The Golden Child

We sit down to dinner and one child is dawdling instead of eating. This is an ongoing thing for us. We tell the dawdling child to eat or nothing until breakfast. Sometimes this child will eat; sometimes, not.

But inevitably, this is what happens if the dawdling child doesn't eat. The child who is eating makes some easy-breezy remark about how clean his/her plate is already. My response is always the same: "Yep. You're the golden child."

"The golden child" isn't reserved just for who is eating. Anything can prompt his/her appearance. The golden child appears when getting dressed before school, brushing teeth at night, helping out with dishes, etc.

It's never too early to teach sarcasm, right?

The sibling rivalry stuff is still going on for sure, though maybe lessening. It comes in waves, a lot like nausea. The kids have their moments. One of my favorite things lately is hearing them crack each other up. Both of them have definite fake laughs but they have recently been doing things to make each other genuinely belly laugh. Tonight on the way home, it was karate moves in the backseat of the car. I could giggle because I knew they were strapped in and unable to really hurt me or each other.

Sometimes they drag each other around the house by the clothes just cracking up as they do so. They are like two puppies they way they wrestle and roll around.

Then there are the times that they do or say something that cracks us up. Like last night at dinner when Abe was called back to the table after a time-out. He came to the table completely straight-faced and wearing a ridiculous infant sun hat from the dress-up bin. He did it to make us laugh.
Beti has taken to repeating whatever we say, which sounds more annoying than it is. Sometimes it's actually very funny. She will also spaz out at times, falling over laughing at herself or I'm not sure really. But it's funny.

Abe, in another time-out recently, looked up at me as I came to him and said, "Mom, did you know I farted two times sitting here on the step?"

I couldn't help giggling. It's gross, I know. It is. I should have been more stern, but I had to laugh.

Considering the stress we've been under lately, I don't mind fart jokes. I also don't mind the frequent appearance of a golden child. It means that at least one of them is behaving.