Retractions, Competitions, and Dinos

Smart Guy has demanded that I print a retraction about yesterday's post when I told everyone that he had apparently hit me in the nose. I was freezing all day yesterday. I don't mean the kind of cold that would cause one to say "I'm a little bit chilly" and then go put on another pair of socks and a sweatshirt. I mean the kind of cold that makes ones teeth chatter even after the addition of socks and a sweatshirt to her ensemble...it looked really cute. I was cold to my bones. Then around 9:00 last night as I was putting laundry away... it hit me. I'm am also getting sick!! Yuck!! I don't have the time or the money for this!!! My neck hurts, my face hurts, my nose has that feeling it gets when you jump in the pool and forget that humans weren't made to breath under water, and my teeth are already hurting, which is rather unusual for so early in a cold. Prophet had it a few days ago. On Sunday he looked like something the cat drug in. At this point he simply has a runny nose. Hopefully this will do the same thing and be a shortlived annoyance instead of turning into what Inkling and Lauren have been dealing with the past two weeks. So, basically, Smart Guy believes that my nose pain is from being sick not from him clobberin' me!!! Okay, sounds like a good excuse!!!

My dishes are done, the downstairs is picked up, Billy Boy (the little guy I babysit) has had a successful trip to the potty, woohoo, Mt. St. Laundry has successfully been reduced to a meer pile of rubble after 2 days of non-stop washing, drying, folding, and putting away, Bee and Billy Boy are deep into defending their "house" from the "evil Bowzer", and I seriously considered running the vacuum this morning :)....so I sit here fairly guilt free and post.

Everytime Billy Boy comes, him and Bee take all the benches from the big "farm" table in my dining room (which my dad made when I was a little girl) and push them around so that poor Bowzer can't get to them. He tries, but alas generally gives up. He's so big that he can't get under the benches and so lazy that he won't go over them. They always block his favorite window from him when they build their "house", so he can't see what's going on in the neighborhood, it's pure torture as far as he's concerned. He usually ends up running upstairs to see if the blinds have been opened yet, it's quite funny to watch. It's a desperate situation when one cannot be nosey!!

Prophet and Drama King have a friendly competition going!! Their school has a reading program called the Family Readers. For every 15 minutes a child reads they get to color in 1/4 of 1 of the 5 clocks on a page that is sent home from school to track their reading. After 4 of the clocks are completely colored in, they become part of the Family Readers Club for that month. When the fifth clock if colored, they then earn a "Book-It" certificate for a free pizza from Pizza Hut. Anyone remember doing "Book-It" as a kid? They still do it. I just looked it up and as of last year at this time, they had spent 290 million since 1985 when it started. Wow!! I was in sixth grade that year, I remember the "Book It" button that everyone got and it seems like we put a star sticker on the button for each pizza we earned or something like that. Anyway, back to the boys.... Drama King is usually the one to turn his paper in first. He is much more of a self-starter and more likely to come home and read for awhile without grumbling. Prophet on the other hand usually has to be coaxed into reading for more than 10 minutes....usually. It's been really cool this month because Prophet has been coming home and immediately getting in his bed to read a book. He's actually about 30 minutes ahead of Drama King. Drama King (the kid who has only missed 1 spelling word since he started first grade) is rather bothered by this, so there have been a few words between the two of them. It's actually been great watching Prophet get so excited about it!! I'm not encouraging the competition at all, it just happens. Have boys, will compete!!

Someone gave me an article years ago when the boys were still small about parenting. It said that parents with 2 boys less than 18 months apart have the most overwhelming, incredible, and crazy parenting job of all. I believed them then and I most definitely believe them now. Prophet and Drama King are 17 months apart. If you factor in the ages they should be had they both been born on their due dates, which neither was, they are only 15 months apart. If you factor in the fact that Prophet had a brain hemorhage and hydrocephulus, and spent the better part of his first two years focusing on growing and getting stronger rather than other things...well the difference between them virtually disappears. I've had many people ask me over the years if they are twins. When they were little, I typically answered "No, but they feel like triplets." To which people often laughed and walked away. I was serious!! There were days I was ready to hand them to the first nice person who walked by. It's amazing to me as a female, that two people who claim to love each other and can be playing nicely and getting along one minute can try to kill each other the next. Prophet was a biter. The only person he ever bit was Drama King though. I don't know how many times I said to him "We love our brother, we don't bite him." Ha, whatever..in one ear, right out the other.

Thankfully they get along well these days. They're best friends. The serious punching and biting of the early days has pretty much disappeared. They do love to wrestle, but it's all in fun, and we have guidelines they have to follow...no hair pulling, no faces, no crotches, and if you actually do get angry while doing it, you have to stop. We have consequences if you hurt your brother out of anger. Not only do you get disciplined by mommy and daddy, you also then "owe" your brother something. We call this the "you owe me" clause. This means that at any given time, if your brother has a "you owe me" against his name, you can use it. It's been about 2 months since we had a serious enough incidence to earn a "you owe me". Drama King was flexing his "muscles". Prohphet reached out to feel them, Drama King didn't want him to, so he popped him good right in the schnoz. Blood went everywhere!! By the time I arrived on the scene, there was a trail of blood from the middle of the boys' room where it happened, all the way thru the hall, into the bathroom, and all over the bathroom counter. Drama King was frantically trying to get the nosebleed to stop and clean up at the same time...it was quite the scene to behold. He knew he was "toast". So for his discipline, he had to clean all the blood from the bathroom and sit on his bed for 30 minutes. For his "you owe me", his brother waited a few days to use. When you have a "you owe me" against your brother, you can use it anytime Mom or Dad asks you to do something. You simply pull out the "you owe me" and your brother then has to do it for you. It works great. Here's how Prophet used it...I needed to put laundry in the dryer, but there was already laundry in there and I didn't feel like getting it out, so I put the wet stuff in with the dry stuff and dried a double load. When it was dry, I told the boys to take it all up and put it on our bed. Prophet chose this moment to use his "you owe me". Drama King didn't say a word, he knew he had to do it, and he did. It took him several trips, but he got the job done!!

Well, now that I've wrote so much I need to go read to Bee and Billy Boy (who, by the way, has had another successful trip to the potty since I've been writing) for awhile...but one more story. Drama King is a dino freak, hence Inkling's name of "Budding Paleontologist", and he can actually roar like the t-rex and screech like the velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movies. The funny part is watching him do it. He sticks his neck way up in the air, put's his hands up in front of him to look like a t-rex and strutts around while leaning forward. It's hilarious. It's pretty cool in moderation, but sometimes..... Well, he admitted he was doing it to the kids at school so I told him he could only do it outside during recess and not in anyone's face. So yesterday he comes home from school and says, "It was really hard not to roar today, one just had to come out, so it did, but I was outside, so it okay. I really need to roar right now." So he goes out the back door, closes it, and stands there and roars like a crazed lunatic, motions and all. The neighbors probably think he's got a hidden personality something like Sybil. That's my Drama King!! Ya gotta love him!