Three Things

1.  Today we went to Wal-Mart to look for more tombstones for our Halloween graveyard.  The boys were grabbing things left and right and tossing them into the cart.  I found myself removing more things from our cart than I was adding them.  Jack was especially busy, tossing things in faster than I could keep up with.  I thought I had returned all his items to the shelves and I confidently sent Jody to the checkout while I took the boys to the car.  I was wrong.  I discovered a few surprises in our bags when we got home: a set of black and orange rubber spiders, three rubber rats, a scented candle, a pack of orange paper plates, a talking skull and one branch with leaves and pumpkins that he plucked from a wreath or centerpiece.  He will be restrained in the cart with a harness on all future shopping trips.




2.  Cade and Cannon have been Michael Jackson fans for a while now.  And to make them happy, I added a few Michael Jackson classics to my ipod for our jam sessions on the way to school.  Sam and Jack have grown to enjoy the songs, but they've never really shown a great interest in Mr. Jackson.  That appears to have changed overnight with Sam.  I've noticed him bypassing Chicken Fried and Long Black Train when he's searching for tunes, choosing Thriller or Bad instead.  And last night he really shocked me as he scoured his closet searching for what he could wear to be Michael Jackson.  He settled on a black shirt and his white pants from his Andrew Jackson costume.  He was trying to replicate the outfit Michael wore when he debuted the moonwalk and a black collared shirt and white pants with metal buttons was a close as he could get.  Later, when he returned in his pajamas I thought his Michael Jackson impersonation was done for the night.  So later when I looked up to see him shuffling his feet just slightly while doing some strange up and down movement with his shoulders, I was alarmed.  And so when his face started twitching, I panicked.  And for a few very long moments, I was frozen, certain that I was witnessing my son have some kind of seizure.  And after watching him repeat the movements several times, I yelled out to him (which was totally unnecessary since he was two feet away from me), "Sam!  What is wrong?  Sam!  Sam!  Are you okay?"  And the moment he heard me, he pressed his lips together tight and looked down at the floor, the way he always does when he's embarrassed.  And I instantly knew.  And I immediately felt like a complete idiot.  An overreacting, oh my God my child is convulsing right in front of me, idiot.  My boy wasn't having a seizure.  He was working on his Michael Jackson moves.  And my explanation of why I thought he was having a medical episode and not dancing didn't go over too well either.  The kid will probably never dance around me again.


3.  And finally, Will has taken up yoga in his free time and he's already totally nailed the downward, sleeping cricket.