Pirates
The boys dressed up as pirates after church today. The nice thing there is we can pass off their violence and agression as ‘playing the part.’
One of the big Christiansen twins (who were practically conjoined they were so close to each other) once told me that they had a fist fight with each other every day of their life until they turned 16.
It’s hard to watch Miles and Owen being mean to each other so often, but those big Christiansens give me hope that they’ll figure out eventually how lucky they are to have each other.
Owen’s Christmas prayer
For months, Owen has been praying for “an electric guitar that’s white and red with gold stars on it.” He will forget to bless the food in a prayer, but he never forgets to pray for the electric guitar.
We do not intend to manipulate the boy’s faith with this, but we went ahead and got him a guitar (it’s white…we told him we’d get stickers to make it look just right) for his big present for Christmas. Before he opened it we asked him what he thought was inside this big box.
He said, “I think it’s a Hot Wheels race track with a Pteradactyl inside.” Then he started unwrapping. When he saw that it was a guitar, he started beaming and shouting and jumping. He was ecstatic. It was a lot of fun to watch. We should put the recording up once I figure out how to do that.
Many hours later at dinner, we asked Owen to say the prayer. Matt reminded him to be sure to bless the food and to thank Heavenly Father for the wonderful day we’d had. Here’s his prayer:
“Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for this day. And thank you for this food. And thank you for the wonderful day we had. And please bless me that I will get a hot wheels race track with a pteradactyl for Christmas next year. Amen.”
Tattling
Miles runs upstairs yelling, “Mom! Owen is hitting me!”
Owen runs upstairs yelling, “Mom! Miles is telling on me!”
China and India
So, the boys were fighting one day and Sara said, “That’s it. All you ever do is fight with each other and I’m sick of it. Fight fight fight. No more! Both of you pick a country. I’m sending you to a different country so that you never have to see each other ever again and so you won’t fight anymore.”
(We’ve been reading a lot of child rearing books and none of them talk about deportation as a means to behavior modification, so we thought we’d give it a shot.)
Owen said, “China! I get China!”
Miles said, “I get Oakley.”
Sara said, “That’s not far enough. I might see you at the grocery store.”
Miles said, “Fine. I will go to India.”
Sara said, “Great. You go to China, you go to India.” Then she turned down the hallway to her room. As soon as she turned, she heard Miles whisper at Owen,
“India is better than China.”
