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Daphne

Kidspeak

Girly talk

kirsten - princess

During our bedtime chat last night:

Kirsten: I want a mei mei. Can I have a mei mei?

Me: You do? I’m not agreeing to one yet but even if I have another baby, it might not be a girl, you know?

Kirsten: Because girls are more difficult to make? Must make the long hair and the eyes and the toes…

Me: Hahahhaha I guess you could see it that way. But you do know that mommy doesn’t actually *make* the baby right?

Kirsten: Your stomach makes the baby?

Me: No, not really. God makes the baby and mommy’s stomach is just like a storage area for the baby to grow until she’s ready to come out to meet you. We’ll talk about the biology of that another day, okay?

Kirsten: Did God make me too?

Me: Of course, sweetheart. He made you really really special.

*pause*

Kirsten: I think I will ask God to start making a mei mei for me now and I will share my Barbie phone with her.

Me: Um, ok maybe not right now. This storage facility needs to rest. Like in a year or two would be good.

how i pretend to be a cool mum, side effects of motherhood

Getting my game on

truett gaming

Ever since we introduced Truett to Angry Birds, he’s been obsessed with the game. How obsessed? Well, they get 30 minutes of TV/iPad time a day and instead of watching his favorite shows like he used to, he’s been spending it on unlocking new levels on Angry Birds.

I’m actually quite impressed because the kid is seriously good at this. Better than me, in fact. And that’s saying a lot because ahem, I’m pretty good myself.

If you’ve ever played the game, you’ll know that it’s not just randomly launching birds into the stratosphere. There’s strategy and skill involved. You’ve got to quadrate vector angles, calculate bird to pig ratio, account for the planetary orbit (on the Space version), optimize each bird’s special powers and most importantly, think outside the box.

One time, he was stuck at this particular stage and he was all “Mom, I need your help to win this stage.” I took one look at the stage and it was really difficult. Like 4 birds against a gazillion pigs wearing armor and protected by a massive steel structure kind of difficult. Aight, maybe a gazillion is an overstatement but I lost count because there were too many.

But you know how in their heads, we’re supposed to be good at everything? To them, mommy’s super awesome because she can do anything. Count backwards from 100? DONE! Fix a 5,000 piece puzzle? NO PROBLEMO! Make fire with rocks? Never tried but HELL YEAH GIMME THOSE ROCKS.

They’ll figure out soon enough that mommy’s not a superhero but and I wasn’t about to burst that bubble. At least not yet. And if It took clearing an Angry Birds level to do it, I was going to annihilate every single one of those pigs.

So I took over the phone and tried a few different strategies. None of them worked. Those were some resilient pigs.

I spent 15 minutes on it and I was still stuck at the same level. Usually at that point, I’m all like “stupid game” and that’ll be the end of that but my son was counting on me to be awesome so I sent him off to play with his other toys and I went to google “Angry Bird Walkthrough”. Ok, I know respectable gamers don’t do walkthroughs but desperate times and all that.

With my newly armed strategy, I taught Tru how to do it and I could see it in his eyes. “Mommy’s still awesome.”

*Crisis averted for another day

Truth be told, I know better than to pretend to be a superhero so I turned to him and said “Actually mommy doesn’t know everything. But I’m going to at least try to keep up, okay?” He nodded.

“And if you ever need to make fire with rocks, go ask daddy.”