The Battle for Dominance

"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"  Uncle Ben, Spider Man
"You're not in charge, Dada is."  My kids, every time I ask them to do anything.  Ever.


Okay, those quotes may be misleading, a little.  First of all, I have no idea what the origin of that first quote really is and I cannot be bothered to go look it up.   Secondly, my kids do occasionally do what I ask.  Like when I say, "Please finish your ice cream."


Then, there was this evening, when Gabrielle and I shared this beautiful moment.  I told her to get her shoes on, her dad wants us all to go out to dinner.  Gabs, being her mother's daughter, would rather eat at home.  I told her, as I do often, "I'm sorry, Gabs, but we need to do what your dad wants.  He's in charge."*  She disappeared for a minute into my bedroom and came out like this:

Those are not her shoes.  I do try to buy them big enough for them to grow into, but I don't plan quite this far ahead.

When asked why she had her dad's flip flops on instead of her own shoes, her response was this:


"Now I have the bossy shoes on and I'm in charge."


If only we could grab control over other people by simply stealing their shoes.  The world would finally value fabulous shoes the way they should.

Homeschooling- WITH CATS!

It's never a dull moment when you live with a young and adventurous cat.  This is especially true if you also live with extremely energetic five and six year old kids whom you are trying to get to sit still.  A while ago I was trying to take a picture of a weather chart for our month to month weather charting project, and here are some of the results:

 How could such innocence be so frustrating?

 Like he doesn't have enough places to lay out.  Except for, you know, the whole rest of the house.

And no cat picture collection would be complete without the obligatory action shot of the cat trying to eat the camera.

Since that day in August, I've learned to try to do things like this when the cats are sleeping or otherwise engaged in harassing someone else.  


Now that Spring is here and the weather is nice, the kids and I have been doing more and more of our school work outside.  This upsets our cats, who would like to be out there with us.  I'm not convinced it's because they want to spend the time with us.  No, I think it's because they want to wreak as much havoc on me as they can.  So, today, little ChacoKitten has upped the stakes:

I framed and cropped this picture in such a way to limit how much dirt in my window track you can see.

Yes, that is a gigantic hole torn into our window screen.  This annoys me, and not just because I had to chase his maniac self around the neighborhood to get him safely back inside.  No, this annoys me most because that means there is one less window we can open to let in the fresh air during school time.  

Guess we'll just have to spend even more time outside.  Rough life.