James on TV...

Hillcrest High School TV produced a piece on James' Big Day. Robert, James brother, teamed up with Julie Wooten to put this together.

Dad...order pisa!

Today when I came home James was asking me to order "pisa...phone". He had pizza on his mind and before I arrived, Cindy saw him with the phone dialing some number, then clearing his throat to get ready to order. Somehow James has moved into a phone fascination phase.

The other night at around 10 pm, Coco received a call from the Hillenburg house telling her that James had called Mark from my phone. Sure enough we found him with my phone in hand. Apologies for the late night disturbance were made and graciously accepted. I then looked at my phone only to discover that he had called the bank, Boston Baptist College, a pastor friend in Lebanon Missouri and a few others.

Back to the "pisa" request. A while after taking the phone away and interrupting his attempt to order he came into the kitchen this time with phone book in hand. He had thumbed through the yellow pages and had found the pizzas. At first I was amazed at his ability to read only to be reminded that he just found the pictures of pizzas which made more sense. After all of his effort I wore down and ordered a pizza. He was thrilled. Come to think of it, I probably did not help curtail our phone fascination phase. I probably just made it worse. But so what. Cute is cute and the bright smile on his face when the pizza came was worth it.

“Breef Mom”…

The other day Cindy was having one of those overloaded Mom stress moments. While James did not know what was going on, he could see that Mom was having a tough time. He walked into our bedroom, looked his Mom in the eye and then with hand motions said, “Mom, breef (breath) in, breef out.” At this point Cindy and I both erupted into laughter and amazingly enough, the stress was gone. James may not understand all the details, but he does get what matters. Thanks, James for keeping us breathing.

You threw what in the toilet?

One afternoon, I walked into the house after work to find the kind of informal courtroom setting that most parents have learned can be essential to child rearing. Cindy, was sitting in the living room with James seated on the ottoman in front of her. The feeling in the room was serious and the tone of her voice was authoritative. “Tell me the truth” she was saying, as I walked in. “I tell the truf”, James replied. At this point I was brought in as a second questioner. Cindy explained what I did not know. The suspicion was that James who had locked himself into the bathroom with Coco’s cell phone only to emerge with no phone after a flush a minute later, had flushed the phone down the toilet. I said sternly, “James, tell me the truth. Did you flush the cell phone and it went away?” He looked up at me over his glasses and mumbled, “A little bit.” Now how you flush a phone “a little bit” is known only to James. The real truth is that the answer was yes and he was guilty but was trying to minimize his offense with careful wording. It actually sounds a lot like the rest of us. We are very prone and quite expert at minimizing or redefining our mistakes.

One post script to the story is that while Coco was very upset to no longer have a phone, she handled it with a lot of grace. Her gracious response gave way to out and out jubilation when I told her that I had ordered a new phone, one much better than the one that got “A little bit flushed.”

What are you doing, James…. I’m smokin!

It was the 72^nd Anniversary Sunday at High Street. We were entertaining our guest speaker and the former pastor, Bill Rogers. We left the church and loaded up the car to meet Pastor and Mrs. Rogers, Dave (their son) and his wife Kendra for lunch at one of our local restaurants. It was one of those car talk moments where James was given the parent talk that goes like, “James you better act nice at the restaurant. Be respectful, eat properly, look into people’s eyes when you say thank you and please…and please, please be a good boy.” Well things went pretty well during the meal. As most parents come to realize, adult lunches sitting in the same spot for way longer than it takes to eat is not an easy exercise for kids. At the end of our time, James picked up a straw and walked from one end of the table past our guests, to the other end of the table with his straw pointed at his brother Robert. I figured that a spit wad war was on the verge of breaking out. Hoping to head this off at the pass, I asked James. “James, what are you doing with the straw?” To which he replied as he elegantly pulled the straw away from his lips, “I smokin.” Nope, we had never covered smoking in any of our pre lunch lecture material. Thankfully, Pastor and Mrs. Rogers erupted in laughter having raised their own PK’s and understood clearly our kid moment with James.