Gloating/Not gloating

My son is two-and-a-quarter years old and sat getting his haircut the other day without shedding a single tear. Primarily distracted by the hair-dryer across the room, he sat still until the whole event was through, only then calling for Mama. What a little gentleman!...

...who, three days earlier, woke us up by bringing a book for us to read -- a book that was goopy to the touch. At which point we realized that that container of Vaseline that we thought was too high for him to reach was, in fact, not high enough at all. After six baths over two days, most of the Vaseline was finally out of his hair.

The other day, our son defied what all the books say about kids his age, proudly declaring, "I try olives!" before gobbling down (several!) pitted, marinated kalamatas with relish. This gives him about a 25-year jump on his dad in the olive-eating category (also the raw-tomato-eating category). Our boy is adventurous in food...

...which is good given that his dad had a hard time eating from the major head-butt he got from his son, so hard that he got a major fat lip that brought about tears. The boy then gave himself a bloody nose (and currently only has one elbow without a scratch on it) and nearly bestowed a black eye on his mother from a unintentional fist. Don't send us donations; just drop off the Ace bandages. (Upon telling this story, we learned of a colleague whose now 17-year-old jumped off a coffee table onto his father's resting body on a sofa, cracking three of his ribs. Given that Xan has done this already, we may have something to look forward to.)