Prayer for His Wife

Me: “Troy, do you want to get married? I don’t mean today, but maybe someday in the future?”
Troy: “Yes.”
Me: “Why?”
Troy: “Because it would be nice to have someone to talk to and do things with. Someone to kiss and hug. Someone to love.”
Me: “I see. Well, then you know what we should do?”
Troy: “What?”
Me: “We should pray for the girl that will become your wife.”
Troy: “Why?”
Me: “To ask God to protect her and to prepare her for you. Would you like to do that?”
Troy: “I guess so.”
Me: “Okay. Dear God, please watch over Troy’s future wife wherever she may be. Keep her safe, help her grow and mature, and prepare her to be exactly what Troy needs in a wife. Help her be kind and sweet, loving, playful, and funny. Let her become a woman who believes in and has a heart for You, Lord. And when she’s ready, and Troy’s ready, bring them together, so they can fall in love. Thank You, God. Amen.”
Troy: “Amen!”

Tooth Fairy: Part 4

And another one bites the dust. Troy lost another tooth tonight. He sneezed a little too hard and blew it right out of his mouth. Oh well, it doesn't matter how we get them out, just as long as we get them out.

4:44 a.m.

Every morning for the past four days at exactly 4:44 a.m., Troy has gotten out of bed and come downstairs.  He usually complains that he's scared and wants to get into the "big bed."  Most nights, I will hear his feet hit the floor upstairs and race to cut him off on the stairs before he makes it completely down.  I'll march him back up and make him go back to his own bed.  But frankly, it's getting exhausting, because I don't usually get back to sleep after these encounters.  Unlike Troy and his mother, I can't nod off 12 seconds after my head hits the pillow.

But what's truly remarkable about this story is that he has some very precise internal clock that wakes him up at exactly the same time every morning.  I don't mean it's around 4:44 a.m.  I mean it's at EXACTLY 4:44 a.m.  I have no idea what sets him off at that time every day, but it would be pretty impressive, if it wasn't so tiring.

The Attic Emergency

Today, I decided to make it a productive day and knock out a whole bunch of things on my to-do list.  One of the things that I needed to do was to rehang the mirrors up in the tree outside, so that the stupid cardinal (who I have nicknamed Richelieu after the Cardinal in The Three Musketeers) will stop banging into our breakfast room windows.  So, imagine me completely up in a tree, tying off a mirror, when I hear screaming from inside our house.  I perked my ears up to hear what was going on, but kept tying off the mirror.  That's when I heard my wife screaming for Troy "to go get dada right away because she needed help.  It was an emergency."

My wife's project for the day was to reorganize the attic, and she had already gotten injured several times in the process.  So, I imagined the worst.  I could hear Troy running around the house screaming for me to "Help!  Help!  Dada, please help!"  He had no idea that I was outside, and he was terrified that he couldn't find me.  I was attempting to climb down out of the tree in the backyard as fast as I could, but I lost my footing and ended up falling most of the way instead.  I cut my wrist open on a branch, but I ignored the blood and went racing around the house to see what was going on.

Troy met me at the door, tears streaming down his face, and said, "Where have you been, dada?!  I need help!  Mama is dying!"  I patted him on the head and told him that I'd check it out, then raced upstairs to see what was going on.  I found my wife in the attic with a heavy bin perched precariously on a shelf above her head.  There was something on top of the box that had gotten stuck on the ceiling, so she couldn't get the bin either up or down.  There was no blood, no death, no injury, no emergency.  I helped unravel the situation and then went back downstairs to comfort Troy, who was still beside himself in tears.  I assured him that his mother was not dying and that she just needed help with a bin, but he didn't calm down until I told him to go upstairs and see for himself.

What a load of unnecessary drama!  And in the end, the only one that ended up getting truly injured was me.  Figures.

Short Fuse: Part 2

Well, the struggles with the summer homework continue. Tonight, it came to an unfortunate end when he was so adamant that he wasn’t going to write a single word, like point blank refused, that after trying to reason with him, I resorted to spanking him. Now, I’m not a spank first kind of guy. I’ve honestly probably only shanked Troy four times his entire life, and generally only for a very heinous offense. I’ve never wanted for him to get used to it, and I’d prefer to find an alternative way to motivate him. I’m not sure why that seemed the only resort tonight. I guess it was the back talk, sarcasm, willful disobedience and stubbornness, and repetitive intentionality to do exactly the opposite of everything I said all rolled together that finally made me feel like I’d had enough. But I feel horrible about it, and it didn’t work anyway. But mostly, I don’t want him to associate negative punishment with doing school work.

When everything had finally calmed down, he managed to tell me that he didn’t want to do it, because it was boring. Of course, he’d rather just play all the time, and not learn anything, which isn’t an option. I have to find a different way that doesn’t involve corporal punishment, and hopefully a way that also makes it interesting to him. Which is hard when he views all knowledge as boring. He doesn’t even appreciate fun and interesting facts that I randomly tell him. But I’ll keep trying to figure it out. But I failed miserably tonight.