Keeping up with the Tater

This morning I offered Casey three dollars to watch Casey for a few minutes so I could get ready. When I exited my bedroom a few minutes later, Tate was covered in chocolate and blue marker. Casey swore he had no idea where the blue had come from. Then, this evening Jason and a good friend went up to L.A. to see the Clippers play the Lakers. Casey has a couple good buddies spending the night. They arrived about 20 minutes after Jason left. They started by playing football tag, then we went and had backwards dinner (frozen yogurt followed by pizza and video games at Round Table), and then we headed home. Not long after we got home, Tate got busy.

It started when he continuously pushed the "open/close" button on the DVD player so that we had to keep re-starting the movie the bigger kids were watching. Finally, I forced him to follow me back to the laundry room to-- ahem -- help. He got bored very quickly. The next thing I knew, the kids were yelling, "Boo Yow!" (No in Mandarin.) Tate, it turned out, had climbed up on the bean bag chair and was slapping Casey's friend Robbie in the face. Repeatedly. Fortunately Robbie is quite patient, and he didn't react. At all. And so tonight I learned the sign language sign for "hitting," and I think Tate already recognizes "no hitting."

After removing Tate from Robbie's vicinity, the kids said they were hungry and selected some chocolate chip muffins for a snack (shocking, right?). I'm not totally sure what happened, but the next thing I knew, Tate had swiped Robbie's muffin. So I gave Robbie a new muffin and figured I'd let Tate keep the one he stole. I went back to Marcie's room to help her pick out clothes for our upcoming trip, and when I looked up, Tate was standing there. With a trail of chocolate chip muffin crumbs behind. Most of the chocolate chips had been mashed into the carpet of Marcie's room. Of course. I stopped what I was doing to clean up the mess, and then heard more yelling.

Tate had figured out how to (literally) pull the plug on the old-school Pac-Man game the bigger boys were playing. I told him it was time for milk, prepared his bottle, and sat with him to make sure he drank it. When it was mostly empty, he got up with it. I didn't think much of, and I was having a rare quiet and good moment with Marcie, so I didn't immediately follow him. But when I looked up, he had shaken his bottle all. over. the. floor.

Sigh.

Fortunately, it was bedtime. For him, anyway.