so the other day, my son starts pushing my daughter around. maybe that's okay in your house, but in our house, that's a no-no. but still, he's pretty insistent about it, even when his mother asks him what the problem is, like he's protecting some random spot on the carpet that he's declared is his (weirder things happen with two-year olds, as i'm sure you know). while my wife watches, after he manages to get his sister to not enter his "territory," the little guy runs to the bathroom, grabs some toilet paper, runs back, and kills a bee that had been walking along on the carpet, unnoticed by anyone else. he wraps it all up in the toilet paper, runs off, and drops it in the trash.

just like that.

he's two years old and has already picked up on the fact that, in our family, the girls are terrified by bugs (they are, though my wife can usually keep her wits about her long enough to kill anything that might threaten the children...she is getting a lot better, bless her soul) and the boys (i.e., daddy, and now him) kill the bugs.

i could hardly believe the story until i saw a virtual repeat just yesterday when they were both sitting on the porch, drawing with sidewalk chalk, when my daughter comes running in the house screaming about a tiny spider, the smallest she's ever seen (she says), out on the porch. i follow her to the porch so she can show me where it is and, as she points, my son sees this spider (it really is the smallest i've ever seen) zipping along the ground and, without moving from where he is sitting, starts attacking it with the chalk in his hands. two or three swipes of the chalk and it disappears, smashed and smeared into the line of chalk left behind by the attack. he looks at his chalk, satisfied that it is dead, and goes right back to drawing without a single word.

it's nice to know that my girls are being looked after while i'm at work.