"Bless me not to say 'poop'."

This is Max and me at Disneyworld last year. He's pretty smooth.

All my kids are smart. I’m not trying to brag or anything, they just lucked out genetically and have turned out to be pretty clever. In the last few months, Max has discovered how funny he is as well. The dinner table has become his stage to put on a nightly performance for the family and unfortunately there is little that we can do to get him to stop. The problem is, no matter what he does, someone will laugh. This only encourages him to do it more. This has caused me to start yelling the types of things that I swore I would never yell at my kids. “Stop smiling!” and “You better not laugh!” are phrases I never thought I’d hear myself say. Yet on a nightly basis, one of the other kids is likely going to get in trouble for giggling at something Max does or says, while Andrea and I are doing everything we can ourselves to not laugh as well.

When you have older siblings, you also pick up a more varied vocabulary than Yo Gabba Gabba and Dora teach. So shortly after he started talking, Max started dropping words like “stupid”, “butt” and “poop” quite regularly. Seeing our reaction to those words was like hitting a jackpot on a slot machine for him – instant gratification followed with a growing addiction to hearing the ringing bells and flashing lights again and again. We decided to take him head on and break him down. Everytime he said one of those words, he’d be busted. We were making some progress with him – in fact he actually was developing the advanced skill of snitching. Now the only time he was saying “poop” or “stupid” was when he was ratting out his brother or sisters for saying it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if that was progress or not. Very quickly I realized it wasn’t progress at all as it became apparent that saying those words was the only goal for him. He wasn’t trying to get his brother or sisters in trouble – he just wanted an excuse to still say the words himself without getting in trouble. (I told you my kids are clever, right?) He’s barely 3 years old and he’s already discovered the art of the loophole. We’re in trouble.

In fact, before the tattling, he had already experimented with the loophole concept. He had figured out that by not saying the last syllable of a forbidden word, he wasn’t actually saying it, and therefore he shouldn’t get in trouble. For a couple of weeks he experimented with this loophole as much as he possibly could to find out what he could get away with.

“Mom, you’re stup……………” while he looked at her, just daring her to react.

“Dad, look at my buuuuuuu……..” as he studied my face to see how close he could come to making the “tt” sound.

So now, in the Nelson house, “stup”, “buuuuu” and “pooooooo” are bad words too.

And we thought we had finally won.

Then, the other night in family prayer, the 3 year old scored another point.

If you’ve never heard a little kid pray, it’s awesome. Our kids have blessed Han Solo, stuffed animals, video games, barbies, spiders, the moon and Indiana Jones. (We’re apparently big Harrison Ford fans.) As we’ve tried to teach our kids to pray, we just let them riff for a while in any direction they want, offering little bits of info to guide them along. (Letting your kids figure stuff out as they go is good parenting – you can look it up. I’m sure some psychologist that never had any kids would agree with me.) Eventually, we finally have to prod them to end it because the food is getting cold or the commercial break is almost over and I need to get back to my show.

About a week ago, Max found his next loophole in prayer.

“Bless mom. Bless dad. Bless Keeya (kayla). Bless me not to say ‘poop’.”

When we opened our surprised eyes to look at him, he was expecting us. He had the smug smile that a 12 year old would give you while they question why it’s okay for you to watch “The Matrix” even though it’s rated “R”. Then you could see the gears turning in his head. Mom and dad didn’t freak out.

“Bless me not to say ‘butt’.”

It was on. Now his smug smile was even more determined. It was like a cowboy duel on mainstreet at high noon. Sweat appeared on our creased foreheads, the safety was off and our fingers were twitching right next to the trigger. Who would dare blink first.

“Bless me not to say…….,” and he stared right at us, “stupid.”

Then a quiet giggle came from across the table. One of those stupid other kids could kiss my butt becaue they had just cracked. Under my breath I even said that other word for “poop.” Now everyone was laughing and we were screwed. Before the reinfocing laughter had even started, I was already wondering how I could tell Max that asking God to help him not say bad words was not okay, considering God is quite used to hearing me ask Him to help me not say bad words all the time.

Not only did Max have the perfect loophole, he had a loophole that made everyone laugh.

Stupid, clever kids.

Blast From The Past

This is Calvin when he was 4 at Disneyland. We bought him some thick soled Sketchers, put 3 pairs of socks on him (including one pair that Kenzie had to take off her feet) and made him just tall enough to ride the Star Tours ride. Look at those eyes - he was so happy!