He seems to have mastered the most basic toddler commands to get us to do his bidding. As we've mentioned, he pats sofas and chairs and tells us, "Sit down." Now he's saying, "Come here." Whenever I do something amusing, he tells me, "Do again!" Whenever we're not paying sufficient attention to him bouncing a ball around the kitchen, he urges us, "Watch this!"

We're not letting him get away with turning entirely into a stinker, and we now have him saying "No, thank you" instead of his usual "No!" (complete with swift head turn). He also surprised us the other day by reciting all of the days of the week. Seems like he's trying to give his brother a run for his money.

We somehow managed to survive the week and even managed to get a little activity in with the boys. Some of it was sedate...

Like this double-fisted watercolor experiment.

Some of it was bizarre...

Like Owen feeding Snoopy a cheese cracker.

Or putting Mickey to sleep under a turkey sandwich bun.

By the end of the week, the sickness had lifted and we were back in business just in time for Max's semester-end "clothesline" swim test. "What does 'clothesline' mean?" you might ask.

It starts out like this.

Then it ends like this.

He'd already earned his ribbon for jump, turn, swim, and now it was time to earn it with his full set of clothes on (to simulate an emergency situation). I wasn't there to witness the event, but apparently he was having so much fun that he refused to take off his shirt and shorts after the demonstration of skill. He wore them throughout the rest of class.

This pleased him greatly.

Ribbon #2. Pride earned.

We had some lunch, put the boys down for a nap, then headed up to Sherman to hang out with the family for the afternoon (and into the evening). It turns out that someone else wanted some pool time too.

He hates this. It makes him miserable every time.

I'm trying to make a whirlpool. Surprisingly effective.

We finished with all that silliness, took some photos of Max's severely red eyes (available in the photo set to avoid scaring people), and got back to general playtime.

Owen doesn't want to draw with the sidewalk chalk. He just wants you to know he has it.

Now that Owen is big enough to hold his own, he's no longer at the mercy of his younger cousins. This can be a good thing.

Awwwwww.

But it also results in disagreements over possession.

I will hesitantly accept that you have the ball, so long as you throw it to me. Now.

We rounded out the day by telling Max to stop getting so close to the fire pit, making some s'mores (yes, spell check, that is a word), catching some fireflies, and driving some very tired boys back home.

You'd think that was a pretty full weekend, and that we'd just spend the rest of it sprawled out on the floor. You'd be wrong.

Sort of. Technically they were sprawled, but that was only after jumping off the couch.

Why we encourage this I am not sure. Even that wasn't enough, though. We had to wear the boys out entirely, so we pumped up our little wading pool and set it up in the backyard. When the boys woke up from their nap, we let them loose.

I believe they were satisfied with this arrangement.

Sometimes you try to take a photo of one of them and inadvertently get a great photo of the other one. This photo of Max is a good example.

The boys took turns leaping into the water and making the biggest splashes possible.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Rinse, repeat.

We headed back inside to get everyone in some dry clothes, but things do not always go as planned.

Owen, those shoes are not dry.

Due to all the excitement (and the NBA Finals on TV) we ordered a pizza, watched TV through dinner, and put some very tired boys down to bed. Thus ended a rough sick week that turned into a pretty nice weekend.

If you want to see the rest of the photos (including the aforementioned red-eyes) you can click here. Now that we're all caught up, maybe I'll finally get around to posting those videos. I suppose we shall see.