Oh, Boy!

I have a half-naked three year-old climbing on me as I attempt to type this with one finger, and it seems fitting, since this August has been almost unmanageable.

The Captain brought his army gear home recently, and it is all over the front hallway. I literally have to trip over metal boxes and boots to get out the front door.

Worse still has been the behaviour of Firstborn. Oh. My. God.

*

Firstborn is my calm, quiet and thoughtful child. Usually, Rosemary's Baby is the one raiding the refrigerator, looking for adventure, and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. He's a little like the tasmanian devil, now that I think about it. Firstborn is the one I can usually count on to think before he acts, and to do as he's told. But this past couple of weeks, it's been Firstborn who has led me around on a non-stop wild goose chase of naughtiness.

On Friday, I took the boys to Booming Metropolis for a quick trip to the health food store and lunch at a friend's house. While we were out, I have to admit, there were no major incidents. Rosemary's Baby was his usual noisy, adventure-seeking self. No surprises there. And there was a lot of whining and complaining coming from Firstborn's direction, but he didn't actually do anything terrible. By now, I've figured out that he's out of routine and so ready to go back to school, so making it home without a major meltdown was about the best I could hope for. But it's what he did when we got here that made me shriek. There was no tantrum or outburst to warn me. He just walked into the living room and went quietly about his business. This is what I found on the wall when I came to check on him:

He calmly informed me that it was a monster. I calmly informed him that he'd be in big trouble when his father got home.

And then came the email incident.

Yesterday, after Firstborn had spent way too much time on my computer (largely because I'm tired of the tantrums when I tell him it's time to get off my computer), I got online to check my email. There was just one waiting for me--actually for the Captain. One of his coworkers had been a little confused by a rambling and incoherent email he had received from my account, signed by the Captain. We had to stare at the bizarre message for a few minutes, wondering if we had some sort of strange virus, before we realized that Firstborn, with his rather impressive computer and writing skills for a first-grader, had signed himself into my hotmail account and proceeded to send several people in my address book messages, composed by him, but signed by one of us.

*

The lecture we felt duty-bound to give him (while stifling our giggles. Come on, the whole thing was pretty amusing!), he received badly, and we had to endure yet another tantrum. Now I know why my mother used to count down the days to back-to-school starting in early August. The seconds are ticking away in my brain.

*

And now for the good news. My photography project ends today! This doesn't mean I'm done taking pictures or using the manual settings on my camera. I'm surprised to find that I really like the way my pictures come out when I set them up myself. So, I'm going to attempt to continue taking daily manual photos, and just relaxing the rules a little. I've exhausted my brain's limits where the self-portrait is concerned.

*

For my final self-portrait, considering what the boys around here have done to my brain this month, I thought it'd be nice to get a shot of me with the only other female member of the family.

Who needs stinky boys, anyway?