Saturday, October 20, 2007

The other night I took Jude to Toys R Us to buy his birthday present. He's still young enough to buy presents in front of. I assume this will get harder as the months pass. We were driving home and Jude suddenly ran out of the candy that he got as a treat from the candy machine in front of the store - the very machines designed to ensure that children throw temper tantrums both going in to and coming out of the store.
Cue temper tantrum.
Unfortunately we were driving so there wasn't much I could do (Daddy and Sophie were at home). The only thing I could think of to end the needless misery happening in the backseat was distraction:
"Hey Jude!" I yelled over his hysterics. "What sound does a cat make?"
"Meow," came the sniffled reply.
"And what sound does a doggy make?"
"Meow," he said again with a little more enthusiasm.
"A doggy doesn't say 'meow'," I said to him, in a kindergarten teacher type voice. "What does a doggy say?"
"Woof! Woof!" He yells back.
"Right!" And so on we went for a while, I'd name an animal, he'd yell out what sound the animal makes and then we'd make that sound a few times until I moved on to the next one.
At this point we were stopped at a red light. I happened to look over and noticed the guy beside me was really belting out a song.
"What sound does a ... (grasp for animal that we hadn't covered yet) ... monkey make?" I unrolled my window a little bit out of curiosity to see if I could make out what song he was listening to - Nickelback, Rockstar.
Jude mumbled something that sounded distinctly like a falsetto "Hi-I'm-a-monkey" in response to my earlier question. I looked at Jude in the rear view mirror, he was smiling devilishly. I looked over at the Nickelback guy one more time and thought to myself, man that's an embarrassing song to get caught singing so passionately to - doesn't he realise people can see him? Then I turned back to Jude.
"No, silly! A monkey says, Oooo oooo oooo" I called over the back seat to him as I lifted my arm and scratched my arm pit. "Ooooo oooo ooo!"

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