Wisdom of a 3 and 1/2 Year Old - On Fixing, Spanish, and Having a Tough Life

"Sorry buddy, there's something wrong with the computer. I can't figure it out." The Gremlin, sitting on his mothers lap, thought about this before speaking.
"DADDY! COME FIX THE COMPUTER! PLEASE!"


That evening, the Mother of the Gremlin was trying to get the Gremlin to speak Spanish.
"Tiene sueno?" Are you tired?
"No thank you sueno."
"Don't you mean 'no tengo sueno?'"
"No, no thank you sueno!"


"It's hard to be 3 and 1/2. My daddy almost yelled at me!"

Daddy Would NEVER Hide Things. Really!

The other day the Gremlin was looking on the laptop. He's found that we frequent Kids Woot, and was looking for the "Track Mover" actually named Harvey. He found a collection of trains that included Harvey, and then turned to the Mother of the Gremlin.

"Momma, is Daddy going to buy those, hide them in his closet, and only show them to Grandma?"

"What do you mean, buddy?"

"You know, like Molly's talking station."

Sadly, there may not be a Gremlin update next week - the Gremlin has decided that talking to Daddy on the phone "makes [him] too sad, and [he] wants to cry." But rest assured, after that there will be numerous updates from the Gremlin's time in Seapple - including his first realization that he has a yard.

Favorite Toy of the Week:  Jeremy  

He's excited to 'ride Jeremy to Seapple to see daddy.'

It's A New Generation...

I still remember my first computer - this awesome IBM with an orange-print screen. We set it up in the family room and I was allowed to mess around with it while my dad wasn't working on it.

The Gremlin is growing up with computers, and it was bound to happen that he was going to pick them up earlier than I did, I just thought he was going to be able to ... oh, I don't know ... spell first. Apparently that's not an issue to the wiles of the Gremlin.

This morning, while the Mother of the Gremlin was making coffee in her beloved Bodum Brazil 8-Cup (34-Ounce) Coffee Press, the Gremlin was begging her to let him play on pbskids.org - his favorite site to interact with shows like Curious George or Caillou (I'd never heard of him either). The MOTG agreed that as soon as the coffee was ready, she'd get the computer there and play with him.

The Gremlin decided this wasn't fast enough, and climbed up to his mother's netbook. When the MOTG came over to her computer, she was amazed to see the Gremlin already playing the Curious George game.

"Buddy, how did you do that?"
"Shhhhhh, momma!" the Gremlin was intent on his game. Once he finished it, she closed out the browser.
"Can you show me how you did that?"

The Gremlin looked up at his mother - considering pulling his "how I do what?" trick again, but realized he's already shown he could get to it. So he put his finger on the touch pad, opened up an internet browser, clicked the URL space, hit the 'p' button, and scrolled down to pbskids.org (and he still claims he can't read).

"So momma, I can play another game now?"


Update: The Gremlin decided he wanted to play on my laptop, so I took video of it. And no, that's not Arrested Development - Season One playing in the background. Okay, 'Maebe' it is....

Computers

I suppose it was inevitable, with a father who worked in IT, for the Gremlin to start picking up on computer terms, but a few weeks ago, the Gremlin entered a whole new world: the internet. He walked up to his mother the other day and said:

"I want to go to PBSKids.org."My wife was so astounded that she booted up the computer and went to the site, where the Gremlin was able to play games featuring characters like Clifford and Curious George. Now it's a regular occurrence for the child to have 'internet time' with mommy.