Life with Boys and email

I am sure I will learn a lot of new things in the next few years that I would not have otherwise learned having boys. Coming from an all-girls family and being one myself, there were certain things I never learned.

For example, I now know what an excavator is, that is uses crawler tracks, different types of cranes and other construction vehicles. Today I found myself outside digging around in the dirt for snails. There are these little snails that are out and about these days and Austin has found several of the shells. He calls them "nails" and loves to find them. We found one today and spent several minutes watching it crawl and wave its' antennae around. Probably a 22 - month girl might also think snails are interesting, but it felt very boy-like. Austin also went around looking for dirt and rocks, splashing in puddles and throwing things (snail shells, water cup, rocks) down the slide.

Oh and email. Doesn't quite fit the outdoor experience you say? There are these funny little "exercise" machines that are in about every Chinese neighborhood. The activities you can do on them are not exactly what I would call exercise, but it does get your body moving. One is this thing that has circles you can stand on and twist your body while holding onto a rail. Austin really likes to "drive" the circles or spin things on them. But today he sat down on the ground, put his hands on the circle and started moving his fingers and said "Austin do email". He knows that Mommy and Daddy do email on the computer sometimes, though I don't think he knows what that means other than you are typing. He also sat in front of our computer later this afternoon, pretending to type and again said he was doing email. This is certainly a different generation from me- he knows about Ipods and email before age 2!

In other news, Austin is suddenly acting like a temperamental 2 year old- well not so suddenly but it has become very evident this week. Perhaps he is also sensing a big change coming with didi, but is both very clingy and possessive of my time and having tantrums and saying "no" a lot. Pray for wisdom in parenting through this stage and especially when little brother comes into the picture. It is rather tiring having to discipline many times in a row. Austin is also into repeatedly asking the same question over and over- also rather tiring. He can ask me what I am doing or Daddy is doing literally 25 times in a row and not tire of the same answer!

Well, no pictures of snails or dirt today, but you can imagine.