Letters from Torii

Last Saturday as I was trying to get ready before we headed out for awhile, I let the Torii and Cordelia watch some TV so I could get done faster. Little Bill was on and that is one of Torii's favorite shows. I heard the beginning of the episode so I kind of got the gist of what it was about. Little Bill wanted to receive mail like all the other members of his family. His dad suggested that Little Bill write a letter to someone and then they would write him back. Torii that this was an excellent idea so I told him he should write a letter to grandpa and grandma. No, he wanted to write a letter to someone in school. Then I suggested that one of his aunties would love to receive a letter from him. Still, he insisted on writing letters to two girls in school. Twin girls. I couldn't talk him out of it so he wrote a letter to both girls. He got the letter to one of the girls, but the other isn't in his class and he hasn't had any luck getting his letter to her. He told me as he handed the letter to the girl in his class another girl asked him if he had a letter for her. He told her maybe next time. So now he wants to write a letter to her as well. Five years old and already passing notes to girls at school.

Games Torii plays

With Rion gone all weekend, it was funny how the household dynamics changed. It some ways life was a lot easier with only two kids. In other ways, not so much. It was incredibly nice not to have to break up any fights between the boys all weekend. On the other hand, Torii was left without a playmate so I became the substitute. Rion is perfectly content to play by himself, but that's not the case with Torii. He needs someone to play with. Since Rion was gone, I kind of let Torii make the rules for the weekend and what he wanted to do was play games. One of the first games we played was Hullabaloo. I never win at that game, but for some reason I was on a big win streak that day. By the third straight time I won, Torii was starting to meltdown. My streak went to six. I kept wishing he would win, but I kept winning. I started to laugh because it was somewhat comical. Finally he won. Then he began to cheat to win. And that's what Torii does. He's not really big on rules. With games or generally in life. When he's not outright cheating, he's making up new rules or bending the rules to fit his needs. I quit a couple of games before completely them, hoping he would learn to be a good sport and play by the rules. Today we played his Ladybug Game twice and he didn't pout once. He played by the rules and we had fun. Maybe it finally sunk in. By Sunday afternoon, I was pretty sick of games and really wanted to just veg out on the couch and watch football. But Torii is a sweet talker and there we were in front of the TV, playing a board game. It was a win-win situation.

Movie night

This weekend Rion and daddy went up north to the farm for the early deer hunting season there. Torii was a little bummed that he wasn't going so I let him in on something special I had planned for Friday night. He was so excited that he told everyone at school about it on Friday and wouldn't stop talking about it all evening. When he got home from school he was ready for Cordelia to go to bed so we could have our special movie night. It must have seemed like an eternity for him, but Cordelia finally went to bed at her regular time. Then we turned out all the lights, popped some popcorn, got out some movie sized boxes of candy, cold bottles of Coke and stayed up late and watched a movie. For our movie we watched Coraline. I liked it, but was afraid Torii would have nightmares from it when he became concerned about the "other mother" in it. After we talked about it, he realized it was just a movie and hasn't had any nightmares. Now he just has an obsession with poison oak and likes to pretend he is rubbing it on my arms. It was a fun night and I'll have to do it again with both boys. I think it made Torii feel really special getting to stay up late with mom. Sometimes the most simple things are the best things.