My Turn

Oh, what fun we had last night. Hannah was cooking dinner and I had a few errands to run so she set the boys up with some paper and crayons at a little table we have in the dining room. It’s usually good for a few minutes peace and last night was no different, when I came home they were happily scrawling on their paper and intermittently running over to the mother to proudly display their latest work of art. Then Monkey Boys creative instincts ran away with him and he decided that the table could do with a splash of colour. Green, to be precise, liberally spread over the wooden surface of the table. I gave out to him, reminded him that he was only supposed to write on the paper and set about wiping it off the table. As I reached to get the back of the table, Monkey took the same green crayon and started colouring in the spot that I had just cleaned.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING???!!!”

He looked at me after my outburst and tried to decide how to take it. It turns out that he doesn’t take me seriously as an authority figure [gasps all around, I know]. He decided that the best course of action was to go on a charm offensive and after a brief delay, he flashed me his best I’m-cheeky-but-so-loveable grin. I did my best to keep a straight face but the best I could do was turn away and make myself busy scrubbing the table.

Clearly, he thought that the walls could use a scrub too and after a few minutes he brought my attention to this fact by decorating the wall beside his colouring table. Pink this time for those of you keeping score. Hannah was the parent on call this time and decided to try out the “naughty step” as recommended by Supernanny. Monkey Boy was brought out to the hall, admonished and told to sit on the step until he was ready to say sorry. Fat Chops tried to follow him out and proceeded to wail when we wouldn’t let him. We couldn’t decide if he wanted to go out to comfort his brother [happening quite often now, very cute!] or to join in the disciplining [loves to tell his brother how bold he is!]. It turns out that it was option C.

After we had brought Monkey Boy back into the kitchen, Fat Chops headed straight out to the hall, sat on the step and cried for a few minutes. When he was done he trotted back into the kitchen and carried on like nothing had happened. I saw it with my own eyes but was he really jealous of Monkey Boy being given out to?