Today I will rectify the inequality in blogging about my children. In the past, blog entries have been mostly about May, but this entry will be mostly about Benjamin, and the things he did yesterday. Our goal yesterday was to go to a Labor Day BBQ at the house of our friends, Dominick and Becky, which we finally did.

Earlier in the day, Jill was moving the family's towels and sheets from one container into a functionally equivalent container in a room next door. The moving of the sheets resulted in the fact that a new container was available in which one could slam ones finger - should you be so foolish. Benjamin slammed his finger with spectacularly bloody results. All day long I tried to bandage that bloody finger tip with no skin on it, and all day long he removed the bandages. I tried to tape the bandages on with packing tape, electrical tape, and medical tape. I taped the bandage on his thumb and wrapped the tape around his wrist; still the bandage was removed. I even taped his thumb to the side of his palm, still the bandage was removed. I must have bandaged his finger with the bloody, flappy skin twelve time. Today, he has a big scab and no bandage.

Our plan was to lunch and then go to the BBQ. We were eating lunch yesterday (I've forgotten what we were eating), and I said, "Who's looking forward to having a hot dog for dinner?" Benjamin happens to have recently developed a palate for hot dogs. However, he has not quite mastered the concept of past, present, future, and our temporal orientation (In a non-relativistic, Newtonian sense; I will not touch on time and relativity in this post. It's too broad of a subject, and quite off topic, as my kids rarely concerned with Einstinian physics.) Benjamin thought we were talking about hot dogs for lunch NOW.

"Hot dog!" He demanded. Then he pointed at the fridge and screamed. Once again, he demanded, "Hot dog!" He kept screaming and demanding a hot dog until we were able to change the subject and he forgot about it.

I hesitate to tell this story, but I should be up front about it. It's a shocking story and it almost derailed our plans to go to the BBQ. The kids were ninety percent ready to go. May was getting ready to go and Ben was all ready to go. I was trying, futilely, to print out directions to Becky and Dominick's house. Jill gave Benjamin a sippy-cup full of milk to drink. It wasn't a good Playtex sippy-cup; it was a cheap, disposable sippy-cup. Benjamin figured out long ago that a fun trick with these disposable sippy-cups is to through them on the floor, smashing them open, and spilling out the contents. This is an extra good trick, because you can both outrage your parents and manipulate them into cleaning up the mess.

So after smashing open his cup and spilling the milk everywhere, Benjamin laid down in the milk on his stomach and thrashed his arms and legs up and down, as if he was swimming. When Jill saw him, she was upset and had to change him into new clothes.

My final story from yesterday about Ben. After the party is winding down, May is watching The Little Mermaid in Becky and Dom's living room. Ben wants to go into the living room, but isn't interested in climbing down the step from the foyer into the living room. Instead, he hurls himself off the step and bell flops onto the carpeted floor of the living room. The first time it happened, I was quite alarmed . The next fifteen or twenty times he did it, he seemed to be really enjoying himself. What would be terribly painful and humiliating for me, he seemed to thing was hilariously funny and quite entertaining.

One quick story about May, then I must go put her to bed. Yesterday, May was talking about New Jersey. She said to Dom, "Would you like to buy a swamp in NJ?" and Dom said, "Sure, I would, how much would it cost?"

May replied, "One dollar."

Dom said, "A whole dollar! I don't know if I can raise that kind of capital. Do you think I could get a loan?"

And May said, "You won't have to be alone with all those things."

May even helped me write this tonight, because she sat on my lap while I was typing and was a very good girl, during the last few paragraphs, by not touching the screen, the keyboard, or anything else on my desk.

I will try to go read her bed time books with her now.

May
-a loan, alone