The subtle art of practical joking...

We have a child who has a hard time recognizing appropriate boundaries when he's trying to be funny.  For instance, the first time you throw yourself in front of the door to try to get Daddy to stay home from work, it's sweet and amusing.  It becomes a problem if you're still clinging to the door when the amused note in your parents' voices has been replaced by something decidedly less friendly, and you try the same thing every morning.  Sometimes we forget that he's not trying to irritate us.  He needs some help in figuring out boundaries that are naturally recognized by our other children.

A recent conversation:

Child 1:  Would a saw be a good joke?

Me:  Do you mean would it be a good joke to pretend to cut someone with a saw?

Child 1:  Yeah.

Me:  Well that depends on whether the other person thinks it's funny or is scared.

Child 1:  So if I was holding a real saw it wouldn't be a good joke, right?

Me:  Exactly.

Child 1:  And I definitely shouldn't say, 'I'm going to cut your head off,' right?

Me:  Right.

Child 2:  And you SHOULDN'T say, 'I'm going to cut off your wenis.'

Me:  Do you mean penis?

Child 2:  Yeah.

Me:  Yeah buddy.  That's exactly right.

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This week someone in our house

1. Had a meltdown when his silly band broke, someone touched something he built three hours ago, couldn't see the pictures on our book, ...
2. Had rapidly deteriorating body parts at clean up time.  First his legs hurt, then his stomach hurt, then his neck hurt and finally he was TOO TIRED.
3. Played Christopher Robin with his stuffed animals and played Celts vs. Huns with anachronistic weaponry.
4. Got schooled by a much younger person at Memory.
5. Functioned as the baseball bat in some game loosely resembling baseball.
6. Desperately needs a new belt because he's losing his pants.

If you can match each number with the correct Brothers H household member, I'll send you an email telling you that you're very smart. 

*I wanted to include a chainsaw picture at the top.  FYI - if you google 'chainsaw images' you see some pretty disturbing stuff.  File that under things I really shouldn't have had to learn by experience.