Triplet Trivia Answers and Overtime (Revised)

Sorry, my friends, I have been waylaid by the most predictable of culprits, and yet one that biannually catches me off guard (--with its intensity more than its timing): the end of the semester.  But I have been able to carve out a little space here in order to give you the answers, at long last, to Triplet Trivia.  Here they are:

1. First play-date on his/her own?

Scout.  She was so excited she woke extra early (4:30) the day of.  Still, when the time came, she would not go unless Mommy or I drove her to Michelle's house.  Once there, all went well until the time came for me to pick her up.  Thinking more about her excitement than about her need for rest, I agreed to come back and get her after dinner, rather than before, and, would you believe it, I got lost on the return trip and was an hour late.  It was dark and, as I will make clear in my next "Impressions" post, it is blatant over-confidence to think you know your way around here, even in broad daylight.  Scout held it together pretty well, but Michelle's mother said she could tell she was coming close to tears.  By the time I finally picked her up and got her home, she had fallen completely apart, and it turned into a tough night for all of us.  That said, the tempest passed, and ultimately Suzy and I are so proud of her for her bravery in venturing out on her own; and, for her own part, she did not hesitate to say yes when Vicki, another of her classmates, asked her to come over for a play-date two weeks later. Hooray Scout, and boo Daddy.

2. The one we call the accountant, because he/she loves counting money, and making it?

Kiefer.  The best part about this discovery was when he made the money.  I don't mean that he worked for it.  I mean that he actually wrote numbers on a piece of paper and had me cut them out in order to collect them all in a wallet I subsequently made for him out of a 3X5 note card.  Eventually, it led to me having to write out the numbers as he called them out, and, man, did he call them out with passion: "Three hundred Forty Eighty Four hundred and Five!"--his eyebrows lifting and saliva popping from his mouth with each syllable.  It was ridiculously cute.  Anyway, Scout jumped on board (--I made her a wallet last weekend), and now all three of them earn stickers for certain chores they do around the house.  Each sticker is worth 100 Colones (about 20 cents).  Funny enough, Charlie and Scout end up giving their earnings to Kiefer anyway (--he tells them that he will get something for them), and every now and again, he takes his collection of coins down from the shelf so he and I can count it together.  He is the family's Accountant.

3. The first to get a negative referral from school?

You all thought Kiefer, didn't you?  Or did you think Scout?  Actually, it was Charlie.  There was some kind of misunderstanding around sharing his classmate's treats, and when the teacher made her frustration clear, Charlie froze, and he would not mind her--pretty much wouldn't even move.  Seems innocent enough, don't you think?  And yet since then, he has twice more been in trouble.  The last time was the best of the three: he and all his class were asked to say what they were thankful for, and by the time it got to Charlie (he was last in line) he went for a punchline.  Yep, you guessed it, "I'm thankful for poopy and pee and caca."  Well, at least he's learning Spanish.

4. The one who speaks Spanish most frequently?

The answer here, despite Suzy's protestation, is definitely Scout.  The reason the answer is Scout, though, is not necessarily because she knows the most Spanish.  She just tries to speak it the most.  But Kiefer, our observer, may very well know more than she does.  He certainly surprises me the most with it, both because it is more rare from him, and because it is some word we didn't know any of them had ever even heard.  So if you guessed Kiefer, you can have half a point, I guess.

5. The most independent one (--which is to say, he/she pays Suzy and I no mind if we encounter all of them, by chance, at school)?

Again, it's Kiefer.  This makes itself apparent at school assemblies, like, for instance, the opening ceremony of the big basketball tournament.  The K4 troop had made their way into the gym and were sitting on the bleachers, but when Suzy and I arrived, Scout and Charlie came running to us and gave us hugs, and generally stayed with us for the rest of the time, though we tried to return them to their class.  But not Kiefer.  No, like a teenager already, he just chilled with his friends and pretended he didn't know us.  Funny enough, when their whole class at this same ceremony got up to dance with the rest of the school, Mommy and Daddy included, none of the three of them could be pried off the bleachers--not with a crowbar.  Suzy and I danced, and coaxed, and leveraged both of our weight, but it was no matter.  Independent?  Scared?  Embarrassed?  I'm not sure.  In any case, I am proud of Kiefer.

6. The one who ties his/her own shoes almost every morning?

Scout.  No incentive needed.  Kiefer was actually the first to successfully do it, but it seemed much less exciting to him than I tried to make it.  Scout, on the other hand, started and hasn't stopped.  Actually, in order to get the boys on board, I offered Skittles as a reward, and now they are all proficient at it--even with a double knot, just in time to show Grandma Martha, who returns to us in a couple of weeks.  I am not sure exactly how it happens, but Charlie's double-knot always looks like a big puff--like a cheerleader's pom pom or something, but it gets him by and gets him that yummy rainbow of fruit flavors for which any of the three of them would do apparently anything.  Just like Mikey Rudolph.

7. The best staller, especially when it comes to taking medicine?

The best staller has, without question, been Scout for most of their little lives, but now, we start to see, she indeed was the first one out, and Kiefer was last.  In fact, the story goes, Kiefer threw out a fist of warning when the doctor first reached in to pluck him out.  This trivia question is a hard one to judge, ultimately, because of Scout's strong will, and because Charlie didn't come down with the same sickness (and therefore didn't have to take the medicine and show off his skills), but Kiefer was so impressive, we cannot deny him the title here.  I mean, I would find myself standing there in my boxers, in the middle of the night, one light on, and cold, with a spoon, brimful of medicine, delicately balanced inches before Kiefer's lips, and he would just go on and on about the most fascinating things that were occurring to him at the moment.  On and on and on...  Suzy would be listening and bottling up her laughter, and I had the hardest time not laughing, myself.  I mean, it was 2:00 in the morning, and that kid might as well have been performing at The Improv.  I never spilled a drop, but once Kiefer returned to bed, Suzy and I were rolling with the sweetest shushed laughter in the world.
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8. The one who believes the horse in our front yard is in love with him/her?

Well, Granny got this right, and I know she is proud of it, too (--in fact, I included it for Granny.)  Scout.  Not unlike the time when the Disney store employee called Scout "Princess," and Scout was amazed that someone else other than I knew the truth, when I noticed the horse seeming to follow Scout as she walked by the fence, and when I noticed the peculiar way she reacted to it--noticing, but also pretending not to notice, I went ahead and said, "Scout, I think he loves you," and she replied, "I know"--like both the horse and my observation were completely unworthy of even her second thought.  She just walked on--into womanhood.

9. The nurturer--that is, the one who most relishes the chance to take care of one or both of the other two?

Really, all of them have shown, at one time or another, the will to do this, but Charlie seems the most natural--our Cuddler.  As I said above, Charlie somehow escaped the last virus that required not one, but two different calls to the paramedics in the same day.  The second visit, the paramedic didn't have all that much patience with us, even after Kiefer, sweating and hard of breath, puked, then fainted right in front of her.  Apparently, that didn't warrant a second call.  And I guess, after all, it didn't, but it scared Suzy and me to death.  Anyway, Charlie kicked into high gear that night and in the days following.  He tried to help us take care of his brother and sister every which way he could.  I'll never forget when, on that first scary night, we somewhat frantically asked him to run next door to get Olga.  He hopped to, grabbed the flashlight, put on his boots and started over to Olga's in the dark.  I came out while he was still halfway up the path to her house, and, being in some urgency, I called out to Olga from our porch.  She answered and Charlie stalled mid-step.  Olga understood my broken Spanish, and started to come over, and then Charlie, seeing what had occurred, turned around and said out loud, "Okay.  Did that.  Now gotta go home."  I will never forget it...  Days later, after taking care of his sick siblings, feeding them pretty much anything they would eat, I came back to the lunch table and offered Charlie a bag of Goldfish too.  He said, "No, Dad.  Save it for Kiefer and Scout."  Man, that little guy--he seems to be made to break hearts.

10. The one who is already a teenager in that he/she sleeps in and has no trouble using up all the hot water in the shower?

I know you're thinking Kiefer, after the earlier answer above, but nope, it's Charlie again.  Or I guess I should say it was Charlie.  Kiefer is now joining him somewhat--and Kiefer actually sleeps, whereas Charlie is likely still sucking his thumb.  Whatever the case, Scout is definitely not the one who sleeps in.  Hell, she has had us up and running at 0600 sharp since she was born, our own little drill-sergeant.  But Charlie still always lingers the longest in the shower.  That part of the question is all his.  The good news is that we don't really run out of hot water here.  But in Colorado, in about ten years, during the winter--oh, yea, we're in trouble.

And there you have it, your first edition of Triplet Trivia.

Now, my mother, who was the only one to submit guesses (though Katie D caught up with her a day or two ago), also made the point that I realized shortly after creating the game--the point any parent, especially any parent of more than one child knows: the answers to these type of questions can be totally different tomorrow.  Kids develop in mysterious ways--in their own time--and, like Emerson advises all of us, with little heed for the hobgoblin of consistency.  Indeed, the hardest thing to do is to refrain from thinking you know, as if it were suddenly revealed, how to identify a child as particularly this or that.  Tomorrow--no, the next minute, you are completely off, and, lest you're not careful, you're paving a path that perhaps the child isn't or shouldn't be taking.  Is that why most of you refused to make your guesses?

Verily, if the impressionist artist should take a child for his subject (or anyone clever enough to regain his child-likeness), his ardent faithfulness to reality would render the canvas a complete blur, a subjectless flurry of every color, and of colors between colors--flushed, scraped, soft--one of those canvases you mock as con-art on a museum wall--a painting any child might have done--pure, simple, and called "Infinity."  That, my friends, is the joy of my life, a feast from which I lift a flavor to enjoy in these blog posts, but which I should never imagine nor hope to imagine I could contain.  Just breathing in and out my days--these sweet sweet days.

As for the overtime questions, here you go.

1.  The one who probably still needs a nap, falling asleep almost every day in the car during the 5-minute drive home after school?

Kiefer.  What's amazing is how alert he is once awakened, however rapidly, and even after a whole history at 2:00 in the morning, he can fall asleep just as quickly.

2.  The one whose imaginary play is the most difficult to break him/her from?

Charlie.  One of the new rules we have with our Bokanovski group is that they need to do what we ask them to do the first time we ask.  Well, just this morning, Mommy said, "Charlie, what did I ask you to do?"  And Charlie, in all sincerity, though his mother couldn't have spoken more clearly, said, "I didn't hear you, Mom.  What did you say?"  And what fascinates me is the extent to which his imaginative play is verbal.  I thought boys were all bang and crash and boom.  I was.  But there are stories being told here.  Kiefer can also go to Narnia, and is no less fascinating, but Charlie seems, sometimes, to live there.

3.  The one who has a new laugh that sounds like he/she just played a trick on you?

Scout.  But, as though to make my mother's point, which I reiterated above, that laugh is all but gone, I've noticed.  It's been replaced by something just as cute, but not quite as mischievous...

Okay, keep an eye out for more--my "Impressions" series are not yet half way done.  I am sorry for the delay, and I hope to update this more consistently from here on out.  Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  We did--had a lot of poopy and pee and caca...

Love you all.