He'll Drive You Crazy If You Let Him

I do remember Calvin having several months of complete and total obnoxiousness before he turned four, which is when I fell in love with him all over again and started thinking I could hack being a mom. And even at Calvin's most outrageous, I was able to figure him out and sometimes get to the bottom of it and find better ways to approach situations.

Not so with Henry. He is simply a piece of work. Laughs in the face of rules, rewards, punishments, furiousness...looks you right in the eye and with an impish grin will do exactly what you're telling him not to. Sasses like no other. The thing is, he is hilarious. Really. Ornery in the extreme. But hilarious.

He's going to be the death of me.

But before I keel over from exasperation, here are some things that have made me smile in the last couple of days and help me not to call the men in white jackets quite yet:

David was at home yesterday and mostly dealt with the boys while I...uuuhhh, what did I do all day yesterday? Anyway, late in the afternoon, from the other room I heard the incessant chatter/singing/falsetto monologuing and "gonnagetchous" of stuffed animals that I had mostly tuned out up to that point and suddenly David was pleading - I really think he was almost about to cry - "Guys! Henry! Will you please take your tiny bear and your dog paw and leave my face alone? I just want to read for a minute!" A while later he told me that he could never be a stay-at-home dad, so I shouldn't get any ideas.

Henry gets bored out of his mind when Calvin is gone to school. Most of the time I have to be on my toes keeping him occupied (and fed!! The boy is a bottomless pit!). Today he was busy for a good part of the morning until he came to me and started whacking me on the head (softly, but very. persistently.) with an empty water bottle and asking overandoverandoverandover (giving response time is unheard of) to put two of the bottles in his shirt. When I figured out where and how he wanted the bottles and what he was doing, I thought his idea was precious. When I said, "Oh! You want jet packs!" He said, "Yeah! 'Jet packs' is a short name for 'little rockets,' right?" And he blasted off.

He told me the other day that he was "deffitly" not tired, but he just wanted to snuggle with Duckie on the couch.

Sanity gets a chance.