It's a bit real.

Mirror, Mirror
Your own children are often a mirror, particularly when they are young. I find that most of the time when I am frustrated with Alex, I'm actually frustrated with my own short comings reflected in his behavior. When you see your bad habits reflected in your children, it grieves you and is a very strong wake up call. It highlights your role as a parent to set the culture of the home, which I believe has a big effect on the child's life, and shouts "Do Better, Be Better" like a Senior Manager.

A trivial example of this is with our 4 mth old puppy Zorro. Zorro loves to bark, and for a while his favorite time to do so was 4:50am... every morning. Somewhat understandable I would get up and yell shut up dog. One day the dog was barking at lunch time, and Alex turns to the window and yells "Shut up dog!"... not a great result, forces you to think - if my 2 yr old son was watching me how would I handle the situation?

For the record, I am taking a different approach with the dog, firmly and calmly correcting his behavior - this actually works, where yelling just confused the dog.

The other good news is the learning from example phenomenon works in the positive direction as well. Recently I've applied this to wearing sun cream and hats. I hate wearing hats, however it is paying off as this morning Alex actually asked to put sun cream on - although he did roll sun cream in my eye in the process. This is a great tool, I plan on using it to instill christian character.

Cricket
I few days ago I was changing Baby Zoe's nappy, and a stream of projectile poo sprayed out at me. I had the clean nappy in my left hand open, and quick as flash I caught it in the nappy like Mark Waugh at Slip. Not a drop fell on my clothes, or the floor. Two observations:

1. it is possible to dirty a nappy before it is even on; and 
2. all those hours of cricket were not wasted. 

Yesterday, a similar situation happened to Louise... all I can say is, she should have played more cricket.