Crazy Kids

I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated the “conversations with kids” series. It’s just been a little crazy. Mostly because of Andrew.

BEN

Ben has been trying to make a run for the title of perfect child as of late. His efforts have been stymied by a particular room cleaning episode and his habit of forgetting to tell us where he is going to play, but other than that he’s been wonderful. He is all about riddles and jokes still and will laugh at just about any one that I tell him whether or not he understands it. He must get that from his mother .

KALLIE

This little girl is starting to run shy on puppy dog eyes. Her game lately is to impress her friends by trying to slyly break the rules while they’re over and then get away with it. That blew up in face when she got to the point of losing friends completely. Whoops. How many years does it take for the kids to figure out we’re serious and we don’t make empty threats?

Her obsession lately is practicing things that she thinks will impress her classmates at school and checking her mouth daily for signs of loose teeth. Hoola-hooping and jump roping have been the skill to boast on the playground lately and Kallie will sit and practice in the driveway and fantasize about how impressed her school mates will be when she can link several jumps in a row on the jump rope. Tonight she told me that in 14 days her bottom 2 front teeth will be loose because she can already bend them backwards but not forwards.

ANDREW

Oh dear. Where to start? He has become quite the dominant little fireball. He doesn’t do anything that he doesn’t want to do for himself and he does a multitude of things that are driving Katie over the edge despite her patience.

To start, Andrew has lately taken to believing that he has the power to dictate when people should end their talks or prayers. Whether at home or church, if he decides it should be over he rolls his eyes, puts on his best ‘this is soooooo boring’ face, and starts repeating over and over in various intonations and volume levels “In the NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, AMEN!”

He won’t listen to either of us unless the reward is substantial or the punishment is severe. When Katie and I took a nap on Sunday we woke up to the contents of the freezer defrosted on the kitchen floor beautifully arranged in a half gallon of honey. The other half gallon of honey was found keeping various crackers and treats in the pantry from spontaneously floating away.

He’s finally found a way to get past the double barrel lock on the front door as well. After realizing that we had found the one spot in the house he couldn’t scale to, he figured out that the keys were still not out of his reach. Now he’ll sit there and tirelessly through his stuffed tiger up to knock the keys down. We have no solution to this problem yet.

Today he realized that Katie had just cleaned all the floors. So he managed to get the dogs to step in his puddle of glue and then prance around the house. No, the glue was not still wet when we found it.