Owen's Day

 Last Saturday we masked up and took a long walk in Pittsford. The real reason for the trip was replace Owen's broken glasses. (Again. Thank goodness for the warranty on those frames.) We ended up taking a several miles long walk to a bakery since there was lovely weather, and Owen complained the whole time. He complained about rocks in his shoes, about a stuffy nose, about needing water, about James and Felix giving him mean looks, about James and Felix not looking at him, and about not being permitted to go in the bounce house. He basically complained about whatever happened to be in his head at the moment.

Once you understand that Owen loves the sound of his own voice, you have a little more patience for walking next to him for an hour. He just has to process the world out loud. I don't have as much patience for how he needs to process the world by touching it.

He touched old gum stuck on the asphalt. He touched a massive pile of horse poop along the side of the trail. He even stuck his head into a lidded garbage can because "It looked nice and shady."

I also don't understand why all of his words disappeared as soon as he was at the optometrist's. (When asked questions by the doctor he barked like a dog.)

He was plenty talkative to the barista at the bakery. He told her "Excuse, my name is Owen. And this little kid over here is called Felix. Wait, there's more. I have more to tell you. This guy is named James. And those are called Roy and Julie. And do you know what? All of us have the same last name! It's SMITH! I'm going to have a Cookie Monster cupcake and Felix--he's the little guy--is going to have the Elmo cupcake. I don't know what James is going to have yet, but I'll tell you when he makes up his mind. Hey, don't go away, I have more to tell you!"

We were happy to get him home, although less than thrilled when he brought his new "pet centipede" inside. (And then got teary when we told him he couldn't have a pet snake either."

Bonus Owen Story:

Owen: "Daddy, from now on we're going to call Felix 'Eli Manning.' Okay?"

Me: "Okay?"

Owen: "Good."

Me: "Good."

Owen: "I have some news. Eli Manning pooped in his diaper."

Felix had to be brought down to lunch after sobbing inconsolably on his bed for 20 minutes because of a piggy bank fiasco. Our neighbor paid each of the boys $3 to pick up sticks from her yard, and J put Felix's money in a plastic container. Then (this is where she made her big mistake) she wrote his name on the side. 

"YOU SPELLED IT WRONG!!!!" 

He shrieked. He screamed. He sobbed. He made threats. He stormed upstairs.

It was spelled F-E-L-I-X. 

But, as we noticed after, the L and the I were slightly touching. 

Some kids can't stand to have any of their food touching on their plate. Apparently Felix can't stand to have the letters touching in his name. 

In a perfect encapsulation of how school has gone this semester, I had to call James back downstairs to have him correct some of the grammar copywork he'd done. 

Here was one of the sentences:

A sentence is a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.

James' version:

a sentence is a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark