Are You Ready for a Few More Wesley Stories?

As Wesley rockets towards his 5th birthday, it seems like a good time to tell more Wesley Tales.  Really, why go through the suffering if I don’t get some good writing material out of it.

Wesley found a paper straw somewhere and decided to figure out spit wads.  At the time, I had no clue what the inspiration for this was, though I later discovered I could lay the blame on 1) a book and 2) Daddy.

A few spit balls is mischievous but it quickly escalated when he started shooting NAILS.  NAILS, friends.  IN MY LIVING ROOM!  Again, it was later when I found that it was Piper who found and passed along the nails, but I digress.

Here’s where Wesley picked up his new transgression.  It’s the newest Betty Bunny book, where the heroine (quite possibly modeled on Piper) is a “handful”.

Read the text closely to find out how nails became involved.

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Kyla should be Wesley’s mother.  She is very encouraging and loving towards him at all times, even listening to him “read” his new book from school.

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With Kyla’s penchant for wearing sweatpants with her fanciest dresses, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Wesley capitulated dressing up for Christmas Eve service in button down shirt, red tie, and blue sweats.

 

 

 

 

 

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And here is the only shot I have of The Worst Day So Far of Being Wesley’s Mom:

 

I might as well record it here.  Who knows, perhaps it will be funny with enough time.

It was 5 days after Christmas. The first four days, Dwayne had spent most of each day working on getting my Christmas present (a cell phone signal amplifier) installed at the cabin.  I just need to set the scene that all my secret desires of  fun family getaways and peace & quiet (obviously not simultaneously) were thwarted by Dwayne going to the cabin for long hours, leaving me to single-handedly care for all three kids all day long. Oh, add to this some pretty severe PMS, during which, if there is a wrong way to react, I will find it.  The fifth day, Dwayne went to work.  But before he went, he got to witness Wesley and I get into it over his breakfast.  Wesley just refused to eat something new—one third of a small breakfast burrito.  I told him it didn’t matter if he hated it—even if he hadn’t tasted it yet—he had to eat it before he got something else. 

I never thought of Wesley as having a iron will, but the iron rose that day.  He refused. Dwayne started to back me up, and maybe he was PMS-ing, too, because it wasn’t long before Dwayne had a sledge hammer and was threatening to smash Wesley's’ favorite toys.  [Okay, I am finally laughing as I write this.  Definitely therapeutic.]

Wesley didn’t seem to care, but I started crying, and Wesley had engaged Dwayne and I in a battle of wills that we couldn’t afford to lose.  And Dwayne left for work.

The day actually managed to get worse.  After Vision Therapy, Wesley had managed to eat handfuls of goldfish crackers under the kitchen table in the time it took me to get everything out of the car and upstairs.  Then Wesley decided to just spend the day in his room, but once, when I went to start laundry, he sneaked into the kitchen and stole an entire box of chocolates and ate 3/4ths of it under his bedcovers before I caught him.  By then, I couldn’t leave him unsupervised for a minute.  He still hadn’t eaten that damn bite of burrito.

I found lots of chores to do right where I could look down the hallway and see his bedroom.  He came out to sit at the table, actively not eating his burrito.  I watched him.  I stayed in the room. Then I turned my back to pick up paper off the floor to recycle, and looked back just in time to witness him throw his food in the garbage.   I had wasted my whole day enforcing our “don’t waste food” dictate only to lose the cursed battle with a 4 year old monster. 

It was 4:30 in the afternoon.  A perfect time for Wesley to take a bath and go to bed.

I texted Dwayne so that he would know that I had just had the worst day ever, not so subtly indicating that it was all his fault—his and his demon-spawn, and no, there was nothing he could do about it now other than endure a very cold shoulder for a very long time. 

None of us were really at our best that day.

But Dwayne came home, took one of the girls with him to the store, and eventually came back with flowers and samples of every food he thought I might like.  And then proceeded to make me wait an hour past our usual dinner time until the special tapas dinner was prepared.  He had the girls eat downstairs with him, and he gave the entire upstairs solely to me, punctuating the peace and quiet only with a little background Josh Groban.  And eventually when I was ready to talk (ahem, instead of growl), he listened.

About 3am, Wesley threw up the goldfish crackers and stolen chocolate.

And somehow, we all lived happily ever after. Don’t ask me how.  We just did.