From the moment that he came into our lives, we knew we had an imp on our hands.  Woo seemed to want to play a trick on you, make you laugh, or get you riled up from an early age.  I’ll never forget the first time that I became aware that he was a trickster.  He was six or seven months old, and had just woken from a nap.  I was listening to his happy babbles on the baby monitor in the kitchen, when I noticed that they had changed from babbles to a new pattern.  I would hear some rustling of his blankets, followed by a few seconds of silence, then he would say “HEE HEE HEE”, and giggle.  He repeated this a few times until I got curious enough to check it out.

I snuck up the stairs and opened his door.  He had been sleeping in a lounger on the floor and was facing the door.  When I quietly opened the door, his blanket was over his head and he was perfectly still. He gave the “HEE HEE HEE”, giggled, and shot his arms up in the air to pull the blanket off his head.  He then gathered the blanket up, covered his head again and grew still one more time before going through the routine again.  After I watched a couple more times, I snuck in and said “where’s Woo?” at just the right moment.  He paused and then carried through his routine, but when he pulled the blanket off this time he looked so pleased with himself.

This was the first sign he might be a bit of a troublemaker. It’s continued as he has grown, and most of the time he is trying to get a laugh.  Once he does, he can’t stop trying for more laughs.  It is generally pretty cute, but occasionally gets out of hand.  Like after a few weeks of school last year when every parent that we met made comments like “oh, so THIS is the famous Woo” or “so YOU are Woo’s parents, we have heard so much about him!” He settled down after a couple of weeks, but I often wondered what we weren’t hearing about, and when it would start to get out of hand.

I was certain that he was going to grow into the class clown and that we would have many, many calls to pick him up from the principal’s office for this behavior.  I was wrong. The lils met me at the gate one day last week, and Goose reported that Woo had hit her.  I tried to get to the bottom of it, but neither were really clear on how it happened, if a teacher had been notified, or if he had been punished.  I figured that I would try again later and we headed home for snack.  As I was unpacking his back, I got to the bottom of the story.  It was there that I found a note.

The note had clearly been read by Woo, as it was ripped in half.  It told how Woo had been naughty at school and had to be sent to the principal’s office and miss the majority of his recess as punishment.  It seems that he didn’t just hit his sister, he did it with a shovel! This was not the impression that I thought he would be leaving, just two short weeks into school at the age of five! His teacher did acknowledge that it was out of character and he had clearly been punished for his actions, so we talked through the behaviour and why we never take out our frustrations by hitting.  He seems to have gotten the message, and we haven’t had any incidents since.  I am hoping that there will be no next note, or the dreaded call from another child’s parents, but I fear that hope is in vain.  Perhaps this is why you don’t put siblings in the same class?!