Throwing a Hammer

I've blogged previously about how I'm beginning to notice certain ways our sons are becoming more like their dad.  This morning was one of those moments where one son might as well have been his dad standing there talking to me.

The three boys were upstairs playing Legos when J finally roused herself from bed (before 9:00 so miracle of miracles!) and decided to join them.  If there is one thing I've learned, it's that if the boys are playing nicely together, introducing a female into the mix will always create chaos.

So J goes to join in the Lego play and before I realize she's there and can distract her with some activity with me, Z comes downstairs to tell me -- with a telling look on his face -- that J is awake now.

I said, "Oh! Send her down so I can tell her good morning."

Then he started to tell me the story about how they were all playing nicely and then J came into the loft-playroom and noticed two Lego cars she'd created were on the floor and missing a few pieces (in her words: "crushed into tiny bits") and so she started demanding that the boys each pay her ten Lego coins each for destroying her creations.

They, of course, were not thrilled about this idea and while O did confess to accidentally stepping on one of the cars, no one else would say he had wrecked the other one.  But apparently, J insisted that if neither older boy would admit to the destruction, both needed to pay her.

Then Z says, "I mean, come on ... the situation is like if I threw a hammer through Daddy's truck window and then he went next door and told them they had to pay for the damages because I wasn't confessing to it."

This is when I burst into laughter.  I mean, there is a pretty big difference between a slightly broken Lego construction and a hammer through the truck window.  There is also a difference between Lego money and real money.  But the whole idea of him explaining things with an analogy is just so C in a nutshell.

He is a fantastic teacher because he (C) uses analogies to explain the most difficult concepts to people who haven't a clue.  I don't know where he comes up with them usually, but they are so perfect.

And now, here's our middle son rattling off some random analogy to explain his frustration about J's demands.  So much like his dad that it makes me laugh.

When J finally came down carrying her two destroyed vehicles (literally there were like maybe ten Legos missing from what I remembered about them -- she showed me what she'd made yesterday), she looked heartbroken.

I hugged her to tell her I understood her frustration because I know how hard she worked on those cars yesterday.  I let her talk about her feelings for a moment and I wish I'd had a video camera secretly recording her because she sounded like she was 20 and describing a frustrating day at work with the way she talked.  Plus her voice is a little scratchy today because of allergies so it just made her sound more mature in general.

I loved her so much in these moments just listening to her describe with a big vocabulary and a future-mama voice about how she spoke to the boys and what she said to them and how they were to handle paying for their mistakes.  It made me realize how much she's grown up and how fast time flies in the lives of our children -- whether they arrive to us as infants like J did or at age 8 like S did.

I did remind her of the day she dumped Legos on the floor after H had spent a few days organizing things and now maybe she can understand how he felt.  So we talked about forgiveness and how he forgave her for destroying his hard work. 

She said, "Well, it took him like an hour or so!"

So I said, "Okay, well, if you need an hour to feel ready to forgive, I guess we can all live with that."

She put her slightly damaged creations on the cabinet in our hallway so they'd be kept safe from further attacks upstairs and now she's happily reading a book with O near me in the homeschool room.