Last week, when my youngest was sick, my oldest found himself faced with a difficult dilemma.<\/p>\n
“Hey,” his momma said to him, “want to come on a walk with me? I’m going to the trestle.”<\/p>\n
Walking to the trestle is fun. You \u00a0see all sorts of Florida wildlife, and it’s a great chance to chat.<\/p>\n
The problem was that his little brother and I were settling down to watch Monsters vs Aliens on the television.<\/p>\n
“Um,” the big guy said, looking back and forth between me and my wife.<\/p>\n
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just pick what you want. There’s no pressure.”<\/p>\n
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go with momma.”<\/p>\n
“Have fun.” I turned on the television and put the dvd in.<\/p>\n
“Wait,” he said, staring at the screen. “I really like Monsters vs Aliens.”<\/p>\n
“You can scooter if you want,” my wife added. He has one of those Razor scooters, and likes to ride it instead of walking.<\/p>\n
“Oh man,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Do whichever you want,” I said. “It’s up to you.”<\/p>\n
“Or just come on a walk with me,” my wife added.<\/p>\n
The big guy looked back and forth between us, then started pacing.<\/p>\n
“You’ll be able to watch Monsters vs. Aliens another time,” I said. “Why don’t you go with Momma?”<\/p>\n
“I want to go with Momma,” he said. “But I really like Monsters vs Aliens.”<\/p>\n
“I’ve got to get going,” my wife said.<\/p>\n
“Wait, wait,” he shouted. “I’ll do Eenie-Meenie Miney Moe.” He held out two fists and did Eenie-Meenie Miney Moe between them.<\/p>\n
I covered my smile with a hand. My wife was doing the same.<\/p>\n
“Aw ma-an<\/em>,” he said.<\/p>\n “Who won?” I asked.<\/p>\n “I’m gonna do best out of three.”<\/p>\n Heh. Some decisions can be really, really hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Somewhere out there is a list of things parents are not supposed to do. This is almost certainly on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-jf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}