Thursday, October 29, 2015

David's questions

What I love about David is that he can do and say things that would make me lose my ever lasting mind if any other human on the planet did them, and then just as I am about to lose it he brings me back from insanity to a place of calm.

I run a preschool so one might  think that I am a pretty calm person who interacts like freaking Mr Rogers with my kids, but if you heard the story from David you would think that I am a constant raging lunatic.....what he forgets is that he doesn't tell the whole story. ( ok, in truth likely neither do I, but hey, my blog, my version).

David could bring the calmest person to their knees in t minus 10 seconds if he was having a David moment.  He has pushed full dressers down the stairs when he was upset with a babysitter.  He has ripped up countless numbers of library books faster than you can possibly get the book away from him, and he has dumped countless boxes of cereal on the table for no other reason than because he can.  However, in these crazy making instances, I am often insanely calm....sure, I make him clean things up, and I let him know that the behavior is not ok, but he often looks so tiny in these moments that for me to react any way other than calm would be totally wrong, so the crazier his behavior the calmer I stay.

On the other hand,  he has moments, like today when I was ready to leave the house and just needed him to pack a snack and he was on freeze mode when he frustrates me and then makes me laugh like no other human.

He needed a snack, and so I offered him cheez its or pretzels, both reasonable choices.  He wanted only a granola bar, not a bar with nuts, but a bar made in a factory where there may have been nuts at some point, and so he could not bring that granola bar.

This is where it is impossible to understand David's brain- he wanted the granola bar, but he knew he could not have the granola bar, but he also could not pick between cheez its or pretzels.  I packed him cheez its because we had to leave, he threw them on the counter.  I offered pretzels, he kept repeating bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.  Finally I said, fine take the bar, I will tell your teacher that you have it and need to eat it outside of the classroom, and he picked up the box and read to me where it says "made in a factory with nuts", and so he would not take the bar since he knows he cannot have products with nuts in his classroom.

As I once again told him that he could pick cheez its or pretzels, maybe slightly more firmly this time, he started to ask me his favorite question:

"Does Uncle Ryan yell?"
"Does Meg yell?
"Does papa yell?

And as we go through all of these and more as I become increasingly more frustrated because guess what WE ALL YELL!!!! But now he is on his yelling kick so he has to go through everyone we know to see if they yell and because he forgets who he already asked about we cycle through Uncle Ryan and Meg and Tim at least a million times!  Then as I tell him for one final time, "we all yell, now cheez its or pretzels?" He says "bar", smiles at me and takes the cheez its!

It's as if he knows he is being funny and in some ways he is pulling my leg, but in other ways he is bringing me to the very brink of insanity and then pulling me back from the ledge as only David can with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face.......