You've got to learn to fight like a girl

The other day Will and Helen were playing with their friend, M, when suddenly M ran in crying with huge scratch marks across her neck and shoulders.  Helen followed right behind her, crying/screaming too about how M was being mean.

After a loooong cooling off period, which involved M going home and Cort carrying Helen kicking and screaming and then wrestling her into the shower, I got to the bottom of it.

Apparently M told Will and Helen that if they wouldn't play what she wanted to play, she wouldn't be their friend anymore. M has an older sister, so she knows how girls work to manipulate their friends. Of course, Will didn't want that to happen, so he immediately started playing with her. 

Helen, on the other hand, was not so persuaded.  And she does not have an older sister.  She has older brothers.  So she did exactly what the boys do.  She got mad and attacked M.  Hard.  The girl still has the marks two days later.

Um, seriously?  That's not how we girls do it, Helen.  Just tell her you won't be her friend, either.  You can change your mind whenever you feel like it.  Unless you continuing attacking people, because then they might not change their mind.

I'm trying to decide whether she'd be better off if I taught her to fight like a girl.

Tales from Kindergarten

The other day the kindergarteners were learning about the difference between "wants" and "needs."  The teachers had them cutting out items from magazines and pasting them on paper to identify whether each item was something people need, or something they just want.

Helen cut out a bottle of beer from a magazine and took it to her teacher:

"I know this is really a 'want,' but my daddy thinks it's a 'need.'"

Top 5 Signs My Kids Watch Too Much Food Network and HGTV

1.  Charlie and Joe begged to stay up late last night so they could find out whether the homeowners would "love it" or "list it."

2.  I'm going to the grocery store today to buy ingredients for a Maddux Family edition of "Chopped."

3.  While playing Minecraft, Will announced that he was making houses for House Hunters.

4.  The other day at dinner the kids were predicting how many kids they each might have, and how many would be required in order to be able to have an entire basketball, baseball, or football team of Maddux cousins. Then Charlie announced that they should each have three. His reasoning?  Each sibling could take a kid if one of them had to be gone for a long period of time to appear on "Design Star."

5.  All the kids were incredibly excited to find out that the Property Brothers are not only brothers, but are actually twins.

Copycat

"Mo-om!  I can't sleep because Will keeps copying me!"

Um, stop talking?