reality TV. Each night, I think I’ll break this habit and go back to documentaries. But, like a gambling addict playing one game of blackjack, I flip to a reality show…and watch just a little bit.

Many wasted evenings later, I’ve learned to justify my addiction to flipping through reality shows. Like it or not, watching snippets of reality TV has taught me a lot about parenting. In fact, for most of us, it’s all the training we get. And I’m not talking about those nanny shows that preach time-out techniques. I’m talking about trashy, reality TV that’s akin to boogers-on-the-wall in its level of sophistication.

I Can't Even Count This High Most Days

From Jon and Kate Plus 8, I learned that one set of twins is enough. Seriously, if Jon and Kate had stopped after their first set of multiples, no one would know who the Gosselins are today. Jon and Kate Plus 2 doesn’t have the same euphonic quality, so no network would cover this, not even your local cable TV programmer who thinks a change in décor at a nail salon constitutes a story. I’d be better off without this show, just like I’m pretty sure I’m better off without my own army of children.

My motto for parenting has come from Survivor: Outwit, Outlast, Outplay. Isn’t that the maxim for parents the world over – to make it past your child’s bedtime while maintaining a shred of sanity? The nanosecond the postnatal-endorphin-rush ends, it’s all about survival. If you have twins, they form an alliance around age two, spurring each other on in contests such as let’s-smear-our-poo-all-over-the-wall when we should be napping. Once they enter preschool-era of no naps, the balance of power shifts permanently, as the little urchins seems to have immunity from every form of discipline that’s legal. I haven’t yet resorted to voting either of my children off the island – I’m saving that one for the teen years.

Stay tuned for more Reality Show Parenting Skills, coming your way Wednesday, the same day Toddlers & Tiaras (insert gag reflex here) resumes its winter season.

Photos courtesy of schmilblick and Spigoo, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike Lisence.

Musical chairs.

Every night before the four of us sit down to eat, we play a game of musical chairs. Well, not really. There is no music nor is there a shortage of seats. Where we sit each meal, however, always changes. Vivian and William seem to delight in determining this nightly seating plan, declaring where they want to sit and which parent they want beside them. It all sounds lovely enough: I could philosophize about there being no head of the table or giving children choice or blah blah blah. Ultimately, though, it’s a pain in the butt: we shift and re-shift while the pasta grows colder.

India.

Perhaps tonight’s musical chair experience exhausted Vivi and Will, because their dad and I actually managed to have a five-minute adult conversation at the dinner table. We reminisced about our trip to India twelve years ago. It was our first vacation together; we figured if our five-month-old relationship could survive three weeks in India it could withstand a lot. We have a thousand stories to tell, from the man with no nose who was our rickshaw driver, to the monkey squatting on top of our buffet table shoveling rice into his mouth while he looked at us. But the biggest lesson by far is that tea and toast make any crisis better.

Dancing.

Our micro-conversation ends when William scoots off his chair-du-jour and starts doing the Chicken Dance. He flaps his way through a round or two, then switches to The Macaroni (which vaguely resembles The Macarena). Next, he starts disco-dancing, shouting out four not-so-random letters: Y-M-C-A.

If my kids dance the YMCA instead of eat at the dinner table, this will be them.

Vivian soon realizes she’s being upstaged (she’s still trying to make up for the fact that she was born two minutes after her brother). To get our attention, she stand on her chosen chair and continues the YMCA, complete with the move where one hand rests behind her head, while the index finger on her other hand points around the room. I object when she starts to step onto the table.

William, thankfully, is rarely bothered by Vivian’s hyper-competitiveness. He just dances to the beat of his own drum – sometimes literally. Instead of hopping onto the chair or table to compete, he says, “I’m just going to do my own dance.” He launches into his signature William-dance. Imagine a five-year-old doing the Running Man and cross it with Pulp Fiction. The boy’s got a bit of groove, the kind that emerges when you don’t give a crap what anyone else thinks.

William’s dance ends, Vivian climbs down from her chair, and the kids go off to tidy the living room.

“How’s that cleaning up going, Vivian?” my husband asks.

She looks up from the flashcards she’s studying for the umpteenth time. “Going fine,” she says. She settles more into the sofa cushion.

William is nowhere to be found.

And that, my friends, is another twenty minutes with twins.

Photo Credit: (cc) bogdog Dan, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Most twin parents are hypersensitive to the issue of fairness. The phrase “equal but different” has become a silent household philosophy. Since Vivian had her day in the sun last blog, I thought I’d share some William-isms from the past few weeks.

He SAID what?

• “Mom, I just need some alone time.” Interpretation: I want to play computer games, so go away.

• “What happens if an astronaut lands in our backyard?” I’m open to answers on that one.

• “We’ll just play one long game of eye spy.” William’s solution to any line-up.

• “Aaaahhhh, Shuddup.” Nothing like quoting Bugs Bunny to get your mother’s attention. I don’t even let my Junior High students say shut up, which is proof that teachers sometimes make lousy parents: they’re too tired of disciplining to do any when they get home.

• “Like a light bulb.” William figured out the unofficial echo in the song, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” He was on repeat play. In January.

• “I’m sorry, Mom. I forgot to wake you up.” These were William’s words after I found him sleeping beside a massive pool of vomit.

• “I’m trying to be brave.” With tears rolling down his cheeks, William faced the fact that two pieces of his newly-constructed, 8000-piece Lego car had fallen down the register.

• “Do you know what Backyardigans’ is my favourite?” Be prepared for a 20-minute spiel following this question.

• “Can I talk to you, Mom? In the time out chair?” Parenting Tip: always make the time out chair the comfiest seat in the house.

He DID what?

• He sang along with the Mini-Pops, even after the commercial was over. Isn’t this a crime? Isn’t singing Toto at any age a crime?

• He convinced his sister to do his homework for him. They’re in Kindergarten.

#1-50 by William, #51-62 by Vivian

• He gently stroked my hair. An hour prior to this he bit his sister. Either he’s a captive monkey or he’s five.

• He named his handcrafted snowman Snowpoke.

Snowpoke, William's Not-So-Quick Snowman

• William refrained from eating candy that he found on the floor of abookstore, but he happily sucked on the Thomas bridge in a high traffic play area.

• While in Arizona, he fell off the golf cart onto the road. When I looked back, he was brushing gravel out of his hands.

• He staged a sit-in on our living room floor wearing only underwear. He was protesting going to swimming lessons. My husband said, “He looks like Gandhi.” Good luck with passive resistance in this household.

• And, earlier this evening, in a competitive game of dress-up, Vivian nearly poked him in the eye with her plastic sword.So he punched her in the nose with a dress-up fist, one from The Fantastic Four. Upon impact, the fist announced, “It’s clobberin’ time.” Well, Vivian got clobbered. William did run upstairs to retrieve one of her favourite stuffed animals. In the end, however, Vivian used the stuffy to console William because he was upset that he had clobbered her.

It's Clobberin' (Your Sister) Time

And there you have it, three weeks of William-isms.

Fairness restored.