Ism of the Week

"Okay, Graham.  It's time for bed."

"Momma?  Can you snuddle me?"

"Of course... scoot over."

"Can you give me a tiss?"

"Yep, plant one on me!  I love you, Bubba."

"Mommy?  I wuv you."

"Oh, you're so sweet.  I 'wuv' you too."

"But I not like your hair."

"You don't like my hair?  Why not?"

"It's not nice hair."

"Oh, that makes me sad.  I like your hair."

"Yes.  I have good hair."

"You do.  And it's very soft.  My hair is different, but it hurts my feelings that you don't like it."

"Yes.  I not like it."

"Oh, alright.  Well, I'm sorry you don't like it."

"I don't.  Now say 'sorry'."

"I don't need to say 'I'm sorry', because I didn't do anything to make you sad."

"Yes you did.  You had bad hair."

"Goodnight, Graham.  I love you."

"Night, Mommy.  Bye bye, not nice hair!"

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

You know that I'm not an outdoorsy girl.  While I make no bones about this, I have been trying to incorporate a few more UV rays into my lifestyle for the sake of my kids.  The little heathens just can't get enough of that irritating "sunshine" and "clean air".

They (and Joel) are obviously better people than I am, and clearly have more well-rounded interests and less pasty skin.  But for all of their wisdom and all of my short-comings, each of these attempts I make further reinforces my opinion that I belong inside the house.  With air conditioning.  Eating ice cream.  Watching the Bachelorette.  (Hooray, TeamJef!)

See?  They're so much better than I am.

But I put my feelings aside on Saturday and loaded the boys into the car so that they could go fishing.  I knew that this activity was a little beyond Graham's ability, but I didn't want to leave him out and I did want to be there to document their excursion.

As soon as we got to the lake, we scouted out a perfect spot that was not only covered with copious amounts of goose poop, but atop a small hill riddled with large rocks and an unstable surface.  You know, the perfect place for a stress-free evening with two inquisitive maniacs with poor balance and a disregard for their own safety.

They tripped.  They covered their faces with dirt and worm guts.  They got tangled in fishing line.  I turned my back and found Cael with his pants around his knees.

After raising the water level, the fishing gear was finally put to use.  Joel dropped a line in for Cael and within seconds, he felt a bite.  Moments later, his first fish was caught.

And within five minutes, nearly as many more fish were captured.

It seems that we stumbled upon a bluegill nest so saturated with fish that it was more of a challenge not to hook one of the little swimmers than to pull one in.

Everyone got in on the action, and even I set aside my girlish ways to cast a line into the bluegill "promised land", although I didn't want to remove from the fish's grasp because it was so, like, totally gross... and wet... and "fishy".

Joel was much more manly, however.

Only a short time into our outdoor adventure, both boys launched into a rock/stick/goose-poop-throwing challenge that I unsuccessfully attempted to squelch.  When a rock grazed my forehead, I plopped Graham down in a sling chair, only to find that while his body could be contained, his irritation with me could not. 

CRACK!!
 

I spun around just quick enough to see my iPhone, the small rectangular device that holds my entire life together, being chucked out of anger toward the lake and landing, hard, on the rocks mere feet from the water's edge.

You can mess with me, or ridicule my blog or say whatever you want about my frizzy, overcolored hair.  But you do not-- DO NOT submerge my iPhone in a lake where my son has just peed.  

I turned on Graham and gave him a death glare (sans words, because at that point none were needed to make my point) that registered anger greater than when he vomited popcorn down my shirt but admittedly less than when Cael dove the motorhome.  Graham erupted into a fit of tears upon realizing his mistake, and I reminded myself exactly why I'm an indoor girl.

But if I hadn't gone, I would have missed the looks of pure excitement and joy on their faces as they reeled in their catches.  I would have missed their giggles and explorations.

I would have missed kisses cooled by the breeze from the lake.

I would have missed this.

And there's no app for that.

Ism of the Week

"Mommy?  Mommy?  Mom!  Mommy!  Hey Momma!  Mommy!  Mom.  Mom.  Mom.  Mommy!  Mommy!  It's me, Mommy!  Mom!  Momma... Mommy!  Talk to me, Mommy!"

"What is it, Graham?!"

"Shh, Mommy, I'm watching a show."

Very Punny

My Dad is well-known for his unique ability to wilt a room with his bad puns.  They're well executed, granted, but as all puns strive to do, his elicit groans and shaken heads as effortlessly as Graham can with one blast of gas.

In fact, Joel's first real experience spending time with my Dad without me took place the summer before our senior year of college, and while on their way into town to get a bite to eat, Papa hit my future husband with the first of many puns.

"See that over there?" Dad asked as he motioned to the municipal airport down the street.  On the horizon, Joel could see the remnants of the large air show that had concluded the day before.  All that remained were parking signs and some partially disassembled white tents.

"You know what they call it when they take everything down?"

"What?" Joel asked, not realizing that he was on the cusp of an unfortunate discovery about my family.

"Past tents."

Yikes.

He still married me, obviously, so he's a pretty forgiving guy.  And as much as he'd probably want me to maintain his privacy, I have to admit that he has been known to engage in a few pun battles himself.  While he's good, however, no one can beat the master. 

Except maybe Cael.

This morning, when Papa stopped by for a quick morning visit on his way to the store, Cael lead him to the kitchen to show him a craft project he'd completed at vacation bible school last night.

"Look, Papa!  I gave the bug three eyes!!"

"That's very silly."

Although tickled by the prospect of having three eyes, Cael understood the improbability of that outcome and looked for an alternative place to stick the googly eye.

"I can put it on his arm.  Or on his tummy.  Ooh Papa, I'm going to stick it on his bottom!"

And then it happened.

"You know what that is, Cael?  Hindsight."

Dear Lord, please let this not be genetic.  Amen.

"Papa, what is hindsight?"

"It's when you remember things clearly that happened in the past."

"Oh, okay.  Hindsight is remembering that when I put an eye on a bug's bottom, you say something weird and Mommy laughs at you.  Got it."

And I think he really does.

Best Laid Plans

(Hope you didn't miss me yesterday!  Technical difficulties wouldn't let me upload my post, but I seem to be up and running today!)


I am so tired of being awakened at ten minutes to six in the morning.  I'm so tired of traipsing around the house to queue up various movies by the hazy light of dawn in the bleary-eyed hope that I can milk another fifteen minutes of sleep out of the arrangement. 

I guess I'm just plain tired.

And while I'm perfectly content with sleeping until 9am, my little tyrants are less than accommodating.  So most days, when one of them wakes up and is incapable of functioning while his brother is unconscious and the noise level in the house is below 100 decibels, he rouses the other and, as a team, they awaken me from a dead sleep in the most jarring manner possible.

Sometimes they jump on me, concentrating on joints and my bladder.  Sometimes I get hit in the head with a hard plastic toy (never a stuffed animal).  Sometimes my brain jumps to life at the sound of large amounts of splashing water or the doorbell being rung by an elusive four year-old wearing nothing but dinosaur underpants.

No matter how they did it, it needed to stop.

My first choice was to chain them into the bedroom using some sort of weapons-grade materials, but knowing that one of them occasionally needs to use the toilet forced me to reconsider.  Joel and I talked about setting an alarm clock to go off at a predetermined time, but I was hesitant to encourage them to wake up on the exceedingly rare chance that they might sleep in.  You know, someday.

The best option for us was this nifty little device that seemed to fit our needs perfectly; a clock that could be set to the time we felt was acceptable for our young kids to leave their room.  When the clock would strike that unfortunate hour, the picture on the clock would change from a blue star to a golden sun and signal that it was time to get up.

But that product is made overseas, and I'm cheap.  Even when it comes to my sleep, it would seem.

So we tried to purchase a similar product, only to discover that it was sold out and badly back-ordered because America clearly has an epidemic of early risers with curly hair and a penchant for maternal torture.

The best do-it-ourselves alternative we could come up with was to put a lamp timer on, well, a lamp of all things, set to kick on at 7:30am, a time still well before my preferred wake-up, but better than 6:15am.  We stocked their closet with a bookshelf and a plethora of toys to play with until they were allowed to leave.

We rigged it all up, tossed the kiddos in bed, and crossed our fingers.  And you know what?  The most amazing thing happened.  Tiny footsteps padded up the stairs at 7:30 sharp the next morning. 

"Daddy, our lamp turned on, but I just wanted to tell you that Graham and I are going to keep playing in our room, okay?"

I'm sorry-- WHAT?

I think I got better sleep that morning than I have since I had children.  There might have been a double rainbow, and I bet I dreamed about newborn puppies.  It was a great day.

The next morning I woke up to this.

And the day after.  And pretty much every morning since.

In fact, what began as such a well-executed attempt at self-preservation has turned into a disaster of my own making.  Every day they succeed in trashing the room more thoroughly than a grunge rocker in a pay-by-the-hour hotel.  Sheets are ripped from the bed, blinds are bent in every direction and those tiny dinosaur underpants are strung from the fan blades. 

And yesterday they still came out before the lamp came on.  So many times, in fact, that I was up for good from 5:57am on, either herding the boys back to their room or pulling wooden trains from between the mattress and box spring of Graham's bed. 

So as I stumbled through yesterday's activities with a foggy mind, I had only one lucid thought-- what was so wrong before?

Recipe for Disaster

When Graham got a hold of my short grocery list yesterday, I figured he'd pretend he was shopping with his bucket of faux produce and plastic cans of tomatoes, but instead he grabbed another piece of paper and made his own list.

"Bubba, what are you doing?"

"Making a list for the store."

"Oh, I see.  Why are you making a list?"

"I have a respisee."

"You're following a recipe?  Cool!  What are you going to cook?"

"Cookies!"

"Yummy!  So what's on your list?" 

"Bananas, toilet paper, milk, bubble stuff, band-aids, cheese, chicken nuggets, ice cream, toys and Oscar."

"That's pretty weird, but let's give it a shot."

So we mixed what felt like 20 pounds of air "ingredients" into the bowl, rolled it, patted it and marked it with a G, and threw it in the "oven" for Graham and me.

Except it wasn't quite as cute as patty cake.  

He pretended to eat the imaginary cookie, spat it out, hurled himself onto the floor in a fit of pretend-induced food poisoning, and then he threw me under the imaginary and proverbial bus.

"Dat cookie is YUCKY!"

"Yeah, it's pretty weird.  But maybe that's because you put those crazy ingredients in it."

"No, YOU did, Mommy.  You not make any more cookies with dogs."

And then Graham walked over and licked the dog.  

If I quit baking, do you think I'll save up enough money to pay for his therapy?

Ism of the Week

"Daddy, you're bigger than Mommy."

"Yeah, and thanks for pointing that out, Cael."

"Are mans always bigger than girls?"

"Not always, but usually."

"Are they smarter?"

(Before I proceed with this, let it be known that my husband was teasing me and in no way trying to undermine my intelligence.  This is obvious, of course, because it simply can't be done...) 

"Oh, yeah.  I'm smarter."

"Really?"

"Yep, and I'm stronger, too.  And older."

Cael knew that we were being silly, but I still wanted to defend myself.  And apparently he did, too.

"But I'm so much prettier!" I piped up.

"Yeah, Mommy... and I have the most gas!" 

No argument there.