Hmmmm...

This weekend was pretty good, and we had two nights of company (one of being company and one of having company). :-) The night of being company went really well, except for Nathan realizing that the time it took to get out of doctor's dress-up was longer than the time he had before the critical bathroom time. ha
The next day we decided to invite over a family we haven't visited with in a long while. Evan left after church and lunch, and he didn't get back until about 15 minutes before our company arrived. I had done a lot while Noelle was napping then decided to wait for him to get home before doing some last-minute things, but he called and said he would be later, so I got it into gear and got the necessary things done. :-) It's amazing what you can get done when you must.
The evening went really well but sort-of crashed at the end (in our parent minds). The girls (5 and 7) played really well with Nathan, but Nathan just gets so over-excited when new people come over. Evan caught him throwing bowlfuls of dog food out into the yard, one of the girls ratted him out for throwing poop (they were doing it, too, she was just mentioning the fact - ha), and the finale was when the oldest girl came in yelling that Nathan was spraying lemon stuff everywhere. He had gotten into the cleaning supplies that are in the laundry room (which is accessible from the dogs' yard). He had left the door to the laundry room/garage open, and I found the dogs cowering in their crate. I sniffed them all over (yes, you can laugh) and didn't smell anything on them (he scared me because he pointed to the Clorox when I asked if he had sprayed anything else). The other parents are very laid-back, thankfully, so they didn't mind taking their girls home smelling like Pledge. Evan and I were both fairly exasperated with our son. I just kept wondering what on earth we had done wrong that made our son act like a total crazy person.
Then I remembered the good things. Like the fact that when the younger girl had an accident and had to borrow a pair of his pants and was not very excited about the fact that she was wearing boy pants, he told her that she was still pretty. And they DID play exceptionally well together. We had the windows open to the back yard, and I saw them several times digging in the dirt while talking about their garden or making a very exciting game with a rope.
Evan and I were discussing the situation after Nathan went to bed, and he said that we just have to do this again. We gave him some pretty harsh consequences for his actions; now we just have to give him the opportunity to do it again the right way. I suppose the hardest thing to deal with is my personal pride. How could I raise a child who acts that way?! ha