May You Please

My son and daughter were riding home with me tonight after having a special fondue dinner at my in-laws.  My mother-in-law has, I think, perfected the at-home fondue meal.   She made the cheese and broth completely from scratch and they rivaled, if not improved upon, what we've had at restaurants in the past.

My children participated minimally in the diner for different reasons: my daughter was tired and wanted to sleep and my son was too bouncy to be contained by a seat.  Also, he wanted to bother his sister.   Dinner went smoother in a way without the children at the table with us being able to have adult conversation which is something of a rarity here.

The children did come back to the table from time to time and were served various things coming out of the pot, with the steak being their favorite.  During dinner we came up with a plan afterward: I would take the children home and my husband would stay there and watch the prior Star Wars movie to catch my in-laws up in preparation for the final installment coming out in a week's time.

My daughter had fallen asleep before we left so we loaded her, the dog and my son into the car and I had a chance to talk to my son alone for the ride.  We talked about the Frozen II soundtrack and how I'd discovered there were outtake songs and instrumental tracks covering two discs, totaling far more music than the main songs we'd all been listening to on repeat for the past week.

While I was queueing up one of the outtake songs that didn't make it into the movie, my son asked the inevitable question: could he have screen time when we got home.   And the more specific question of late: could he watch YouTube?  We've not been letting him watch YouTube lately because his viewing choices haven't been that good.   What he said to me was, "May you please let me watch YouTube when we get home?"  

I told him no on the YouTube and that he needed to stop saying 'may you please' because he knew it was incorrect grammar.   I was surprised by what he said next.   He was genuinely distressed.   He's been saying, "may you please" for years and I know we've corrected him before, but he swears he had no idea it was incorrect.   The indignation and almost despair when he said, "Mom, are you telling me you and dad have just let me say that wrong for nine whole years now?"

I apologized and said I thought he was doing it intentionally, like some of the other things he says, because he prefers to.   I gave him alternate things he could say that would be correct and how different variants had slightly different meanings.   While I was saying this I was also thinking about the YouTube question.

I said if he wanted to watch three videos (and no more, period, don't even ask) we could watch Smarter Every Day or Mark Rober because they did science videos that were interesting.  They both like to research and discover things and they do it in a way children can understand.   He agreed.

We got home, I carried his sister to bed and he got into his pajamas and then he picked out three videos from the Smarter Every Day channel.   The first one was figuring out how much force it would take to deform and then destroy a golf ball.   The second one was on colliding vortex rings and the third one was on super laminar flow.   My son was transfixed and I kept getting stuck standing in the living room while I was trying to get laundry started and things cleaned up because all three videos were really interesting.   Tomorrow, I told him, if he wanted to watch that kind of YouTube, I could get behind it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son can be a pest when he wants to play with someone.   If his sister doesn't want to be bothered but he's bored, he'll bother her until she gets angry or cries.   Tonight she just wanted to sleep, but he pestered her until she woke up and then they made some hot lava grid with Nana's blankets in her living room while we ate dinner.   When she came in and asked why they'd put blankets on the floor my son said, "but you have the cleanest floors you say, Nana."  She agreed, she did keep very clean floors.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to dress up like Elsa today.   She came downstairs with a dress on and asked me if I could braid her hair like Elsa's.  While I was doing her hair, she asked me if her dress was blue like Elsa's.   I told her it was the dress she wore in Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian's wedding and it was blue, but it was dark blue but that it should count since it was blue, right?   How do you explain shades to her?   Actually, I think she understands because she used to be able to see.   I don't know how you can possibly explain color intensity or colors at all even to a child born blind.  I'm glad she had sight for the number of years she did.