Tanner's Threadless T-shirt

Hey everyone, we'll resume our regular posting on here soon, but in the meantime, you should all check out and vote for my brother-in-law's T-shirt design on Threadless. If he gets enough votes then Threadless will actually make it in to a shirt, resulting in him getting money which he will then pass on to me...or something like that. Click on the picture to check it out:

Aaaargh!

This buccaneer has developed a little bit of over extra confidence lately. We sure love him and don't want to burst his bubble (I'm sure it will be burst soon enough), so we go on agreeing with him that he is the smartest, kindest, best-looking, most artistic child in the entire universe!

Last week Henry and I had an argument over cookie-making. He thought we had enough frosting for our batch of cookies, and I didn't. He looked at me and said, "Mom, I know I'm right, because you're a girl, and when girls get pregnant, their brains don't work as well. I'm a boy, so that will never happen to me."
Of course! I've been wondering all along why Henry is so much smarter than me. He's a boy, for crying out loud! Everything makes so much sense now.

In all honesty, I do have to admit that he's a pretty smart kid. Out of curiosity, Ben had him take a 3rd grade reading comprehension test the other night, which he whizzed through and nearly aced. He only missed two questions, one which asked "What was the author's purpose in writing this passage?" (a non-fiction article about owls). Very sincerely, Henry answered that the author's purpose was to "entertain" rather than "inform." I had to laugh when I realized that he really does read these types of articles for pure entertainment, and he had stopped several times during the assessment to tell me interesting tidbits about owls. Afterward, in trying to explain the error to Henry, I pointed out that in addition to being entertained, it seemed like he also learned a lot from the article. "No," he asserted, "I didn't learn ANYTHING from reading that! I already knew ALL of it!" Hmmm. Probably due to the fact that he's not pregnant, I guess.

In case you were wondering, not only does Henry already know pretty much EVERYTHING, but he also is pretty much the most knowledgeable and talented artist in the world. Somehow he got it in his head that I can also hold my own in the art world, but Ben is seriously lacking in his art skills. This is a point of great concern to Henry, and he is constantly brainstorming new ways he can teach Ben to be a better artist. When we tried out a new stencil set Henry got for Christmas, he remarked, "This is pretty easy! I bet even DAD could do this one!" And then he finally convinced Ben to take a formal art lesson from him.

Here is the page where Henry "taught" Ben to draw.

Here is Ben's unsuccessful effort to measure up.

Perhaps someday soon we will have a little discussion about what a know-it-all is and why nobody likes them. Perhaps someday I will defend the equality of women's brain capacity. Until then, I'm going to just go on being amused by this kid.

Purple Ear

This is what happens when you let your 5 & unders stay up until the REAL midnight on New Year's Eve. Henry was having so much fun twirling around in the snow as we returned from our party that he didn't notice a metal pole in front of our house. Smack! Oops. Ellis also fell down the stairs at about 11:00pm. Apparently our boys start to get a little tipsy from lack of sleep. Next year we will exercise self-restraint and put our children to bed at a safe and reasonable hour. Maybe.