Yeah, it really is about the kids.

Two quick stories. First, this was a little while back.  I'm pretty  sure it was during the first week of July, when James was home all day with Christine and Daniel because our day-care provider was on vacation that week.  It may very well have been the day that Christine IM'd me at work during James' "nap" time saying she could hear him running around at the top of the stairs calling out "WOOF!" Anyway, for quite a while now one of the things James has been doing when he gets bored is tossing stuff down the stairs or over the railing along the upper landing.  "Stuff" is, regrettably, as specific as I can get without examples.  So let's have a few.  His soothers.  His stuffed animals.  His garbage can.  His socks.  His books.  You get the idea.  If it is influenced by gravity and isn't obviously alive it is fair game. Back to the story. This day I arrived home, Christine was in the kitchen with dinner almost ready. ...

Hope I don't get into trouble with Disney here. The evening routine, I may have mentioned before, is Christine reads stories and helps James brush his teeth, then I take over with getting him settled, usually read one  more book (unless he talks me into reading more) and I lay down with him in bed until he either falls asleep or I despair of him falling asleep and leave him on his own. An example in the despair  category would have been from the other night when he had sookie in his mouth and sneezed.  It launched out across the bed -- as you might imagine -- and when he realized what happened, he thought it was the funniest thing ever.  So then he started saying "ah ... ah ... CHOO!" and hoping sookie would launch out of his mouth again. He reminded me a lot of that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data was practising sneezing. After a few failed attempts he concluded something was missing.  So he added in pushing sookie out of his mouth wit...

Okay, so I've actually got a collection of short James stories this time, but probably the best is the one (two...) that inspired the title. First, though, very quickly.  The other night James and I were sitting on the loveseat in the theatre watching Toy Story (I think, might've been Toy Story 2, I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of the Cars movies).  Lately he's taken to wanting to sit at the opposite end of the loveseat.  After a few minutes he'll even move the cushion over there and hand it to me to hold.  And make no mistake here, it's for me to hold .  I've tried taking it, saying thank you, then putting it down between us or on the ottoman. Both fail, he'll announce "no" and hand it back to me. Anyway, this evening as the movie progressed he moved more and more toward the middle, until he was scooched right up against my hip.  Then he took my hand and put it around his shoulders.  Then he turned to me and held up his sippy cup full o...