The new look and Evan

Iwas on this site last night called Mandarin Designs, and they have neat little cut and paste things there to spice up the blog. I tried. I couldn't. So I thought... let's go with a new template. Tried a few, thought this one was good, then realized that my links totally disappeared. Because I am SO HTML illiterate, I am trying to figure out how to make a links category. So be patient with me. I think I want to keep this template ... for now.

Children spilling food. Love hearing that sound ... then the crying afterwards. Evan is his mother's son. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. He spills things on the floor, on himself, on the table ... you name it, it is all over. I remember doing that myself (and I am notorious for getting something on my shirts ... always!) when I was kid, and I remember my parents making a huge deal about it, as if I was the world's worst klutz. I remember that instant humiliation. Not that they did it intentionally.

So I try SO hard not to make Evan feel bad about spilling things. I try to impress upon DH that it isn't the end of the world, and he has gotten a lot better because he didn't have to live with that humiliation. You know, there are those people who are just magnets for mistakes. You walk around on eggshells, thinking "what will I mess up today" or "what will I spill today." This was my existence, and I can see Evan going down that path in life. My Dad would ask me to go get him something, like a hammer or a screwdriver or a cleaner (to clean up my mess), and I remember sitting on the floor, looking under the sink in our kitchen, not finding what he needed. I could feel the heat on the back of my neck into my head because I knew he would be able to find it in a New York minute, but it took me a long time to find things (attributed to my eyesight). I never wanted to go back empty-handed, but sometimes I had to. And he would get SO angry with me (at least to a small kid, it was SO angry). To this day, if my Dad gets angry or says a cross word, it makes me stop in my tracks.

That there is respect (I think) or fear (I think).

So I don't want my son to go down that same path. I don't want him feeling like a small failure when he spills things, or can't find things because he can't see as well as his sisters. Evan is very near and dear to my heart (not that my other two aren't) because he truly is the mirror-image of me. Other than the fact that he likes to put his forehead on the carpet and push his head around, giving himself rug burn, and other than the fact that he likes to scratch his butt, and other than the fact that he openly admits that he likes burps. But other than that, mirror-image.