I've mentioned before that Sophie is a "collector" of sorts. A happy Sophie is an armfilled Sophie.
She's always been partial to the stuffed-animal collections. She's gotten even more dramatic about this over the last week or so. This morning, as I was herding the kids out to the car, Sophie lugging her plethora of furry friends, I decided I had to get a picture of it. Here's Sophie, upon arrival at Ya-ya's house, making her way inside.
It looks almost unnatural, doesn't it?
On an unrelated note, the last few weeks, Travis has been talking about exercise, since his gym teacher has been heralding the benefits of fitness at school. He now does jumping jacks upon waking and before bedtime. He and Ben worked on sit-ups and push-ups the other day. Tonight, as Travis was doing his pre-bedtime jumping jacks (he did 30 of them!), he asked if he could dance afterwards. Apparently, Mrs. Gym Teacher has also extolled the virtue of dancing as an exercise.
I tuned the TV to MTV's TRL music station, and let the boys loose. I love these pictures. Look at Canada salivating in the background. There is not much that drives him crazier than the insanity of frenzied movement that is my boys dancing.
Also tonight, Travis and I stumbled across "Pen", a balloon penguin that we had stored on the top of their bookshelf so as to preserve it for longer. Pen has been steadily losing air from his little balloon body over the last couple months, and is now a fraction of his former self. Travis was delighted. "Pen is a baby penguin now!"
And finally, tonight Travis spent a fair amount of time in time-out for kicking Noah. He is required to sit in time out for a given amount of time, and then upon completion, must explain to me an acceptable alternative behavior that he could have displayed, instead of kicking.
As he is bawling in time out, Travis insists that he "just can't think of anything!!", nevermind that we had just encountered this situation YESTERDAY and had a nice lengthy discussion about it. So I was having none of his excuses, and would only talk to him to ask him if he was ready to tell me what he could have done instead of kicking. Twenty minutes goes by, Ben is getting ready to leave for bowling and is a little sad that he won't get the chance to even talk to Travis before leaving, but I insisted that we not give in and not appease the little bugger.
Finally, Travis comes up with a brilliant idea. He sniffles, "Mom?? I think the I-Care Rules will help me figure out what to do....." You see, a few weeks ago, he had received a paper in Kindergarten called (you guessed it) the "I-Care Rules", which are 5 rules of behavior that the kindergarteners are expected to display. We kept the list in the toy room but hadn't really done anything good with it.
But, upon Travis's suggestion, I brought him the I-Care Rules list, he reviewed it, and figured out what he should have done.
I-Care Rules:
1. We listen to each other.
2. Hands are for helping, not hurting.
3. We use I-Care language.
4. We care about each other's feelings.
5. We are responsible for what we say and do.
He said, "Well, I can just change 'hands' to 'feet'. "Feet are for helping, not hurting." (I love that, by the way. Feet are for helping.) "And, we use I-Care language like please. Right, mom?"
Then, using a stuffed horse named Wally, and a stuffed Eeyore, Travis explained to Wally what Wally could have done instead of kicking Eeyore. "Wally, first you should ask Eeyore nicely not to do what is bothering you. Be sure to say 'please'. If Eeyore is still bothering you then walk away and tell my mom." Then he very politely went to Noah and apologized for kicking, to which Noah responded, "That's okay. Be sure not to do it again."
Travis and I decided to post the I-Care Rules in the time-out area, so whenever someone is placed in time out, they can refer to the Rules to determine the appropriate behavior.
So, it took a while, but I finally got a decent response out of the kid, and I'm hoping that his I-Care idea has some kind of a lasting impact. We'll see.
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