Great afternoon.

After a morning of meltdowns and feeling doom as parents of our sensitive, combustible little Art a great afternoon was had.  We mowed the backyard.  Art would take a turn and then me.  It's a push mower so he can totally manage it and I would say he did about 1/3 of the humble backyard.  Then Lew woke up and we all bumbled around on beds for a while.  Then we went down for some ravioli.  While Lewis was eating Art was hiding behind the dining room door making noises.  Lewis thought that was really funny and I said, "Is that Arthur?" and Lewis pointed to the door!  I asked him again, "Where is Arthur?" and he pointed at the door again!  So Lewis definitely knowns Art's name.  And he knows how to answer Where is...

Then I shoved the boys in the car so we could go get a birthday present for Art's school friend.  We went to Michael's craft store to get art supplies (Miles likes to draw) and Art did pretty well waiting patiently.  Of course, I had also told him we would get french fries afterwards.  Anyway, we went to Burger King across the parking lot where they have one of those big climbing things.  We got the fries and the boys ate a few and off they went.  Lewis, of course, was in there without hesitation.  He climbed through the first tube over and over and walked back and forth on some squishy mats waving his hands and shaking his head with what I can only describe as glee.  Art was surprisingly bold.  He climbed right in without begging me to come with him.  And, what's more, he tried to get Lewis to go higher with him.  "Come on Lewis!  You can do it.  It's not scary."  He even tried to lift Lewis up to the next highest tube.  Later Art was chatting up the another kid named Aiden.  Aiden's mom and I were chatting and Art said he didn't want to go to the slide because it was too scary.  I told him he didn't have to go.  He could come down.  Then Aiden's mom asked her son to go with Art and Art went quite a bit higher, but he still decided tocome back down.  Now, before we were about to leave Art decided he was going to go down the high, long slide afterall.  Meanwhile Lewis had been trying to climb up the slide.  Anyway, he went up and came down and had so much fun that he wanted to do it four times.  So we did.  Then we came home.

Lewis and I got ready for bed and Art (you won't believe this, Ben) brushed his own teeth.  Not kidding.  Then I put Lewis in his bed with a book and for the next couple minutes he made his "oooooh, ooooo, oooeeeeooo" sounds alone in his room.  He was reading a little before turning in.  I had to go in a couple times to retrieve a gackoo for him, but otherwise he went down.  And Art and I also had a flawless bedtime.  

So, a really lovely afternoon.