She didn’t really give us any trouble. She could be stubborn and would backtalk us to no end, another trait she seemed to have inherited from Alice although they weren’t related by blood, but she usually obeyed us. That doesn’t mean we never grounded her, though. Regardless, she was a good kid and after the health scare at Helena’s that Christmas, she was really careful with her health. We felt really lucky to have such a great kid.

Charlie was another story. While he wasn’t bad by any means, he was really ornery and rambunctious. We blamed a lot of that on Shane, who taught him how to play pranks on us. It was sort of funny for awhile until Alice found a pound of hamburger that had been sitting in her backseat for days. They’d only intended to have it there an hour or so, but Alice had cancelled the trip she’d been planning and it had wound up sitting in there for about three days before she found it.

We made Shane pay for the cleaning, but there was absolutely no way they could ever have gotten that stink out. So, I wound up buying Alice a new Mini, and asked Shane to pay me half the cost of the car. I also withheld my son’s allowance for quite some time until he’d paid a good portion of it too. We also had a talk with him. He was about thirteen or so when it had happened, and he and Shane obviously felt bad about it afterward, but that didn’t make him stop pranking us even after we’d grounded him. I don’t think Shane took part in the pranks after that incident, but Charlie kept doing it for years.

I really think he inherited most if his behavior traits from Alice, which would have been well and good if she wasn’t an overgrown child. I say that as lovingly as I possibly can, but…well, facts are facts. I liked that about her, but wasn’t such a fan when it carried over into our son’s behavior. While he didn’t really get into much trouble at school, he was sort of the class clown and we were always being told to talk with him about appropriate behaviors in the classroom. What I think his teachers never understood is that it didn’t really matter how many times we discussed it with him. He was just that way and continued to be for a long time.