Overheard at our house (the joys of boys)

1. Your hair is not a napkin

Isaac (2) does not use utensils. He can use them, but prefers to dig in with the hands, no matter what it is he's eating (chili, Lucky charms, ice cream-- you name it). In the past, I didn't mind too much, resigning myself to helping him wash his hands after each meal. But he's going through a fastidious phase and can't stand having anything on his hands. Napkins don't get his hands as clean as his hair does, so everything he eats ends up in his hair. I've found pizza, paint, playdough, hot fudge and a plethora of other edible and inedible things in his strawberry-blond mane. So the every-other-night bath thing has become a thing of the past, which is good because he'd bathe ten times a day if I'd let him. He appreciates indoor plumbing, unlike our older son, which brings me to the second thing you might overhear at our house.

2) Don't pee in the backyard

Four summers ago, Bryce (6) was potty trained. The weather in MN was so beautiful and so fleeting that we spent as much time as possible outside. Rather than trekking a toddler with a full bladder into the house every 30 minutes or so, I decided to let him pee outside. Unfortunately, he's never gotten over it. A year later at preschool, we got called in to discuss the "urination situation," because Bryce was apparently whipping it out on the playground whenever he felt like it. Yesterday I was using the downstairs bathroom when he needed to go, and rather than use one of the two upstairs bathrooms, Bryce ran outside to pee, despite it being 50 degrees and raining.

3) Don't shoot your baby sister

We're not a gun-loving family. We don't have a gun, don't hunt, and I don't even like the idea of our boys having toy guns. But Bryce is a Star Wars freak, and Isaac loves anything Bryce loves. A couple of weeks ago, Isaac was milling around the garage, and found in the beach toys bin some long-forgotten water guns that Bryce got for his birthday a few years ago. And for the last two weeks, he has carried a "blaster" with him at all times (ok, I peeled it from his hands as he wailed when we were going into  church yesterday). I've tried to impress upon him that he can point his blaster at walls and windows and other inanimate objects, but not people. So far, Maren is his favorite target ("I till my baby sisser"). I guess that gives you an idea of how the sibling rivalry thing is going around here.

Boys-- can't live with 'em, and (unless you're Isaac) just can't shoot 'em.

--originally posted 1/22/07