MORE LANDON STORIES--AS REQUESTED

Landon was my first child.

He is still my first child.




God entrusted me, a very inexperienced, barely a woman at 25, to raise a high spirited, verbose, overly honest, world-in-black-and-white son.

I will skip over many of my mistakes on parenting and enhance the things Landon did, frankly, because looking back, we were probably one of God's sit-com reality shows. *




Landon talked in full sentences (with good grammar), from the moment he was born!

 I think I remember his exact sentence to be, "The doctor slapped my behind, but I'm not gonna cry because what he did is just wrong!"




And there it started with Landon.

  He learned anything I taught him with ease.

 I taught him all kinds of facts, but my favorite was to teach him Bible facts.




 Before he was two, he could answer 200 hundred Bible facts,  (this is not an exaggeration!).

We could have been in the circus with this act!

I'd say, "Landon, do you want to play the Bible game?.

 If he wanted to, I ask him things like,

"Who was Samson's girlfriend?"----Dee LIE La, he's say.

"What are the first four books of the Bible?--Gen SIS, EX Dus, Love IT e cus, NUM bas.

Who was in the fiery furnace? ME shack, shad RACK, & a  BEND I go.

And on it went. 




Once, at nine months,  Lance took him outside while doing yardwork.

  Lance has a propensity to balance my "hover-mother" with his laid-back parenting style.

 Lance was busy doing "yard-y" things when he looked over to Landon and saw him chewing on a bark chip. 

When he got closer, he realized it was a dead, flat mouse!

Ever the calm LJ, finally told me the story a week later.

I gasped and screeched and uttered all other kinds of onomatopoeia s,  

 "Well, he didn't die!" said Lance proudly. 





When I was having kids, there was no Supernanny on TV to teach me how to parent.

 Dr. Dobson had barely published his first book on rearing children. 

Before that, it was Dr. Spock who, I think, was the Father of "children should be seen and not heard" era. 

So I was flying pretty blind here with a toddler.




When I scolded Landon for a 3yr. old crime, he would try to convince me to change the punishment to anything other than what it was.




  After his verbal barrage, I would give out and usually lock MYSELF in the bathroom.

  Landon would bang on the door and say, "There's three more points I want to make about my punishment before I go to my room."

At which I'd yell, "You'd better be a lawyer or you are going to have to pay me back pay for listening to you argue."  

 And then I would stick my fingers in my ears and sing the Star Spangled Banner.

Once I outed myself  from solitary confinement, he was usually in his bunk bed with poster board and marker making "Life is Unfair" posters.





 From this time to the time he went to kindergartener, Landon ran with scissors, talked with his mouth full, and challenged me hourly.




I taught him to read early, because I was a tired mother.

 Once he knew how to read, I let him "practice" reading his bedtime story to me while I "just rested my eyes so I could concentrate while listening to him."




His birthday was the middle of August and the kindergarten cut off was Sept. 1st.



  When I went to register him, the assigned teacher told me that I should consider waiting a year since he has just turned five a few days before.

I looked at her and said, "I don't care if he goes to kindergarten for twelve years; if you don't let him in, I'm gonna have to kill him. " (That's back when parents could joke about things like this and not have to write blogs from jail).

  She did not have a sense of humor and told me that he'd more than likely have to repeat kindergarten. 

Since I was ok with that scenario, I took him to school a few days later.

 At our teacher parent conference in Oct that year., I asked the teacher if he would have to repeat. 

She uttered a barely audible, "no". 

"What?  I said?  Can you please say that louder?" I mocked.  

"He's top in the class., she mumbled and he already knows how to read."

"Yes," I blurted, "have him read, 'Hiram's Red Shirt' to the class and you can have some downtime. "





More time passed with broken windows, scraped knees, and big wheel accidents.





  All his birthdays were outside because I could hose off everything quickly when it was over.




Landon's scrapbook has his dinosaur birthday picture at 5 with a garden rake in the background.

Landon at 6 was with an uncoiled hose around his pirate ship.

Landon's cowboy party at 7 was with two trowels and in his holster. 



And so it went until today, Aug. 14th, Landon's birthday.



 He is 32.  I'm pretty sure his birthday picture will have a lawn mower in the background.



I have passed the torch. 

Landon now  can have all of his kid's birthdays outside and lock himself in the bathroom when his kids argue.




And I'm pretty sure that when I'm in the nursing home, he'll publish a book titled, "My Mom Embellished Too Much. "





Until...my next musing!

JLou

*many of the memories have been embellished because that's what I do.