Breaks, Birthday Party, and a Meal Not Finished

Happy Spring, my friends. Now that spring break has come and gone, the weather has finally decided to warm up and act like it's April. The kids and I survived our long spring break, and it was actually pretty fun. We stayed just busy enough. We had a few days at the beach, a few days at home, a birthday, and a little help from the grandparents here and there. I loved not having a morning routine. Relaxing mornings are the best. Of course, when yesterday came, and it was time for everyone to get back to school, I wasn't complaining.

Davis had his birthday party over the weekend. We kept it small. He insisted that Ava be the only invited girl, so we just had the boys from his class and a couple of other friends. That made it easy. We had a local guy named Coach Scott come over and run the party.

I keep telling him now that he's 4, I really expect the 3-year-old behavior to be gone. So far, he's about 50/50 on that. "Stupid" and "idiot" are still among his favorite words. We've entered the questions phase, too. Today, in the car, these are the ones I got:

"Mommy, how do we talk?"
"Mommy, how do we go poop?"
"Mommy, how do we go pee?"
"Mommy, where did we get our house?"

And, at the same time, he seems to be bringing Ava down to his level of antics and humor. I guess it's a lowest common denominator, thing, but she is often behaving like a 4 year old herself. Mealtime, for instance, is terrible lately. My kids have apparently forgotten every manners lesson I have ever taught them. Davis will start doing something silly, and Ava breaks into hysterical and uncontrollable giggles, which just encourages Davis. Then I call them down and they laugh even harder. By then I'm just mad. Tonight, I ended up exiling Ava into the playroom (nee dining room) where she had to finish her meal alone at the kids' play table. They were unscathed by my punishment, and just proceeded to yell 'hi' to one another. After a threat or 2, I deemed that dinner was over and removed their plates from their tables. They won't starve.

Maybe I just need to send them to boot camp for the summer?