He's also at a stage of life where he has some extreme emotions, and gets quite worked up about some things. He has his mother's competitive nature (not always a good thing) and he's one of the younger brothers, so he's always out to work as hard or harder than anyone else on everything he does. This can get quite exhausting and difficult, and at certain moments he gets "full of vinegar" as he and I like to put it. Because he understands about real vinegar, he also seems to have a true understanding of what I mean when I say he has "vinegar inside" of him. And he's learning how to let that out. It's pretty neat to see. Sometimes he will tell me he has vinegar in him and he doesn't want to hurt George, it just happens. When he has vinegar, if I'm nearby, I can help him make it somewhere safe to get that out--like we used Nana and Grandpa's couch in Provo (he yelled into it as loud as he could), or sometimes I have to tickle it out, or he has to do some jumping jacks, or run out and jump on the trampoline. The other day I told him that Dad and I had a fun time on our tennis date, and that it felt really good to hit those balls hard--it helped us get our vinegar out. He smiled knowingly at me, and it made me feel good to know that he has some understanding of the normalcy of frustration in our lives and also has an understanding of what he can do to get it out of his system before it harms someone or some relationship he has with someone. We sure love this sometimes-vinegary-boy. :-)
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