Sunday, July 13, 2008

The Boss Revisited

Quincy and Alyce were talking the other day. Quincy said, "I want to be a teacher when I grow up...Wait, no." He thinks for a minute, then, "Mom, what's that thing that you said before that tells people what to do and has servants?"
"The president of a company?" I asked.
"Yeah! That's what I want to be."

Xander Learns the Word "Cheese"

You can guess who this child belongs to. He doesn't know "please," he doesn't know "thank you," but he does know "cheese." If you tell him to say cheese, this is what he does:




Claire Gets It Right

Claire was playing with the Fisher Price Little People the other day. She had all the fences put together forming a circle, and inside the circle was another circle made up of Little People. I asked her what she was playing. She said they were blessing a baby. Sure enough, there was the baby, right in front of the Dad. Interestingly enough, all the women were included in the circle.



Derek Tries to Multi-task

Derek and I went out on a date on Friday night. We pulled into the parking lot of Pei Wei and noticed there were not a lot of parking spaces. Derek found one and was apparently concentrating a little too hard on pulling into the space, because he said, "Boy, it is crowwwDED! With a capital D!" He didn't even notice what he had said until I repeated it back to him while laughing my head off. We both agreed that had Justin been in the car with us, he would have been crying.

Toilet Tally

Here is a list of some of the things that have gone in the toilet since I last posted: Legos, a squid toy (which Alyce urinated on because she didn't see it when she sat down. I don't know how she missed it; it took up the entire pot and stuck out of the water so much I'm surprised it didn't poke her!), a crayon, a book, a pad of paper (which Xander was sucking on after dunking it--hope he doesn't get sick!), and irony of ironies, the toilet tongs themselves made it into the toilet!

Friday, July 11, 2008

Toilet Tongs

Xander has entered the stage where everything gets put in the toilet. We have a designated pair of tongs that we use to fish things out, affectionately called The Toilet Tongs. Most of the things that get put in the toilet are thrown away. If you look in all the bathroom trash cans, you will find odd things like a slinky, a pirate ball, an entire Fisher Price radio toy (quite large, but already broken and now water-logged), a tube of toothpaste, a rubber duck, two gold coins. It's actually a great way to purge ourselves of some toys. If he starts putting my paper in the toilet, that's a different story. You'll see a Xander in the trash can.

A Misspelling

The kids have been trying to catch each other with the quintessential, "Spell I cup." Claire does not quite get it because she can't spell yet. Driving home today, Claire said, "Mom, I want to go to Eye-See-You-Pee. That spells IHOP." I hope not!

Saturday, July 5, 2008

My Birthday


Here is the conversation that happened as we were eating birthday cake tonight:

Derek: Let's all say something we love about Mom.

Xander: Mamamama (saying "more" referring to the ice cream)

Claire: Come back to me. I have to think about it.

Quincy: (Laughs because he thought a piece of cake went down my shirt.)

Alyce: I love Mom because she makes good dinners and most of the time I like them.

Derek: I like Mom's new shirt. (see picture)

Another Why

Why is it that kids find the smallest, most inconvenient space next to you, and stand there?

Complaint Form

Every mother should have a stack of complaint forms. I would use mine every time one of my kids comes to me with a whiny voice saying, "Moooooom?" followed by any number of complaints. Quincy hit me, Claire took my toy away, Alyce is copying me...(kids haven't figured out that all they need to do to stop the copying is to be silent.) My standard response would be, "Fill out a complaint form, I'll review it, then get back to you with my verdict." Having a complaint form would weed out all the trivial problems because it would be too much trouble to fill out the form. Only the big stuff would make it on paper, and then I could just deal with it all at once at the end of the day after the kids have gone to bed, thereby saving me from saying rash things like, "That toy is mine for the next two years!" It works for big companies, right? So why shouldn't it work for Moms?