The geese have really taken flight in the last couple of days. Yesterday AJ and I took a crepuscular outing to the playground on the river and watched as wide Vs of geese yawned across the sky, merging into Ws, crossing and moving on. Hundreds and hundreds of geese flying south. AJ loved spotting the various letter formations in the sky. He was running around pointing up shouting �V! W! X!� so enthusiastically, that I had to step in and rescue him from nearly slamming his face into the pole of the swingset.

Poor AJ. He�s trying so hard to behave himself, but it is clear it is a struggle. He just needs to push all his limits right now and it is driving me absolutely insane. I don�t like being the bad guy all the time. Lately I feel like all I do is tell him no and make him cry. It totally sucks. On the other hand I think it�s important for him to know not to run in front of traffic, not to hit the cat with a baseball bat, not to pull all the books off the shelves at the bookstore and not to shove other kids who happen to be standing in an inconvenient location. Some science experiments are best left undone. It�s really hard, though, to watch him be frustrated all the time. The other difficulty is that saying no a lot puts you in the habit of it. I frequently catch myself starting to say no to something that doesn�t really matter.

AJ�s favorite CD at the moment is a release from They Might Be Giants for kids entitled No! The title song is his favorite track:

No means no!

No is always no!

Should I stay? Should I go?

No! No! No!

Finger pointing,

Eyebrows low,

Mouth in the shape of the letter �O�

No means stop!

Do not go!

No! No! No!

The CD also works as an interactive CD-ROM with animated scenes for each song. For �No!�, each time the word �no� is sung, blocks spelling out the word fall in a stack into the screen. If you click on the blocks once, they turn into �yes.� If you click on them again, the stack drops into a hole in the ground like seed and a plant sprouts on the spot. At the end of the song the plants bloom as sunflowers revealing the word �Yes� in the center of each one.

I wish my own nos were so productive.

0 people said it like they meant it