Those Boys

If you'd like to hear some adorable stories about my precocious children and their endearing habits . . . well, maybe some other time. Instead, let me share the following:

Charlie is developing into quite the little comedian. So far his best routines are raspberries on any exposed bit of skin on the lucky receiver--usually me and my cheek, which is simultaneously hilarious and gross, what with the attendant slobber--and pooping in the bathtub.

Yeah. That last one is so not a hit with me. There are few things I enjoy less than cleaning feces out of a bathtub. But it's so much worse when the poop is deliberate. And I know it's deliberate, because the first time it happened, it was an accident. But there was so much ensuing hilarity--thanks to boys and their appreciation of anything scatological--that Charlie now does it on purpose to make Cubby laugh.

This does not make me laugh. In fact, it makes me swear freely while I scrub the tub.

Cubby's latest little quirk is "I can't." As in, "I can't take off my snowpants; they're too tight."

Five minutes and a lot of screaming later, the snowpants are off with no assistance from me other than repeated statements to the effect of, "You can and you will, because I'm not."

Or from Cubby today: "I can't walk up the driveway to the house. I'm too tired. I need to lie down in the snow."

My response was something along the lines of, "You can and you will, because we have been out in a blizzard on the beach for an hour at your request and Charlie is cold and miserable and we are going inside right now."

Obviously, "can't" is not a word I have much sympathy for.

I also don't have much sympathy for pooping in the bathwater, but that's way more disgusting.