Teasing

My 13-year old daughter and 8-year old son used to get along famously. These days, however, the age gap is much more prevalent and my wife and I are forced to endure more and more arguments between the two. They are usually limited to your standard verbal fights, though every one-in-a-while they get a little more physical. This happens rarely, and when it does, they?ve know that hitting back will only get them both into trouble.

So my son has learned to get a little more creative in his retaliatory techniques. They recently got into an argument, which culminated with my son crying and complaining that his sister had hit him. She was honest and about what had occurred and so I sent her to her room as punishment. Once my son calmed down, he went back to his room and all seemed well. In fact, neither my wife nor I noticed how he got his sister back until much later that night when we passed by our daughter?s room and say a sign taped to her door.

It read (spelling errors and all), ?Hi, I?m Nara Wiess and I am afraed of evrey thing and I like to wet my bed. And I poop and pee myself evrey 4 minutes. It?s fun, try it!?

Not even my daughter could stop herself from laughing at that one.

Terrible Twos

When my daughter was about two, her grandmother took her to go see a movie. They both got dressed and ready to go, but my mother-in-law happened to notice this weird bulge around my daughter?s bottom. She decided to check things out and realized that my daughter was wearing a panty liner.

?I?m a big girl now grandma,? she said.

Going along with it, my mother-in-law and daughter set out for the movies. Once they arrived, my daughter seemed to have difficulty walking and starting picking at the back of her dress.

?What?s going on?? asked my mother-in-law.

?Grandma, can you help me get this out,? said my daughter. ?Maybe I?m not as big a girl as I thought.?

Baby Bowel Movements

My brother-in-law has a horrible gag reflex. He gags not only at a bad smell (he's a horrible person to help with trips to the local garbage dump, by the way), but when he sees something he finds particularly nasty as well ("Fear Factor" hasn't been good to him).

When it came to changing diapers with his first child, fights between him and my sister-in-law were fairly commonplace. She would get upset that he didn't change enough diapers, while he would complain that--while he wished he could do more--he threw up every time he had to change a poopy diaper. Eventually, of course, that child grew out of diapers and into underpants. And the fights stopped.

We all knew what was coming when my sister-in-law announced she was pregnant with their second child. So in preperation for her baby shower, my wife and I decided to opt out of the regular, run-of-the-mill shower gifts.

So what did we get instead? An official World War II gas mask that we found on eBay.

And no diaper-changing fights ensued after my neice was born.