THE BAD ONE BALKS AT EFFORT

So I floated the idea of the kids joining the Cannonball II: How Do You Do bye my wife and the two girls. As suspected, the eldest jumped at the chance and even asked if it was ok if she read more than one book a week. (cue fatherly pride) Of course it's alright to rad more than one. Unfortunately for her father, she's going to make me look bad by finishing the damn contest in twenty weeks or so. She's required to read books that are age appropriate or higher, no comics and has to write ten book reports/reviews. I'll post the odd one up here so you can bask in the cuteness.

The middle daughter was, let us say, less than enthusiastic. Her initial response was disbelief, quickly followed by "I don't think I want to do that". When I asked her why she said it was because she didn't think she could read very well. I assure you this is not the case. I asked her how she thought she would get better if she didn't practise and what she was going to do when she got older and couldn't read very well? Both her mother and I told her that she could read quite well for her age and so she agreed to do it too but we had to do a lot of prodding. She also has to give us an oral report on the book to prove she read it.

I should probably mention something about the bad one. She's smart, stubborn and devious. She knows that if she slacks off, usually somebody will do whatever needs doing for her, usually her sister (Smart!). Once we made her clean up her room, for two days! Finally, Jacq decided she'd had enough and made Baddy sit in the corner for half an hour then sent her back to clean her room. This happened four times until finally Jacq asked her whether she wanted to clean her room or sit in the corner. She chose the corner. When I came home she had been there a couple of hours (Stubborn!).  I knew that this tactic wasn't going to work as I would've done the same thing as Baddy (we are very much alike) so I tried a different tactic. I told her she wasn't eating anything until her room was clean. It was done in half an hour.

Now the deliciously devious part of her personality. My wife and I were sitting in the living room, watching tv while the girls were in the bath tub. All of a sudden we hear this spine-tingling screech from the bathroom liek somebody was strangling an sopprano abino cat. We, of course, figured someone slipped or otherwise got hurt and went rushing in. Baddy was crying and we could see a pretty hard bite mark on her arm. We questioned Goody as to why she would bite her sister to which she responded that she didn't. Of course we don't believe her and continue to press for information. Now Goody is like her mom, a terrible liar, so as she sticks to her story for a good ten minutes we looked into the matter a little further. After rocking some serious CSI shit we concluded that Baddy had, in fact, bitten herself hard enough to leave deep indentations and bruising in order to get her sister into trouble. Did I mention she was two at the time? Yeah, I can't wait until she hits the teenage years.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, both girls are CannonBalling and we've determined what the prize will be. If they both finish the fifty-two books in a year they will each get a $100.00 gift card to McNally Robinson (it's a book store). Goody was extatic, Baddy's reply was "So we win more books if we read all the books? Hmmmmm." So I did capitulate and told her she could buy something else, from the bookstore. HA! Game on, bitches.