So far I haven’t had many Caleb stories because usually the things I find funny are things the kids have said to me and…well…he don’t talk yet.
But in the last seven days he has pulled out all the drawers in the kitchen, whacking himself in the nose; tried to run away after taking a bath, giving himself a black eye; figured out how to climb on the dining room table and figured out how to push chairs from other rooms into the dining room so he could climb back on the table after I tried to stop him; and eaten half a serving of dog food. The dog took it very well.
He’s now standing at the front door with the handle halfway down yelling, “Bye-bye!” I should go before he figures out how to open it and runs away from home.
Monkey Baby
Life Is A Highway
So as anyone who’s known her more than three minutes can attest, Alexis loves cars. She watches NASCAR with Daddy on Sunday afternoons and yells at the TV. She loves the Disney Cars movie so much we’ve had to replace the DVD. And when Holli came to visit and called her a snuggle bunny like it said on her jammies, she insisted that she was a snuggle racecar.
She’s pretty much done potty training but as one final incentive, I figured I’d get her some Cars underwear to celebrate. After an inauspicious start (Note: When searching for appropriate underwear for three-year olds, do not enter “cars, girls and underwear” into your search engine. You have to be more specific) I found…nothing. I thought maybe since there are girl characters in the Cars movie, they’d make girls’ underwear. They do not. Her only option was Disney Princess underwear, which we both vehemently rejected.
When Timothy came home from school the other day, I pulled him aside to tell him that his sister had gotten new underwear. She was so excited, she was running around the house waving them over her head. And whatever he secretly thought about her underwear, he was NOT to make fun of her. So when she ran into the kitchen waving her boys’ briefs and yelling, “I got new underwear!!! Woo-hoo!!” her brother made me quite proud by complimenting them.
She also wears them backward so she can see the picture.
Excerpt of a Conversation Between Two Children Upon Entering Their Home This Afternoon
Alexis: It smells like poop in here.
Timothy: No, that’s just dinner.
He was right. I’m hoping she was wrong.
Frogs, Snails and Puppydog Tails
It seems that Timothy has made two good buddies in kindergarten. They are nice boys — they play well together, they’re polite to me and Chris, they don’t swear (except for Timothy, as discussed earlier), they seem to have genuinely good hearts. But I just don’t get boys.
All the behavior I’ve spent the last six years trying to curb seems to be par for the course. They grab their friends’ clothes and swing them around and kick their ankles and play-fight which sometimes results in actual hitting and throw things at each other and use everything from Legos to stuffed animals as swords, guns and bombs. Of course I’ve read books on all this stuff and I knew it in my brain but now it’s actually in front of me and what to do? They need to get all this energy out somehow. But do I step in when Timothy has Alex in a headlock and Alex in turn is chewing on his leg? Or do I let them see this UFC bout through to the end? And if I’m truly this lost already, how on earth am I going to deal with a male teenager? Oh, help.
Disclaimer: I don’t actually let the boys hurt each other or anyone else while playing. In case you’ve ever left your children with me.
me again
I’m back. I had a short hiatus because 1) the computer was fried and Chris had to fix it (side note: I try not to write unflattering things about Chris on my blog but I think it’s fair to say that those who assume women are moodier than men have never lived with a man trying for a week to fix a computer) and 2) I was sick. Not desperately ill — one of those annoying cold-thingys that lingers for six weeks with a cough and runny nose and then a stuffy nose and occasional bouts of lethargy. One day I really wasn’t feeling well and I suppose I should be grateful that it didn’t seem to bother the kids. I don’t think they even noticed, judging from their attempts to wrestle me and the fact that Timothy asked me to move the fridge because he dropped something back there. Other than that day, though, I don’t suppose I can really justify lying around the house for six weeks, moaning and doing nothing. Which has been my operating procedure. Oh, and whining when I can. I should go now…my head hurts and I have this cough and I feel weak and…
It’s been absolutely, gloriously sunny this week. I almost feel like I haven’t left CA yet…yesterday the kids & I went hiking and discovered that our favorite climbing tree at our favorite hiking spot has been flooded by beavers. More specifically, a beaver dam. Kind of a bummer, but the Park Service did put up a cool new bridge to span the beaver dam so now we drop sticks off the side for fun instead. Hours and hours and hourrrrrrs of fun.
Today, I just kicked the kids out back to play all afternoon. We put up a playset last summer so the kids have been climbing and playing pirates and heckling people trying to take a walk by our house (“Avast, ye mateys! Into the brig wi’ ye!” and so on…) The kids seem eager to be outside almost as much as I want to get them out…I discovered this afternoon that when Alexis is playing out here and has to go to the bathroom, she doesn’t bother coming inside. She uses one of my flowerpots. Oy.
And now, I return to my wine and my relaxing on the deck. This Friday there are threats of snow but for now…carpe diem!
We’re Back! Sort of.
We returned from our two-week vacation on Tuesday and it’s Saturday night and I still haven’t finished unpacking. For those of you who are my Facebook friends and know I still have my Christmas tree up, this does not come as a shock. Part of the problem is that we came back with a bunch of Christmas presents — toys and clothes — and while unpacking them, I’m going through and getting rid of the old toys and clothes. I’m realizing in the process that a house with three different ages and two different sexes of children accumulates a lot of stuff. Yeesh.
Our trip was great — we spent a week in San Jose with my parents (sans Chris, who had to work) and a week in LA with Chris’s family and our friends where I sat in the sun like a lizard as often as possible. I used to think my family from NY was insane when they’d visit in Jan and insist on wearing shorts but I totally went there. I ate too much chocolate with my family and drank too much with Chris’s family (not that they’re alcoholics. Or that they drive me to drink. Or even that I got drunk, for that matter. I just meant that I had more drinks in LA than San Jose and they have lots of calories and…ahhhh! I shall now be silent) and I’m in serious need of some green veggies and a few 3-mile hikes up the sledding hill here.
I find that on the drive home from CA, the kids do great until about two hours from home. Then they, and I, get cranky and I spend my time trying not to encourage Chris to drive faster through the mountains and get us home already. But I like road trips because they inspire me. I find that if I stay home, eventually I become convinced that actually going anywhere is a lot harder than it really is. So then I keep staying home and then I really never go anywhere. A road trip reminds me that it is actually possible to get out and go far places with the kids. Now I have all kinds of big plans — this summer I want to go to NY and then pit stop in Kentucky and if we have time in the middle, maybe we should go to Washington, D.C. We’ll probably only get as far as the state line, but I enjoy the dream.
Kicking and Screaming
So Timothy’s last basketball game is this Sat. The last time he played, he was three and it does everyone’s soul good to watch three year olds play basketball. They bounce the ball once, it hits their foot and rolls, they run to catch it and accidentally kick it farther away, and the entire pack moves down the court in this manner. Now that he’s older, they take the game a little more seriously.
I’m not a sports-crazy person. I’ll watch a game on TV but I don’t own a Broncos jersey or hat and I’ve never painted my face a weird color for a game. I just wanted Timothy to have a place to run off some energy during the winter and maybe learn a few basic rules of the game. So I have no idea what came over me when I was watching him play and wanting to correct everything he was doing. To be fair, he’s the smallest and youngest kid on the team (because he turned six the last week of the season, they made him play the entire season in the six to eight year old league). But while the other kids were dribbling down the court and grabbing rebounds, he was somewhere in the middle doing The Naked Dance (a dance he invented and perfected at home a few years ago — fortunately he kept his clothes on in public, but I’d recognize those moves anywhere.) He didn’t get the ball once during any game. He made one pass in practice and we all acted like he was Kobe winning the playoffs. I don’t think he got close to even trying to get a basket ever. For a kid (and perhaps, a mother) used to doing well in most things he’s tried so far, it was a good, humbling experience. But when baseball season starts, we’re going to kick some butt.
So after spending the last six years barely leaving the house, I discovered last weekend that my center of operations has shifted. Between Fri and Sun, we went to two basketball games, one Christmas choir practice, three Christmas choir performances and two parties. I regularly stock winter clothes, diapers, wipes, food, water, blankets, books, toys, a hairbrush, lotion and sunscreen and — somewhere — a toothbrush in the car. I’m now living in it and Parenthood: Phase Two has begun. At least I now have a reason to shower.
Where the h___ did he learn that???
Timothy just said a bad word. We were brushing his teeth and Alexis was playing with a toy in her room that made some noise and Timothy said, “What the h*** was that?” After explaining that we don’t say that in our house during primetime, I asked him where he’d heard it, to which he responded breezily, “Oh, you know…somewhere.” Yes, but where? “Oh…around town.” He’s six. What, exactly, does a six-year old do around town? When asked to elaborate yet again, he said, “TV. And in the city.” At which point I gave up. I think he honestly forgot and was just trying to make me feel better by answering.
