Flap pants

Tonight was one of those nights. Something crummy happened at work, and I was late getting home. Brooke had a bee in her bonnet about mowing the 9-inch tall grass in the back yard, and she embarked on that, only to run down the battery on the mower with frequent starts and stops to wrangle children. I arrived home and swore extravagantly about my day. Brooke responded in kind. I ordered pizza.

Nearing the end of dinner, Karl spent some time dipping his fingers in dipping sauce, being asked to use his fork or his bread stick, and then dangling his little fingers over the sauce pile on his plate, eyes twinkling.

"Karl," I told him, "You're on my list."
Sanna perked up. "The BAD one?" She loves hearing me say this to people who are not her.
"Nooo," Karl replied, "Not on a list." This was the most hilarious thing he had heard in weeks.

Shortly thereafter, I lure Karl upstairs with promises of seahorse nightgowns. The kids are in a phase where they want everything they do to be matching. If they're both wearing shirts with red on them, they embrace and jump up and down and cheer, "It's brother-sister day! It's sister and brother day!" Karl turns pink with glee and announces, "Both have matching ones, Meli!" Sanna shouts, "We match because we love each other, right, Karl?" So when it was hotter than beasts outside and none of Karl's shorty pajamas were clean and Sanna wanted a nightgown but all of the nightgowns in her drawer were fleece, I rummaged through the storage bins in the basement for outgrown dresses. I returned with a few 3T for Karl and a few 4T for Sanna. One in each size happened to have seahorses; while the similarities ended there, they had a blast wearing their seahorse nightgowns, matching through the night.

Sanna did say something I've never heard from her when Karl played dress-ups: "Karl looks like a girl." We talked about how he was wearing clothes that were made for a girl, that wearing those clothes doesn't make him less of a boy, and that he's still her brother Karl and will always be himself. I want him to be able to be free in his own home.

Sanna lost another tooth. This one died of natural causes. She now has fewer teeth than Karl, who has not deigned to grow all of his just yet.

Karl has decided to use the potty. We are having fewer poop fails, and traveling is still a challenge, but he is fully dry (but for diaper at nap (but today's nap was in underpants and fully dry!)) at daycare four out of five days a week for the last couple of weeks. Guitar underpants may have helped the cause.

Have I mentioned how weird it is to have boy underpants in the house? That little flap: Does it actually get used? How old is a child typically before he is equipped to use the flap? For the record, I do not intend to teach Karl to stand when peeing. That, like princess crap, is something he'll pick up from his peers, and I'm going to keep him in the dark as long as it's my decision. After all, how would I teach him to stand?