On parenting

I posted this on carnageblender last night:

I'm so proud. My 3 year old son is playing Ghouls and Ghosts from the capcom collection for ps2. I know what he's playing without turning around, because I recognize the music.

That's my boy!

This morning he was excited to help Dad do the dishes, and so proud of helping Mom clean his room that he borrowed her phone to call me. ("Matthew?" I said. "Does Mom know you have her phone?" She didn't.)

Tonight we took Matthew to a party store to get Mom and Dad costumes. (Matthew and Melissa were each taken care of by a grandmother: they're going to be a tiger and a lion, respectively. So Rachel wanted me to be a bear, but I talked her out of it.)

All was well: I "zoomed" around outside with Matthew and we had a fun time. Then we went inside to see how Mom was doing. Matthew was still being good. But when Rachel dropped off the basket with me in the checkout line while she went to try to find someone to get her costume down, he threw a tantrum that he wanted to go with Mama. He'd been with me the whole time, totally fine, but now that wasn't good enough. I tried to reason with him. (Ha.) I told him if he kept it up I would spank him. His yells said, in effect, Whatever, Dad. You can't make me shut up. So (after the promised spanking) I trundled the basket off to Rachel from my position at the head of the very long line, handed Melissa back to her, and took Matthew out screaming under my arm to the car, where we stayed.

The ups and downs of raising a three year old.