Vendredi V - Kiddie Love Edition

During our nightly snuggle yesterday, The Boy informed me that his teacher had encouraged them to practice the things they are good at.

"And I'm good at making farting noises with my armpit!" he exclaimed, and proceeded to give me an exuberant demonstration.

Aside: This is, in fact, the truth, and that's not just parental pride talking. The other night we were on a family bike ride in the neighbourhood, and we passed some kids who ride the bus with The Girl and The Boy. An older boy looked up, nodded solemnly at The Boy, raised his hand as if to salute, and brought it swiftly under his arm to make busy farting noises. The Boy silently nodded an acknowledgement, and the two were well met.

A further aside: Despite his prowess, there is room for improvement. The other day The Boy informed me breathlessly with shining eyes that "there's this boy in swimming class and when he gets sweaty enough, he can make farting noises Behind. His. KNEES!" Ah, to what heights can one aspire!

So it got me thinking about all the things my kidlets do well each day. Not in a "they're awesome at driving me around the bend" or "their ability to whine is unsurpassed." Nope, this is the real deal, the stuff you save for the grandparents because they can handle the bragging. And, apparently, so can you:

Top 5 Things My Kids Are Good At:

1. Playing Imaginatively. My kids are living proof that lots of television does not equal a degredation of the imagination. Despite plenty of time in front of the boob tube, when we turn it off, their imaginations kick right into high gear and the costumes come out. We've had carnivals, spas, libraries, rocketships, schools, elaborate scooter obstacle courses, and many children-shaped pets. All of this in the past two months, too.

2. Wearing Their Hearts on Their Sleeves. This one makes me wince a little, because it's tough to see your little ones heading out each day wearing their vulnerability like a target. But the alternative to seeing every thought flit across their faces or sharing in the roller coaster ride that is life in grade school is to be shut out by premature independence. When they lay their bleeding, anguished hearts at my feet and look up at me with tear-filled, mournful eyes that plead help me, I feel like I'm being presented with a most incredible gift.

3. Turning Our House into Comedy Central. A lot of you comment that the munchkin stories on here make you laugh. Honey, you don't know the half of it. I make a conscious effort to exclude any stories that I think will someday embarass them or hinder them in their goal of taking up residence at 24 Sussex Drive (because, of course, the plan is to send them to Laval University - yay for cheap tuition! - where they will meet nice Canadian partners and they'll settle in Ottawa and finally put an end to the Two Solitudes and make the Liberal Party a force to be reckoned with again and I'll be so proud when they take their oaths of office in their back-to-back terms and be so glad I didn't post that story on my blog because, phew boy, if the Canadian voting public only knew....).

4. Making Everything Old New Again. Due to limited life experience, stuff that's old and tired for their parents is astonishingly exciting to our kids. When they learned "why did the chicken cross the road," you would have thought Jon Stewart had come to live with us, such was the laughter. Watching The Princess Bride over the weekend with The Girl made me remember how much of my heart I gave to Wesley as a teenager. And you don't even know how close my heart was to bursting last week when The Girl finished reading The Wizard of Oz.

5. Transforming the Mundane into the Extraordinary. Again because the novelty of life hasn't worn off yet, and also because they have virtually no control over their lives, my kids see the world as a magical place where anything can happen. Like last week, when I was craving a Blizzard and The Husband was away, I suggested we head to DQ after supper. They looked at each other with a combination of nervousness and slyness: "holy smokes, does she NOT REALIZE it's the middle of the week and we NEVER go out to a restaurant on a Tuesday night and we're TOTALLY not going to clue her in and we're GOING TO GET FREAKING BLIZZARDS!" I want to live in a world like that, where wizards are real and awesome equals a pirate ship in the hotel pool and where ice cream might be hidden just around the bend.

Actually, with them around...

I already do.