Personality

Everett has exploded with personality the past few days. It's as though getting his cast off has made him feel free to once again be a kid. He of course has his opinions on how things should be. What two year old doesn't. He's smart and picks up facts very quickly. But he is a tenacious little booger. I have to be very consistent with punishment if I want it to take effect. Chloe takes longer to pick up on the facts, but "learns her lesson" after one time out. They're total opposites in so many ways. One of his favorite past times is chasing Chloe. Why do boys like to pester girls and make them squeal?! Today I painted Chloe's nails. He really wanted his painted Lightening McQueen Red. He likes to put his hoard of toys and blankets in his laundry basket and stay up late at night. He used to refuse to get out of his bed for any reason at bedtime. Knowing it would probably backfire, we were sick of the fussing. So we taught him to get up on his own. So now he roams his room doing who knows what until who knows when. He naps well, so it's only occasionally a problem. He still repeats entire scenes to us from CARS (as if we've never seen it before) and says, "that was funny!" Today we printed some coloring pages from CARS. Tonight he was all snuggled up with "Fthanklin" (Franklin) watching "Green Lantern" with Daddy. He'd hold his "lightening ring" up to help the Green Lantern. It was way cute. (The lightening ring is a plastic ring with a bolt on it for "The Flash." It came with Chad's comics last month. Everett loves it!) When I took him in to get ready for bed, he insisted that Franklin needed to look at his CARS picture. He turned Franklin around and held that picture up for a while for him to see. Franklin ended up being positioned along with "Teddy Bone" (his blue care bare, used to be the prize before "Shishu" aka Shifu and Franklin) looking at the picture for the rest of our bedtime routine. I love it when kids start to pretend! You see their imagination and personality run wild.
Chloe is so very mature. I swear I put WAY too much pressure on that poor girl. I forget that she's not an adult and get frustrated sometimes when she doesn't act like one. I don't mean to, but she takes it like a champ. I asked what she's most excited about for starting school, and she said she's most excited to learn to read. She's been learning about baptism and the priesthood at church. We've also attended several baptisms recently. So the other day during bath time, she pretended to "bath-tize" Everett and her Ariel doll. She also colored this picture of Daddy baptising her while Everett and I stand on the purple ground (yes, the church has purple carpet) and watch. Can you guess who's who? That's right Everett is the "Lightening Red" one, and I'm pink. It wasn't long ago that she was still just drawing basic shapes. Now you can tell what's going on. I love it. It's fun to get a little peek into what's going on in her head. She loves crafting. Last night I had some scrap booking stuff out. So she started using my punches. She has punched gobs of shapes and colored them and taped them up all over the house. When Chad went to work today, she said, "I sure am going to miss Daddy (as usual,) but I hope he opens his briefcase!" When I asked why she said she'd put some shapes in there to surprise him. How sweet is that!

Here's a craft we did not long ago. I had my eye on these color-your-own-shirt kits at Aldi. When they finally came down to $1, I snagged them. Chloe and I had fun and they both love their new shirts. We colored with crayons, washed it off and then painted them... hours of fun!