And That's Why Dad Needs Hearing Aids

As of this week three of the four Sharp children are in school. The Zoologist is rocking 1st grade, one animal book at a time. The Ballerina and the Demolitions Expert are both in preschool. This year we switched preschools to the preschool at our church. Above is a live image of what going to school at her church has done to the Ballerina's brain.

One thing that has become abundantly clear to me as we have raised our children is that our two-year-old Demolitions Expert is by no means a morning person. She is generally excited to get out of bed, but on school days she is forced to get up at a time not of her choosing. She operates best when she can wake up and go through a rather involved process where she moves from laying down, to sitting up, to standing up, to yelling for someone to come get her out of bed. She is at her best when this process is uninterrupted. This process is now interrupted most days.

Her lack of not being quite ready to interact with the world becomes most obvious when she is forced to do something she does not want to do. The list of things this morning that she did not want to do included: getting in the car, getting in the car that her mother was not in, not having her backpack, having her backpack, and me and the Ballerina singing.

The singing was my humble attempt to try to bring the Demolitions Expert out of her somewhat sour mood as I drove them to preschool.

I failed.

We sang through a few songs, and finally the Demolitions Expert decided that she had enough. She decided that the best way to get us to stop singing was to scream, loudly, in the confined space of my vehicle. As the Ballerina and I started in on Jesus Loves Me from the Demo Expert’s seat we heard, “LA, AAHH, LA, AAAH!” She decided that the way to make the noise stop was to drown it out. This is a classic move from the Demolitions Expert. Why attempt diplomacy when you think brute force can get the job done? There was a time when this attitude would have made her unfit for public office. Now, I fear she will be on the fast track.

After a couple of suggestions, one gentle and one a little more demonstrative, that she stop the screaming, the Demolitions Expert decided she was on board with the singing. She suggested that we sing a song, but for the life of me I could not understand what she said. To me it sounded like she was saying, “Block lock,” which made no sense to me. I asked the Ballerina if she could understand her and she said, “She wants to sing “Blix lav.” This also made no sense. Finally, the Ballerina said, “I think she wants to sing the song about the Lord.” This didn’t help much, but at least we had finally gotten to English. I told the Ballerina I didn’t know which song that was, and she said, “You know, the one with red, yellow, black, and white.”

We sang Jesus Loves the Little Children as best we could. I don’t know if this is what the Demolitions Expert really wanted, or if the Ballerina chose to translate gibberish into what she wanted to sing. To be honest, the Demolitions Expert was happy, or at least not openly hostile, and that was all that mattered at that point.

They made it to school safe and sound. Now all I have to do is see if our insurance covers hearing aids.