Festival of insanity, a.k.a. Fatherhood

This past weekend was a goldmine of nutty things my kids said and did. Jonah topped this list, mostly because almost every utterance out of Timothy's and Stephen's mouths these days concerns Pokemon, and because Sam still can't talk much. Which leaves Jonah as the primary non-Pokemon talker in the house.

Here we go:

Timothy
We were at my in-laws for Father's Day, and the adults were sitting around regretting the amount of food we ate and trying to decide which card game to play while we waited for dinner. (Okay, actually that was just me. Nobody else overate and everybody except the kids was too full to eat any dinner.)

Timothy walks up and asks, "Can we play the big CD's?"

I had no idea what he meant, and my face must have shown it.

He tried again, "In Papa's room. The big CD's that you play on top of the box."

Blank stares.

It took us a few minutes to determine that he meant a record player. [Insert "how old I feel" joke here.]

Stephen
All of the house males ran some errands on Saturday morning so that my wife could paint the bathroom. We began with the half-hour process of getting shoes on and then moved to the half-hour process of piling into the car.

Very early in the shoe battle, Stephen was geared up and ready to go. He asked, "Can I play my Gameboy in the car?" Thinking he meant "when we are in the car may I play my Gameboy," I said yes.

Later, all the other boys (and 1 Dad) had shoes on and were ready to go. But I couldn't find Stephen. I looked through the house and then finally checked the garage. He had been in there, playing his Gameboy in the car for the past half-hour.

Jonah
Part of what had taken so long was fighting with Jonah over what to wear. Jonah loves his overalls. He's got a couple of short pairs, and there is one in particular that he will wear whenever he gets the chance.

So while were getting dressed (and while Stephen was in the car playing Pokemon on his Gameboy), I instructed Jonah to put on "a t-shirt and some shorts." Oops, wrong word.

[Cue rocket-launching scene from Apollo 13.] "Not shorts! I wanna wear my overalls!"

At this point, a wise man would realize his mistake and back down. I am not a wise man. Perhaps I was changing Sam, but the fog of war makes memories hazy.

"Put on some shorts Jonah," I replied.

"But Dad . . ."

"Get dressed Jonah."

Holding up his overalls for me to see, he whined again, "But Dad, my overalls have shorts stuck on them."

And so they did.

Sam
He didn't say anything, but we did find him mainlining cat food. He now is able to open the door to the garage and eats it directly from the bag.