I'm a fast thinker, you know.

James and Kate behaved badly a couple of days ago (Saturday). They each took a turn pushing the other from the top of a set of bleachers. Kate pushed James first and then he pushed her in retaliation. James landed on his feet, more or less. Kate went down with her arms and legs spread and landed flat on her back, neck and head. We are very, very lucky there were no serious injuries . . . or worse.

I don't think, at age 4.5, they have an appropriate appreciation for how dangerous the falls could have been, but Ben and I had a very serious talk with them on the way home trying to help them understand. It was late, so we informed them that they were going to be having a two hour time out in their room the next day and that they should use that time to think about how dangerous it was to push each other from the bleachers and how they would remember to not do such dangerous things in the future.

Sunday morning, over breakfast, Kate said, "Mom, I'm a fast thinker, you know." Not sure where she was going with this, I replied, "Yes, Kate, you are a fast thinker." Then she said, "So can my time out can be shorter than James'?" Apparently, Kate couldn't figure out why she would need two hours to think about not pushing James again.

As an aside, during the time out, Kate immediately fell asleep and James tinkered around waiting for the time to pass, occasionally calling upstairs to find out how much time was remaining. During this same time, Robert was taking his regular afternoon nap and Ben and I managed to get a lot done. We've decided to start working on figuring out what we could ground our kids for next Sunday afternoon.