Another morning with the boys. I’ve started Charles on the “morning stuff” regime, where he’s not allowed downstairs until he’s done his morning stuff. This consists of putting on clean clothes, going potty and doing tolietries. Charles wore his Teletubbies™ jammies and he was OK with taking the shorts off. He sat on the potty for a bit as well but when I took off the top Charles went fetal on me. I tried to convince him to pick out some new clothes but he didn’t want to do that. So went back downstairs to take care of some things. I popped back up a couple times but Charles was still unwilling to pick new clothes. One time he was over by the bathroom and he responded a little bit. But he acted like he didn’t quite know how to walk. He’d get up on his hands and feet and then collapse back down to the ground. Eventually he just crawled over to the clothes and then lay on the ground. I had the clothes on the edge of the bed but Charles couldn’t raise himself high enough to look at them.
Eventually Corwin woke up and wandered about upstairs. At one point he’d done his toiletries but was still shirtless. I used my mega-threat against him, informing him that if he still wasn’t dressed when Erica arrived that she’d get to dress him, probably in something pink, frilly and with a big Hello Kitty© picture on it. Corwin took that lying down but not passively:
Corwin: “How long do I have until Erica gets here?”
Dad: “Let me check … about 70 minutes.”
Corwin: “Tell me when I have 50 minutes.”
I’m not sure what surprised me more, that Corwin was planning like this or that he thought he needed fifty minutes to get a shirt on. Unfortunately for Erica Corwin managed to get his shirt on fast enough that when I gave him the 45 minute warning he was all dressed. Meanwhile, I had gone back downstairs to wait out Charles. I wasn’t down very long before I heard giggling upstairs.
When I went up, Corwin and Charles were both in the parental bedroom banging about. Charles was on the bed, giggling and looking cute. He does this adorable little pantomine which involves pulling up the sheets and looking extra cuddly and he was practicing it. I gave him a few tickles and body-slammed Corwin on a the bed a few times (Corwin wanted more but Dad’s back isn’t what it used to be, plus I suspect that Corwin has gotten bigger). I then asked Charles if he wanted to get dressed. Charles thought that was a great idea and off we went. Dad was completely forgiven for stripping off the only one day old clothes from the innocent little cuddly boy.