Not What I Expected

Just when you think you have your kids figured out, they change on you. Here are two incidents that did not play out the way I thought they would:

* Jada watches this interactive DVD of Dora the Explorer religiously. It is so cute to watch how into it she gets. With this special remote control, she can answer questions, cue up songs she sings along with, and even learn a few words in Spanish. Not a morning has gone by in the past several weeks that she hasn't asked to play with Dora. So when, one morning, the DVD wouldn't work, and I investigated and found it had a crack in it, I was expecting some sort of extreme expression of disappointment or sadness. I apologized to Jada that her Dora DVD couldn't work anymore, that we had to be careful with these things, and that we would try to buy her another one soon. She just said, "That's OK, we can watch Madagascar." In other words - no fuss, no muss; let's just watch something else.

* Aaron is slowly weaning his way off the pacifier. But, in a pinch, he'll want it to calm himself down when he gets worked up. Yesterday was one of those days that, let's just say he needed the pacifier a lot. And yet, when Amy's dad came over and the kids were ready to take him to the park, and I told Aaron to fork over the pacifier, he non-chalantly popped it out of his mouth and handed it over. We all kind of looked at him, as if to say, "Huh, no fuss," and then quickly lauded him with applause and good words.

I guess the moral of the story here is that sometimes, your kids can be better than you expect. Good girl, and good boy!