yuck

Me: Andy, you're such a buggar.

Andy: No, I'm not. I'm not even coming out of your nose.

andy's advice of the day

"You shouldn't pick your teeth because you might accidentally bite your finger."

zoo camp

"Today at zoo camp we played red light/green light and all the kids went too fast and ran me over and I fell down and then the ladies picked me up and let me stand on the side and then I went into the bathroom and played red light/green light in there and Max said 'Red light!' and I crashed into the garbage can."

Glad I'm getting my money's worth out of zoo camp.

ah, 4-year-olds

Shawn: Laura, do you want a muffin?

Me: No thanks.

Andy: Hey Daddy?

[Shawn doesn't hear him]

Andy: Daddy?

[Shawn still doesn't hear.]

Andy: Daddy, can you ask me if I want a muffin?

Shawn: Just a minute Andy.

Andy: But Daddy!

Shawn: Hang on, Andy.

Andy: Daddy! Can you ask me if I want a muffin?

Shawn: Andy! Just a minute! I've got my hands full.

Andy: Can somebody ask me if I want a muffin!?!? NOBODY'S ANSWERING ME!

Me: Okay Andy, do you want a muffin?

Andy: No thanks. I'm too busy right now.

short fuse

Yesterday I took the boys to the park. Andy played while Benji slept. Eventually Ben woke up hungry. I tried to feed him in a quiet corner of the playground, and tried to be discreet, but everywhere I went people followed me, and Ben didn't seem to want to eat under a blanket where it was hot and stuffy. So we had to sit in the car so I could properly nurse the little guy. To make it up to Andy, I offered to take him to Dairy Queen.

I guess Ben wasn't full yet, though, because he started griping. By the time we hit Elm Grove he was downright honked and began to yowl like a Siamese.

Andy cried, "Mommy! Benjamin's hungry!"

"I know, Andy," I said. "He's just going to have to deal with it for a few minutes until we get home."

At this, Benji started to make what I call the angry goat noise. (Big inhale, followed by a screech that turns into an enraged, quivering bleat.) Andy hates it when Benji cries, and sits in his car seat turning red, yanking on his own hair, kicking the seat and having a hissy fit of his own because he can't handle it. (Now he knows how we felt when he was a baby.)

I looked in the rear view mirror and Andy's hands were on his ears and his face was scarlet.

"Benjamin!" he cried. "Deal with it!"

I said, "Andy, he's a baby and he's hungry."

"But he's not dealing with it!"

Benji let out another howl.

"Benjamin! DEAL WITH IT!"

Howl.

"BENJAMIN! I SAID DEAL WITH IT! YOU'RE NOT DEALING WITH IT! DEAL WITH IT!"

Needless to say, Benjamin never dealt with it.

Andy didn't deal with it so well either.

aggressive much?

Me: I love pelicans.

Andy: I love to punch them in the nose.

cheese with your whine?

I think Andy is having a hard time adjusting to life with a little brother, having to share the spotlight and share the available parental attention. He's doing his best, but his emotions are running a tad high and they seem to have a hair trigger. He melts down quite easily. (More easily than normal, that is.)

Yesterday he asked for a banana. I was feeding Benji so I told him to go upstairs and pull a chair up to the counter and get his own banana. He's perfectly capable of doing this.

I heard a great deal of thudding and tromping and thonking, following by one big wham! on the kitchen floor. I knew this was the snowball which would set off the meltdown avalanche, and sure enough, he came down the stairs in tears.

"What's wrong Andy?" I asked him.

He could barely talk because he was focusing so much energy on his over-dramatic whining.

Finally I heard, "I dropped the greenie!"

"What?"

"I dropped the greenie Mommy!"

"The what?"

"The greenie!" And he threw himself down on the floor.

I put an irritated Benjamin down and went over to Andy and plucked him up off the floor. "What is a greenie, Andy?"

He answered, "That big green banana up in the kitchen."

We don't have any green bananas. They are all quite yellow and spotty and of a normal size. So I grabbed Benji and went upstairs to find the world's biggest zucchini on the kitchen floor, and zucchini guts all over the chair he'd used to retrieve it. In addition, there were three semi-peeled bananas smashed on the counter.

None of which he would touch. While I was cleaning up the banana mess he went back downstairs. I found him eating Nutter Butters.