Things the Boys Did Today

My hands smell like poop. I just changed another one of Owen's awful diapers, and as I type on this keyboard with poopy-smelling fingers I am thinking that if I don't write down what the boys did over the course of today some evolutionary pro-reproduction amnesiac instinct will kick in and cause me to forget it.

The big project for today was to finger-paint canvasses like we did last year. James offered a candid assessment of their work from last year:
"Owen's picture looks awful. Mine is pretty good, but his picture isn't very good at all. This year he should try to make his better."

Don't tell him, but I prefer Owen's work to James' for both years.

So we went to Hobby-Lobby. Taking the kids anywhere is a challenge, because Owen ALWAYS takes off his shoes. J put his shoes on while we gathered keys and wallets and made ready to leave, and he took them off as soon as he was unsupervised. Then he took them off again while we were driving in the car. Then he took them off again when we were pushing him around in the cart, and he attempted to throw them away in the store.

We went over to Kohl's (with James pointedly insisting that I was taking the wrong way home after having asked repeatedly for the previous half-hour whether or not we were going home yet) so that we could pick up some sunglasses for J. (Yes, that does obliquely tie in to the epic beach-sunglasses saga, but it would take too long to explain.)

Owen didn't take off his shoes in Kohl's, but he did run away and hide in the bedding department. And then when James chased him and blew up our "parenting-via-authoritative-verbal-commands" he ran away even further and bumped into old ladies. I caught him and picked him up, and he started trying to bite me.

I hate the biting thing. He does it on purpose, and he knows he's going to get in trouble for it. I think he legitimately believes he's a tiger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TxKeYPxf-c

And just like a tiger, he bites, roars, and scratches. He ended up in hot water less than ten minutes after we got home for successfully biting James. (Although, to be fair, James' art criticism was sort of asking for it.) He also got in a nasty swipe at J in Kohl's, where they did not have any sunglasses.

The painting when okay. They had us exhausted by nap, and when J took them over to the playground so that I could practice for an hour Owen found a pile of dog poop and picked up a handful of it, then ran away and eventually threw it away when she tried to chase him down.

Before dinner he was walking around the kitchen taking mouthfuls of milk from his sippy cup and then spitting them out out into little puddles on the kitchen floor.

At dinner he didn't eat anything and kept on putting his grubby feet up on the table.

Then he threw his food and his silverware and (very nearly) his plate on the floor when I made him stop.

And then he pounded on the walls of his timeout corner and pooped his pants.

So that's why my hands smell like poop, (I think everyone's hands smell like poop at this point) and why I'm writing a blog. He isn't currently bothering anybody, but he is climbing up to all the highest points of the furniture he can reach and then jumping off.