Um...

My kids have been quite "spirited" this week (read: they've been total buttheads... YES! I just called my children "buttheads", you wanna make something of it?!) and the end result is usually a Mommy Migraine. Tonight, even though they've been in bed for an hour, they are still up screaming and fighting with each other, in the dark. Every so often, if the screams become too tortured, I'll go in, watch them scramble back to their beds, and tell them to knock it off. Anyway, I heard Madison scream that special kind of scream only a little girl can do. You know, the one that sounds like a hockey mask-wearing gorilla jumped out of the closet and tore her arms from her body? Yeah, that's the one. So I go in, and find Shane sitting by her bed, dilligently working at something that he had taken from her. (All the while, hearing her scream "GIVE IT BACK!!! BACK!! MOMMY!!", and we're still in darkness.) I walked over to find him with this...

What you see there is a toy can from a kitchen set, and a knife from a tea set. Shane was splitting open the can like it contained the last morsel of food on the planet. I wonder how totally bummed he would have been had he fully cracked it to find only air. I can picture it now, him shaking the can into his mouth, and then throwing it with frustration, much like you'd see an animal do in the wild. The sad part is that happens frequently enough for the image to be permanently etched in my mind. Oh, the joys...