Leader of the Pack and Will you Pee my Valentine?

Random cute kid stories to report:

On Tuesday, Anika started a sand castle trend at preschool. As her teachers told it, she was intently building a sand castle when one of the bigger kids came up and tried to smash it down. She convinced them not to and instead they crouched down and started building their own sand castle. Pretty soon, they said, she had half the playground group huddled around the sand pit and a marvelous sand castle city emerged.

She's quite the leader, they said.

And today she was so excited that it was Valentine's Day that she started an impromptu dance party in the Brown Bears room. She randomly started grooving to the background music they play before circle time, and kids started joining in, and suddenly it was a dance party.

I hope she never loses that confidence and hutzpah.

Reni is more and more interested in potty training and, although the actual potty training is far into our future, I've been humoring him lately, letting him run around Full Monty in the house when he feels like it (which is most of the time). Lately, I'm noticing that he's holding his pee until I take the diaper off. Tonight was the typical play down: demanding to get out of his chair, "off! off!" until the clothes come off, then runs into the living room, butt cheeks bouncing and giggles echoing throughout the house. Then, a few moments later, rushing back into the kitchen, smiling and announcing: "Pee!" and then racing to the cupboard underneath the sink and grabbing the small broom and dustbin and sprinting to the huge pool of pee on the floor as I rush after him, paper towels flapping, to mop it up before he sprays it everywhere with that broom.

I promise you that I actually find this cute, and not at all disgusting. What IS disgusting is the amount of mucus that a small being can produce when that being is teething like a MoPho. I wanted to get a picture of the kids together on Valentine's Day, wearing their matching red shirts and Ani's hair in the cutest pigtails ever, but Reni's face is so chapped that it's actually bleeding in places and he's slathered in vaseline and not at all photogenic at the moment.

So here is Anika, wishing you and yours a very happy Valentine's Day, and lots of hugs and kisses from the Morillo clan.