Friday, January 08, 2010

Parenting is Hard: Three-and-a-Half Scenes

I'm sure these aren't the worst things we'll have to deal with over the years, but sometimes it's a fine line between laughing hysterically and how do I handle this.

Scene I

Quinlan is in the bath. I am downstairs and hear:
"Snow White! Snow White! C'm on! Go get your gun!"

Talking with her afterwards, Quin explained that it was Cinderella who wanted Snow White to get the gun. I don't know if that makes it better or worse ... although it sounds like Disney has an as-of-yet underexploited Princesses niche on their hands.

Scene II

Celeste in her kindergarten classroom. The teacher is at the whiteboard writing out some sentances for the kids. Celeste starts yelling out:
"Boring!"

Appropriately, she was sent to the princapal's office ... where she was allowed to sit and read quietly for a while ... which is what she wanted to be doing in the first place. I'm not sure the right lesson was learned there.

Scene III

Celeste and Quinn are discussing Celeste's newly proclaimed vegetarianism, as Quinn extols the virtues of eating meat.
C: "Well, Quinn, I just don't want to hurt animals"
Q: "But you don't hurt them. They're already dead!"

And with one vegetarian parent and one not-vegetarian parent, it just makes this whole dinnertime craziness even more fun ...

Scene III½

A little later Quinn was asking about what other sorts of animals are eaten by people. She already knew chickens and turkeys (although she's not convinced those are different), pigs, cows, fish ...
Q: Do people eat bunnies?
E: Yes, some people do eat rabbit.
Q: Slightly worried look on her face.
E: But we won't ever make you eat rabbit, Quinn.
Q: But I want to!

I need to check with her nursery school to see if they had a guest apperance by Anthony Bourdain or something ...

6 comments:

Evelin said...

Let me just comment on scene two. Mrs. B was actually handing out treats (cars) and Celeste didn't like them. And yelled boring multiple times. And was told she could go hang out in Mrs. P's room if she couldn't behave (a pre-k or 1st grade teacher). She eventually returned, started up with the same chorus (maybe this was when they were at the white board?) and was send to the office.

T. Carter said...

See that's what I get blogging only part of the story ... ;)

Marie said...

I guess boring would be my child b/c I don't have such exciting moments to share. Scene 3.5 was my favorite!

kirsten said...

Oh these made me laugh. They didn't make me feel better about the moments when I want to strangle my children (seriously - this is your hard parenting post?) but they did make me laugh. thanks. :)

T. Carter said...

@Kirsten: Oh there are plenty of those sorts of hard parenting moments, too, but they generally aren't as funny as these ...

Melissa said...

It's been a while since I read your blog. I'm LAUGHING so hard about the "BORING" story.