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.

Sorry!

We have been thoroughly enjoying our Christmas vacation, especially with these few days of nice weather we've had. Seth is taking the kids sledding now before another cold front hits us like a slap in the face.

Last night we went caroling with some friends and it was so much fun. Fortunately over half the group was musically inclined enough to do harmony on all the songs and it sounded beautiful. The kids especially liked it when people handed out cookies! Charlie was happy to be outside - he probably doesn't even remember what it's like to be outside longer than it takes to get from the house to the car. And I'm pretty sure he was singing along on a few of the songs.

Another thing we've had more time for is playing games with the kids. Elena, Sam and I played Sorry! the other night. Elena won first (which really makes everyone happier) so then Sam and I finished the game. Sam beat me, and about 10 minutes later Elena came up to us and gave us our "prizes."

Here they are. I'll translate what they say since she's still working on sounding out words:


Here is Sam's (with a blue ribbon in the center): "Sam, You are the star. Congratulations, Sam. Best Player Ever!"



Here's mine: "Great try."

Roast Dinner

Not to brag, but the roast I recently made for dinner was delicious.

I know because when Elena tasted it, she said, "Mmmmmm. I wish we were carnivores."

Unfortunately for her, I made all the omnivores at the table eat their vegetables, too.

Seth was drinking wine with supper, which triggered this puzzling comment from Sam: "Wine is made from elks."

"How do you figure?" I asked.

"Because it's elk-a-hol."

Look Who's Walking!

He's actually been walking now for almost a month and I'm just now getting around to putting it on here. He is our earliest walker so far, taking his first steps at 10 months.

Brrrr...

For those of you not living in MN, I'll give you a little weather update.  Though the past couple of days have been staying at a tolerable sub-freezing temperature, December so far has been COLD. There were several days in the last 2 weeks where I was tempted to put on boots, jacket, hat, scarf and mittens just to answer the door.

For those of you also enduring this MN weather, let's look at the bright side.

It could be worse. We could be total wimps like these people (and I say that in the most loving way possible):

(OK, I'll admit it's very debatable whether it's worse to be a wimp or to suffer through 6 months of winter every year)

Happy 5th Birthday, Sammy!

Sam decided that he wanted to have a birthday party with just his friends this year (which actually ended up being 3 cousins and 1 friend).  I was a little apprehensive about keeping 5 little boys entertained for the whole party. I had a few games lined up, but those took up all of 10 minutes before the boys started needing to burn more energy than they could exert on Pin the Tail on the Donkey.






Enter Seth and our 11-year-old nephew AJ to the rescue.  We were lucky to get decent weather for Sam's birthday so the boys all played football outside for almost 2 hours. They had a great time playing and my mom and I had fun watching them from inside. Elena was a bit disappointed that the majority of the party was spent on something she had no interest in, but once she accepted the fact that a bunch of preschool aged boys will not sit and play dolls for 2 hours like she would, she was OK.

 

 After 2 hours of running around, the boys were ready to join Elena in an activity that was more up her alley: stuffing envelopes for the 800+ Christmas cards we are sending to Seth's clients.  She outlasted the boys by far, though, and I've still got around 500 to go :)

Note to self for next year: make sure to check the toilet seat and floor around it before going to the bathroom when there is a house full of little boys. And keep those sanitizing wipes handy!






Included with Sam's card from my parents was this picture of my 5th birthday. I'm sure it seems like an ancient picture to Sam, but to me it doesn't seem so long ago: