18th December

Ben's vision teacher came today. She had Ben play with package bows. He didn't like them. He'd touch one, make a face, then drop it. I guess he doesn't like smooth textures. He was cute. Eric has an obsession with teasing. Karen is most often the subject of the teasing, but sometimes it is Ben. I don't know why I lived with it so long. I guess I thought it was just a phase that would go away after the hundredth "stop it". I just couldn't stand it anymore. This morning I decided that Eric would go to his room for 5 minutes everytime he teased. He learned pretty quickly and only got sent to his room three times, although it was reported that he teased while I was in the shower. Hopefully this crack down will end the teasing. When my aunt was here she kept mistakenly calling Eric by the name of my younger brother. Just a week before her visit I remarked to Aaron that Eric's behavior reminded me of my younger brother when we were kids. I suspect that was why my aunt kept calling Eric by my brother's name. My brother was aweful and never got in trouble. I got in trouble for retaliating. This was back in the day when older brother would be in charge while the parents were gone. It wasn't a good idea. I'm not sure I should ever leave more than one child home alone! They can do some naughty things in company.

I had no plan for dinner. By afternoon I thought I was going to go buy walmart pizza. As I was cleaning the kitchen I found a recipe for turkey chili and decided to make it. After I had chopped the veggies I realized we had no canned black beans. I ended up using red beans. After putting in the beans I went downstairs to get a can of corn. Right next to the case of corn was a whole case of black beans! Dh bought them just before Ben was born, but they are behind the case of tomato sauce, so I never saw them. At least now I know we have lots of black beans. I almost bought a case at the last case lot sale. I made corn bread to go with the chili. I had wondered why the batter was weird and they didn't bake up the same as usual. It was as I brought out the milk batch that I realized I had forgotten the eggs! If you are allergic to eggs, cornbread will still work out, it just won't be the same light and fluffy texture. The muffins were more like biscuits than muffins. They were eaten anyway.