The Little Prince

I'm wondering if I should change the Little Prince's nickname to the Little Devil. There are times it's sure tempting. Since September the Boss has been doing taekwondo. The twins would often go with him if Baba was taking them and they would watch and sometimes they would participate. The captains play with them and would let them train. After they turned 4 the Little Prince has been going pretty regularly and the Diva wants to. The captain said that since she's only 4 and there's nowhere nearby for her to do it at this age she can do it there too. Well, it didn't take long for the Little Prince to realize that if he's going to train that he has to mind the captain. Have I ever explained that he's the carbon copy of his father? Except for his coloring, which he gets from me, he's the spitting image of his father. Right down to the stubborn streak that runs miles wide down his little body. So for the last few weeks he's been saying he doesn't like taekwondo and he doesn't want to go. We know from before that he loves it...he just doesn't want to take orders from anyone. Since there are absolutely no downsides in making him go and only the benefit of learning some very important life lessons, he's going whether he wants to or not.

So yesterday he's pulling his "I don't want to go taekwondo" routine but I just got him dressed and in the car with the Boss and M (his friend who goes with him). We get there and the Prince refuses to get out of the car. I reach in to undo the seatbelt and the captain is parked next to us and getting out of the car. He says to leave him there and then he orders him out of the car. He shows him his stop watch and tells him he has 2 minutes to get out. The Prince is in tears. He's not sad or in pain...just totally ticked off that he's being told to do something that he HAS to do. As I get back in my seat I tell him to give me a kiss, which he does with tears running down his face. The captain tells him to give me a big hug again and then they head inside, with the tears already drying. See, he really does like it. It's that will of his that can't stand the restraints placed upon it. {Insert evil mommy laugh here.}

So I go back later to pick up the boys and we head off. The Prince said that he likes the captain. I said, "But you told me the captain doesn't like you (yeah, right!)." The Boss tells me that the Prince finally got brave enough to tell the captain, "You don't like me." I asked the Prince, "What did the captain say?" "He said, 'Don't go taekwondo anymore.' " I noticed the big grin on the Boss's face and asked him what the captain really said. "He said, 'I don't like you? Of course, I like you.' " LOL What a little sneak!

Last night we spoke to Jiddo on the phone. When the kids and I first moved to Lebanon we spent the first few months with him and SIL. Everytime Baba would call and ask how things were Jiddo would laugh his head off. He loved how his son now had a little blond version of himself to make him as crazy as Baba had made him. You see, Baba started working over here soon after I found out I was pregnant. The twins turned 2 in March and we moved here in July of '06. Up until then they'd only seen their Baba for about a month at a time every few months. Even so, the Prince and Baba are just like each other.

At the Giurgian Festival held at my school last fall we saw one of my Arabic-speaking colleagues. She was the Islamic teacher for my girls at the time, before they switched some staff around. She looked at the twins, pointed first at the Prince and then at the Diva. She said, as she pointed, "One Lebanese, one American." She hit the nail right on the head. There are days I think he'll be a perfect member of their parliament. He likes nothing better than to argue for the sake of arguing even when he knows it'll get him nowhere. Except, that unlike them, he's highly intelligent and would more than likely "get 'er done".

But I have to say, that for all his onriness (sp?) and bullheadedness (is that even a word?), he will drop whatever he's doing when I say "give Mama a kiss?" That's my boy!