regression

yesterday:

while posting, gd came in to talk, and while we talked a wasp arrived at our window and hovered about for a bit. after looking around a bit, i think we see it - right above the same window of our downstairs neighbor. i hope we're right so we can get it cleared...

the fighting with mr smear didn't end with the board game. after i posted and did a bit of side project work, and then tried to get him to come out with me, which triggered a regression behavior and we got into the same, tired old battle of getting him to come outside on a saturday. here's the thing: we could choose violence and punishment, or choose rationalization and negotiation. the former would be much, much easier. *much* easier. because our child is not a rational being, and he's so set in his belief that him needing to go out and get exercise and be in (relatively) natural surroundings is wrong and is not how the world should be...

... it was a rough hour of our lives performing the dance, but he came out with me with a positive attitude and we took a proper walk* about the city, the park and then the port, even stopping by the games arcade to experience a painful loss on their giant pacman game.

* i'd wanted to go rollerblading, but i compromised on that part.

overall, we talked about a bunch of different things and we had a good time, and i even got to do another couple of tests on the social media app i've been working on, and it's getting there!

dinner was nice, accompanied by the barmitzvah episode of the wonder years, after which mr smear disappointed us by decided he didn't want to watch total recall with his crazy awesome parents who think he's old enough for that level of excitement, so we let him have half an hour of minecraft while we watched game night instead, at the end of which he declared that he might have made a bad call :P

gd and i went to bed at a relatively reasonable hour, and i woke up this morning quite relieved that i managed to sleep alright in spite of everything.

...

oh! and i figured out why i was so confused about shmini atzeret and simchat torah this year. not only is it always confusing that in israel the two are merged together, but the school holidays including an extra day (today) really threw me off. so it's a relatively normal work day for me today, and gd's off to the dentist, and mr smear's got one last day of holidays.