Oh brother

I have been watching this little face with nostalgia for the past couple of weeks.

 He is after all my baby who is not so babyish anymore. My mom heart aches to know that eventually he will figure out that it is not called OPmeal but rather oatmeal and that usually does not have a hard k sound anywhere in it. All too soon he will figure out that the majority of the things I say are neither cool nor funny to anyone other than myself. Even worse he will trade in his bright green helmet and huffy bike for a real set of wheels that take him to far away places with ease. I was getting pretty bummed out by these facts until this week.

We went out on a family bike ride and halfway through Thing 1 started lamenting about the fact that he wished that we had never switched schools because he was so far behind. I kept trying to tell him that there are state standards and that every teacher is required to teach the exact same thing at every school. I figured that my use of big words like curriculum would satiate his complaints but he just kept on poking the bear. He kept telling me that there were are least two big things that Thing 2 knew that he was never ever taught. His insistence grew and soon he was near hysterics. I finally asked him what knowledge had been bestowed upon his younger brother and not to him that was rocking his world to its core. The answer- Space time continuum. Yep my youngest child had convinced my oldest child that he was being taught this nerdy topic at school and that because he had yet to learn it was going to fail at life. I am not sure why he knows about this concept and I find it oddly amusing that he was wielding it like a weapon of worth but he does and he did.

Then today we had our annual eye exams. I knew that we would not have time to do homework before we left so I grabbed two clip boards and a couple of pencils and gave each child their respective work to do whilst I drove us all to the optometrist. He worked quickly and diligently and when we arrived at the office I checked his work. Things all looked pretty normal; math facts check, deductive reasoning and comprehension check, vowel sounds check. Then I found this…

I don’t even have words or an explanation. I really did think about letting him turn it in. I mean I would laugh if I read this but then I decided that perhaps his teacher does not suffer from the same malady that I do. You know the one where I am a fourteen year old boy stuck in this mid-thirties body. So I made him erase it and put a real answer. I do feel a little ashamed for conforming to the man but what are you going to do?

So now you see the predicament that I am in.  Blue eyes sent from heaven, and a sense of humor that is sick and twisted like his mothers.  Even after all of this I still have a silent prayer in my heart and it goes like this.

Oh sweet boy please stop growing- amen