You know that age old rule: “Don’t laugh when your child does something wrong no matter how terribly cute or funny it is”?

I broke that rule today.

Shoot, I took a sledgehammer and smashed it all to smithereens when I turned to hubs saying “Watch him! Do it again for Daddy!”

A teensy moment of bad parenting.. I’m not perfect.

My son may have thrown all table manners to the wind when he took off the top piece of bread to his sandwich, held the other half in his hands and then dove in face first, nom-nom-nommed on the deli turkey, swallowed satisfactorily and then pretended to burp sheepishly… but:

1. He was eating his meat (which is what I told him to do, and what he didn’t want to do.)
2. He was doing it joyfully and agreeably.
3. He was awfully darn cute.
4. And it was the last thing I was expecting, the playfulness catching me off guard under normally frustrating circumstances until I giggled like a little girl.

I guess sometimes you just gotta laugh!

Hubs just stood there and shook his head at me. “You’re probably going to regret that later.” Yeah. I might. Remind me of that tomorrow.

Image via Wikipedia

As soon as I hear the word “savvy” I get the image of Jack Sparrow flashing to mind, making some kind of witty or absurd statement and then asking, “Savvy??”

Perhaps this is because we’ve seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies a combined total of about 3 million, 257 seven thousand, 4 hundred and 2 times. At least. And this is because I have a four year old pirate-crazy boy. Which is fine by me because I like the pirates. (Or maybe I just like pirates that look like Orlando Bloom, whichever the case may be.)

At any rate, “pirates” is something I have that I can share with my boy. Which is cool because there’s a WHOLE LOT about my boy that I don’t relate to. Me, the girly-girl, anti-bug, indoor type versus my wild and free, bug collecting, happy outdoor-type little boy. There are plenty of things my son does each day that I just don’t understand. I guess you could say, “I’m not boy savvy.” Not at all.

But I AM pirate savvy. It’s nice to know that at any given time I can sit down with my son and watch a pirate movie or pull out one of my son’s many-many pirate books, or sword-fight with my son decked out in full pirate garb and bond with him through fun pirate accents (which I’m pretty gosh darned good at, by the way – AR, MATEY!)

The day will come when my son pulls away from Momma and doesn’t want to be Momma’s boy anymore. He already swoons over getting to help Daddy with projects and tries to follow in his footsteps. That’s a natural progression and that’s a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that I want to let him go completely! It means I need to adapt and be more “boy savvy” as he gets older, more pirate savvy, more superhero savvy, more bug savvy – and later: more computer savvy and car savvy and wherever his interests lead him. There will be plenty that I will never be able to “get,” plenty that he goes to my husband for, but I can hang onto all these little things that we can share together and we can have that.

Queue Casablanca soundtrack: “We’ll always have pirates.”

My boy's pirate hat.

“Savvy” is this week’s Popinjay photo prompt. What does “savvy” look like for you? Link up and chime in – I’m guest-hosting for Michelle this week. Remember the no kid/no pet rules. (Notice how I got around that by taking a picture of that hat and not the boy.) ;0)