Theo's ink woes

So last night Theo put this really large, pretty cool looking tattoo on his neck. Before anyone things this is another of my bad dad posts, it's a "temporary" tattoo. The quotes are there because they seem to hang around for over a months :P

Anyway, it is shaped sort of like the wings pins that you used to get from American Airlines when you were a kid flying. He's got the center of it over his adam's apple, and the wings extending around to be underneath his ears. I wish I'd gotten a picture this morning. He was quite proud of it and strutted around all evening.

This morning he woke up and decided he was too embarrassed to go to school with it on. So he asked me to take it off. I have no idea how to do that, and tried to soak it off with warm water to no avail. It was a classic moment of failing to see the consequences of an action, and learning later that he has to think things through. I imagine it won't make any difference though :P

And then there's Riley--she put about 20 tattoos on herself a few months back and had no embarrassment wearing them no matter where we went.

And then there's me--all my tattoos under my t-shirt on my back and I regret not being able to show them to people without coming off as some kind of nutjob. "Wanna see my back???"

Bad Dad!

So this morning I did something with Theo that might not be good parenting. But you know what? I just don't care.

While we were waiting in the car for the bus to arrive--5 degrees out there--he told me that he doesn't like to ride the bus because there's a girl who calls him 'fishbreath' everyday and she's mean to him.

So my first response was the correct parenting response--just ignore her. He said that he does ignore her, but she still does it and it hurts his feelings. So I told him that he shouldn't let what she says hurt his feelings because she's clearly not a nice person and her opinion shouldn't matter at all. He didn't seem reassured by that, and after a moment of considering that advice I realized it was unrealistic. I always had a hard time reacting rationally to that kind of shit, too.

So I ventured out into bad-dad land and told him if, and only if, she called him 'fishbreath' he should look at her, smile in the most friendly way, and say 'Hello, Elephant Ears'. He giggled for a while and seemed excited about getting on the bus, and that made me feel much better.

Until I got home and realized I'd just told him to call names and pick on someone's physical appearance. I felt guilty for a moment. But only a moment. After that moment I wished I could b e a fly on the wall to see how it went, and if it wasn't successful, provide him with another tactic to get the little rugrat off his back.

I wish my Dad would have taught me the art of war when I was a kid :D

Skin art

For the last few months I've been toying with the idea of getting a tattoo. I fluctuate between wanting a crow, a NiN tattoo or a bar code that actually translates to 'stop looking at me' or something like that. I'm actually getting close to going out and doing it. Unfortunately my kids beat me to the punch.

Recently they got little books that had 1001 tattoos or some other freakishly huge amount. We made the mistake this weekend of leaving them with the books unattended for a while. In theory they were watching TV. We don't let them do that very often, and when we do it's a chance to go hide from the monsters. Well, when we saw them next Riley was covered head to toe with very artistic, multicolored skin art. Theo has a bunch of single color black tribal tattoos on his chest and arms. He even has one of those armband ones on his bicep.

She looks like the Tattoo'd Lady at the fair/circus and he looks like a punk rocker, largely because he's as scrawny as I was at his age. Luckily we caught Riley before she managed to get them on her face--but that was clearly on her list of things to do.

I'm hoping that they don't decided to go for piercings...at least not until I've gotten mine...

Best buddies!

So Theo and I have been spending a lot of time together. His favorite activity currently (as the last time I posted) is watching me play World of Warcraft. If he's been good, I 'allow' him to watch me play. As you can imagine its really terrible to have to play a video game like this. I'd much rather do chores, or stay 'at' work longer or even just go to the dentist for a root canal.

Interestingly enough, this has allowed us to bond in a way I wasn't expecting. Last night he told Emily that he and I were 'best buddies'. This, of course, is the easiest way to make me deliriously happy and extremely suggestable. Hopefully he won't ever figure out the last part.

My kid dropped a dime on me

Yesterday I got a note from Theo's kindergarten teacher. She wanted to let me know that Theo had said "Kick ass!" in class today, and when asked where he'd heard it he said gave me up. Ratted me out. My most pressing question was if he had used the term correctly, but I knew that asking that would only get me in deeper trouble.

So Theo and I had a long discussion about how some words were not ok to say. I told him when he got older he'd be able to decide for himself when a good time was to say those words. I then proceeded to itemize all the words and phrases he's not allowed to say. Ok, that's not true.

At first he started trying to convince me that some random kid in his class made him do it, but I wasn't having any. Then he wanted to know if this was a word he was allowed to say in his room with the door closed. I told him I'd prefer he didn't say it at all. This, of course, was unintended carte blanche to say it in his room with the door closed. Evidently 'prefer' means 'yes, go for it, champ!' in Theo's world. So we had the talk again and this time I laid it on heavier (if I EVER catch you saying that word, you'll be grounded for the remainder of your life).

Theo, of course, has no concept of what 'grounded' means. I'm a bad parent.

Up all night

Theo had a fairly intense relapse in his 'sneak out of his room to do random, yet important things' issue last night. He was out at least 5 times that I noticed, and one time I only noticed him as he was crawling through my desk. It has this cabinet that is specifically made to house a computer so its large, and open in the back. He snuck in RIGHT under my nose, got behind my desk and crawled in there. I have no idea how long he was in there, but suddenly the cabinet door which is at my right knee basically began to push open. I nearly had a coronary, which of course led to some awesome yelling that even impressed Theo, despite his jaded nature. He piled the rest of the way out of the cabinet and ran out of the room. I yelled after him a final "GET BACK IN BED AND STAY THERE" and then settled back into my, er, computing. Moments later, harboring a secret suspicion that he hadn't actually made it back to his bed I looked up and caught him crawling across the floor towards the back of the cabinet. I smothered laughter and chased him back to bed.

This wasn't the last time he came out. The kid is a real pill.