Its Sunday night here. I finished about six loads of laundry and tidied up our kitchen, playroom and entryway as I gear up for a new week to start in the morning. While doing this, I was thinking about the new milestones we entered with the boys this week. For the most part, these are not traditional milestones, but they are all new experiences for us and/or the boys.
Caleb has added several new words to his vocabulary. Very important ones like "Roll, Slide, Cup, Pa Pa (Grandpa), Lion, Treat and Poo." He also figured out how to climb over our gates. Yep, even our thirty foot superyard gate. We've found him between the gate and the TV/entertainment center several times which shows that the gate is no longer working. So sad. We are going to have to figure out something else soon because he is convinced that he is old enough to put DVDs in and out of our player. He is pretty good at taking them out, but then he throws them around the house. And heaven help us if one our Baby Genius Cds stops working as he is obsessed with those baby song dvds right now. He has also mastered opening every door in our house and flushing the potty. This means that I keep our front door locked at all times as he will walk outside barefoot in the snow if he can get the door open. Also, if its even remotely quiet, I know to check every bathroom right away. I caught him playing in 2 of our 3 toilets this afternoon while I was putting laundry away.
Aaron got his "first" tie shoes, not that he can actually tie them on his own, but he's excited about them anyway. I am most excited that hand-me down shoes from Andrew still count as "new" to Aaron.
We recently switched cable providers and our new package with AT&T has tons of kid channels we've never had before. Aaron has become obsessed with the Care Bears. He has also been introduced to commercials for the first time which has been painful for us. He pays very close attention. In fact, yesterday at church he told me that you can make ice cream by shaking milk. He was very serious about it. He is convinced that we need these ice cream shakers. He also asked if we'd buy these wrestling guys he saw advertised. When we said no, there were tears (big surprise). Clearly, we are going to have to limit his exposure to commercials for our sanity.
Our cute little mailboxes were part of a devious scheme this week. One of the brothers signed a "mean" note to Aaron (I really think he meant it to be a joke). The note was something along the lines of "Dear Aaron, I do nut like you, Love James." When Aaron excitedly brought the note over to me to read it to him, I was not happy to see what it said. I called James in and asked him to read it to me. He pretended he couldn't read it. I calmly explained that if he wrote it, he could read it. While I was waiting for him to own up to it, Andrew came in and claimed ownership of writing the note.
On one hand, I was so proud of Andrew for coming in and confessing to it before we figured it out. On the other hand, I was kinda upset that he "framed" James to take the blame for the mean note. I'm pretty sure the whole scenario was a prank/joke gone bad as Andrew has been the one writing the most notes to everyone and very sweet ones. I don't think he thought the whole thing through and realized that it would make Aaron sad. And to be honest, it doesn't take much to get Aaron to cry these days. Sometimes its just a matter of looking at him wrong, so when he heard the note, he did cry a little. What baffles me even more is that James didn't recognize that it wasn't his handwriting or speak up saying that he didn't write the note when I asked him to read what he had written.
This incident totally flashed me back to my childhood when I would do something I thought was going to be clever or funny only to realize it hurt the other person's feelings or caused a problem. I can't think of a specific example, but I remember those feelings of regret and shame like they were yesterday. I could see it all over Andrew's face which I guess makes me happier than him having no emotional response to the natural consequences.
The whole incident was smoothed over relatively quickly and we have now carefully explained to everyone that you are only allowed to write notes that you sign with your own name.
One last milestone that the big boys reached was learning about the all-american whoopie cushion toy. They received one in their goodie bags at a birthday party today. James came in all excited from the party saying that he had gotten a "poop pad." I had no idea what he was talking about until he took it out and showed it to me. I guess he thinks that the name whoopie cushion makes no sense. These fifty cent whoopie cushions entertained all 3 big boys for a good thirty minutes before dinner. I'm sure this is just the beginning of the boy potty humor in our house.
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