What Am I Thinking About Right Now?

[dr_pretentious]

Livejournal offers me this little writing prompt as I'm trying to delete spam in a comment thread. So, what am I thinking? "I wish Livejournal would just let me delete my spam, already. My personal blog is nobody's effing free link farm." And then I think, "I remember when Livejournal automatically offered me the option of reporting comment spam and banning spammers from commenting on my journal whenever I deleted a comment. Whatever happened to those lovely features?"

Can you tell I'm a little frazzled from trying to get holiday shopping done while wrangling two young children and a writing deadline?

Comments

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

Hey - I wanted you to see this post, I haven't watched any of the vids but I thought of our chat at Sabri's about life with little ones and thought you could use the pep talks:

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2011/12/11/toddlers-the-hours-are-long-the-years-are-short-video/#.TuZTG2CW55o

Love you!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Today was the day I needed that. Thank you. I adore and enjoy my children, but they keep doing age-appropriate things. I look forward to the end of Conrad's current biting phase. Weirdly, I also look forward to the moment when Conrad is big enough to hit Gareth back, because seeing my often-sweet firstborn beating up on an infant bothers me on more levels than I can begin to articulate. He mostly hits his brother to get a rise out of Dan and me. The cosmic joke will eventually be on him, though, since Conrad can almost match him for height and weight *now*. Tenth percentile, meet ninetieth percentile.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that the kid who is squashing his infant brother in a full body tackle and cackling as I struggle to intervene right now is the same kid who was asking very courteously for a snuggle two minutes ago.

My sister can tell her girls to work out their disputes among themselves. Then she closes the door and goes downstairs, and they actually do as instructed. When eventually I can do that with my boys, their resolution may involve fisticuffs, but at least it won't need to involve me Every Single Second.

How does anyone survive to the age of five?

[leapfaith.livejournal.com]

I humbly suggest that you tell them to "have a discussion, come up with a solution which is fair to both of you, and report back to me or your father when you have a solution you both think is good." If they need additional motivation, point out that they need to practice so they can be ready for the galactic federation council.