Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

In which my six-year-old son steals the show...

My son likes to "invent" things. This is the dispenser he made for his Halloween candy -- which he immediately altered when he realized the candy would just spill out at the bottom. (Image by the author. Feel free to re-use. Attribution appreciated.)

1. It was the morning of Crazy Sock Day in the lead-in to Halloween at my son's school and we hadn't picked a pair yet. So I explained the premise -- mismatched socks, as different as possible in as many ways as you can get, like color and pattern.

He did a good job of that, and as I was about to set the unmatched second pair on his dresser, he took them from me and put them in the dirty clothes basket.

Yes. He wanted both pairs back after the wash.

2. The kids learned about Veteran's Day at school, but as he has before, my son confused veteran with a similar-sounding word: On the day, he wished me a Happy Veterinarian's Day and gave me some hand-made cards.

Later on, he told a neighbor that I had worked for George Washington.

"I'm not that old," I chuckled, before explaining to him that Washington was our first President, but had died long ago.

Good on him, anyway for remembering that the President is atop the chain of command, and for trying to put that together with something else that he learned about the Presidency.

3. My son likes to enjoy some screen time as he soaks in the tub, and I allow him to use an iPad sitting a few feet away on the toilet lid. One day, his battery was low, so I hooked it up to an external battery before his bath.

"Don't splash around or get this wet," I told him. "It could start a fire."

When I came to check on him a few minutes later, I found that he'd moved the iPad and the battery further away, to the top of a vanity -- and those were sitting on a folded towel.

4. We took the kids to Disney last weekend, and one morning, Little Man was in the mood to do something else at the moment we needed to leave for the first Fast Pass window of the day.

"Disney is boring!" he complained.

As wise and clever as he can be, he's still a little boy, and not long later, was excited to see Mickey Mouse in one of the many parades that seem to pop up out of nowhere all the time in the park.

-- CAV