07/12/2012

1.  I went out of my room this morning to find Brigham hard at work cleaning the kitchen.  UNASKED.  He did a really good job of it, too.  He is such a good boy.  I sat down at the kitchen table to slice up some bananas, and when he saw the pile of banana peels on the table, I could tell that he was sad I was messing up his beautifully clean table.  That made me so happy.  Know why?  Because one of my biggest goals for having the boys help out more around the house is for them to feel more ownership of the house-- to care about keeping it looking clean, because they were the ones who cleaned it!  And it's working!  At least, for Brigham.
I did wash off the kitchen table again after I was done with the bananas.  :-)

2.  Brigham was also the first to get all his practicing done.  He's fully embraced the idea of getting work done first so he has lots of uninterrupted time to play.

3.  In the afternoon I took the boys and Natasha down to the boulder park to explore.  On the way to pick up Natasha, I gave the boys strict instructions NOT to do anything stupid, and to keep a close eye on Natasha to make sure she didn't get hurt.  There is a lot of water down there, and a huge waterfall pouring down the boulders.  I haven't seen it, but I can imagine it could be dangerous, and that makes me nervous because I can't be down there, and can't supervise or help if someone does get hurt.  Joseph assured me he had a pocketful of band-aids just in case.  :-)  The didn't get hurt and spent almost 2 hours down there, climbing around, finding snake skins, picking flowers, and getting very, very wet.  Mosey found the coolest looking walking stick/staff down there.  I'm glad they went, and wish I could have gone with them!!!

 4.  The boys have all been getting along pretty well recently.  Except for some instances of passive aggressive stuff that is hard for me to know how to deal with.  This morning, Joseph and Brigham were drawing.  I think Brigham was drawing a robot, and Joseph was drawing a battleship.  From what I could tell, they got into a "discussion" about the plausibility of the designs they were making, mostly questioning the plausibility of the other's design.  :-) So (and I'm practicing piano with Mosey at the time, so I'm not really sure how it went down), Joseph drew this passive-aggressive picture and gave it to Brigham:

Not surprisingly, Brigham ripped it up.
Then Joseph got mad, saying that Brigham ripped up his drawing.  So Joseph got another drawing of Brigham's, and scribbled on the back of it.  Which didn't help matters.
Then Joseph made another drawing:

And at this point they came and got me involved.  I didn't see the first drawing (it was in the trash), or I might have changed my response.  Anyway, I got mad at both of them and told them they are not allowed to rip up or scribble on any drawing except ones they made themselves.  Which seems reasonable, except that I believe Joseph did actually give that first drawing to Brigham.
Anyway, this kind of picking on each other is frustrating and makes me sad.  I want them to be sunshine and love and happiness toward each other all the time.  Is that too much to ask?  :-)
The cartoons are pretty funny.  I told Brigham he should be flattered, because Joseph obviously believes that Brigham is a genius, and is better than everyone at everything.  I don't think he was buying that, though.