The sweetest words...

The sweetest words I've heard in a long time came today not from my beloved, but from the very girl who earlier today took a pen and wrote (ironically enough) the letters H and A on our ottoman. Needless to say, it was not a pretty day in our household. When I inquired as to who wrote the letters (and also wrote on the faces of all three children in residence this morning) the answer came "nobody". Nobody did it, eh? Well there's only one nobody in this house who knows how to write letters and further, only one nobody who has a particular penchant for the letter H. GUILTY!!!!!!!

Moving on to the better part of the day... Kailin and Steve were playing with his Facebook pet while I made dinner. She loves to buy the mystery boxes and see what's inside. Well, Steve was done with buying mystery boxes and told Kailin he was saving up for a sink and a bathtub and a stove. So she suggested they go buy the stove. They did. Then she suggested that they buy the sink and tub. Steve said they'd have to wait for another day as he was out of money. She immediately said, "I have money! In my bank - to keep it safe from Colby. He will choke." It made my heart just swell to capacity to hear her so willing to give her piggy bank money to daddy for his pet. Of course he explained the difference between real money and pretend money that Fuzz has, but that part doesn't matter much.

I'm really glad that I get to be her mom all the time and not just when I find "ha" on the ottoman - and I'm glad she's such a forgiving little girl because I didn't do a fantastic job of handling the "writing on the wall" so to speak. She didn't care, though - 10 minutes later she was back to telling me that I am her best mommy. Oh how I love that girl!

All none - it's the time of the Christmas...

I'm hoping this will post back in February when I wrote it. I'm not sure how it didn't get posted.... I'm glad I wrote it down, though, because both of these are already gone. Although yesterday (April 21) I heard another charming rendition of "the time of the Christmas"!

The kids have been killing me lately with all their funny little quips. Out of the mouths of babes they say and "they" are so right....

Colby can be heard, many times a day, proclaiming that he is "all none" with something. It's easy to figure out that it's his version of "all done", but I'm amused at the idea of him wanting it all or nothing - even though that's far from his meaning. If food is involved, there's definitely none left!

Kailin's been into singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". However, instead of "glad tidings for Christmas, and a Happy New Year" she sings, "the time of the Christmas....the time of the Christmas...and a Happy New Year!" This morning it even changed into the time of the rocking chair, the time of the new door.... I bet you never knew what a versatile song it was!

Splish splash...

We had an unseasonably warm day on Tuesday. It was nearly 60 here. I think, with the strong wind we had it felt more like 50, but that's at least 30 degrees warmer than it's been lately. The kids and I walked up to the post office in the morning. We needed to take the Cherry Blossom Market package up to mail.

Have I already ranted about the Cherry Blossom Market? Ours came without one of the roof connectors. That renders the product useless. Of course we only discovered this AFTER we assembled the thing and the kids were really really excited about playing with it. I promptly called Mattel the next day. I was informed that the product is "too new" for them to offer single parts for it. They were all too happy to remedy the situation, but first they'd have to mail me a label and then I'd have to send the market back to them and then they'd send me a new one. Wow. That all seems really archaic to me - and also a little fiscally stupid. Don't you think it would be easier (and far cheaper) to email me the label and then open a box of Cherry Blossom Market and snag out the piece I need so that they can have the remaining parts for future customer calls? Surely that makes more sense, doesn't it? Anyway....

I was quite a sight at one point. I was pushing the double stroller with the wonder twins in it. The Market package was sticking out the side of the basket under the stroller. It was too big to fit in the bottom of the wagon ( my original idea was to have the boys sit on the package in the wagon), and too big to fit in the bottom of the stroller and too heavy to carry all the way up there. We approached a really really deep puddle and Kailin had her tennis shoes on. So I hoisted her onto my back and then held her with one arm whilst pushing the twinsmobile with the other and trying to balance on the soggy curb grass rather than walk through the 3" deep puddle myself. I did do it, but it was a little hairy there for a minute and I was actually laughing at the thought of seeing myself there.

After Steve got home, we decided to take the kids for a walk at the State Park near us. I told Kailin she could wear her boots and splash in puddles. We don't have rain boots for the kids yet, so they wore their winter ones and off we went. Kailin was so cute! The first part of the trail was covered in ice and snow yet, and Kailin immediately grabbed Colby's hand and said she was going to make sure he was safe and didn't fall down or get squished like a pancake (that part applied mostly to the parking lot). It was too cute!

We found a little puddle and the kids had fun splashing around in it. We walked a little further and I looked ahead and said "Oh Steve, there's the motherload!" It was at least 3-4" deep and ENORMOUS!! Steve told Kailin to look and her eyes lit up. She was looking at him he told her to go ahead and she was in disbelief... and then in she went, with her brother at her heels. They splished! They splashed! They danced and twirled and giggled and whooped. They would run to one end of the puddle and then splash their way back to the other end. They got SOAKED, but they had the time of their lives and I was so glad that we did it! On the very last run (we'd announced it in order to soften the blow of having to leave), Kailin slipped and fell and ripped her pants. I was a little worried that her puddle splashing days were over, but when I asked her if she'd splash again she said, "Yes, but not in any of those mean puddles!" Ha ha ha.

We walked back to the car and Colby was actually SQUISHING in his boots! Midway back I was thinking that he must be pretty cold so I offered to carry him. He was having none of that! When we got to the parking lot, he actually went entirely limp in protest of our departure. Only by telling him that Kailin and Daddy were waiting could I cajole him into going to the car. When we arrived, Steve pointed out that Kailin's pants were now torn and also bloody. Ick. We got the kids home and patched Kailin's scraped knee up. Steve took them upstairs to get some warm, dry jammies on and I got some warm dinner on the table.

Unsatisfactory sleepwear

I'm not satisfied with my sleepwear - or ANY sleepwear for that matter. I decidedly DON'T like nightgowns because I don't enjoy waking up with my nightwear around my neck. I prefer pants. That said, I don't like ones with elastic at the bottoms of the legs because then they ride up to above my calves never to return (and possibly to cut off circulation and/or make those elastic dents in my leg). I don't like the ones without elastic because they also ride up when I wiggle around to settle in for the night. It wasn't a problem before I was married because I was only disturbing myself in my efforts to dislodge the pant leg and relocate it to my ankle region, but as a married person (and one whom is frequently settling down to sleep well after her spouse has been slumbering away), I feel an inner sense of guilt at wiggling around at all much less at wiggling around and contorting my body in bizarre ways, trying to maintain the new found "comfy position" while trying to get the pants where I want them and also not wake Steve or yank his covers off or wake him up or lose my comfy place..... It's all a little easier in summer, but for anyone about to suggest that I wear less to bed, remember that I live in the cold north and that I live with the man who, before we had children, preferred to keep our house at a balmy 58 degrees at night. I've got him up to 62 at night for the kids' sake. So anyway - I'm not in any place to be wearing less than pants, socks, and a long sleeve shirt! I think the ultimate (and definitely fashion forward) solution would be stirrup pants. ha ha. Now there's an image! I'm in a better mood just laughing at the thought.

Shaking it up a little.

For the past 20 or so years I've had the same morning routine. Get up, use the bathroom, shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, put my contacts in and do something with my hair (the teeth and contacts might get swapped around, but the contacts definitely have to come before the hair or there are sorry sorry results). Recently I found that I lacked desire to brush my teeth. Surely not from a hygienic standpoint nor from any notion that it was okay not to do it. I just felt...well...like it was another time-suck in my rush to get out of the bathroom and get Kailin out of their bedroom before she woke Colby and/or get downstairs to check email and get coffee before the boys arrived and my day officially started. Obviously it is not acceptable or desirable not to brush one's teeth in the morning.

I decided to shake up the old routine. Teeth brushing now comes before my shower and you know - it's working great. It's interesting, though, that I'd been using the same routine for 20 years. It never even occurred to me that it had been that long until I changed it and then stopped to think about it. I wonder what else I've been doing for 20 years without realizing?

Fondue Fiasco

I had a brilliant idea to make cheese fondue for dinner last week. We love fondue and I happened to have come across a recipe for beer cheese fondue recently and wanted to try it out. I've made fondue before but haven't really found a recipe I love. I made focaccia bread to dip and we had carrots, celery and apples as well. That was the end of the good experience. The plan.

I shredded the cheese and tossed it with flour just like the recipe said. I followed the recipe to the T. What I got was a large amount of melty cheese below a layer of cheesy liquid. If I heated it enough and stirred rapidly, I could get the liquid to incorporate. At that point, I thought it had "come together" and I dished some onto plates to cool a little for the kids (we'd done this when we had our friends over recently for fondue and it worked great). When I stopped cutting apples to check the temp of the goo on the kids' plates, I discovered a solid lump of cheese. I called Steve in for council.


We agreed I should try adding a little milk (despite the fact that checking the large pot revealed that we'd returned to a state of cheese on the bottom, cheesy liquid on the top). That seemed to help enough that maybe at least the adults could eat it from the pot. I sliced some cheese for the kids' plates and we sat down. It became immediately clear that we'd be having a VERY brief window in which to eat the "fondue" before it returned to a state of a solid lump of cheese. I reheated it once in the middle of dinner to sort of make it usable, but it was so stringy when we dipped into it that we were having to wrap it around the dippers manually and then "cut it off" with our fingers. NOT optimal, appetizing, or desirable. Needless to say, the search for a good fondue recipe is still on and that one found it's way into the recycling bin.

Are there any seasoned fonduers out there who know where I went wrong?

Pinther Pan

Kailin kept asking me for "Pinther Pan" last week. A friend brought Peter Pan over once, but we don't own it, so although I convinced myself that's what she was asking for and kept telling her we didn't have it, she was insistent that we did. Back and forth we went. Round and round. We don't have it, "yes, we do!" she insisted.

It wasn't Peter Pan she wanted - it was the Pink Panther! She's still calling him Pinther Pan or sometimes Peter Panther. At any rate, I've been putting on some Boomerang for the kids now and again for fun. No educational value whatsoever in Tom and Jerry or Pinther Pan or the Smurfs, but they love them all and I love that they love them. They sit and giggle and point and it's music to my ears. So we watch. I didn't realize how violent Tom and Jerry are, though!! It's silly violence and there's no blood and no one dies and the kids don't seem to be engaging in violence toward each other as a result of watching it, but it did get me to thinking about the difference in cartoons these days vs. when we were kids. Really - what if Tyrone came running along and pushed Tasha out the upstairs window of her house? Or what if Dora and Boots lit some dynamite under Swiper and watched him ride off into the sunset in a cloud of sparks? It just wouldn't happen. I'm not saying that the changes are a bad thing. Just interesting myself in the lack of rivalries in today's offerings for kids. Everyone gets along - then again maybe that's not such a bad thing!

An arrogant drunken sailor...

That's what you'd have if you combined the verbal stylings of my kids right now.

Steve and I overheard Kailin telling Colby that she is a genius last night. I don't even know where she's heard that word!! (although at least it's one I don't mind that she's repeating!) We've also heard her say "you can't be trusted" over the past two days. I wasn't sure where she'd heard that one before. She's using it in context correctly, but I don't think she knows what it really means. I was really wracking my brain about where she might've heard that someone couldn't be trusted when it dawned on me. Veggie Tales. Her favorite episode ("The Haman one" as she calls it) has a song about "those who can't be trusted". Mystery solved. Odd to think about which words and phrases make an impact on kids!!

Colby, if you haven't already figured it out, is the drunken sailor portion of the gig. His vocal stylings these days include special versions of sit/seat and also frog. What is it with my kids and frog?! Steve wants to make sure we get both on video before they're gone. Ha ha ha. He's also got some less offensive terms right now. Go-gee (doggy), bee-ba (pizza), wuh-bu (love you), and "I know...." (I don't know) are favorites around here.

Needless to say there's never a dull moment!

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????

Who named cling wrap? I know I'm not the only one who's noticed that it never clings to anything but itself and even then sometimes it doesn't do that. I was about to complain about it and then thought "well maybe the intention is that you would wrap the item entirely in the cling wrap such that it would be contacting itself and thus cling." However, in my experience, it only ever clings to itself as you're taking it off the roll. THEN it's clingarific fantasticness. Try to apply it to anything you'd like to keep fresh and it's suddenly about as clingy as plain white paper. And yes I know that there's now Press and Seal stuff out there. And for a leak tight seal I'm glad they invented it. But seriously, in all these years since cling-wrap was first invented and we've developed computers and memory that are infinitesimally tiny compared to what they used to be, we still can't master - CLING WRAP? REALLY? Wow.

A rockin' party...

We had Colby's birthday party on Saturday. It was such a nice one!! I have my husband to thank for most of it. Although I did make some of the food and decorate the cupcakes, he did ALLL the cleaning and prep work. He's discovered, I'm a little ashamed to admit, that doing the work himself is a far better choice than having a lunatic, out of her mind wife on party day. It seems to work for both of us and it does make me a much nicer person.

Anyway, it was wonderful to see Colby so surrounded by love! He was his silly, social little self and flitted around to anyone and everyone. He was VERY excited about opening his gifts and after he felt he'd waited long enough, he walked on over and carefully moved a small gift on top of the largest one and dug right in. Ha ha ha. Someone yelled, "Colby's opening gifts" and we were off to the races. He loved everything, although at the rate he was going it was going to take 9 years to open them all as he wanted to carefully and completely dispose of EACH SCRAP of paper before proceeding. It was cute!

He blew out his own candles (okay, a little help from dad - but he did actually blow them (and they flickered a bit on the first try). He didn't seem to know what all the singing was about and got a little wide-eyed about that, but in the end he was okay with it. I took a bazillion pictures, so I'm posting most of them to our Shutterfly site instead of here or this would be a huge huge list of pictures with not a lot of text.

The house was warm and bustling with conversation and energy - just the way I like it. I did stop and say a little prayer of thanks for the wonderful family we have and that they love my kids as much as they do.

A banner day!

Owing to myriad errands needing to be accomplished on Friday, I was unable to post.... but I'm ECSTATIC to announce that Kailin had her first DRY NIGHT on Thursday night!!!! She woke up Friday entirely dry!!! (the feat has yet to be repeated, but we are so very proud of our little girl!)