Wicked, sharks, 1-2-3, and credit reporting

On Friday night, S and I went to see Wicked with A's sister. It was delightful. I didn't know the whole story (I know, can you believe it?), so it was great to experience it all with S. The next morning, she put on her new t-shirt and old witch's hat and made her brothers act out the play. H was Fiyero and T was a flying monkey.

This week, H had a program at kindergarten. All of the kids had completed diorama projects on animals (well, some of the kids did their projects; other projects were obviously completed by the parents). H picked sharks. Luckily for him, his aunt loves sharks so we got a cool shark and some other sea life to put in his project. Each of the kids had to present their projects (just reading a few sentences about the animal) and H did a great job.
For the past month or so, I've been using a different discipline tactic with the kids. The decision to try it came out of a pleading prayer for something, anything that would help. I immediately thought of a book I had gotten for free that I had never read. It's called 1-2-3 Magic and it's a fairly well-known program. It involves saying, "That's 1" the first time they whine, act out, etc, and "that's 2" the second time. On 3, they go to time out. (And yes, you can give an automatic 3 for things like hitting and such.) It's not rocket science and we've tried different forms of it before, but I think the part I like most about it is that you're supposed to take the emotion out of discipline. No arguing, no lectures, no begging your kids to behave. It's working really well, especially with T—and I think it's because I'm more calm.

Lastly, a T funny. The other day, he was coloring at the kitchen table with H. I was changing the babies' diapers and I heard T singing and tapping the table with two pencils like they were drumsticks. This is what I hear: "I married a dream girl, I married a dream girl, but she didn't tell me..." He kept singing the same part over and over again. Fairly quickly, I realized what he was singing. Then H pipes in, "She didn't tell me her credit was bad."

If you don't recognize it, here's a refresher:



I'm going to chalk this up to my boys having inherited their dad's uncanny ability to recite TV/movies after only one viewing, and not a result of any over-watching of TV.