April Fools!

I've spent the last 24 hours trying to explain to the kids what "April Fool's Day" is. It's safe to say it was not very successful. It started last night with Addy when I told her that today would be the start of a new month. She immediately went to her Frozen calendar and changed the page and saw that it was Olaf & exclaimed, "oh yeah it's Olaf because he is funny and April is a funny month because of April Fool's." She also knew what it was because of an Arthur book that we have but she was confident that the jokes in that book "were not good ones to use" (she was right.) Before bed we brainstormed some funny tricks that she could play the next day at school. She said that she could tell her teacher that we were getting a cat for a pet (obviously a joke!). So we practiced it and she said it perfectly. We also thought she could tell her teachers she was moving to Wisconsin, so we practiced that (I played the role of her teacher) and again she nailed it. I told her that her teachers would think she was so funny. This resulted in her saying, "well I don't want to say this because I don't want everyone to laugh at me because then I will be sad" and within seconds she was actually crying at the thought of telling a joke and making everyone laugh. Not the reaction I was expecting.

This morning Cameron and I went to wake her up and I said, "Happy April Fools' Day!" and she asked me to tell her an April Fools' joke.  She hated my first one (I told her all of her hair fell out) so then I told her that Santa Claus was downstairs (to try and get her out of bed). She knew it was a joke, but I forgot that Cameron was still new to the concept. So of course he was super excited to go downstairs and was quite disappointed to find out I had just been joking (where is Santa, I don't see him?). Over breakfast we tried to explain the idea to Cameron and told him that he could tell his teacher he was Superman as a joke. He loved it and quickly stated, "I'm Superman, April Fool's!" I told him he had to tell that to his teacher when he got to school, but instead he insisted on telling me that he was not Superman, he was Cameron. He was not interested in telling anyone a joke that wasn't true.

When we got to school I tried to nudge both kids to tell their jokes and but they just yelled in refusal. They wouldn't even tell them to Brian after school. I think we'll keep working on this one and see if next year is more successful!