If only...

Elena and Sam were playing nicely all evening when I overheard Elena say something to the effect of, "We've been playing really well together today, Sam. We should do this more often."


I came into the room to get them ready for bed a minute later, and Elena said, "Mom, guess what! Sam and me decided that we're going to agree on everything for the rest of our lives."


I asked if I could get that in writing. They said no.


I think it lasted another 3.5 minutes, but it was nice while it lasted.

Curious George: the R Rated version

Sometimes when I read the kids their bedtime stories, I purposely mess up the words and they enjoy correcting me. So instead of the North Pole, I'll say the "Porth Nole", or I'll call Pete the Cat "Ceet the Pat."




I was doing this tonight and let's just say that from now on I will be a little more careful. All was going well until I got to the phrase "feed the ducks." Without thinking, I flipped the f and d, making Curious George "deed the *$#*s." Unfortunately I didn't catch what I was saying until it came out of my mouth.

Other than my eyes bulging out of my head at the moment I heard myself utter the mother-of-all-swear-words right in front of our 3 small children, I did my best to continue reading as though nothing had happened.  I might have been able to pull it off if Seth (and then I) hadn't burst into uncontrollable laughter prompting the kids to ask several times why he was laughing to hard.

Oh, dear. At least they quickly accepted my explanation that he just thought it was really funny when Mommy messed up the words.

Our Baby is 1!

Charlie celebrated his first birthday yesterday. He was the first of our kids to really dig into his birthday cake (literally). I tried a new recipe for his cake and it turned out to be delicious.  The main ingredient was - drum roll, please - Black Beans! It sounds strange, I know, but it was very yummy and not one kid complained or even noticed that anything was amiss. (I waited until they were finished with their cake to tell them what was in it.)

Here are some of the highlights:

Showing off the birthday banner  Elena made.

Charlie's first artistic masterpiece.  I call it  Don't Worry: It's Not Poop

This is what happens when I ask Sam to keep an eye on Charlie for a few minutes while I clear the table. You have to admit, it could be a whole lot worse. At least Charlie was still happy. And his forehead was happy, too (I'm pretty sure that's a smiley face).

Imitating

Charlie is reaching the age where he imitates everything he sees. It's so fun to see the details he observes and how he interprets them. The other night we were at a party and I was feeding him some snacks. Every once in awhile he would drop one, and then someone nearby would usually see and pick it up to throw away.

After this happened 4-5 times, he started squirming to be put down. He then placed his snack on the floor and then picked it back up to eat it. Apparently when he saw everyone else bending over to pick his food up off the floor, he thought that that was something one was supposed to do. For the rest of the night, every time I gave him a snack, he would first bend over, put it on the floor, then pick it up and eat it. (I know, I know that is completely disgusting to some of you, but it was so dang cute we decided to just apply the 5-second rule and let him do his thing.)

An exciting new development in Charlie's behavior is that he is beginning to show signs of being orderly, though I'm not getting my hopes up. Of course, he creates a colossal mess everywhere he goes like most kids his age, but occasionally he will find something out of place and put it back where it belongs.  As he was pulling stuff off the bathroom shelves, he found an empty shampoo bottle on the floor (I set it by the door so I could bring it to the recycling when I left); he crossed the room to pick it up and carried it over to the shelf with the shampoo and placed it there...before continuing to pull everything else off the shelves. And at my parents' house today, he found a book, brought it over to the book shelf and tried to stick it in among the rest of the books.

Those of you who know our other two children well will realize that this pretty much earth-shattering news for us. And I give my mom all the credit; she was one of those kids who drew a line across her shared bedroom so that her sister's mess would not cross onto her side. I  just hope it's not a phase that he will soon outgrow. If he does end up craving order, I guess the only downside would be that he may not enjoy so much being surrounded by the slovenly habits of his siblings (and let's be honest, his mom's not so hot at cleaning herself).




I have some pictures I am hoping to share, but either the blog or my computer is refusing to cooperate so you'll have to wait until I can figure out what's wrong.