Our resident lion, who has been growling around the house all day, is now asleep and snoring in his room in a vaguely leonine fashion. AJ has entered another �I�m 2 and I�m proud� phase this week. His modus operandi this time seems chiefly to be to contradict everything. As in this scene that played out at the library yesterday:

Harriet: AJ, how about this video? (pulls video off shelf and holds it out in front of AJ)

AJ: No. I don�t like that video.

Harriet: (puts video back on shelf). Why don�t you pick one then?

AJ: (ponders for a minute) I want that one! (pointing at the same video I had suggested).

Harriet: I thought you didn�t like that one. Maybe we should get a different one�

AJ: I want this one. It�s my favorite!

This morning, when we were getting ready to go to music class, which generally has AJ dancing in circles around the house after breakfast in anticipation of fun things to come, AJ instead said, �I don�t like music class!"

Harriet: You liked it last week. Why don�t you like it?

AJ: It�s too loud (on this point I must agree with AJ, actually).

Fast forward to the beginning of class. AJ, still complaining about how noisy music class is, runs across the room in order to beat the rest of the kids in his class to the biggest drumsticks on the biggest drum, which he proceeded to bang as hard and as fast as humanly possible while screaming �TOO WHOO WHOO!� at the top of his lungs.

Um, yeah. Too loud. Gotcha.

These are only a couple of examples of why I am losing my mind.

On the plus side, AJ has had several imaginary friends hanging around the house lately, all of whom are extremely entertaining. A string of them had breakfast with us this morning. They had to take turns, because we only have one extra chair. AJ insisted, however, that they have their own plates of food. I said that was okay as long as he helped with the dishes, which he did with pride. Occasionally one of the friends would transmogrify into a snarling animal and have to leave the table very fast, but for the most part they were exceptionally polite and good conversationalists. I think we�re going to need a bigger table.

I still have to try to knock off a bunch of paper proposals this afternoon � not my favorite task. Trying to write in 250 word chunks about my already 200 page dissertation is crazy-making in a completely different way.

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