Life Skills

 Our two-year-old daughter turned her pepperoni pizza into a pistol yesterday and spent several minutes dispatching bad guys around the house.  Ross and I exchanged simultaneous looks of surprise and amusement.  And then Ross paused what he was doing and corrected her form...just kidding.  He was one of the bad guys and just wanted to avoid getting tomato sauce on his shorts.  

The prior morning, during a family photo shoot, it was her sister that had us exchanging glances.  

"She's so cute rubbing those two sticks together."  

"Well, she's trying to start a fire...." 

Less cute. 

*Photo Credit: brownmoosephotography

Obviously, the girls keep close eyes on their brothers, and we in turn, have to keep close eyes on all four of them.  Sometimes we wonder if we're doing this parenting thing right.  Then we read another news headline and conclude that, "Yep, survival skills might come in handy.  We'll let that ride."

The skill set that might be my undoing, however, is the potty-training.  We are pretty much all in.  Spending $100/month on diapers will do that to you.  The girls think it's awesome.  Too awesome.  Two awesome.  Potty-training twins, for us, means stopping everything twice as much to make twice as many trips to the bathroom (if one is going the other one is absolutely going too) for twice as long (anything you can do, I can do better).  It means twice as many misses, messes, and rolls and rolls of toilet paper.  Twice as much laundry.  Twice as much handwashing and drying and soap everywhere.  Which is to say, it's not going exactly as neatly as I had hoped. 

While they may never be potty-trained, they will know how to share and take turns.  That is at least going well.  I mean, it still comes with a lot of screaming, but eventually they work it out.  It's better than it was...it's getting better. 

I expect it will get better soon.

I'm praying for their future spouses now.