Madeline is wearing her ANGRY eyes

Madeline has developed temper tantrums. I don't know where she picked it up, because she pretty much does all her learning from Curious George and Sesame Street, and they always share and say please and thank you and talk nicely to grownups. But pick it up she did. And now, whenever anyone tries to touch her or take away metal cans she's grabbed out of garbage cans, she throws a fit. The kind of rolling on the ground, kicking and screaming fits that I always thought you had to have some kind of Tae Kwan Doe training for. It's halfway between maddening and hilarious. She just collapses in a fit of self-righteous anger. The best was when she tried it on the dog when he kept stealing her dropped crackers. Since it just made it easier for him to get to the crackers, I think he got the better end of the deal. Anyone with advice on how to curtail these activities or hard scientific evidence that it's a completely random behavior that has nothing to do with the quality of my parenting is encouraged to share their wisdom.

In other news, since my parents are getting new couches for their newly remodeled/soon to be remodeled living room, we've seized the opportunity to ditch our very worn $10 dorm couches in favor of their moderately worn, more comfortable couches. My parents don't understand why we want their castoffs. I figured I'll invite them down to try to sleep on them with Madeline cutting off the circulation in their arm so they'll understand. Meanwhile, I'm on a quest to get rid of our old couches. Instead of paying more in gas and dump fees to get rid of them than we did buying them, I got the brilliant idea to stick them on craigslist and see if some other poor sucker is willing to take them away at their own expense. I've got a few bites, so we'll see if we can bid our poor old couches farewell this weekend. My fingers are crossed. (If anyone wants them to go couch sledding or to put on a porch or something, holler at me and you can be the poor sucker who hauls them away at their own expense. Lucky you.)