My inlaws should be here any second now. So this is a quick entry. I had the day off from Baby Ben, so Geoff (my son, not the DogSnotter) and I went to Kohl's to buy some school clothes, and went to Wendy's for lunch. We also cleaned the house, everything except the bedrooms. The place looks really okay and slightly orderly. I'm impressed. Geoff enjoyed using the swiffer on the kitchen floor. Didn't do a great job, and I had to do a ton of touching up, but you know what, he did it -- it kept him busy, and hell, that's all anyone needs, right?
[9:30am, 8/16/03]
We picked Jessie up from camp last night. She went to 4H camp, and there was this long long long long long ceremony at the closing where the camp director took time to recognize each of the 20 or more counselors at the camp, and then the counselors gave out the achievement awards to the campers who excelled at stuff during the week.
Geoff was rather well behaved, at times. At one point he chose to make burping and farting noises inside the lodge, so I yoinked him out of there and made him sit in time out at the foot of the totem pole. He then started screaming that the camp sucked, and singing Plankton's part of the Spongebob "Fun" song (F is for fire that burns down the whole town, U is for uranium bomb, N is for no survivors!!!") in a very very evil voice. And he told me he hated me and wanted a nuclear bomb to land on my head.
So.
I couldn't laugh at him and think he was just acting out because he was bored. When you start with the "I hate you" crap with me and you're six, you're up the creek. I was none too happy with him. He was told that there would be no more dinosaurs in his life if he continued to spew forth vitriol at me (not in those words, of course) and that when he got home, away from the prying eyes of the parents at Camp Leslie, he'd have a date with a wooden spoon.
He shaped up. Temporarily. Later he ended up having a total hissy fit at the truck (I had chased him around the camp as he'd decided the ceremonies were concluded and it was time to go home). While one of the counselors played "Taps" on his trumpet to conclude the ceremony, Geoff screamed and threw a fit like a caged wildebeast for no one but me to hear (thank God).
He got yelled at and sent to bed when we got home. My father in law told Doug that Geoff didn't do anything too bad, but in the long and the short of it -- he did. I bet you 10,000,000 bucks that if Doug had done that when he was six, his father (mind you, thinks Geoffrey didn't do anythign too bad) would have let him have it.
It's amazing how grandparents change their parenting skills once they aren't the parents anymore.
Geoff came out of his bedroom a while after he'd been sent to bed and told me that he wasn't feeling too good because Jessica behaved well and he didn't behave the same. I thought that was pretty amazing. It didn't ocurr to me that he had some Jessie anxiety, envy, or whathaveyou. I asked him if he was jealous that she got to go to camp and he didn't and he nodded. I knew there was some envy there, some "Me Too"ness, and it's really hard for him to grasp the fact that he has to be 7 to go to camp, and that 6 year olds are too young. I told him to put his best effort towards doing a good job (note, I didn't say "next time act like Jessie" because I know for a fact she's a hard act to live up to, and I want him to just do his best, not necessarily to compete with her) and that we'd have a better day tomorrow.
It was not an easy Geoff evening.
This morning, he's entertaining everyone with his boundless knowledge of all dinosaurs, even knowing the periods they lived in, and is watching Jurassic park on the couch with Grandma.
Hopefully we'll have a great day in whatever we end up doing. We're still trying to decide. I need to get a shower -- so I should tie this up.
I just did, however, wish to mention that I am kind of jealous that we didn't have any part of the power outage. I would have liked Friday off of work. Oh wait, I did have Friday off of work.
My sister, on the other hand, was in hell. The poor thing.
I had no idea the scope of the power outage until Doug told me at about 9pm on Thursday night. I blame my mom -- on Wednesday she put an air conditioner in her window, on Thursday the power blows. Blame Canada? Nah, Blame Shirley! Tess, you're very very glad you weren't in NYC this past couple days. Whew!
Anyway -- that's it for here for now. More later
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