Missouri

It's late, I'm tired and it's been one of those days, so I'm going to do one of my not-so-longwinded posts tonight.   The day started with my daughter coming in screaming and crying, waking my husband and me up.   Her brother had pinched her, she said, "hard!"

There was damage from the pinch, of which I have photographic evidence.  He was called upstairs, screaming and pitching a fit all the way.   They had had an argument over something really serious, life-changing, of the utmost import: who's chocolate in their advent calendars tasted better. 

I won't go into the details, because they border on the ridiculous.  No, they were ridiculous.  But to my children at the time, it was super serious stuff.   My son started the physical part, grabbing and not letting his sister go.  She pinched him, he let go, he didn't like that so he pinched her back. 

Consequences were given out and they had to fold their laundry before they could do anything else, on top of the other restrictions we'd put on their day.   At this point, my son was doing a fairly good job of talking things through with his sister, but it wasn't getting him out of the laundry.   

Two hours later and my son hadn't folded the laundry.  I have videos of him on the floor—MY TEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD—because it was such an awful thing to have to do on a Sunday.  He was sent to his room.  He threatened to leave home.  He was given his suitcase and invited to do so.   He said he wanted to Missouri, because it sounded like the word miserable, and that's how he felt. 

I told my son he could either leave home to move away or stay in his room until he folded his laundry and put it away properly.   And if he chose to stay, he would need to come to the basement to find me, apologize and to not put a single qualifier on it.   (He loves to put qualifiers on things, turning an apology into blaming instead.)

I thought he would be in his room for the rest of the day, but ten minutes later he came downstairs, walked into the room in a happy mood and said, "I put all the laundry up.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.   I'm sorry I was so mean and said the things I said."   I hugged him and told him I loved him.  He even hugged me back.   

And the rest of the day went smoothly.  No one fought.  Imagine that.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is really quite good at designing things in Tinkercad, the online free CAD modeling tool targeted at children.  Tonight, he created a bowl for his teacher which is printing now.  It's an upside-down prism with another prism for a base.   He also worked on the goldfish model which will go into the bowl.  He's figured things out so quickly.  He wants to print goldfish with letters on them.  One for each of Alison's name and one for each in his first name.   Then, she can try and figure out the puzzle of what the letter fish spell when she opens her present later this week at school.   It's a very clever idea and he's having fun doing the modeling.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came to her brother's defense earlier today when I was in the room with him.  She came in and tried to keep me away from him because she had heard a thunk and thought I'd hit him.   When I talked to her later I told her I would never hurt her brother and I tried to figure out what she'd heard.  Ah, I told her, it was the suitcase dropping on the floor from the shelf when he had said he wanted to move away.   It was so sweet for her to want to protect her brother.  She told me a secret.  She said, "Mom, I love my brother more than I love you.  I hope that's okay."  I told her it was totally okay and I thought it was wonderful she loved him so much.   I said it was also fine to love everyone just as much as you could, and that it didn't have to be measured.   Then, the dog jumped up to see her and she said, "well, I might love Matisse more than my brother."  I told her that was okay too.