nice kids outside of stepford city limits...who knew?

Babysat tonight for the first time for FearlessLeader & his wife SuperCalm. They have four kids: in the manner of naming dwarves I've blog-named them Smarmy, Crafty, Grinny and Bashful. Please feel free to take all of those labels in the nicest possible way because they are GREAT kids! There's two things I particularly like about them:

1. They don't fight.
Their parents are fairly strict, with enough exceptions to make sure they have some fun in life. But there are things they just are never allowed to do and one of them is fight with each other. They disagree plenty, they negotiate, they give opinions, but they don't yell at each other or call names. It's SO NICE!! I'm sure it's taken years of teaching them alternatives, but whatever effort they made is worth it. These kids actually like each other and are truly friends.

2. They manage to be well-behaved without being boring.
Self-explanatory really. I've looked after well-behaved kids before, but they're not always very interesting to be around. At first I didn't know what these kids were like because they were quite timid around me (me being so scary and all.../rolls eyes/) but now they have warmed up to me, they're actually pretty clever and funny. They're also really children, you know? They're kids and they act like kids - not 9 going on 23, but 9 going on 10, 4 going on 5, etc. It's refreshing.