Where's that kid's mother?

Bedtime prayers are so fun for us. Everyone is bathed and has been wrestled into diapers and PJ (and I mean WRESTLED!) The twins like to roll around Joe’s room chewing on his books while Daddy reads and then we all say prayers together, asking God to bless everyone in our families and all our friends and neighbors, and we end with the “Angel of God” prayer.

Joe loves lawn-mowing right along side Daddy. He even turns his bubble mower when Scott does. It’s super cute.

From the mouth of Joe:

• “I’m glad to see you, Daddy!” as Scott walked in from work
• “I’m excited!” He says this often now when he’s about to do something he wants like eating pancakes at McDonald’s, playing on the computer or watching a Wiggles DVD from the library
• “What are you doing in mommy’s slippers?” “I’m going to Notre Dame” “What are you going to do there?” “Watch football”
• “Hello, I’m reading” he said matter-of-factly when I opened his bedroom door after his nap. He was sitting in his rocking chair with one of his favorite books and babbling to himself.
• “That’s yucky” Most commonly said in the bathroom
• “Are you okay?” I ask when he recently bumped his head on some furniture. “Yes, I’m fine”
• “I… hungry. Uh, I …am hungry” Nice to have him correcting his own English.
• “That’s silly” when he saw this picture of cousin Kolbe wearing funny glasses:

We were reading a book about plants and I thought Joe would need a little explanation of what a cactus was because he probably hadn’t seen one before. I was wrong. Joe immediately said “Yes, racecar said ‘ow, ow, ow!’” I thought that was a funny thing to say until we were watching a preview for Cars the movie and I saw the scene he was talking about – Lightening McQueen drives off a cliff into a bunch of cacti. Pretty clever association, Joe.

Is this a pattern? Joe seems much less in control of his emotions lately. I would just blame it on a lack of sleep, but twice in three days? Joe had a total breakdown at the zoo on Friday. This was very difficult for me having the twins, too. Eventually, I just had to strap him into the stroller while my friend Dawn helped out with one of the babies. Joe basically screamed his head off the whole LONG walk to the car. Normally, I would try to pretend that he wasn’t my kid, but that wasn’t an option since I had to push him in the stroller.

Sunday, we went to a fall festival at a city just north of us. Joe did fine on the 5 block walk from the car, but once we got to the exhibits, he lost it a little. When we got all the way down the street – the farthest we could be from our car – he lost it a lot. Since he was wearing a Packers shirt, one guy commented that he was just being a typical Packers fan. Other people didn’t realize that I was his mother (Scott had Joe, and I was pushing the twins behind them) and would eye-roll and whisper once they had passed by. I guess I should have defended Joe (maybe my husband, too. Who knows what they were saying about Scott) but I was too busy pretending he wasn’t my kid!