Complete With Pictures

There are some days that I simply can't get enough of this face.

Or this general cuteness:

Avee brought me the camera and asked me to take a picture of this pose. It was a pose, of that I am sure. What I'm not clear on is what she was thinking when she deliberately struck this pose. Twice.

She came back to review the picture on the camera and she said, "Oh, that's cute. Aw MAN MOM! My showt is rip-DUD, I bettoh go get a new one."
Three cute things about this: 1. This is the same shirt she put on wrong and said, "What's this hole about mom?" a little over a month ago. 2. She called a picture of her backside, holding a chanter all weird, "cute" 3. She's my girl.

My uncle came into town for a short, less than 24 hour visit. My earliest memory in life (around 2-3 years old) is of him coming to visit us. I loved that my children got to enjoy a similar experience. He's delightful and entertaining and all three of my kids loved him almost immediately. Although, Avee was a little skeptical. She thought I said Uncle David is coming and she drew him a picture and everything. She was more than annoyed when J corrected her and said that it wasn't Uncle David coming. Bo told his friends on the way to school this morning, "There's a man at my house that you don't know and he plays the accohdian and he's my gwate uncoh." I love his style of bragging.

He brought his accordian

And his violin


And lots of TLC

A great time was had by all. Except Danyo. A nap was had by him.

In other news: Avee has been driving me batty lately with her complete lack of regard for my authority. AKA, naughty. I know I write a lot about her sassy style and her fiestiness and whatnot, but in general, she is very sweet and mostly eager to please. But every once in a while it gets like this and nothing we say gets her to behave. Nothing. She will stand there and stare at me, completely expressionless. If I wasn't used to it, I could be screaming like a banshee and blue in the face, and she wouldn't blink.

It can be infuriating.

I try really hard not to pick up my kids and remove all choice from them. Plus, I'm lazy, so that works out for me in the whole, "I believe in letting a child choose" I espouse. But it seems that sometimes that is the only recourse I have. And that of course results in hysteria of the arm flapping, leg flailing variety. Another thing I like to avoid.

Tonight J got home and I had had enough of fighting with her on every.little.thing. But I don't say anything to J because he tends to pick up where my patience let off, and then it gets crazy really fast. So I just started repeating myself every 45 seconds or so. "Go brush your teeth (45 seconds) Go brush your teeth (45 seconds) Go brush your teeth (45 seconds)" and so on and so forth. She did not brush her teeth. She did however stand 7 inches away from me the entire time with a blank expression. Every once in a while she'd cast a pathetic little victim look my way, but in general, blank.

Methinks my husband grew weary of the broken record approach and so he finally chimed in. "Okay Avee, last chance, 5... 4... 3... 2... 1!"

Then nothing.

There was silence.

Avee didn't move.

J didn't move.

No one said a word.

I turned to look at J, watching George Dubya telling us we should bail out the rich corporations with our seven fitty an hour jobs, and he is completely not even paying attention to Avee.

Avee's watching me. I'm watching J. Nothing is happening.

So I say, "Um hi. Uhhh, what happens at 1?"

J looks over with his really cute smile and shrugs his very tired shoulders and says, "I dunno."

Pretty much, um----we couldn't even use that experience to pretend we were teaching her to count, cuz he counted backwards.

And there's your shining example of superior parenting. From our home, to yours.

Lastly, the neighbor boy (son of aforementioned neighbor lady in post below):

My friend's kids come over and play a lot and usually she calls for them to come home right around 5:30-6 every night. It saves me a lot of trouble of being the bad guy. They have to go home, so my kids naturally assume they need to come in and get ready to eat. It works great.

Well tonight, our dinner was ready first. So I said to my friend's kids, "Hey guys, it's about dinner time, you should probably go home."

They did look at me like I was an alien.

Right then, I noticed the neighbor (with the "doting" mother) looking at me, and I saw the wheel's a'turning in his head.

A few minutes later Bo was inquiring where Neighbor Boy had gone. Brother replied, "He's gone to find some dinner."

10 minutes later, he came out with a sandwich. I kept my composure because on one hand, it's really really sad, and on the other hand, I don't want my children laughing at people the way that I do. I do have some standards.
We call this beauty, "DINNER".

The picture doesn't quite do it justice, there was somewhere close to a cup or more of jelly on his little sandwich. I said, "Holy Moly Neighbor Boy!" and he giggled and said, "Me and my brother like jelly."