"NO" Prayers and Scary Moments in Parenting

It is time to continue this month's theme and what better way to do it than to remember a few of our more scary parenting moments!

But first, news from the parenting front... Marcus aka The Opinionator is learning to pray. I think. You see, most normal (emphasis there) 2-3 year olds are learning to speak and will copy everything you say, which makes teaching a child to pray very easy. Well here's how it goes:
"Ok Marcus, say 'Dear Heavenly Father'"
"No!"
"Say 'Thank you for my family'"
"No!"
"Say 'Please help me to sleep well'"
"No!"
"Say 'I say these things'"
"No!"
"In the name'"
"No!"
"Of Jesus Christ"
"No!"
"Amen."
"Amen!"

What the? Sometimes if I'm whispering to him what to say he will also whisper "No", which I suppose is at least a little bit respectful to God. Oh well. This comes from the same child who quotes Mr. T on a regular basis. Thanks for that A-Team DVD mom!

And now a look back in time to two of our more scary moments in parenting...

One night in 2004 I came home from work and discovered two of my children in their room sulking. This would be Parker and Alex. Parker’s favorite line is "Hey Alex I got an idea." Alex’s favorite line is "Cool!." Invariably this leads to bad things. I asked them what they had done and Parker said, "We were having fun with the toothpaste." Oh boy. Walking quietly, I reached my bedroom door and listened. I heard my wife mumbling something about our boys having the brains God gave a duck. Glad that it wasn’t me she was upset with I opened the door and saw her on the floor with a towel scrubbing at a small patch of blue on the carpet. I asked, "What's up?" She promptly handed me a towel and told me to watch where I step. Sporting a genuinely bewildered look on my face I thought, "What does she mean by that?" and then when I saw what she meant. I wished I hadn’t.
Our bedroom, our place of sanctuary had become a mural entitled, "Ode to Crest, Bubblegum flavor." It looked like they had climbed up and attached tubes of toothpaste to the blades of the ceiling fan and then turned it on "Hurricane."
Everything I looked at had fallen victim to the toothpaste bandits. My bed, the walls, curtains, dressers, computer, floor, closet, lamp, you name it and it had become blue. My wife informed me that they had only been alone for 2 minutes. I honestly did not know this kind of stuff was possible. In a matter of an hour we learned to hate the smell of bubblegum flavored Crest. The boys apologized and promised never to use toothpaste again. Super.

Back in the year 2000 we learned an important lesson: kids and cat litter are a bad combo. It was a fine day and our son was playing with his friend. We were all enjoying a nice lunch when we heard him yell, "It's raining! Whee!!" followed by what sounded curiously like, well, rain. Both of us looked at each other with that "I don't recognize that sound, do you?" sort of look. Just then we heard it again, "It's raining, whee!" and then the sound of falling rain. We knew two things at that point: One, it wasn't raining. Two, we were inside. Not good. Those two thoughts occured simultaneously to us and in one smooth movement we got up from the table and headed toward the bathroom, actually hoping that it was raining. Upon opening the door we discovered that our happy child was indeed in the middle of a rainstorm. A thin coating of Fresh Step mixed with brown hail lay everywhere. I said, "Oh crap." I couldn't resist. Well, I spent my lunch hour vacuuming and our son spent his lunch hour in the tub.

That's about it from the desk here at Bonehead Central so until next time, keep your toothpaste locked up and buy a fish.