Trip to the Bank

Seeing as how the Father of the Gremlin is almost always working (slaving away every night and day, tirelessly toiling for his family - if I do say so myself), the Gremlin usually travels with his mother (the MOTG) to run various errands, including the bank.

The last time he went in there, the Gremlin led his mother over to the kiosk, pulled out two deposit slips, gave one to his mother, and then snagged one of the pens hanging from the chain down to his level.

The MOTG, figuring he was just doodling, filled out her deposit slip, and stepped into the line next to the kiosk. The Gremlin filled out his deposit slip, and stepped into the empty line (and closed window) next to his mother. Apparently he can't read that well yet...

The people before and after the MOTG in line noticed the Gremlin and chuckled at the three year-old standing in front of the 'closed' sign, but the Tellers noticed as well. After he stood there for several minutes - just as the MOTG was getting to the front of the line - one of the Tellers opened up the Gremlin's line and took his deposit slip. She took the slip back to the pinboard and posted it up on the wall, walked back, stopped by a drawer, and dropped something in the return tray.

The Gremlin strained up to reach it, and pulled out - A SUCKER! He turned around, surprised his mother wasn't done yet, and started out the door.

"Hey! Stop there, buddy! Wait for Momma!" The Gremlin turned around and trundled back to the line. He handed the sucker up.

"Please open this for me?"

"Buddy, I'm not sure you should have that right now - it's too close to dinner."

The MOTG had dropped her purse down to Gremlin-level, though, and he struck again. He pulled her phone out of the purse and flipped it open. He paused, and then used the worst threat he knew.

"Be nice, momma, or I call daddy!"

He Can Totally Read

He's doing it again. While most children delight in advancing, proving competency to their parents, and showing up their friends, the Gremlin has decided to do exactly the opposite. After spending weeks and weeks repeating various books we've read to him, we're just now finding out that he's picking up a few things here and there. His grandmother came in town from California over Thanksgiving, and brought him whiteboard flash cards that also had traceable letters for things like cat, dog, boy, girl, etc... and he's been putting them and his vocabulary to good use. We're glad he's finally doing this, because before these cards, we had only our suspicions.

Like when we were walking into Half Priced Books last month and the Gremlin pointed to a sign, asking what it meant. When his mother told him it was an emergency lane for rescue vehicles, he corrected her, "Momma, it's a fire lane." But when we asked him to repeat it, he talked about how he wanted to go look at the books. And then again at the bank he again asked for a sign to be read at the ATM. Again, when the word 'bank' was omitted, he corrected his mother, and then refused to bring it up again.