Funny Things the Kids Say

Here are some funny things that the kids have been saying recently:

Jackson:

• "I'm wary firsty." (He's never just thirsty. Always very thirsty.)
• "Cubumber" (for cucumber)
• "My birthday is in bohbember."
• "It's too louder!"
• "I! don't! want! dat! eeder!!!!" (I don't want that either!-- even if what you were suggesting wasn't an alternative at all....)
• "Is it tomorrow yet?"
• "Is it still today?"
• J: What time is it? Me: 3:30 J: Why?
• "When will we go to Disneyland?"
• J: What day is it? Me: Monday J: Why?
• (when saying a prayer) "Thank you for this days."
• "Am I a big kid?"

Addy:

• "Nammies" (jammies)
• "Skake" (fruit stick)
• "Snock" (snack, usually meaning fruit snacks)
• "Nominoes" (dominoes)
• "Tock-tock" (Tic-Tac)
• "Bunnies" (bunny crackers)
• "Oh no!"
• "Color!" (meaning to draw)
• "Where's Addy?"
• "no, no, no, No, NO, NOOOOO!"
• "nigh-nigh" (Night-night, meaning either nap, bed or blanket)
• "No want go nigh-nigh!" (I don't want to nigh-night)
• "Where's Jared Camryn?"

The World Revolves Around... the Potty

I haven't posted in a while. I'm recovering really well from my deviated septum surgery, despite a really scary drug interaction the Friday night after the surgery. For all of you who want to know but don't have the nerve to ask, no, I did not get a nose job along with my septoplasty. I have the same old pointy schnoz that I've always had. Darn. (Besides, if I was going to undergo the knife, I can think of some body parts that would get much higher priority than my nose. If I wasn't morally opposed to cosmetic surgery.) But I digress. My mom just left on Monday after being here for three weeks. She was able to help with the surgery, help me organize our junk room into a play room and generally make my life awesomer. It was fabulous. I'm having serious withdrawal now that I'm having to be a responsible adult again. :(

We (meaning my mom) started potty-training Jackson while she was here. He is plenty old enough at 3 1/2 , but I'm not nearly old enough. Or maybe I'm too old. At any rate, I don't do poop and this is killing me. He's got the pee-pee thing down pretty well, but this sitting-on-the-potty-for-an-hour-and-then-pooping-in-your-underwear thing is getting old. Really, really old. Maybe those in the 7th circle of hell are really just condemned to an eternity of perpetual potty-training. (Deep breath.) I can survive this. Really. I can.

The Father Son Campout

Last night Dave took Jared and Jackson camping at the beach for a church Father/Son Campout. I told Jared to pack a change of clothes into a bag and he did-- along with a package of hot dogs and a half-open bag of giant marshmallows. (I wish I had a picture of the stuff in his bag amid the pajamas and socks...)

Today they are playing on the beach before coming home. These photos are brought to you courtesy of emails from Dave's Blackberry. (Isn't technology amazing?) I love how Jared is dressed in his swimsuit on the gray, freezing Oregon beach. At least he's prepared for the best.... :)

 

Productivity (Addy and Jackson Style)

One of the toughest things for me as a mom is to let go of "getting things done" and my obsession with productivity and just play with the kids or watch them play. A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to "get something done" and Jackson kept bugging me to go outside. As much as I wanted to finish, it was a beautiful, sunny day in Portland (in March) so I gave in and took him and Addy outside. It was such a great afternoon. There is nothing like the happiness a three-year-old can find in his scooter or the accomplishment an 18-month-old feels by putting along with her feet Fred-Flinstone style on her trike.

Fun With Dental Floss

Jackson found a package of dental floss today and went to work. Who knew that dental floss could be so fun, even if you aren't an obsessive fan of oral hygiene?

How can this much string fit in such a tiny package?

"Wait a minute, I'm stuck!"

"It's minty!!"

All of this fun for only a couple dollars worth of floss....

Played Out: Why I Never Practice Piano Any More

People sometimes ask me if I "keep up" with my piano and "Do I practice anymore?" The answer is yes and no. Yes, I still play the piano. Do I "keep up" with it? I have two degrees in Piano Performance and spent 6 consecutive years of my life practicing between 4-7 hours a day on the piano (depending on what time in my schooling). So the first answer is "no," there is no way to "keep up" with that unless you a) do it for a career, b) have no life, c) have no children, or d) all of the above.

These pictures are from a different incident, but accurately represent my difficulty with piano practice at this stage of life.

Being a piano major in a former life presents problems though. Everyone that finds this out exclaims, "Oh, you should play something for me!" And I should. Except that the major pieces I have memorized and under my fingers right now are "Jumbo Elephant" and "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam." It's also troublesome because once you have learned how to really play and do a piece justice, it is very difficult to play in a way that is "half-baked" and doesn't really represent how the piece should or could be played (assuming that you devoted the time necessary to play it in such a manner).

Note the expression of relaxation and enjoyment on all-- well at least one-- of our faces.

I had a friend has been bugging me to audition for a local talent contest (yes, I got your email, Sarah) that even has cash prizes so I have been throwing around whether there is anything I could "pull up" for this. It then presents a dilemma: Do you try to scrounge up time to practice something and seize on an opportunity to perform again? Do you publicly play at a level that does not accurately represent your best? Or do you remember that you have children and 5 baskets of unfolded laundry upstairs and scrap the idea altogether?

Yesterday morning I had the brilliant thought that I should play the piano for a while for fun, as a form of "self-care" or "me" time. I waited until Addy and Jackson were sitting up eating breakfast and then I started to play a Mozart slow movement. Jackson immediately left his cereal to go soggy and took this perfect opportunity to climb on me and add a duet part. Recently I have been working with this er, rather, um, challenging child on being firm and sticking with boundaries, so I gently pulled him off my lap and told him that he needed to wait. He didn't like this ("But mahhhhhm, I want you!") but he was going to have to live with it. He climbed on me again and, yet again, I gently pulled him down and said he would have to wait.

The ideal way to practice....

 I pulled out the Schumann-Liszt "Widmung" and started to play through it. Jackson climbed up on the back of me and then held on to my neck and swung from there, laughing at what great fun this was. Again, I stuck to my boundaries and calmly set him down to the side and told him that he needed to wait. Finally, seeing that half-measures were not working, Jackson took a giant plastic sand shovel that I bought the other day and used it to knock my music down off the music stand and knock the piano lid closed. (Exactly how he did this I am not sure....) At that point, all calmness and boundaries flew out the window. I stopped playing and bellowed, "NO JACKSON!!!! NO! NO! DON'T DO THAT!!! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!! No toys on the piano!!!!!" After about ten seconds of bellowing "NO" and scrambling to contain myself, I calmly took him to time out as he sobbed giant tears. At this point, after liberally berating myself for losing my temper, I tried to remind myself that I am not a perfect mom and anyone has their breaking point-- especially when a giant plastic sand shovel is applied to the music rack of your piano.

I think I see simultaneously why I don't practice the piano very much anymore and why the successful Venezualan concert pianist Teresa Carreno (who had six children) reportedly kept a loaded gun on the piano. Um, yeah. That might work. I guess that explains a lot.


"I'm not a perfect person, 
there's many things I wish I didn't do. 
But I continue learning..." -Hoobastank

Bouncing Off the Walls

For Jackson's only birthday present last year, we got him a bounce house (I know, tough life). While we have a really great house, we have a really lame backyard-- it is small, steeply slanted and is two stories below the main floor of the house so it isn't very easy to get out there and play. So our response to this problem-- intensified by the fact that Jackson is VERY active and physical-- was to get a bounce house for the basement as a kind of a "backyard substitute." It's way cheaper than moving, right? (I know, I know, I'm a pro at justification.)

At one point we had one of those home "ball pits" (you know, the kind that don't have enough balls to actually jump in and last for about two weeks before they are completely destroyed), so we have lots of leftover plastic balls still hanging around the basement. I don't know if it was Addy or the kids who started it (because Addy is known for depositing random objects inside her sleeper) but the kids made a game of seeing how many plastic balls they could fit in Addy's sleeper. The end result is a smaller, pinker version of the Incredible Hulk.

 

Apparently, Camryn caught on to this trend and figured she could use some muscular enhancement as well.

Goodness knows that my kids are always bouncing off the walls. I admit that I harbored the secret hope that purchasing a thing exclusively devoted to "bouncing off the walls" would save our other walls some wear and tear. That hasn't panned out, but the bounce house is still really fun.

Uno: Jackson Style

A few weeks ago we discovered a new card game: "Uno: Jackson Style." We used to always play a house-rules take on Uno that we called "Super Uno" or "Match." In this version you can can throw down an exact match of the card facing up at any time- even out of turn. It makes for a fun twist just when you least expect it.

In an attempt to have a game night involving all of the kids, we developed a new version that you might dub "Super-Jackson-Uno." You play Uno with the normal rules, except that Jackson can lay any card at any time and it counts. So you have a fun twist just when you least expect it. And it kind worked.

Meanwhile Addy discovered that she loves popcorn.

Sunday game night with popcorn for dinner was a de facto tradition in my house growing up. We used to tease my mom because if we ever asked what we she felt like for dinner, the answer would be "popcorn." I guess we know where Addy inherited it from. ;)

My New Best Friend

Yes, I have a new best friend. He isn't much to look at, but he is (thanks to our DVR) always there when I need him. Maybe it falls better under the category of "Tranquilizers that are Legal for a Three-Year-Old." No matter.

Dear George,

For your contribution to my mental health and sanity I will be eternally grateful. Hopefully I haven't killed too many of Jackson's brain cells in the process. (It's educational TV, right?)

Love,

Me

Jackson's Bike

Jackson has always been one who loves adventure. He is a particularly devotee of things with wheels. Jared and Camryn have really been into riding their bikes recently. Jackson, as usual, is following suit. He LOVES to ride his big wheel trike, even though he doesn't know how to pedal yet. 

And just putting around on the street isn't enough for this boy. No, no, no... he has to take his trike to the top of the hill on our street, lift his feet up and go catapulting down kamikaze-style.

Going up....

Look out below!

Let's do that again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jackson doesn't have any brakes, so he improvises his own. 

Hit the brakes.

Note to self-- next time do not let your two-year-old go catapulting down the street on his trike wearing his church shoes. I seem to have a hard time getting video to work on my blog, but just in case it works this time, I'm going to try posting a video of Jackson doing his thing.

Addy thought watching him was very entertaining. Luckily, she's a bit too young to try it out herself yet. Just give her a year or two.... :)

P.S. This week Addy has taken three steps by herself and she has two new words: "yes" and "yeah." You add this to "mama" and "dada" and she is a talking machine! :)

First Day of School

Can you believe it? I am actually posting about something on the day it happened! Hold your applause, please. Okay fine, applaud away. It may not happen again any time soon.

Today was Jared and Camryn's first day of school. Jared is starting 4th grade and Camryn is entering 2nd grade.

After a whole summer of no alarm clocks, it's back to the 6:45 wake-up. I am not a morning person, so this is a bit tortuous for me. Jared and Camryn, however, woke up to their alarms, got dressed and were eating their breakfast when I came down to help them with their lunches.

Then it was out the door to catch the bus.

It's hard to believe that they are growing up so fast. I'm always a bit nervous for the first day of school. Will they have good teachers? Will they make good friends and get along with the other kids? It always worries me as a control freak to have my kids out of my immediate control for such a big chunk of their lives. And I have mixed emotions about school. Part of me is so sad to have the kids gone for such a big part of the day again. But there is just as big (if not bigger) part of me that is jumping for joy at the prospect of having more quiet, fewer mess-makers and less sibling arguing for part of the day as well.

This year is a landmark for me too, since fourth grade was the last year that I attended school (until college). I was home-schooled from fourth grade through high school. People who find out that I was home-schooled usually ask me why I don't home-school my own children. It's because I don't want them to grow up to be social outcasts like me. ;) Just kidding. In all seriousness, I really loved being home-schooled and had a great experience. I always planned on home-schooling my kids, right up until Jared was 4 and 3/4 years old. Home-schooling didn't seem like a good option for us at the time, so we decided to give public school a try. We've been very lucky that it has worked well for us so far. The kids have had good teachers, made good friends and made good academic progress. But it took me a long time to get over feeling guilty that I wasn't doing enough for my kids' education or measuring up to what my mother did for me. The conclusion that I finally came to is that parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their child's education. They may choose to "farm out" some of the job to schools, tutors, teachers, coaches or others, but the parent is the one who needs to make sure that the child is getting what he or she needs. And I do teach them at home. But I don't think it's a bad thing for them to learn from other people as well. And hopefully if public school ever ends up not working well for them, I will be in tune enough to see this and find another alternative that does work. End of long tangent.

Meanwhile, Jackson and Addy are settling in to having the house to themselves for a while. I think Jackson is adjusting better to having "Jare-Camryn" gone than last year. Having Addy to hang out with certainly helps. Today they spent the morning dumping half a box of wipes.

I guess it's nice to have a sidekick. Especially one who looks up to you who wants to learn all of your tricks.

One of these days I'm going to have to try chucking some diapers across the room to see if it's as much fun as it looks.