I have boys. And, by definition boys are expected to be rough, tumble, active... totally get it. Joel from day one was calm, quiet, reserved almost. He was obsessive about trains from nearly birth (just before his first birthday). I wouldn't have ever expected his crazy wild antics to have occurred the way they have. Kaeden... he came into the world as a high maintenence baby. He was needy, clingy, and made his presence known EVERYWHERE. He, I would have expected to be loud and obnoxious.
Funny how when their personalities come out, they're totally the opposite.
Joel is a leader... I suppose that's natural since he's the "older" brother. (FYI--he hasn't figured this out. He believes wholeheartedly that he fits into Kaeden's clothes and shoes, even though he's a minimum of two sizes bigger). He can conive Kaeden into joining him in any venture big or small. And poor Kaeden admires his brother so much that he has to be the side kick... no matter what the punishment will be afterwards.
In the past week these boys.... oh these boys...
For Christmas and Joel's birthday we were given a large amount of underpants for our potty training duo. While we were grateful beyond words, they were all the same size. So, I had kept what wouldn't fit in their drawers and decided I would exchange them for larger sizes. I should have obviously done that, because after a few months of those underpants sitting on their dresser, the boys decided the fish were going to potty train. All the underwear, brand new, in packages, were floating along with anything else the boys could find, in the aquarium. Problem was, I didn't realize this for a while. Most of the fish died. The water was so dirty you couldn't see in the aquarium whatsoever. (They managed to put a large canister of food in there as well). I told their dad, aquarium is going.... I'm done with fish until we have a larger home that we can display a beautiful tank in a common area.
So, when I decided to clear the tank of all the water a few days later... I thought nothing of it. I anticipated that we were causing the tank to weigh less so it was easier to move. No biggie right?
One night when the boys were "asleep" I went to bed as well. I was awakened at 3am by the banging of the door and yelling "mommy, open door!". Not an abnormality as they wake up randomly through out the night on occassion. It wasn't until my walk down the hall when I realized things got serious... their light was on and there was some weird substance (saw dust like) under my feet. I believe the boys hadn't gone to bed and had decided to ransack their room. When I walked in... I realized they (Joel) had climbed onto their dresser to turn on the lights. They (Joel) had gone into the fish tank and pulled out all the rocks and anything else that was in the one inch of water left and thrown that all throughout the room (included in, two dead fish). They pulled out their clothes from the dresser, as well as the bins of future clothes in their closet. The room was completely and totally destroyed... and apparently to mask it all, they found a bottle of baby powder somewhere and finished the job by shooting that into every orphase of the room.
Patting myself on the back, I did not yell or even punish them... I clothed them (because of course, when our boys party, they do it naked) and told them to either go back to bed or clean and I walked out of the room.
...they went to sleep.
The next day, they cleaned up, with direction by their mother. ...there's the punishment in that.
And, when we moved that aquarium to the garage, I decided Joel's bed could go into the nook that held the fish at one point. He seemed to love it. The boys wanted to play in their new "big" room (big equalling more space). We thought nothing of it... and a half hour later or so, when they (Joel) began wrestling and they (Kaeden) were screaming we (parents) went in and discovered they had christened their new "big" room with what else... a canister full of fish food... like it was confetti.
Prior to becoming a mom I loved Mardi Gras. I sure wish my kids would get with bead throwing rather than fish food/baby powder throwing. It would be just as pretty and far easier to clean. Ugh.
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