Banner Day

For our one month anniversary, the kids gave us an amazing gift... they slept until 8:30. Probably had more to do with the long thunderstorm last night and this morning being cloudy, but we appreciated it greatly. Of course when they did get up, they were both unnecessarily cranky but that was remedied when they saw their first raccoon. We had been talking about them for a couple days but this morning there was one in the trap and I waited for them to wake up before taking it to "a better place."

Then we got productive. A car was washed. We went to the recycling center, or as we called it, "Garbage Again-Again-Again." Mowed the lawn. Weed-whacked. Trimmed two trees. Swept the sidewalk, and both kids bathed, all before lunch!

I really wanted to do something special at this point so we decided to press our luck and take them one their first American grocery run. On our walk yesterday they had pointed at our local grocery store and said they 'just wanted to look at the building' but for whatever reason respected me when I told them no. So today on the way, I gave them my, "American stores are very big, but we're here only for the items on mommy's list. Mommy Daddy little money. No pointing at things and saying 'me? me? me?' understand?" They both nodded as they had heard the exact same speech last week when I needed to run into the hardware store. Inside they were very good although Yordi found a loop-hole and would point at stuff and then ask, "No this?" Her brother eventually intervened. So in the end they got 2 treats, they picked out a birthday cake mix and the frosting, and they got to choose a box of popsicles (they went for the bomb-pops, baby!) which was a far better deal than they had gotten at the hardware store.

It's not that there wasn't sass or stomping or pouting or "Daddy No! Daddy Go!"s or a really stupid argument about cereal today, but overall everything just came together.

Today's fatal pantomime was a double header. H showed us why he won't touch my box of electrical wiring tools, and Y gave us an excellent rendition of what could happen if you got too close to Canadian Geese protecting their young.

As a quick side story, we saw a flock at the park this evening and Chris and I had already made gestures showing that geese will bite. H noted that they were big birds. I agreed and held my hand about 3 feet off the ground showing their height. He then made a biting motion with his hand and pointed it toward his stomach. I then winced, and moved his pinchy fingers to match the height I was indicating... which fell squarely, um, below his belt. His eyes got really big and even though we were 20 yards from the birds, he took another 3 steps backwards. Chris, through her stifled giggles, asked if that was really necessary. "It is," I said, "if you want him to have a healthy respect for geese."

He who has not scarred his children, throw the first stone.