Smart Little Buggars

So I need to hurry and write something before it's been a month since I've written something. Oh brother.

I have to go back a few weeks (or has it been a few months? I can't remember? Oh brother) to an incident I had with Lillian.

Lillian is definitely imaginative. Let me start with how the incident ended and work backwards. I was sleeping on my bed. I should put "sleeping" in parenthesis. I wasn't sleeping. I was lying on my bed. (I almost wrote "laying" but I could hear Mom in my head saying, "Chickens lay eggs.") So I was not laying or sleeping on my bed but my body was on my bed. I was very out-of-it. I had the stomach flu. Again. Lilly came screeching in from the living room, crying hysterically and scolding me, "I told you not to do that!! I told you not to put those in there!!!" (repeat 7 times) I roused myself enough to find out where I was and I tried to settle Lilly down. What had I done? I could barely understand her through the sniffling and snorting, "I told you not to put the bugs in there!! I told you not to!" Even in my bleary-eyed state, things clicked in my head very quickly. "Bring me your pot, Lilly," I commanded as coherently as I could.

There they were. Two nice, fat, wiggly, white, completely disgusting worms wriggling around in the little play pot that Lilly was cooking something (not worms!) in just a few minutes ago.

Backing up: I had been trying to stay in the living room with Lilly that morning while I had the stomach flu so she wouldn't be lonely. I think being lonely is better than being accompanied by a barfing mother. When Lilly saw that I was sick and lying on the couch, she was kind enough to bring me her miniature play pot to serve as my throw-up catcher. She liked the idea of the play pots so she got the rest of them out and left one on my arm as a precaution I'm sure. Then she found the acorns to play with--the acorns she and Will had painted (?) with Grandma and Grandpa. She rested an acorn on my arm so that I could "participate" in what she was doing. Not long after that I had to make a run for the bathroom so I dropped the acorn in her pot and told her to cook it for me while I was gone. After the stop-off in the bathroom, I placed my body on the bed and drifted off, only to be awaken by Lilly's accusatory screams.

Like I said, it took a few minutes for my groggy mind to put it together but I was still amazed: How did those little things know to hatch out of that acorn right at that exact moment? I couldn't help but sneak out a little laugh.

Smart little buggars.

(Whew, made it with 20 minutes to spare before a month was up! Oh brother.)

Why Will! What a big nose you have!

Lilly and Will in the kitchen. Lilly crying. I come in and ask, “What’s the matter?” Will answers, “I didn’t hurt her. She fell right here.” (Hits his head on the island on the opposite side of the island Lilly is on.) I respond, “No, she wasn’t even on that side.” Will runs around to the end of the island, “Okay. How about right here? (bonks head) She hurt herself right here.”

Nice try, buddy.

Epilogue

Just in case the last post seemed a bit too cutesy:

A little while ago I noticed the Snuggle Puppy poster on the ground in Will's room (with everything else he and Isaac own) and when I peered a little closer I noticed markings all over the Puppy. I also noticed a Bic pen lying on the ground with everything else Will and Isaac own so I asked Will what all the markings were. They were arrows. Not the kind in a compass, the kind Robin Hood owns. Apparently Snuggle Puppy is now Slaughtered Puppy.

Oooodalolly ooodalolly!

Puppy Love

So the other day Will's teacher called me during school. I answered the phone rather nervously, wondering what was wrong. She informed me that Will had won a coloring contest and as a prize, he could choose a poster at the Book Fair and could I come and help him pick one out? Yes, you read that right: Will won a coloring contest.

I went after school and took Will up to the Book Fair to see the 3 giant boxes of posters he could choose from. He was clueless as to what was going on. I told him we would look through the posters in one box and then after he saw them all, he could choose. The very first poster we saw was a cute little puppy. We continued to flip for a few minutes past all kinds of posters of teen idols, Spiderman motorcycles and lots of "sweet" shiny sports cars. Three-fourths of the way through the box, there was a pink poster with hearts and a grey kitty. After seeing them all, it came down to the pink kitty or the snuggly puppy. A hard decision but the puppy came home with us. How appropriate for the snuggle bug of the family.

Say What?

So I decided to be really careful with which picture to post on the blog today. I went with the safe one.

Tonight I was reading The Tale of Despereaux with Isaac and we got to a sentence that said something about someone maneuvering something down the hallway. Isaac's eyes got really big and his mouth turned into a grin and he said, "Oooooohhh...naughty." I was a bit confused. I asked him to explain. He said, "It said 'pooping.'" It did? I missed it. Is my reading comprehension lower than my 3rd grader's? Most likely but that's beside the point. I asked him to elaborate some more so he explained, "It said 'manure-ing.'" Oh! I giggled. I re-pronounced the word, this time emphasizing the "v" in the word and explained as best I could what "manueVering" is. Not quite as exciting as manure-ing. Do we have a new verb? Nah, I'm sure teenage Chris already came up with that one...

Wrap-Arounds

So today's theme is "Wrap-Arounds." Lots of different wrap-arounds.

When someone like Mark Mulcahey thinks about a wrap-around, something like meat wrapped around meat pops into his mind I'm sure.

I've heard of these. Someday I'll eat one.

When I think of wrap-arounds, the first image in my head is the blue wrap-around skirt with the tie knot at the top I remember so vividly my Mom wearing during most of my childhood. Mom, you get points for frugality, talent (I'm sure you sewed it yourself) and for being consistently skinny to fit in the same skirt for years. I looked for a picture of the skirt and this is as close as I could find:



Another wrap-around is me trying to wrap my mind around buying diapers again.
And changing them all day every day. And soon having smelly ones in the garbage can. Hum. Still wrapping around that one.


Closely related are the paper roses that are suddenly blooming in our bathroom. See, Lilly has been attempting to take care of her needs in the bathroom independently by taking a 30 foot length of TP and wrapping it around and around and around her fingers and then it's supposed to be "used" but instead these little blooms end up all over the bathroom floor. And 5 or 6 roses end up in the toilet but not flushing DOWN the toilet. I don't know if one of these has ever been actually "used" for the purpose for which they are so carefully created.

Anne has always had a knack for being able to wrap her mind around the reality of things:

August 17th, 2005 was when Anne got 2 letters from Grandma and Grandpa Sykes who are in Long Island. Anne wrote them letters and they wrote back. Anne read them silently and after she read Grandpa’s letter she chuckled and commented to me that Grandma must have written that letter and signed Grandpa’s name. I asked why she thought that and she told me that it was because it said, “Love, Grandpa” and Grandpa didn’t write that because Grandpa doesn’t do stuff like that.

And at the same time, she's able to wrap her arms around her little sister:

On Friday, June 10th, 2005 after Lily had her 2 month check and immunizations, Lily was very sore and cranky after her shots—every time we moved her or touched her, especially around her leg area, she just fussed and cried. It’s not like her to be so fussy. We all felt so bad for her. Anne and I were looking down into her carseat and expressing our sympathy for Lily to each other and Anne remarked to me, “I wish I could take her place.”

Will's favorite wrap-around:



I found a conversation that I had with Isaac when he was 5, almost 6, that demonstrated what he was trying to wrap his mind around back then:

During breakfast Isaac started asking me deep questions that I was interested to hear: “How did God become alive?” I told him I wished I knew and I thought that when we got up to heaven we’d be able to understand the answer to that question and lots of other answers to questions like it. Isaac was pleased with that answer and started getting excited as he thought of more things he would understand, “Yah, like ‘How did He become a baby?’ and how He got made and how nothing appeared before we were up in heaven.”

Indeed. Still wrapping around that one too.

Also, I started looking through iPhoto with the kids last night and noticed how well Pa has got Lilly wrapped around his little finger:



















As for now, I think I'll spend the rest of the day unearthing a blue blankie to wrap around someone new in a few days...

More Moab Please!

So we went to Moab for Spring Break a month and a half ago but since I'm behind on everything by at least a month and a half, it's time for me to write about it. Here are the best parts of the trip:

The trip started typically. Dave instructed the kids to all go to the bathroom before they got in the van to leave the house: "I don't care if you have to go or not, you have to go before you get in the van!" So we pulled out of the driveway and headed about a mile away to the gas station and before we got there, Anne had to go to the bathroom! Awesome!














We found a pretty cool lizard after it warmed up enough for the lizards to venture out. (The first morning was really cold, see first picture. One older guy passed Lilly and admired her Daisy Duke shorts and said, "Here I am in long underwear and she's marching around in shorts!") The kids were all excited about the lizard and they scrambled around on the rocks to watch it for awhile. Finally, Isaac got impatient because it was keeping us from starting our hike: "Come on you guys! We're spending too much time on him! It's not like he's Jesus or something." Our hike commenced immediately.














Lilly looked amazingly similar to how she looked in Oregon:


And Will looked amazingly like his dad:

And the arches and 70-degree weather and the thousands of friendly Mormon families and the crystal blue skies and the bacon and eggs for breakfast in the hotel lobby and the fact that we took only books and no movies and the kids survived and even got along and just that it was a really perfect trip were good things too.

How Could I Forget?

Oh, I have a blog?! That's right.

Yesterday was Fast Sunday. Isaac was claiming death was on his doorstep all morning. I told him if he felt fine about it, he could have a snack before church. He didn't. He survived through Sacrament Meeting with all kinds of excruciating facial expressions and his tongue lolling out. After he went to Primary, his Primary teacher came up to me and whispered that during the lesson, she had asked the class what the Sacrament was. Isaac piped up, "Breakfast!" (Thank heavens his teacher thought it was funny.)

The other day Will and Lilly were sitting by each other up at the island. Lilly is turning into a bully and while I wasn't watching, she chucked something at Will. Will immediately called to me that Lilly threw something right at him and that it hit his eye! But don't worry, it was okay because he had closed his "eye shield" just in time! Whew!


Lilly is singing all the time these days. Half the time I can decipher the song by either the tune or the words but usually only one of those at a time. A lot of the time it's a recognizable melody but with completely made up nonsense words. So the other day I recognized the tune of "I am a Child of God" and when it came to the part of "teach me all that I must do" she sang the beautiful words, "Cheat me all that I want to..." Hum. Close enough??

Anne is very interested in this blog. Well, she used to be when I used to write things in it (on it?). She will ask to read my blog and sit in front of the computer for long periods of time, reading and re-reading everything. She'll laugh just like she's never read it before and then she'll give me a suggestion: "Mom, you could write about my blanket." I usually say "okay" and then I go for a month or two without writing about anything. So today I found a journal entry about Anne and her blankie that I thought I would put in. This was when Anne was 8 1/2 years old:

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 I was washing Anne’s blanket which is always a traumatic time and unfortunately I didn’t have it done in time for bedtime. I put Anne to bed and assured her I would bring the blanket in to her when it was done and she should go to sleep in the meantime. So that was that and then I got a long phone call and went into the laundry room for some quiet and so turned off the washing machine during the rinse cycle with Anne’s blanket inside. I continued on the phone and about 45 minutes later heard Anne bawling from her bed—she was wailing, “I neeeeeeeeddd heeerrrrrr!!!” Eventually David came home from Scouts and went in and lectured her at which point Anne got up, went to the washing machine and pulled the blanket out of the rinse water, threw it into the dryer after sloshing 5 gallons of water across the floor, wrote me a note saying, “Dear Mom—Please start the drier. Blankie is in there. Anne.” I had to put Blankie (she is a person, after all) back into the washer, re-start the rinse cycle, take only the blankie out of the washer and put it into the dryer so it would dry extra-quick and then take it into Anne when it was dry. Anne was propped in bed with about 10 pillows behind her and her arms folded across her and it had been about 2 hours since I originally put her down.

I couldn't possibly add anything more. The end.

Riding the Wave!

So it all started one day back in December when we were getting ready to go to Pack Meeting. I told Will the normal stuff like, "Get your socks and shoes and coat on and wash your face off..." and blah blah blah and then I added something atypical: "...and comb your hair!" We must have been in a hurry because I don't normally turn hair responsibilities over to kids under the age of 8. So I was delighted when Will came to me in his socks and shoes and coat and messy face with dripping wet hair. He told me excitedly, "I did it with a knife!" At first I freaked but then realized he couldn't remember the name of a comb and got it confused with a knife. Phew. Off we went to Pack Meeting where Will's hairdo was greeted with much appreciation from some of the other mothers. None of the fathers would notice something as important as a 4 year-old's first hairdo.

The weeks passed and Will got better and better at doing his hair with a knife and realized he could get it big and cool. The farther up it stuck and the fluffier it was, the better. It started drying in ways I didn't even know possible (and in ways I would have been so jealous of in the 8th grade!) and Will decided he was the awesomest thing on two legs. I'll just let the pictures speak a thousand words.

I AM the beef...

Here are two ways two of my kids have flattered me lately:

Will: We were reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for a bedtime story and we got to the part where the hungry little caterpillar becomes a big fat caterpillar and Will stopped and asked me, "Was he as fat as you?"

Anne: I was getting dressed in my closet when Anne unexpectedly walked in on me and I shrieked and asked, "What are you doing?" She just answered, "Oh, I just came to put Dad's jeans away." She handed me my jeans and left.

Waahh.

Here's the beef...

So here are my favorite kids' quotes recently:

I noticed that Isaac had started to take his own initiative to shower lately. He was getting up early in the morning and showering, being careful to leave his wet towel lumped somewhere. After a few times of Isaac doing this, I noticed that the "kid shampoo" had been in my bathroom for the last week or two but Isaac had been showering in the other bathroom. Hum. So one time I asked him what he had been using to wash with when he showered? He answered casually, "Oh, a cryptus smoothie." Hum, how mysterious. I had to go peek at his secret cleaner and there is was: Suave Citrus Smoothie. Good enough. Now let's just hope he's been using the cryptus shampoo (that was hidden) and not the cryptus conditioner (that was out in plain sight).

Will helped me make some deliveries this month. I didn't do Visiting Teaching visits, but rather "drop-offs" and while we were out, we took some stuff to some people that had just had babies. Three-fourths of the way finished, Will got back into his seat and declared, "Mom, this is awesome!" I asked him, "What's so awesome, Will?" And he responded, "All this doing!"

But my favorite was when Will was helping me again, this time browning the hamburger and onions for the spaghetti sauce. After some of the grease had leaked out of the meat and it started to jump and spit, some of it splashed on to Will. Of course I did the whole, "Oh, Will, are you okay? I'm sorry you got burned!" And Will leaned into me and started rubbing my shoulder and back and reassured me, "Oh, it's okay Mom. I still love you anyway!"

Cream O Weber

So we haven't had cottage cheese forever! I don't know why, we're just not in the habit I guess. But the other day it sure looked good at the store so I got a big container of it. At home, I offered some to Will. He didn't remember "cottage cheese" by name but when I showed him some in a bowl, he got excited. He dug right in and declared, "This is good! It's made out of crumbs and milk, huh?"