Sunday, April 17, 2011

Hyrum-isms

So Hyrum has really started to turn a new page. With the exception of last week (I'm not sure what has gone on), I think he is finally potty trained and is far more obedient than he's ever been before. Hyrum has decided that he's 4 years old rather than 3 (even though he's been 4 since November) and actually tries to do what I ask him to do rather than trying to do the opposite.

Hyrum has been especially funny though. We never know exactly what he might say, which always makes me laugh. For example, I have habit of calling my kids silly names. I'm always calling the kids Sugar, Pumpkin Eater, Sweety Peety, Booga (that's Jacob's nickname), and who knows what. Whenever I call Hyrum, Sugar, for example, he looks at me with a rather concerned eye, and says, "I'm not Sugar, Mom. I'm Hyrum. I'm a boy, REMEMBER!!!!" as though I had forgotten.

For the last 15 years or so, my favorite color has been blue. However, Hyrum is very gender specific, and blue, according to Hyrum, cannot be a girl's favorite color. So whenever he asks what my favorite color is, and I say blue, he gets very annoyed. "No, Mom, your favorite colors are pink and purple, remember? What is your favorite color, Mom?" If I'm dumb enough to say that it is blue again, he gets very annoyed (sometimes he even tells me that I'm annoying him). "No, Mom, your favorite color is pink and purple. Blue is not a girl's color" (how he knows this I don't know). Then he asks me even more insistently, "WHAT is your favorite color?" When I finally tell him that my favorite colors are pink and purple, he exclaims excitedly, "Yes, Mom, that is CORRECT!"

He also is very insistent when we are riding in the car, listening to music, that if a boy is singing that I can't sing too because I am a girl and "that song is just for boys. Don't sing, MOM!!!"

He has really enjoyed going to his new school. He calls it his orange school because it is in fact orange. He really misses his brown school though. Just the other day, he realized he wasn't going back to his brown school. This realization made him very sad. We went and visited his old teachers, and I hope that helped. His transition was very sudden, which I think was a little hard him. He's done great though in his new school. He now writes his name, is constantly pointing out letters, and is extremely technically savvy. He can figure out how things like computers and my new cell phone work as well or better than I can. It's a little scary how he can figure this all out.

Hyrum is very observant. Michael was seeing how a football game on the internet looked on our TV since we just cancelled our satellite. As it inevitably happens in a football game, a ref threw a flag. "Ooops," yelled Hyrum, "a banana peel!!!" He's so funny and crazy.

Invoking a Higher Power

So the other day, Thobe and I went on a rather long drive to take a treat to his Primary teacher for his birthday. The boundaries for our ward at church are very broad. I would say that members from our ward may live up to an hour and half away from each other. We are fortunate in that we only live 12 minutes from our driveway to the church parking lot and are centrally located in our ward boundaries for the most part. Anyway, when I entered the address to Thobe's teacher's house into our GPS, I was surprised to see that the drive was 20 minutes longer than the 25 minutes that I already anticipated. "Oh well," I thought, "Thobe and I will enjoy some mommy Thobe time. So we started out.

Thobe and I had a very pleasant conversation as we drove. He told me a lot about his made up superheros, U.S.A. Face, Al Qida Face, and U.S.A. Face's pet, Baldy (Baldy is a Bald Eagle, Thobe's favorite animal). I heard lots of interesting situations where U.S.A. Face beat Al Qida Face and learned all about U.S.A Faces favorite colors (red, white and blue) and U.S.A. Face's birthday (the fourth of July, ironically the same birthday as our nation and Thobe's Grandpa Monday). As we were driving, Thobe noticed that our GPS's speedometer was turning red (this is our GPS's handy feature to remind me that I'm speeding).

"Mom, you are speeding. You need to slow down," Thobe insisted.

"It's okay, Thobe. I'm just going 59 mph rather than 55; I don't think we'll get a ticket going a little over."

"But Mom, if we speed we could get in a wreck and die. You NEED to stop speeding! We don't want to die!" he demanded.

Feeling frustrating that we would never get there and being the fabulous mother that I am, I told him that we were really going to be fine.

"I'm going to say a prayer. Heavenly Father, We thank Thee for this day. We thank thee for our family. Please protect us. Please bless that we'll stop speeding." And then he ended his prayer.

I didn't speed for the rest of the trip.