Vandelism

After living in our apartment since around Julyish, Jedidiah has formed a friendship, well kind of. There are a few other couples with children that live in our apartment building. This one little boy he saw soon after we moved here, and Jedidiah's comment on the little guy was, "what's wrong with him? He is too happy." Jedidiah said this because the cute lil guy smiles "ALL" the time. Every time you see him he is smiling. Such a pleasant lil guy. Last week they discovered that they live right next door to each other. They love to ride their tricycles around the stairwell.

There is a gate around it except for on the side that the steps go down. I have to admit it makes me nervous. I am afraid one of them will have some kind of a mishap and fall down the steps. Roger, on the other hand has no worries. He says they will be fine, and that Jedidiah has enough sense to know that riding down the steps would not be a good idea. I still believe that boys sometimes have ideas without thinking them through. Actually, I am certain of it. Now back to the story. The kids will each go into their apartments and bring out toys to play with outside. I explained to Jedidiah that he is not allowed to go into Fernando's house, and Fernando isn't allowed to come inside ours. I feel this is a good practice for "new" friends. I haven't seen Jedidiah go into their house, but F likes to come into ours. He will come in and look around and go back into the bedroom. I tell them to go back outside. I need to learn how to say this in Spanish, because F doesn't speak any English. He just smiles. It seems playing is a universal language. The reason I titled this post vandalism is the boys got out markers to color in coloring books, and they wrote on the concrete outside our apartment doors. F is about 2 or so years younger than Jedidiah so he just did some scribbling, but Jedidiah drew a boat and some letters. Jedidiah was so proud of his artwork. I prefered the scribbling, at least it looked more like an accident. I tried to explain to him that this was vandalism and that we shouldn't deface other people's property. I am always looking for good teaching moments. I just wished it could have been a different topic. Tonight I bought some magic erasers and will attempt to remove the markings tomorrow. Wish me luck!