Testing, testing 1.. 2..3...

One of the interesting things about having twins is that you're not able to blame age or birth order for the differences between your children. I wrote about this before with drum lessons, but this is more personality.

In life, I've known many people who like to push the envelope. I am one of them, my husband is one of them. And I believe my son is one of them as well.

When I say push the envelope, I simply mean, figuring out where the line is, and then trying to go over the line to see what happens.

This can be a good thing. It certainly makes life more interesting (when you're not the parent of said person). At work, I've found nothing would get done if occasionally, someone asked "why are we doing it this way again?" or merely go around the boss before asking permission first.

Thinking about it, this very thing must have made the lives of my teachers very difficult.

Anyway, I can tell my son is there. I love him, but after more than two years of this, I'm pretty sure this is part of his personality.

I don't think it's a stage.

Basically, on a regular basis, he is trying to figure out what he can get away with. From how many vegetables he needs to eat at dinner, to whether or not he actually has to go to bed at night. My daughter tries to determine this line as well, but it's different. She isn't as consistent about it.

We haven't sat around the table for an hour waiting for her to eat the vegetables on her plate.

We did that once or twice, but she figured it out (that her parents were serious). So now, she typically will eat her vegetables when asked. And don't misunderstand me, the time we had to sit around the table waiting for my son to eat his veggies is much less than it was. But I know we can't back down. One night, we can't say, oh, it's okay, don't eat your veggies. Because the next night, we may spend an hour or so negotiating.

I'm not complaining, I'm just attempting to observe that this is the way things seem to be.

I love being a parent. It's helping me work on things I need to work on (i.e. keeping boundaries). When one of my co-workers mentioned that children do this (keep pushing to try and figure out where the line was), I didn't believe her. Now I suppose I do.