The 8th Wonder of the World

Today we had some errands to run and I told the kids we could do something "special" if they were really good and they were through both stores. We went to a park, new to us out at Lake Storey. They had a ball and they ran around for more than hour. I picked up lunch and promptly at 2pm said it was nap time and they all went to their respective beds/couch. I was even considering I may take advantage of nap time too. Staying up every night until 12:30 or 1 am is taking a toll on me which I blame partly on scrapbooking and partly on Nancy Grace and her quest to understand the disappearance of 2 year old Caylee Anthony which I am officially obsessed with but that is another story. My diligence on nap taking and separating my two party-goers has worked and today both Caden and Addison were out in about 5 minutes. Ethan had other plans, he took a 10 minute power nap in the van on the way home and therefore decided he didn't need to sleep. And he's my rock at naptime -- I can always count on him but not today. He was so loud that he woke Caden up after an hour so there went my plans for a much needed and wanted mommy nap.

This little boy is such a puzzle sometimes. Look at this ritual that he performs several times a day. He empties his bed which is no easy task because there are no less than 45 stuffed babies in there.
He throws every one of them on the floor.

Then he goes to the top of the stairs and throws all of them down, one by one to the first landing.

Then he must repeat this on the second set of stairs.

It's quite a time consuming process.

It accumulates to a large pile.

Then he starts to pile them all in a nest of his choice: laundry basket, playroom, chair, today it was the couch.

He likes to lay on them all. Sometimes he does this about 5 minutes before his bedtime so then it all has to go back up, which he is pretty good about taking them back to bed but it can take a while especially if he decides to do it one by one. Why does he do this? I don't know.

And why is his face so filthy (besides the fact that his mom didn't wipe it off) -- that's M&M's -- you know the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hands. Well, apparently it melts on your mouth. How can he look like that and spill strawberry milk all over his shirt in the van first thing this morning and then become covered with water and sand at the park; yet at preschool if one drop of paint gets on his hand he has a meltdown and cannot, will not paint one more second and finger painting? Forget it!

This morning he was playing with a wooden alphabet puzzle. He held one up to me and said "R" and I looked and yep, it was an "R". So I picked up another and he told me "M". He knew "P", "S", "O", "K", "L", and "B". He thought the "V" was a "K" and the "Q" was an "O". I was impressed. How does he know all that but he can't go potty in the potty chair? I don't even think he should know any letters yet except maybe an "E" for Ethan but he should be at least attempting to potty train. Oh the puzzlement of it all!