It's not his fault...

Public Service Announcement: Acronym Change.

First, I'm going to change abbreviations. I know I confuse myself sometimes between ES and YS with the two S's in there. I've decided I'm going to change YS to YB for either Younger Brother or Youngest Boy. I think it will help differentiate between the two.

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It's NEVER his fault.

It boggles my mind that when LW or I will tell YB to do something that he's supposed to do, we'll tell him a dozen times and he won't do it. We both feel like broken records. And yet, when he gets into trouble for doing something he's not supposed to do, it's never his fault. He has adopted the but-he-told-me-to-do-it defense. [Aside: My fifth CO would have called this the I'm-a-victim-it's-not-my-fault defense when JOs or Chiefs would try something similar.] Usually he blames it on ES. As in: YB, don't jump off the bed! "But ES told me to do it." Tonight, he blamed it on the neighbor's boy. YB, don't eat cookies right now, it's 5 minutes until dinner time. "But J gave it to me." [Aside: LW and I have a hard enough time getting YB to eat his dinner WITHOUT him eating a cookie 5 minutes before dinner.] I cringe because I sound like the stereotypical parent with the counter-argument, "If ES told you to jump off of a cliff, would you do it? No? Okay then!"

I wonder how many times we'll have to go through this pattern of he-told-me-to-do-it and the canned counter argument before he understands he needs to take responsibility for his own actions and not just blindly do something because someone else told him to do it. I mean, jeez, if a stranger drives up in a van and tells him to come help him look for his lost puppy, is he going to do it "because he told me to"???

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Future Chess-Master(s)?

Tonight the boys' bath took less time than I anticipated, so we had some time after getting their pajamas on before they had to go to bed. I asked if they wanted to play a game and listed off a bunch of games we could play like connect four or blockus or UpWords, but the boys chose chess.

It's been about a week since we last played. I was impressed that both ES and YB were able to set up their sides of the chess board on their own without any help. YB doesn't know how all the pieces move yet and just moves the pieces that I tell him to, but I was pleased that he knew which pieces started out where.

ES really impressed me with his analytical skills in playing chess tonight. He now understands that when I move a piece, there is a reason for it (I'm really not just moving the pieces around at random!), and he searches for that reason and then analyzes what to do to prevent me from achieving my objective.

I still won, but he made it a challenge. It took considerable effort to work through this substantial fortress he made with his queen and two rooks, but I managed to get check-mate because he left his king back behind a row of three pawns (after castling previously in the game), so when my queen got to the back row he couldn't do anything to either move his king out of the way or put anything in my way to block or take the queen. However (comma) I remember the first (and last) time my Grandpa won because I had done that, and he taught me the importance of leaving an escape route for the king. I suspect I won't be able to catch ES with the same trick again.

This photo is from just over a year ago back in Virginia, but it went with the topic. I love this picture - me in my pokey hair, the boys in their jammies, me with my coffee and YB with his apple juice, playin' a little chess in the mornin'.

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Movie Reviews

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. I took the boys to the Sharkey Theater to see this new Veggie Tales movie this afternoon. It was pretty good. The boys and I enjoyed it. It was not based on a Bible story like most of Veggie Tales' previous movies. The plot outline was similar to 3 Amigos (which I'm sure someone smarter than me will tell me that plot was copied from something else by Shakespeare or some other classic). They added a whole bunch of one-liners from other movies, like, "Say hello to my little friend!" ala Al Pacino. It kept me involved because I was trying to remember what other movies each of those lines came from. I also really enjoyed the spoof on the B-52's Rock Lobster at the end.

BTW - I need to go back and add Sharkey Theater to my list of Hawaii favorites. It's the base theater on the sub base. Active duty get in for FREE. I paid $1.50 for the boys to get in, and spent $6 on two popcorns, two bottles of water, and one medium soda. Can't beat those prices at any other big screen movie theater!

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New Video from Paula Abdul

I haven't been a big Paula Abdul fan in the past. LW and I watched two episodes of American Idol on the DVR to get caught up, and saw this debut of Paula Abdul's new album. I don't know what it is about it - it's just mesmerizing. LW just said, "Paula Abdul is hot isn't she?" I guess I can't disagree with that. It took me until the second time I watched it to realize that Randy (one of the other American Idol judges) was playing the guitar in the video.

[Don't forget to scroll down and stop my blog music before you click play on the video.]