My seven-year old woke me up the other morning, looking very upset in his halloween pajamas.<\/p>\n
“Daddy,” he said. “He’s using three pieces of paper.”<\/p>\n
I groaned and sat up. My wife had left early for work, so it was just me to deal with this particular crisis. “Is that bad?”<\/p>\n
“Three pieces!” He gestured with his hands. “He’s drawing a picture on three pieces!”<\/p>\n
The little guy looked very upset, not I’m-going-to-collapse-into-tears upset, though. He looked more serious, more this-is-a-wrong-that-must-be-righted upset.<\/p>\n
“That’s what the paper’s for,” I said, covering a yawn. “I can’t wait to see what he’s drawn.”<\/p>\n
“Three pieces,” he repeated. “It’s wasteful.”<\/p>\n
“It’s fine.” I sat up. “That’s what we have the paper for.”<\/p>\n
He tilted his head forward. “It’s wasteful,” he reprimanded me.<\/p>\n
“Why do you care if he draws on three pages?”<\/p>\n
“It’s wasteful. He should draw on one piece.”<\/p>\n
“Well, I say it’s okay.” I stood up. “And I’m the daddy. Come on. Let’s go see.”<\/p>\n
We found his brother drawing in his room, a vast cosmic battle that spanned three different pages. “Wow,” I admired. “Looks good.”<\/p>\n
“Thanks.” He grinned. “He doesn’t like me using three pages.”<\/p>\n
I shook my head. “I know. It’s fine.”<\/p>\n
I turned to find my seven-year-old glowering at us from the doorway. “It’s wasteful,” he intoned.<\/p>\n
“Time to get dressed.” I led him into the den, where clothes were folded and piled neatly on the couch. “Your momma was folding clothes last night. If you need anything, it’s all here.”<\/p>\n
He crossed his arms. “If she could fold them,” he\u00a0said, “she could have put them away.”<\/p>\n
I tried not to smile as I picked up a pair of socks. “Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you tell her that next time you see her?”<\/p>\n
He glared at me, lips pressed together.<\/p>\n
“Really,” I said. “I think she’ll take it well.”<\/p>\n
The corner of his mouth twitched, then he gave a big sigh, and started picking out his clothes. I’m not sure, but I think he was smiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is there anything cuter than a grumpy seven-year old?<\/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":[123,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-mD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","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=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}