Spencer

This blog is all about Spencer and his day. Spencer's day did not start out very well, nor did his Daddy's. I left for work at 6:00 this morning and Jordan was in charge of getting the kids to school and the babysitter. All went well until Jordan tried to leave and the van wouldn't start. It's been idleing differently and we've been thinking something is wrong with the alternator. So anyway, Jordan ran across the street to get the neighbor to come jump the van and Spencer decided to follow. However, he only made it as far as the street, where somehow his right eye made direct contact with the pavement. Don't ask us how, we don't really understand it. Just know that he is a five-year-old boy and somehow these things tend to happen quite regularly. So Spencer's school day began with a tardy slip and an ice pack.

The rest of his day went well though, and after school the kids and I went out to the front yard where I got busy planting tulip bulbs and pansies in the flower beds. At one point I looked up to see Spencer hammering a tennis ball into the ground... with an actual hammer. It made me wonder, but I just kept on planting. The next thing I knew he'd gone into the house and came back out with a cup full of water which he poured on top of the tennis ball. Finally I asked, "Spencer, what are you doing?"

"I'm planting this ball so we can grow a new tree and get a lot more tennis balls!"

He was quite disappointed and a little bit skeptical when I tried to explain to him that not everything grows on trees, some things are man-made. Ahhh, such are the disappointments of childhood.

Shortly after the tennis ball incident, I was continuing to plant when Spencer came out of the house with a piece of paper and a crayon. He lay down on the cement and began to write. I could hear him whispering the words, "I have money."

"Mom," he said, "how do you spell 'have'?"

I helped him spell "have" and then he asked for help spelling "money." When he was finished he proudly picked up the sign and said, "There, I'm finished. Tomorrow I'm going to sit out in the street with this sign on the ground in front of me."

I didn't really look closely at the sign--I thought he had just written "I have money," so I didn't understand what he was doing.

"Why do you want people to know you have money?" I asked.

"No Mom," he explained. "My sign says 'Can I have money?' I made it because I want people to give me money."

I still didn't understand and began lecturing him that people don't just ask other people they don't know for money.

It turns out I was wrong.

"Yes they do Mom," he said. "In California they do. You know, the old guys, they sit on the street with a sign so that people will give them money."

Apparently Spencer has aspirations of being a bum... We've taught him well so far, haven't we?