Last week I made the shocking realization that E. had outgrown his carseat in both height and weight. I knew it was coming. He's been hovering just under 40 lbs. for several months and although he technically was over the height limit a couple of months ago, his ears were still well under the top of the seat.But now it was official. We had to go carseat shopping. I had tried doing this before without said child's participation and it ended in tears - mine - when I bought one that A) said child proclaimed horribly uncomfortable immediately and 2) was completely impossible to install in the car. So this time E. would need to be there.
There was no way this was going to work without some sort of incentive and I really had a hankering for pancakes. So using a form of code that H. and I have developed I suggested we go to the "Global Abode of Carbohydrates" after carseat shopping. E. immediately began hovering around us demanding to know what we were talking about - he has the uncanny ability to detect any food - real, hinted at, or merely imagined.
We kept up our veiled references to eating out, alternately discussing the "Transcontinental Residence of Skillet Confection," mostly because this kind of wordplay really entertains us. (Don't even get me started on our love of puns!) Eventually E. could be put off no longer and we offered him a deal: if he could behave himself so we could find a carseat, we would go to IHOP (International House of Pancakes).
We went shopping, we went to IHOP, but not before realizing we could stop E. from running around by simply leaving him strapped into the test carseat as we picked the next one to test. More than a few parents gave us a congratulatory nod as they walked past E. straining against his seatbelt and loudly pointing out that perhaps we had forgotten something.
So, anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else out there enjoys the above-mentioned sort of wordplay. If you do, try to come up with a phrase that you wouldn't want the kids to immediately understand, and replace each word like you're consulting a thesaurus. Leave your coded phrases in a comment!
over your head and make you disappear."