Friday, February 5, 2010

"I Love You" as a weapon

Xander loves to tell me he loves me. Most of the time this is great. I love to hear him say it. But lately he's been using it as a weapon. He'll be laying down in bed and instead of closing his eyes and going to sleep, he says, "Mommy, I love you" a dozen times. If I ignore him, then his tone gets more insistent: "MOMMY I LOVE YOU" with a bit of a whine to it. I feel like the worst mommy ever when I have to respond, "I know. Stop saying that and go to sleep." But I only say that after he's said it at least 20 times.

(He just ran up to me and said "Mommy, I love you" while I was typing this.)

Fool me once, shame on you....

As anyone with a small child knows, band-aids are the best thing ever. Regardless of whether or not there's actually a boo-boo.

One night last week, as I was trying to get Xander to sleep, he complained he had a boo-boo and needed a band-aid. He pointed out the boo-boo but in the semi-darkness of the room I didn't see anything. I tried to ignore his request but sooner rather than later, I gave in. When I brought the band-aid into the room and asked him to show me the boo-boo again so I knew where to put it, he gave me a completely different finger to put it in than he'd shown me before.

With this incident in mind, last night he started complaining again. He showed me the boo-boo and again I didn't see anything. I told him if the boo-boo was still there in the morning, I'd give him a band-aid. He got very insistent and eventually produced real tears. I thought, okay, maybe it is a real boo-boo; after all, he's crying. I got up and got a band-aid.

He gave me a different finger to put it on.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Squirrel!

I've been working on quilts for the kids. I'm a very slow quilt maker. I bought the fabric a couple of months ago, and immediately washed it. Then eventually I ironed and now am in the process of cutting it. The kids have been bugging me incessantly about it lately.

This morning, Xander started up. "Will you work on my quilt today?" This immediately got Jessica's attention. "No! Work on my quilt!" Then I couldn't hear what either of them were saying because they were both saying something to the effect of "Work on my quilt" loudly and at the same time.

Then Hari, genius that he is, pointed out the window. "Look! There goes a squirrel!"

Both kids stopped shouting and ran over to look out the window. It was just like "Up."