friday fun, trouble, and causality

The last week has found us fitting in a few fun things in the midst of adjusting to a school and preschool schedule...Friday night we made smiley-face pizzas (minus a little cheese hair) before the kids' 6:30 bedtime. Yeah, that's right. So when my parents called at 7:30 to congratulate Calvin on his first day of preschool, he was sound asleep for an hour, despite his 3 hour nap that day. I'm not sure why, but nothing else works quite like sleep in transforming my snarly beast into the sweet boy he's supposed to be. I've been struggling lately to train him despite his belligerence. He'll often angrily re-correct me after I've corrected him in some area, like whether #15 should be included when counting to 20. He's also been known to silently hijack someone else's drink, flick people with his finger, and openly exclaim his premeditated acts of disobedience. When I asked them what they were going to do while I was upstairs he cheerfully and thoughtfully replied, "Um--we're gonna cause trouble!"

Here he is in all his pugnacious radiance. As rude as he is, the kid has a real soft spot for his baby sis, which makes me happy. He'll often tell me that he loves her--when she's happy and when she's sad. And during one of his finger-flicking sessions, he flicked everyone except her, declaring his purposeful lack 0f malicious behavior toward her. He's SO sweet. (I think.)

Jude is still his easy-going self. Still working on potty-training (with a little success--hooray!) and I'm being trained in the lessons of causality. (i.e., if I feed my kids flax, there may or may not be a fibrous poopy mess exploding out of a diaper and tracked onto carpet at an unprecedented proportion, which leads to a morning bath and later, streaking down the sidewalk buck naked, as far as the nosy neighbors' house.) Yes, I do dress my kids--most days. Except when I'm distracted cleaning carpet for too long. Besides, going "freestyle" a little can help with potty training.