The other day at dinner, N (our three year old) was refusing to eat his dinner again. This time, thank goodness, his momma was dealing with it.\u00a0She was taking the relaxed this-is-why-you-have-to-eat approach. Explaining how important food is, how it gives us energy\u2026 you know the drill. In fact, I\u2019m willing to bet that if you haven\u2019t given that lecture, you\u2019ve probably heard it.<\/p>\n
She ended one of her explanations with \u201cso eat your asparagus. Okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
The little guy smiled. \u201cOkay, Ox\u201d<\/p>\n
Whoops. He\u2019s been experimenting with calling names over the past few months. He\u2019s not being mean, just playful. Sometimes, however, he hits on one that\u2019s not allowed. \u201cOx\u201d was pretty close – and it certainly wasn\u2019t respectful. His momma fixed him with one of her stern glares.<\/p>\n
He faded into his chair and said very quietly, \u201cSorry, Momma.\u201d<\/p>\n
She relented. \u201cThat\u2019s okay. But you have to be respectful. Remember what you called me this afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n
I was sitting between them at this point, trying to match my wife\u2019s sternness without going over the top. Since I wasn\u2019t sure where she was going with this question, I looked down at my food and loaded up a forkful.<\/p>\n
The little guy smiled again. He raised his fork triumphantly and shouted \u201cChico!\u201d<\/p>\n
Chico? Chico!? I burst out laughing. Where the heck did he come up with Chico?<\/p>\n
He laughed with me, along with his brother. His momma tried to hold out, but\u00a0couldn\u2019t withstand the onslaught. Soon she was laughing with us.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s nice when someone accepts their new nickname.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other day at dinner, N (our three year old) was refusing to eat his dinner again. This time, thank goodness, his momma was dealing with it.\u00a0She was taking the relaxed this-is-why-you-have-to-eat approach. Explaining how important food is, how it gives us energy\u2026 you know the drill. In fact, I\u2019m willing to bet that if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-33240","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-8E8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33240","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=33240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}