{"id":127,"date":"2006-01-27T12:49:55","date_gmt":"2006-01-27T12:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/01\/27\/a-tradition-continues\/"},"modified":"2006-01-27T12:49:55","modified_gmt":"2006-01-27T12:49:55","slug":"a-tradition-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/01\/27\/a-tradition-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"A tradition continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other morning,\u00a0when I walked into the kitchen to grab some breakfast, I discovered J and the kids lounging on the couch in the den. I walked over to\u00a0chat\u00a0and N immediately hopped off the couch and toddled over to me with a (very satisfying) cry of \u201cDaddy!\u201d<\/p>\n

He and I played for a few moments, and then it hit me: no one had trained N in the fine art of bopping<\/a>. Sure, he\u2019d seen it done before –\u00a0and I think I\u2019d even handed him a pillow\u00a0once or twice – but this was a clear opportunity for him to discover the true joy of pillow bopping.<\/p>\n

Checking to make sure that the others were distracted by the TV, I quietly handed him a couch pillow and whispered \u201cbop!\u201d. He took the pillow (which was roughly half his total height), and then looked at me with a big open-mouthed grin.<\/p>\n

I pointed to J and mimed hitting something with a pillow. I even whispered \u201cbop!\u201d at the appropriate point.<\/p>\n

He turned and started to toddle towards her, and then turned back to look at me. He was looking strangely serious<\/a>, though I didn\u2019t recognize the expression at the time. I gestured enthusiastically for him to continue.<\/p>\n

It should be noticed at this point that J had realized what was going on. She was gamely playing along, however – pretending to ignore us.<\/p>\n

N toddled back towards me, holding his pillow. Not quite getting it, I gestured him in the other direction, continuing to whisper. \u201cNo, that way! Bop!\u201d I mimed bopping again. \u201cBop!\u201d<\/p>\n

Bop. The pillow hit me square in the face. It wasn\u2019t moving very fast, but it was clearly a bop.<\/p>\n

The student had turned on the teacher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which the pillow bop turns against me.<\/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":[123,122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-23","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","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=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}