Yep! (ten things to mark this Friday in the annals of history)

Buddies

He fed the goat, our goat, and they walked together through the field at 9.32 on a late summer morning.

U2 at age 3

What are you doing?
I asked as he sauntered across the driveway.

I’m just looking for something,
he announced confidently, as he took giant strides across old asphalt while he carried his pants over his shoulder, and I randomly noticed he was wearing neither diaper nor underwear.

Okaaaay,
I sighed,
I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Translucent flight

They stepped out the back, each with a sudsy container, and they blew bubbles against the wind, with limited success, and a cat took an inexplicable interest and kept coming back around to join in.

Yep!

Is that…good?
I asked, as he confidently poured a giant dollop of jalapeño ranch dressing onto his plate.

Yep!
he announced confidently, picking up a bottle of shiitake sesame dressing and dumping it upside down over the same plate.

Are you…sure?
I asked, watching the different viscosities of dressings swirl together in some Scandinavian-swamp like amalgamation of a sauce.

Yep!
he assured me, taking a giant spoonful, half of which made its way to his mouth, the other half making a rapid descent down the front of his shirt.

Dreidel

Your oldest brother used to collect these,
I said with nostalgia as I watched him organize the once-beloved four-sided Hebrew charactered game pieces, and

someday I will also have a memory of him playing with these on a Friday:

once an eight-year old playing with them every day of the week,
now a three-year old playing with them once, on a Friday,

and I am in the future getting reflective already.

Work and Play

A five-year old played with Lincoln Logs, those wonderful classic building shapes for constructing old cabins, and

a three-year old vacuumed in the background, and they both used all of their skills and focus and intensity of attention to do these two things; separately and simultaneous and together.

Thom

Are you a fan of Radiohead?
I asked my 3- and 5-year old sons as they helped me in the laundry room.

The younger leaped out of the laundry to answer enthusiastically:
Yep!
he said,
I loooove Radiohead!

Two notes on this:
a) Although he has heard Radiohead on plenty of occasions, I have a certain confidence that he is more familiar with the music of Lin-Manuel Miranda than that of Thom Yorke.

b) When I used the phrase above “…leaped out of the laundry,” I’d like to clarify that it was a giant, huge, messy pile of dirty laundry.

I’m not sure why it was important to clarify that point. Perhaps I should have left that more ambiguous.

Laundry, pt. 2

They had come down to help me with laundry, but suddenly I realized I was getting more done than anticipated, and the reason was that they were not helping. Rather, they were helping, by not helping.

I mean no disrespect. I am a strong proponent of investing, at early ages and stages, in children helping out with life. Including chores. But a big part of that investment is knowing how much longer many tasks will take. And suddenly this task was going more rapidly than expected.

The reason was that they were playing. Many children might find it preferable to jump and bury themselves in piles of clean laundry, but I’d like to brag on ours for a second and acknowledge the fact that playing in dirty laundry is actually more efficient, in terms of not having to express concern over clean laundry getting dirty.

Surprisingly, laundry that is already very dirty does not suddenly get very clean when children began playing in it.

Then their sister came in, turned off all the lights, and began a terrifying game of hide and seek in the dark. The combination of small space, dirty clothes, and unwashed bodies made for a truly terrifying experience, especially when paired with her horrifying growls and yawps of menace cutting through the black and reverberating violently off the concrete floor; a floor fortunately rendered less dangerous by the accumulation of millions of pieces of clothing strewn throughout.

Snack

Can we each have a Swedish candy fish?
Two boys cheerfully begged late-afternoon.

I don’t really want candy,
my oldest son said.
Can I have a bowl of instant oats please?

Jeremy Allen White

Becca invented a dish a decade or so ago. It’s simply called Sweet Potato Curry. It’s hers. I make it sometimes, and it’s alright. I’ve heard others refer to making curry with sweet potatoes, and so forth. But this is her dish. It is a delight, and we all love it, and we ate it outside, on a Friday evening, with my parents-in-law, to observe and commemorate their half-century formally together.

Bill Tell

I watched him run around with a bow and arrow - a toy set bow and arrow - and I marveled at the many different ways in which he maneuvered these two objects together, and at no point did he manage to successfully launch an arrow; a fact which did not diminish his enthusiasm for the sport. Eventually he figured out, despite my attempts to set him on a more prude and traditional course, that he could make the bow fly by shooting backwards, and sending the arrow backwards over his shoulder.

If a robber should burst in during the night, and should our youngest son be present with his bow and arrow, I should be curious to see what might happen. Perhaps it’s a good thing, for now, that he possesses a toy version.

It was a Friday.