Things We've (Hopefully) Learned This Week

• To Sintay: You WILL end up in the time-out chair (just like yesterday) if you bite your big brother again. Mommy WILL make you apologize again, no matter how much you dislike doing so.

• Just because you emphatically shake your finger and say "No!" when Mommy tells you that Daddy and Yikealo are hers, just like you are.....does not mean that you and Mommy are actually the only two people in this family.
• If you cover your uneaten pasta with a napkin and say, "Mommy, pasta yedlem" (all gone), you will not get away with it, because Mommy is not as dumb as she apparently looks. (How in the world did we get one child who refuses to eat meat and one child who refuses to eat anything else once his meat has been snarfed down?)

• The best way to make friends with a grumpy old cat is NOT to fling a plastic fireman's hat over her head and then pelt her with small stuffed animals. She will probably hiss at you, and then you will be terrified of the "Meow."

• If you throw small bits of salmon onto the floor while eating dinner, the two resident felines will begin circling your chair like sharks, hoping for more treats. You will not like this arrangement, since you are frightened of the Meows (see above). The rest of the family will not like it either, as they will have to put up with repetitive howling from you and the cats.
• Even if you shriek like a banshee when Mommy washes your hair in the bathtub, you will inexplicably love running the freezing garden hose water over your entire head. You will also repeatedly dive under the water in the wading pool.

 
 

•  To our neighbor Maria: It does not help your 2-year-old recently adopted Ethiopian neighbor learn English if you shout "Hola!" in his ear over and over while he is riding his tricycle. In fact, it may induce him to kick you.
•  To Yikealo: If, while your little brother is still strapped into his booster seat eating breakfast, you bring the three toy mekinas (cars) that he has claimed as his to the table and start playing with them in his sight but out of his reach....he WILL start wailing again, and Mama WILL get annoyed with you.
• To Daddy: Just because you tell your new son that you are going to lay down with him at bedtime does not mean that he will accept this arrangement. When he says, "Ayedellem! Mommy alga!" (No! Mommy bed!), he does, in fact, mean that he will cry until Mommy takes pity on him and replaces you in his bed.
• To Mommy: when your new son gives you his first completely unprompted hug and kiss and says, "Mommy, awedashallo" (I love you) in your ear, you will utterly melt.

• God made little boys so completely precious when they are sleeping...no matter how tired you are of them shrieking and fighting and taunting and biting, one look into their peaceful, cherubic, sleeping faces will ensure that you will be more than willing to get up and do this all over again tomorrow.