Halloween

Frankie was a very cute tiger for Halloween this year, as you can see. He didn't want to stand up normal for the picture.

 And it looks like he's already picked out his costume for next year. As long as his head doesn't grow too much, he can be a popcorn popper. He's been wearing the top to our popcorn popper on his head all night (he calls it his "football hat")

Deep Thoughts

"If you turn your head all the way to the side, your nose looks like the letter E." - Charlie

And another from Charlie as I was tucking him in tonight: "When I grow up I'm going to marry Debbie. But if Debbie married someone else, I will marry Gia. And if Gia marries someone else, I will marry.....Tenly. And if Tenly marries someone else, I will marry Kaitlyn! And if Kaitlyn marries someone else, I will marry....(long pause) I'm done talking about this now." And then he fell asleep.

Happy Birthday, Frankie

Frankie turned 2 about six weeks ago. So I guess that's how far behind I am. Anyway, once again he was fortunately to have his birthday 4 days after his cousin Gabby's so my sister could make a beautiful Elmo birthday cake for them.  I made a mediocre-looking but tasty cake for his actual birthday at home.

He really, really enjoys the "Happy Birthday Song" as you can tell from this video. He now sings it whenever we light a candle. Seth and I also got quite a kick out of Sam casually dancing while we were singing.

Charlie and the Eagle

A part of me looks forward to the day when I won't have the vast majority of my time taken up with taking care of little kids. Not because I don't like taking care of children, but because there are other areas of the community where I would like to help or volunteer and I can't. And once in awhile I would just like to say "I need to go to wherever for a day (or an evening or a weekend)" without having to call up the National Guard to help watch our kids so I can go.

However, there's this other part of me that absolutely dreads the day I will no longer have small children at home - because, holy buckets, can they make me laugh!

Like the other day when Charlie and Reed ran inside "quick!" because they saw an eagle (probably actually a turkey vulture) flying overhead. Here's his reaction:

House remodel pictures...finally!

We finished our house remodel almost a year ago, but I never did get around to sharing before and after pictures. Here they are.

For those of you who haven't been in our house before, it might be hard to visualize how this all goes together. It doesn't help that I'm a pretty poor photographer, but I'll do my best to explain.

Before: this was our formal dining room and sitting/play room, separated by pocket doors:

 After: We took out the wall and made one long living room right off the kitchen. I can finally keep an eye on the kids while I'm cooking in the kitchen! Life has much improved with this change.

Before: Turn around, and you can see our formal dining room from the opposite end. This is actually a before-before picture of the dining room (before we painted it and before the remodel). This was a beautiful room that was original to the house, but functionally it was making my life crazy. This room broke up the kitchen from the "living quarters" of the house, and the kids were constantly dragging stuff into this room on their walk from one part of the house to the next. It functioned less as a dining room, and more as a perpetually messy sight and sound barrier between the kitchen (aka, my home base) and the play room & living room (aka, the kids' home base).

After: Our new living room, separated from the kitchen by an island rather than 3 or 4 feet of cabinetry. Don't worry! We still kept that hutch and the 120 year old chandelier....stay continued.

Before: Here you can see our galley kitchen with a bathroom just next to where we cooked. Can't say we miss that.

After: We were able to reuse pretty much all the cabinets, just moving them to a more efficient layout. My favorite is the "kids' counter" - made out of necessity because the former bathroom window went too low for a standard counter. Not only is it a great place for the kids to help me in the kitchen, but as short as I am, it's actually a perfect height for me to bake. Kneading and rolling out dough are especially easier.

(I will add that our floor looks normal now. We hadn't finished it yet when I took this picture.)

Before: We loved eating in our breakfast nook, but as the family kept getting bigger, it was becoming crowded when we all ate there together (not to mention that we frequently have extra kids over). It was also a trap for clutter since it was a difficult area to clean out and sweep.

After: the breakfast nook and formal dining room converge into a single dining space. Here you can see the hutch (which was quite the task to move!) and chandelier (quite the unexpected expense to move!) from the old dining room. 

Before: The isolated living room, which was off in a corner of it's own in the house. The bottom picture was taken before we repainted in case you're wondering why half the room would be green and half gray. The covered doorway there lead to the old library (new bathroom featured in a previous post). 

After: We were pleased to have come up with a solution that allowed us to keep and actually improve on our library. The old library was small and cramped; the new allows room for our piano and other instruments.

Quotes from Charlie

Here are a few of Charlie's latest comments that made us laugh.

Looking at a picture in one of his story books of a mom mowing the lawn: "Hey! Moms can't mow the lawn!!" (Seth and I fit pretty well into very gender-stereotyped roles, which looks like it might get Charlie into trouble if he ever spouts this stuff around the wrong person. In my defense, the last couple of times I tried mowing the lawn, Frankie started crying for me so much, we just gave up.)

"That's not a question mark. It's a mystery."

"Remember when Reed was 4 and then he turned 5?.....That was totally funny."

Charlie: I have to go pee.
Me: I have to go pee, too.
Charlie: You have to go PEE???!!!
Me: Yes, we both have to go at the same time (thinking that's what he's so astounded by).
Charlie: Girls can GO PEE?? How can girls go pee???

Getting in the car, I turn on the engine as Charlie is getting in his seat. He says, "Mom! I'm not in my seat yet. Don't go until I say 'hit it!'" I wait a few seconds, hear his seat belt click, and then "Ok. Hit it."

Misheard lyrics

I noticed recently that the kids have become fans the Bruno Mars song That's What I Like. I also noticed some of the lyrics aren't fantastic for young children. Fortunately KidzBop has versions of the song that sounds pretty much the same as the original, but with cleaned up lyrics so I let them listen to that version.

I probably didn't need to worry too much, though, given Charlie's tendency to butcher lyrics. The kid's version of the song changes the lyric "strawberry champagne on ice" to "strawberry milkshake on ice" (kind of corny, I know). When Charlie heard that, he started laughing and said, "They sang it wrong. It's supposed to be 'strawberry shampoo, that's right!'"

He's also pretty convinced that "Despacito" is pronounced, "Ses-flock-flee-co." And here he is singing the well known hit by Pat Benatar: "Hinowinovencha!" I'll let you see if you can figure out what song he's singing.

A new era

We've hit an exciting milestone around here. Exciting for us, I guess, probably not so much for anyone else.

Seth didn't get a chance to mow the lawn this weekend so I was hoping to somehow get to it during the week. I hadn't even really had a chance to think about it when Sam asked me if he could mow the lawn yesterday. "Do you know how to mow the lawn?" I asked. "Yeah. I can do it." So I said he could go for it.

I was too occupied with Frankie to even go out and help him get started, but pretty soon I heard the mower start, and before long he had the entire lawn mowed. He even refilled the gas at one point (I supervised) figuring out our complicated gas can (I was struggling despite the can's illustrated directions).

So yay for Sam! One of this kid's first sentences was "I help!" - and he is proving to be a very capable helper....when he wants to be, which is rarely the case when it comes to household chores.

The only problem: he knows the neighbor gets paid $25 to mow another neighbor's much smaller lawn, and he was a little disappointed to find that I was not going to pay anywhere near that much.

When boys come to play

Boys are different from girls. There. I said it. Can I even say that anymore? I like to think that I am just pointing out the obvious, but I know some would disagree.  Some would argue that "boys" and "girls" don't even really exist, as such, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't pee standing up without making a huge mess. Several boys who frequent our house also seem to struggle with that, but I know at least they are capable of it, just apparently unwilling to make the effort.

Of course, I realize that boys are generally different from girls, as far as behavior goes. Each person is his/her own individual and obviously won't fit every stereotype out there - or even most of the stereotypes out there. But there is this thing called testosterone, and boys generally have more of it, which generally leads to more testosterone-driven behaviors, which leads to people saying things like "boys are generally different from girls."

There is a quote by Flora Thompson, which says "One boy is a boy; two boys be half a boy; and three boys be no boy at all." In other words, the more boys in a group, the less work gets done. Of course this isn't always true, but it is frequently true. It's the reason my boss at the pizza place I worked at in high school, scheduled two boys to work alone together once and only once. After seeing the shocking amount of work that was left undone, she always made sure to have either 2 girls or a boy/girl combo working.

I also learned today that it's the reason my grandfather never took a coffee break after a certain day in 1952 - which equates to something like 20 years of working as a store manager without one coffee break. In that particular day, he left two teenage boys in charge of the store while he took a 15 minute coffee break. When he came back, one of the two boys had lost an eyeball. (Well, presumably he knew where his eyeball was, it was just no longer attached to his head.)

Which brings me to my case in point and the reason I started writing this post in the first place. Sam spent a week with his cousin Alex (during which, they had a great time  and behaved well overall, but at one point the two of them together decided to rub butter all over the banister going downstairs: two boys be half a boy.) Anyway, with Sam gone all week, Elena ended up spending more time playing with her cousin RJ who would normally be playing with Sam.

RJ was being very open-minded, and not insisting on conforming to gender-stereotypes in his play. When Elena and her friends were coloring Disney princesses, he hopped right in and started coloring with them. So sweet.

I'll let you guess which of these was colored by the lone boy in the room. I'll offer a brief description below each picture in case it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at. I know it might be difficult, but I think most of you will be able to guess correctly.

Here we have Aurora, partially colored before the artist ran off to play something else.

Here is Tiana from the Princess and the Frog. I had to pull up a picture of her online to make sure all the colors were just right. 

And here is Rapunzel with her horse. What began as a fluffy white cloud in the sky was transformed into a thundercloud with lightning coming down to strike the horse, who is covered in blood with extra blood running out of his nose. The stream of green coming out of Rapunzel's mouth is vomit. And those little orange and brown things in the sky - I had to ask on this one - are butts with poop shooting out of them.

And just to prove I am being fair, I'll remind you of a similar post from 4 years ago in which Elena absolutely did not fit your "average girl" stereotype. You can read it again if you click here. 

Frankie's Messes

I might have mentioned that Frankie has been our messiest toddler so far. I can't guarantee this is true because it very well may be that I have just forgotten how messy the other kids were at this age. Nature has a way of tricking us into having more (thankfully!)

As Seth says, it's really actually impressive how big of a mess he can make in a very short period of time. I'll share a few examples of what our dining room looks like after he's eaten.

This first one is pretty typical. He doesn't like having a sippy cup at meals, preferring a glass like everyone else at the table. Inevitably his food ends up in his cup or his drink ends up all over his plate. He loves to play with his food, and very often I'm pretty sure only about 5% of what we feed him actually ends up in his stomach. 

 Here his is after his morning yogurt. This is quite a bit cleaner than usual, although this picture does not show all the yogurt on the chair and floor. You may also notice that he is standing in both of these pictures. Booster seats seem to be an invitation for him to fall on the floor trying to escape. And sitting is just simply not Frankie's style...unless it's on my lap while he spills my meal all over both of us. 

This one is worse than it looks. We had quinoa and broccoli for supper, and the kids got pineapple juice to drink as a treat. As usual his food ended up in his drink cup, and before I could stop it, the cup was dropped on the floor. (I can't recall if that was intentional or not.) This sticky quinoa/pineapple juice combo splattered across the entire dining room floor - spreading all the way under the table, up against the wall and into the crevices of the drawers and leaded glass on the hutch. It's red quinoa in case you're wondering why it looks so funny.

This wasn't at supper but while I was trying to prepare supper. Frankie has a tendency to decide he wants a smoothie at very inopportune times. I prefer to make him a smoothie when I can go outside with him and help him drink it without making too big of a mess. On this particular day, he was so insistent on getting a smoothie that I made him one to keep him happy while I was cooking. Sippy cups and smoothies don't mix so well so I just had him stay in the kitchen next to me. I was using a hand mixer which made him decide he needed to help by getting me another hand-held blender we have. When he tried to pull it out by himself he dropped a pyrex pan on the floor and it shattered. The crash scared him causing him to drop his smoothie. You may notice that not only was the floor covered in this mess, but the smoothie also splattered onto half of the dishes in the cupboard.

It helps to remind myself that we deal with all of this because he is healthy and therefore active, and for that I am very grateful. Mind you, I am aware that some people have children who are both healthy and fairly inactive, but for us this is life. And boy, do our kids provide us with a lot of stories!

Look who's riding bike!

It took him about 30 seconds to get the hang of it. To celebrate, we biked to the Dairy Queen where Grandma treated us to ice cream.

One of the benefits of having a Grandma who volunteers at a thrift store is that she has gotten great deals on all sorts of bikes, scooter and trikes so there are always enough to go around. Here's Sammy giving Frankie and Gabby a ride on one of Grandma's trikes.

Charlie and Debbie

This last year, we watched a little girl, Debbie, a couple of days a week. Being the youngest of 8 kids, she was always cracking us up with the things she would say. She talked like a teenager trapped in a tiny little body.  And Charlie isn't short on comical quips himself so the two of them together were pretty entertaining. After about 7 months, I finally had the bright idea to set up a camera while they were eating lunch every day.

I picked out the best of their conversations and put them together for you all to enjoy. My only regret is that I didn't catch some of their earlier conversations, like the time Debbie said, "Ugh! I just need to get some peace!" and Charlie, trying to help, opened the freezer door and said, "We don't have any peas, but we have ice." (I actually had the camera out on that one, but Frankie was throwing a tantrum so I couldn't hold it. I'm pretty sure you'll get to hear him crying in several parts of the video; lunch time is usually Cranky Frankie time.)

I hope you can understand it all - I didn't have time to put subtitles on all the parts that were hard to hear. There's also a brief appearance of our nephew, Reed. The video is unlisted so let me know if it doesn't work on here:

Finger Shapes

This morning Charlie held up his fingers, attempting to shape them into a heart (it was more like a rectangle) and said, "Look, Mom! It's a heart."

"Oh! That's so sweet!" I said. Then he shifted his fingers and said, "Now it's poop." I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be the shape of a poop emoji. Unfortunately the poop is much more accurate.

Flash vs. Superman

We have some friends staying with us while they are in transition between houses. The dad is a fan of Marvel superheros just like Charlie so when Charlie was zooming around the house like Flash, Nathan thought he would quiz Charlie. Here's how that went.

Nathan: If Flash and Superman were in a race, who would win?

Charlie: Me!

Nathan: That's a great answer.

I, of course, asked what the real answer was. Apparently there's no way to tell because (aside from the fact that they are fictional characters) they are both able to reach a speed enabling them to travel through time or something....

My favorite superhero is one of Charlie's invention. Seth's Grandma gave Elena an old flowy nightgown/robe thing, which Charlie quickly confiscated for his cape. Then he ran around and around the island at top speed as "Bat Grandma"!

It's become pretty tough to get stuff done around here (like posting on the blog, for example!), mainly because Frankie all by himself is a full time job. Plus I have keeping up with the home and the other 3 kids so some days feel like I have 3 or 4 full times jobs. We keep saying Frankie is our most challenging toddler (but honestly we're probably just suffering from a bit of mental amnesia).

Basically if I'm not holding him -which he wants me to do about 7 hours a day - he's getting into something. This morning's first example: I caught him trying to put one of the kittens in the oven. Luckily, he can't turn it on!

At least he's nice to them when he sleeps.

It's All in the Presentation

The same smoothie these kids rejected in the morning because they "didn't like it" was eagerly gobbled up that afternoon after I froze it into popsicles.

I've found the importance of presentation to be especially true when dealing with children. After I tried sneaking kale and spinach into some of our smoothies, our kids have become wary of the term "smoothie." They will eat them sometimes, but they don't jump at the chance as quickly or consistently as I would like. Half the time, they don't like it and I end up drinking everyone's smoothies myself (this is usually when I try to sneak in a little extra nutrients by adding flax seed or something). The other half, they love it and I don't have enough to go around.

The younger they are, though, the easier it is to persuade them to like something. For Charlie, I call my berry smoothies a "banana-berry milkshake," and he will drink it down much more willingly than if I just call it a smoothie.

Frankie loves them every time. The only problem with him is that he really likes to play with his food. Half the time, he dumps his smoothie into his lap and starts rubbing it into his legs so he ends up with red legs covered in stuck-on raspberry seeds.

A trip to the cities

We had tickets to a children's theater in the cities so we decided to make a weekend of it with the kids. We went to the play - "Stone Soup" - which all the kids loved. Even Frankie sat through the whole performance. We also went to the MN Zoo and the Science Museum.

A few days before we left, Sam asked if we could have "that stuff" we had in Germany again. After a bit of explaining, I figured out that he was referring to shawarma that we bought from a street vendor. We decided to take the kids to the Mediterranean Café, a Greek restaurant that we used to go to when we lived up there. Knowing they sometimes have belly dancers, we decided to go at lunch, thinking the wouldn't have belly dancers on a weekday at noon. Not that we have anything against belly dancers, we just didn't know if we wanted to intentionally bring our young children to watch a woman gyrating around a stage.

Turns out we were wrong about them not having belly dancers at lunch. Not only did they have one, she came over and invited the kids to come up for a belly dancing lesson, which was very entertaining. Charlie was a little unsure so he didn't go up, and Frankie just stared and stared. Sam and Elena had a lot of fun, though.

"Fish!!" (or as Frankie says it, "Shish! Shish!") Frankie loves fish and is constantly asking to go over to his cousins' house next door where they have a mounted fish he can see or to re-watch an episode of Mr. Rogers where he goes snorkeling again and again. So he was pretty excited at the giant aquarium. I think he would have stayed there all day if we let him.

with one of the cast members of the play

Conversations in the car

Charlie: Debbie, sing along with this song.

Debbie: I can't.

Me: She probably doesn't know it because it's a song from the 80's.

Sam: They had songs in the 80's???!!!

6 girls playing in Elena's room with 4 kittens.

4 boys playing "Roblox" in Sam's room. I don't know what that is but it involved a lot of jumping, yelling and testosterone-inspired-noises.

1 boy crying, screaming and arguing for 1/2 and hour because I wouldn't let him drink a can of Mountain Dew he somehow got his hands on at the neighbor's or somewhere.

And 1 toddler downstairs with me who is only happy if he is making me mad - he's at that developmental stage where he misbehaves on purpose and watches for my reaction.....He has spent the entire morning going back and forth between yanking on the cats fur/hair/tail as hard as he can (she's too kind to bite him although I wish she would), climbing on the dining room table to take a swing at our 130 year old chandelier, trying to spread yogurt and other foods on my laptop keyboard, unfolding the laundry I'm trying to fold, then laughing in my face when I tell him to stop any of the above, and crying miserably when I make him stop.

This has not been the most productive day.

It's Here!

The winters here may be long and cold, but boy do we enjoy our summers! And here's the proof.

At Walmart today, I noticed a couple of women say "Oh my gosh! Look!" I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were looking at something very cute. When I looked, I realized they were looking at Charlie. A little curious, I took a good look at him as an outsider might see him, and realized they were right.

He had come across a bowtie that morning and attached it to his tank top. Combined with his new glasses, he had quite the look.

Charlie's Quotes of the Week

Charlie: Mom, when will be the last day?
Me: The last day of what?
Charlie: The last day.
Me: The last day of school?
Charlie: No, just the last day.
Me: You mean the last day ever? Like the last day of the world?
Charlie: Yeah.
Me: I have no idea.

It amazes me that this kid can go from such deep philosophical thoughts as the one above to this:

"Mom, when I was born, I wish you would have named me 'Farty.'"
He's lucky his older brother didn't hear that one, or that nickname might have stuck for life.

He's been on a kick contemplating alternative names for people (maybe because of all the business of naming our kittens). Last night at supper, he pointed at Elena and said, "I wish when she was born, you would have named her 'Accident.'"
And Seth replied, "You have no idea how funny that is." She was not, by the way. I know what some of you are thinking...

Happy May Day!

Ah, Minnesota. A land where you can be bitten by mosquitos during an unusually warm March and then be hit with 3 inches of snow in May.

I credit my ability to adapt and be flexible partly to my upbringing in such an irrational climate.

April Showers and May Snowstorms

So much cuteness!

Coco had her kittens! We could tell she was in labor Tuesday night because she kept meowing and looking in secluded places. So we put her in the box we had fixed up and waited expectantly. Sam was so excited and emotional he kept tearing up (I don't know what he'll be like if he ever has children of his own someday). She would only stay in the box if we sat next to her, though, and after 2 hours of taking shifts, we finally gave up and got the kids ready for bed.

Before Seth and I went to sleep at midnight, I headed upstairs to put towels down in Frankie's crib, which was where I had last seen Coco, only to find her in Sam and Charlie's closet with a newborn kitten. So we woke up the kids, and the boys got to watch her next baby come out before we all went back to bed.  Elena was too tired to get up, which was just as well because it was difficult for us all to see anyway. Sam had already named the first-born Skunk before he went back to sleep.

At 4:00am Sam came into our room worried because he woke up to the sound of frantic meowing and noticed that Coco was in his bed (her normal sleeping spot) nursing only one kitten; the rest were still in the closet.  So we moved Mama and her four(!) kittens to the box we had prepared and spent 45 minutes trying to help the littlest one latch on. We finally had to give up, and it took me a lot of reassuring Sam that the kitten would probably not be dead by morning, and if s/he was still struggling, we could call the vet and get some milk. Fortunately, all four were nursing when he woke up at 6:30, and Coco has been doing a great job with them since.

We are also very lucky that she is a relaxed mom, and doesn't seem to mind people coming near her kittens. We have had lots of visitors, and we've had to gate the room so Frankie and Charlie can't get in without supervision. Charlie knows better, but he just can't resist picking them up when he thinks he can get away with it. I've caught some of the older kids doing it, too, so we've had to lay down some pretty strict rules and big threats. We had 8 extra kids stop by today alone to see the kitties, and I don't want to take advantage of Coco's generosity in sharing her little ones.

Each of our kids got to name one kitten, and fortunately they all picked different kittens to name so there was no fighting (Frankie didn't much care). So we are happy to introduce:

Skunk (named by Sam - the one who looks like a skunk)
Mittens (named by Elena - gray with white feet)
Flash Minty Pizza Cowboy ("Flash" for short, named by Charlie - who else? - the orange one)
and Ticka (that's how Frankie says "kitty" - all gray)

I can hardly stand how cute these guys are!

Happy 1st Communion, Sam

On Sunday Sam received the greatest gift obtainable on Earth for the first time. Congratulations, Sammy!

We had to promise Charlie a goofy picture to get him to pose for the first one.

As much as Sam wanted a suit, not just a nice shirt and tie, he sure changed out of it quickly!

 We tried to recreate this classic picture, but fell a little short. I didn't have the original handy so we were working from memory. Plus Sam had already changed, and Charlie didn't understand what the heck we were doing, but we tried.

 And if you look closely at that cake, you will see that although I am more German than anything else, those perfectionist genes failed to make their way into my DNA. (I ran out of room on the word "Communion" and had to write the "n" on the other side of the chalice, which itself was pretty badly smudged).