Bugs and But

Cullen and Aiden have become terrified of bugs. Bees inparticular, but they think every flying insect is a bee, so basically all bugs. Unfortunately for them (and us) they both got stung by bees within a week of each other. However, neither one of them swelled at all. In fact they swell more from mosquito bites than bee stings. It got so bad that we finally had to force them to got outside and play. Cullen threw a fit for about 5 minutes, then suddenly got up and went to play and had a great time. Aiden ran off to the neighbor's house right away, but I found out later that he spent the whole time sitting inside their cardboard box fort, so no bugs would get him. Then at Cullen's Open House this week, I learned that he had a meltdown at school during recess about the bees. His teacher said it got to the point that she was like "Get over it!". Of course she didn't say that, but she was thinking it. It would have been nothing new to him had she said it, because he's heard the same thing from us. Then on Aiden's first day of preschool, he wouldn't even stand still outside for me to take his picture. He was ducking and looking around and freaking out about "the bugs", so I'm sure I got some great photos! Cullen seems to be over it for the most part now and Aiden was playing outside at preschool without freaking out when I picked him up, so hopefully the worst has passed.
On a more impressive note...Cullen brought home his first spelling list and he only missed one on his pretest! I decided to help him study his words by making up sentences with blanks in them to fill in with the correct spelling word. One of his words is but, so I made up a "but" statement. This intrigued him and he wanted to make one up. I can't remember what he said, but it wasn't a "but" statement. However, Aiden was next to us the whole time and started rattling off "but" statements. I could not believe it! He just kept saying I've got another one and rolling them out. I think he said about 10 before I finally stopped him. So then I said "That's great, but let's worry about something you should be learning, like your ABC's" Then out of nowhere, he just rattles the song off perfectly all by himself with no help. I almost cried! He has never been able to even make it halfway through the song without getting confused, so it was unbelievable. Of course that just makes me think even more, that it's not that he doesn't know these things, it's just that he thinks it's fun to screw with me. Oh and Cullen still hasn't figured out the "but" statement, BUT I'm sure he will!