Quiet as A...

Due to a schedule change with our nanny, Al and I are now responsible for picking the Beaner up from school on the days when he gets out at noon. We split duties, each taking a different day.

Last week, my day was a particularly hectic one, so instead of bringing the Beaner home and waiting for Shawna, I brought him to work with me and asked Shawna to pick him up there.

We stopped at Ralph's on 43 to get the Beaner a slice of pizza and an apple juice, and then we went back down to Awesome Central, the area in the SW corner of 15 that we've claimed for co-working for the past few weeks. Awesome Central was full, since the whole team was in the office, so I pulled up an extra chair so close to mine that I would have been elbowing the Beaner constantly if I moused on the right side.

He happily added sticky notes to the board (items like "I alweys love you mom <3" and just plain "<3"), and then he just sat there, happily eating his pizza while I tried to solve a Production problem. A few minutes later, I was describing said problem to another team member as resulting from "users pressing the buttons continuously like monkeys" (completely mixing my metaphors in the process—I was thinking of both rats pressing the feeder bar to get a pellet and monkeys on typewriters banging out Shakespeare) when the Beaner totally startled me by going, "ooh ooh eee eee aah aah."

I jumped, and the rest of the team laughed. I'd totally forgotten he was there, despite his proximity. A few minutes later Shawna txted me that she was in the lobby, so I packed the Beaner up. On the way down, I commended him for his good behavior and remarked that he was so quiet and well-behaved that I'd forgotten about him.

"I was as quiet as a chicken," he said proudly.

In my head I was thinking, "chickens make 'bock bock' noises. They're not particularly quiet." But then he clarified.

"Chickens are the quiet ones. It's the pigs who speak, right?"

Posted by Lori in parenthood and work at 3:55 PM on April 30, 2010

Comments (2)

Lori:

Makes me smile.

Comments

I love that kid.

Posted by: Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah at May 1, 2010 11:42 AM

Makes me smile.

Posted by: Lori at May 2, 2010 8:15 PM

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