YOU MONSTERS!

Yeah, I'll get to that.

First off, last night Daniel asked me to read a book he and I haven't read in a while.

One of many, many, many of those five-page board books we have around the house and despite being mostly below even Daniel's age now, we keep around because we still pretty regularly get asked to read them and because Daniel will pick them up occasionally and "read" one to himself.  Which is very cool.

Of course, in an effort to retain the few shreds of sanity I have left, I frequently ad-lib bits to, y'know, punch up the story a bit.  For example on this page:

I added an "Oh, bother." to the end.  This would prove to be my undoing.

The first read-through resulted in the very common request, "again! Do it again!" and occasionally, "read it again, please!"  So I did.  Sticking to the same flow as the last time, because even when I'm augmenting the story I try to keep them consistent within sessions.

Me: Pooh wakes up to a very rainy day.  Oh, bother.
Daniel:  Hee hee hee!

Then, at the end of the story, "Again! Do it again!"

Me: Pooh wakes up to a very rainy day.  Oh, bother.
Daniel:  Ah hee hee hee!  Hee hee hee!

By the third read-through thought this was the funniest thing he'd heard in his life.  By the fifth he didn't even want me to go to the next page, he just wanted this page over and over again.  Should I try to move to the next page he would let me read two or three words then declare, "No!" and turn back to the above page.  On the sixth read-through we actually read in roughly this order:  Page 1, page 1, page 1, page 1, page 2, page 1, page 1, page 3 (because I'm no fool, I knew I'd never get to page 3 via page 2), page 1, page 1, anyway, you get the idea.

Today we went to Mountain Apple Orchards because we've heard lots of great things about it, today was a nice day, we didn't have any other plans and apples are delicious.

Google has it as a 35 minute drive from our house.  The clock in the car may have said it took even less than that, but I maintain it was actually several hours.  Why?  Because the dialogue from a significant portion of the drive was:

Daniel:  Daddy, say "oh bother!"
Me:  Oh bother!
Daniel (giggling madly):  Daddy!  Say, "oh bother!"

and believe me, neither boy in the backseat would allow me to ignore such a request for more than a quarter of a minute, regardless of whether I was trying to talk to Christine or not.

I might have done something to encourage this behaviour by regularly saying "Oh bother" and by changing intonation and cadence as much as possible and occasionally slipping in an "oh, fiddlesticks" (which was misinterpreted by the backseat as "fiddle-snakes" and thus began an alternative command performance).

Anyway, we had a great time at the orchard.  It was definitely as good as the stories told.  We came home with a half-bushel of apples, some apple cider doughnuts, a jar of apple butter and a jar of crab-apple jelly as well as two very tired boys.

Did I say something about monsters?  Oh, right.

Once everyone agreed that we had enough apples to fill our bag (the bag wouldn't close and both James and Daniel were still trying to balance apples on the top) I picked one last apple from high up on one tree.  It looked perfect, completely red and a little warm from the sun.  I showed the boys then polished it up and offered it to Daniel.  He put his hand on it and tried to guide it to the bag too, but I showed him that we intended to eat this one.

You monster!

He roared in his best two-and-a-half-year-old manner.  Meaning he didn't say either of those words, or indeed any words at all at first, but he immediately broke into horrified tears.  After a minute or so, and after he shook off the now-bitten apple I offered him and then took a second bite, he shouted, "Daddy, don't wreck it!"  (I swear, that is what he said.  He said "Daddy, don't smash my ice cream" when I tried to cut up a Revello ice cream bar for him the other day, so this isn't the first time he's expressed this kind of idea.)

It only got worse when I showed him that Christine was going to eat some too and that it was yummy.  He lost his mind.  He wailed the whole way back to the wagon that would take us back to the front of the farm and the store from the orchard.  I was genuinely concerned that someone was going to stop us because no kid who isn't being kidnapped by total strangers should be crying this hard and saying "no don't" over and over.  Seriously, I was thinking we were going to end our trip to Mountain Orchard talking to Mounties.  Which, frankly, would've had a bit of amusing symmetry to it, but still not a blog post I wanted to write.

Mercifully he calmed down when we got to the wagon and the fun of riding on it pushed out thoughts of the atrocity we'd committed against the apple (an appletrocity?) a few minutes previous.

He's still not really forgiven us, really.  Despite bringing a seemingly endless supply of these home:

An unpolished survivor.

we had apple-turnovers for dessert tonight and he wouldn't even look at his.  He knows.  We know he knows.