I'm MC Bishop and I'm here to say / my rhyming skills are on track with normal childhood development

Despite the fact that we inadvertently gave our daughter the initials MC,* she's got zero lyrical flow.

We discovered this when Madeline came to a page in her Hello Kitty activity book that instructed her to "See how many words you can think of that rhyme with the words below!" 

The first word was "kitty," but as there aren't that many words that rhyme with kitty in the average five-year-old's vocabulary, she did what any normal kid her age would do — guess wildly.

Tentatively she said, "Mitty," looking for some kind of acknowledgement from Kelly or me that "mitty" is in fact a word. While it isn't, I did think it was an interesting and topical first guess given the current election season.

For her second try, my sweet, beautiful daughter said with her angelic voice, "Shitty."

Now even though we try to watch our language, it’s entirely possible Madeline could have heard that word from her parents. "Shitty" is pretty much our adjective of choice when we're talking to each other and one of us or one of the kids is being a surlypants. 

"Hey, stop being shitty." "Why so shitty, shitty?" "The kids are kind of shitty tonight." There are other words we could use, but shitty really gets right to the point.

To make sure we heard Madeline correctly — as well as because it’s kind of adorable when your kindergartner accidentally swears — we tried not to laugh and asked her to repeat herself. Then we told her that's not really a good word for her to use, and thus far she hasn't said it again.

Keeping in mind that this is my new wave five-year-old, I’m a little disappointed Madeline didn’t try to rhyme kitty with Scritti and/or Politti before moving on to another page in the book. 

*Madeline's initials are 100% unintentional. We didn't realize she'd be MC Bishop until it was too late.

However, when deciding on a name for James, to complement his sister I actively tried to come up with something that had the initials DJ — but Kelly saw right through my plan and shot me down. 

We could've had a lil' hip-hop family! 

Any other parents have kids swearing at an advanced level? How are you dealing with it? Are they at least using the words correctly?

Bears Don't Have Wheels

The kindergarten homework failure parade continued at the Bishop house last week. But at least we had a win first.

What you see above is a picture of grapes, bananas, cupcakes and a pumpkin. The directions said to cross out the one that doesn’t belong with the others. Madeline crossed out the pumpkin.

I asked her why. "Pumpkins aren’t for eating," she said, like it was the most ridiculous question she’d ever heard.

This does actually makes some sense, though. Number of times she’s had cupcakes? Countless. Number of times she’s had pumpkin in clearly recognizable pumpkin form? Zero.

In fact, the number of times I've had raw pumpkin is zero, too. Seeds? Sure. Pie? Yes, but then it's more akin to cupcakes so we’re back at square one.

I guess pumpkin is a fruit. But come on, when you think of fruit, you've got to get pretty far down the list before you get to pumpkin. And before I wrote that, I absolutely had to Google pumpkin to confirm it’s not really a vegetable. 

Thus, a moral parental quandary for Kelly and me: 

1. Tell Madeline we agree with her but she's wrong and that's just how the world is so suck it up, kid. 
2. Let Madeline turn in homework we were pretty sure would be sent back marked incorrect, further reinforcing her teacher's surely burgeoning belief that Kelly and I are a bit on the daft side. 

Ultimately, we decided to leave the X on the pumpkin, and wrote a note to the teacher asking her to ask Madeline to explain why that was the thing that didn’t belong. The homework came back with a green "OK." Victory! 

The celebration, however, was to be short-lived. This is where the sad trombone of the homework failure parade began to play once more.

The worksheet also came back marked "Redo and follow the whole directions," as some of the problems had an extra step that we’d missed. What we were supposed to do for those was: "Cross out the one that doesn’t belong and tell why." (The pumpkin problem wasn’t among these.)

I assure you we hadn’t completely ignored this part — I’d just done it wrong. Instead of having Madeline write down the answer, I’d sat down with the kid and had her verbally "tell why." You know, on account of the fact that Madeline can't spell.

Okay, she can spell a few things — her name, her brother’s name, Mommy, Daddy, love and a couple of other words. She’s positive this is enough for her to be able to play Words With Friends, yet I remain unconvinced.

Anyway, I asked Madeline to explain why among a tricycle, toy truck, wagon and teddy bear, she’d crossed out what she did.

"Daddy," she began, a little condescendingly. "Bears don’t have wheels." It was like she was maybe 98% sure I knew the answer, but had decided to play it safe just in case.

I spelled "bears don't have wheels" out for her letter by letter and she wrote it all down, and then we redid the rest of the problems she’d missed. The homework came back the next day with an "OK" on it.

 
You don’t eat pumpkin. Bears don’t have wheels. 

Madeline must be constantly wondering, "What is wrong with these people?"

Five Years Old and Punk as F***

Just like her dad, Madeline loves music. When we went to go see the Doo Dads at Park Place over the summer, she wanted to be right up front, close to the band. It’s never too early to start developing the key rock show skill of fighting your way to the front of the crowd.

We listen to a lot of 1st Wave on Sirius in my car. Classic alternative and new wave is to me, Madeline and James, as listening to Motown on the radio was to me and my mom.

Madeline asks some pretty good questions about the songs on 1st Wave when we’re driving ‘round (up and down, through the streets of your town). Here are a few of my favorites.

The Ramones: "Rock 'n' Roll High School"
"Daddy, am I going to go to a rock and roll high school?"

The Cure: "Boys Don't Cry"
"Does that mean they think only girls cry? Because boys do cry. I've seen them."

Siouxsie and the Banshees: "Christine"
For this song, Madeline wanted to know why Siouxsie Sioux calls Christine “the strawberry girl” in the chorus* — but my co-worker Leisha had a much better question.

I was proudly telling Leisha how Madeline was expressing interest in what I'd consider some fairly advanced post-punk for a kindergartner. Leisha then asked me, “So at what point did you decide to raise Madeline to be a tiny goth?”

    Think this...                                             ...plus this.
 
Cool, yes. But I can't imagine the look would fly at Catholic school.
 
*I didn’t know why Christine is “the strawberry girl,” so I looked it up. “Christine” is based on Chris Costner Sizemore, who had dissociative identity disorder, and “the strawberry girl” was one of her identities. If Madeline’s question comes up again, I’m going to stick with, “I guess she’s just super excited about eating healthy foods."

Jumping Into the Deep End of the Carpool Lane

Morning is entirely too early to deal with dropping M off at school.

Admittedly, my wife and I are novices at managing the carpool lane, but we’re also working with a kindergartner that just turned 5. Some of these other parents have been doing this for going on six years — or longer if they’ve got older kids — and have their drop-off maneuvers down to a science.

Unlock car door. Kiss-like motion. And boom — they’re gone. They’re minivan ninjas.

Meanwhile, we’re slooooow.

We’ve got to stop the car. Walk around to M’s side. Open door. Undo car seat buckle. Get backpack on her. Hug. Kiss. Tell her to go inside. Get back in the car. Roll down the window and tell her to go inside again when she inevitably (albeit awesomely) stops to turn around and wave and yell, “I love you! I hope you have the best day ever!,” at whichever one of us is dropping her off. M has done that every day, so I’d feel kind of bad if I just ditched her at the curb and sped off.

Plus, as previously mentioned, the door to my daughter’s school is too heavy for her to open, so we’ve got to wait and watch to make sure she gets inside.

What if we didn’t wait and she somehow got trapped outdoors and went feral? That could totally happen. I do not want to be the parent of the deadliest kindergartner.

Slowly but surely, however, we’re getting the hang of drop-off. Strategies employed thus far include: 1. Arriving right when the doors to the school are unlocked so there’s not as much traffic behind us, and 2. Waiting in line until we can pull up as far as possible in front of the school so we don’t cause a major backup when we get M out.

Most of the other parents seem to understand what we’re going through, giving us knowing nods. Tiny kid, second week — we’ll be pros at this soon enough.

But I did get an eye roll from an SUV mom the other day.

Jaded sixth-grade parents. They’ve seen it all, man.

Anybody have any tips for efficient carpool lane drop-off techniques? Bonus points if they still incorporate hugs into the procedure.

Kindergarten Begins

It can’t bode well for the future of M’s academic career that her first homework assignment came back marked, “Check directions and redo.”

Homework, revised.

You see, rather than circling the big shapes with a blue crayon as the instructions clearly state, she circled them with a pencil. And there go her chances for making valedictorian.

Also, I had no idea they give out homework in kindergarten now. For the record, both my wife and I individually deny one of us incorrectly told M how to do the worksheet. But it’s not like the kid can read, so somebody had to tell her what to do.

This was M’s first week of full days at kindergarten. The door to the building is too heavy for her to open by herself. Her Hello Kitty backpack is as big as she is. At lunch, she gets to have chocolate milk. She’s crazy about going to school.

I’m so excited. Kid, sometimes I wish you’d never grow up, but apparently you have to, so c'mon — let’s learn some stuff.

Scratch that — let’s learn everything.

How is everybody else adjusting to the new school year?