“What does it taste like?”

Hmm…they are in the kitchen attempting to whisper. This can’t be good.

“It’s not bad. It’s good.”

I hear my oldest say in a hushed voice.  That can NEVER be good.

“But it says HOT on the bottle. Is it going to be HOT?”

I think to myself…Thank Goodness my second child can read now.

“No, it’s not it just says that.”

And that’s when I enter the picture from my perch where I’ve been carefully listening to the plot unfold.

I explain to the two children my oldest is trying to convince to taste hot sauce that no, just because your oldest brother says it’s not hot doesn’t mean it’s not.  It is indeed hot sauce.  It’s the burn your tongue kinda hot. Not for kids to mess with.

Then I explain to my oldest son, my beloved firstborn, why he & I need to have a little chat. Because he cannot use his siblings in his pseudo-science experiments about hot sauce (as he claimed it was for homeschool, extra credit!), there are rules about that.

Momma rules.

Ahh, the joys of motherhood & older brothers.

Select the pieces carefully.  Every piece should be inspected.

Put each piece together with precision care.  Snap, pop & crooked all work.

And make sure to get some cheap labor, the kind of labor that can be bought by a cookie.  Little brothers make great labor.

Problem is the barely 2 crowd of little brothers also make great train destroyers.  Maybe when building a train stick to the over 2 crowd as cheap labor or make sure they aren’t drinking on the job.

If D-man walks for Mr. J before me I admit it. I’m going to be a little jealous, as in reminding D-man his whole life how he walked for Mr. J but I am the one who carried him in my womb & birthed him. ME & it took like 3 weeks of labor to have him. That’s right THREE WEEKS, THREE– I mean it FELT like 3 weeks even if it only a few hours. Hours become weeks when you are laboring, WEEKS I TELL YA!! WEEKS!! But anyway all mothering guilt trips aside, Mr. J has been trying to help D-man get his land legs everyday. He can’t wait to have D-man take his first steps & he is hoping that when D-man does walk it will be with him. Although I’m wondering if Mr. J has thought through this plan, because once D-man is standing & walking on his own 2 feet you know that he will want to get into EVERYTHING that is Mr. J’s. He’ll be like a flash of toddler lightening.

(and this picture is courtesy of Mr. G who had to also help his brothers out)

Brotherly love can be so fickle. One minute they are best buds. Then the next minute they are lobbing the “potty” language (as it’s known around these parts) at each other.

Apologies before bed were required for the elder boys. They had to make up for saying mean things. Apparently in calling each other names based on poo is the epitome of awesomeness in insults & kid comeback lines. And apologies are required when such a line has been tossed around because we can’t just let the poo fly, figuratively or literally in these parts.

However, part of me was concerned about the comments about poo for a totally different reason separate from the boys verbally jabbing one another. I just thought about them as older kids & realized that we can’t have them grow up only having “BIG FAT POO-POO” as their best insult or comeback. Instead I’m pretty sure this is another indication that we need to work on honing their social skills. Because I think we can do better with our poo one liners.