Kids are Funny Creatures

Brian and Caleb headed off to their first ever weekend away for Cub Scout camp. I'll let Brian share those stories and pictures later (we'll see if we can get him back on here...as I think his last blog post was when I went on bedrest 15 months ago :)

So that left Elijah, Noah and I together for the weekend. Noah was a bit bummed out by this, as Saturday was his 6th birthday. So Eli and I did what we could to try to make it feel special. Well, really, I did what I could as all Eli could do was just be Eli. Which he did a great job at.

We started off Saturday with Noah requesting blueberry muffins for his birthday breakfast. I made the mistake of putting the candle in the muffin while it was still too hot and we suddenly had a very pink, waxy muffin.

We kept moving over the weekend. Spent some time at a friend's house swimming in their pool and topped the day off with Dairy Queen treats. By Sunday, Noah was ready for Caleb to get home. And by all accounts, Caleb was ready to see us, too. Evidently, during free time, instead of b-b guns or boating, he said it was time to get home.

The boys reunited about 3:00 and had a good couple of hours playing. But we could both hear it... The bickering was rising to the surface. We have really been trying to teach the boys that when one or the other bugs them, just don't give them the satisfaction of knowing it has worked. Bottom line, if someone is trying to bug you...don't let them.

So this undercurrent was growing. Lovely.

Brian expressed that he wanted to go to Punch Pizza, kind of a "gourmet" pizza place in the neighborhood for dinner. To back up three (or 23) steps, I should say that Caleb has decided...and I do mean decided...that he doesn't like cheese. Any kind of cheese. Period. It is insane. And we have let him know this.

We have both pointed out to him that this will make for a truly miserable life of cast parties, overnights and sporting events (the sporting events were an afterthought as the two of us spent far more time hanging with friends and doing cast parties after plays than we did sporting events). Because, really, any of those events you will be bound to have pizza. But nonetheless, the pizza/cheese thing has gotten out of control. I have also pointed out that I make many meals with cheese in them and just haven't told him this, but that also hasn't proven our point.

It's also worth mentioning that this pizza place also has very little cheese on their pizzas.

So Caleb gets all dramatic on us about not wanting pizza. We just assumed, the kid is tired and he'll get over it, and so we all piled in the car.

The pizza place is about 8 blocks from our house.

We made it 4.

I was driving and the kids were bickering and picking and poking and still crying about cheese and swearing they weren't going to eat dinner and I thought...ENOUGH.

Time for a tough love night.

And so I turned the car around. (Sorry Brian.) And we drove home. And along the way, I came up with one of my best punishments yet. If being around each other is so hard and horrible, then we are going to have a week where we pretend they don't live together. While they share a room, this week they will not share a table, they will not be allowed to play together or even talk to each other. They have to take turns brushing teeth and be in the bathroom at different times. And they will be miserable. And we both hope...really, really, hope...that the might learn some little lesson about the fact that having a brother 20 months apart from you can be an okay thing.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a long week.

And no, we still haven't solved this cheese thing. Stay tuned on that front, too.