Nolby

Colby decided this week to color in the lines and he did. Did a bang up job in my opinion (and the stinker proved to me that he CAN do it when he wants!). He also declared (while you're making declarations, you ought to go ahead and make a few, right?) that he was going to write his name. So he did. (he had a little help with which letters to do, but no help with the writing) One small problem - he's left handed and curved his hand around causing him to start his "c" a little too far forward and it turned into an "n" instead. He also had a false start and now the paper appears to say "I nolby". I am greatly amused by this and intend to preserve this paper forever. It's unclear at this time whether Shaggy had eaten bad cheese or if he had the flu or just what was going on...

Then yesterday Colby drew a person. I was shocked at how well it turned out. It has eyes and hair and appendages! He'd never drawn a real person before, but he's been into drawing monsters quite a little bit lately - furry monsters with 900 eyes and hair sticking up everywhere and usually a variety of arms and legs. Once he tells you that it's a monster, it's pretty easy to see that it is, but if you don't know that you're looking at a monster, it might be pretty easy to mistake it for a scribble, so this is a huge step forward! I don't know what's with all the art advances this week, but I'll take 'em -- and I can't wait to see what next week brings!!

Call the Poli!!

Kailin just told me that it's not police if there is only one. "Then you have to say poli (puh-lee)." I just couldn't let that one go without writing it down. Her logic at this age is pretty amusing at times!

**I have since realized that the root of this discussion is the current reading topic at school. They're learning all about how adding an s at the end of the word makes it a plural. Since she doesn't know how to spell "police", she has come to the conclusion that the s sound at the end of the word is actually an s, making "police" a plural of "poli". Only Kailin....

butter bandit

We have a butter bandit in the house. A butter biter if you will. I keep a small amount of butter on the counter top because, for better or worse, I prefer it to mayo on sandwiches. The day after we'd had rolls for dinner and the butter was left on the table, I noticed that it had been speared with a butter knife. Okay, fair enough. My bad. Upon closer inspection I realized that the reason for the spearing was to facilitate the spearer taking a bite out of the butter blob. The knife was carefully positioned in such a way that it was impossible to determine the bandit based on their seat at the table. I figured it was a one-off and frankly, I admit to having taken a chomp or two of butter in my younger years.

Then Kailin lost her tooth. And then I found the butter blob there to the right and I think it's pretty clear that there is no missing tooth involved in this caper. Upon interrogation, the butter bandit maintains that he thought it was "cheese", but I'm not buying it.

The fact that the bandit is presently sitting next to me playing in my hair definitely makes it a little easier to forgive him....

It's coming out right now...

Kailin's two top teeth have been loose for some time. First just a little wiggly, then a little wigglier, then one emerged as the leader in the race to escape. It's been really wiggly for about 4 days and yesterday she was wiggling it with her tongue during lunch when it kind of shifted a bit. "It's bothering me, " she said. "I'm not going to eat anything else until it comes out." Steve warned her that it might be a day or two yet and she said, "No, it's going to come out right now." and she hopped down, got herself a tissue, and started pulling. The tooth was soon out and she didn't swallow it this time (to her immense relief), however, a small piece of tissue that looked like a bloody little tooth remained. I can handle a lot of things. I've been covered in poop, "caught" puke, been handed boogers, and been peed upon. I've cleaned up cuts and scrapes and held pressure on a scalp wound that was bleeding heavily. And I've been fine. But that bloody little tooth stump did me in. It was doubly bad because it was during lunch and because she wanted to show it off. I nearly lost my lunch. Thankfully, and to my relief, it receded pretty quickly and now her "tooth hole" looks normal and can easily be admired and re-admired by me when she shows it to me for the 917th time. She's got a lot of space between her teeth, so now this hole looks GIANT.

She put the tooth under her pillow last night (her first one!) and got $3. We have a special little silver box for the tooth. She got it at her Baptism along with a box for her first "curl". It's weighty. This morning she was asking me just how the tooth fairy got the lid off the heavy box if she is so tiny. I asked her how she knew that the tooth fairy was tiny and not as big as a regular person. She said that it was obvious that the tooth fairy must be tiny because if she was a regular person then she (Kailin) surely would have felt the tooth fairy digging around under her pillow. "So she has to be tiny," she said, "so she can go right under my pillow and get that tooth out. She must be really strong, huh?" Can't argue with that logic I guess!!

Take care 'dese guys....

There is only just a certain length of your life when announcing your intentions, whatever they may be, doesn't fall under any kind of filter or desire for tact. I just overheard Colby telling his friend "Take care 'dese guys. I'm goin' poop. I'm gonna go poop. You watch dese guys. Don't shoot 'em yet (they're playing Batman), 'cuz I'm goin' to go and poop." Okay, thanks for sharing, buddy. Can you imagine if we were so unashamed of our bodily functions as adults? "Okay, Jim, can you just sit tight on crunching those numbers? I'm going to go poop. I'll be right back, but I need to poop now." Probably not going to happen. I'd kind of like to see the look on "Jim's" face if it did!

Fantackafickafox

Colby used some of his birthday money to buy "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". Both kids love the movie with a deep passion ever since we borrowed it from the library this summer to watch on the way up to the lake. He's been asking me for several days to watch it, but we've been having a mostly tv-free week around here, so I've been putting him off.

However, today with the temps near zero and the windchills well below, we're definitely inside and I caved to the requests for a show. Kailin picked "Sid the Science Kid". Colby picked "Attack of Mr. Fox". Now that would be en entirely different movie! Feathers flying everywhere! A swath of death and gore in his wake.... I corrected Colby and tried to get him to say "fantastic". He tried. He failed. He's now calling the movie "fantackafickafox". Tee hee! It's better than his other version and it's cute. And it's catchy kind of. We're watching it now. Fantackafickafox - we're watching that.

sunt'n to remember

Last night, my beloved and I lay in bed having the very discussion we have nearly every Saturday night. "Are we going?" "I don't know, I'm so torn." "Well, it's up to you." "I'm not deciding." "Well, this marriage is about a partnership and we need to make decisions together." "Right. I make some decisions and you make some and we make some together. This is one you need to make." "Well what does that mean?" "It means it's up to you, but if we do the 'walk of shame', you're doing it this time." "Why do I have to do it?" "Because I did it last time."

Yes, it is the weekly decision about whether or not to set the alarm and attend church. This discussion is not the product of a lack of desire to attend church. This discussion is not the result of a lack of faith or desire to worship our Lord. This discussion is the product of the realization that oftentimes attending church with our two highly active children results in us getting NOTHING out of the service and quite potentially impacting the ability of other people to get something out of the service. Our kids are not horribly obnoxious by any means, but we find ourselves spending much of church shushing, pleading with, disentangling or preventing our children from coloring in the hymnals (despite the fact that they have perfectly good paper at hand and that they do not color in books at home) or dropping them hymnals on the floor (for reasons unknown to me, they are drawn to the hymnals like moths to a flame). So it is that we gauge our churchgoing on how much (or little) sleep our kids have had and our best, educated guess as to how much we might actually get from the service. On the weeks that we feel like it's a lost cause, we do the "walk of shame" and take the kids to Sunday School even though we haven't attended church. Yes, I realize that if it makes me feel shameful not to take them to church then I should know that I should be taking them to church. Sometimes, though, it just seems like an enormously daunting job. I reminded Steve last night, however, that if we ever want them to learn to sit through church it will require practice and also that if we are struggling with two in church, we might as well kiss it goodbye entirely when Carter comes home. On that basis, we set the alarm and off we went to church this morning.

You know what? BOTH kids were near to angelic during the entire service. BOTH. We were shocked and amazed. We dropped them off at Sunday School (well, we dropped Colby off - Kailin announced loudly that she was going to take herself to Sunday School and she did), and Colby didn't even have his little weekly sulky tantrum. There were no fights on the way to get coats after Sunday School and although we had a small issue with some slush stomping on the way to the car, we loaded them without much issue. We were planning to surprise them with a trip to the movie theater after church. Our theater chain does "Frosty Flicks" every year in the dead of winter where they pick one kids' movie a weekend and do one show on Saturday (and now Sunday) morning. Admission is $2 no matter your age. It used to include a small popcorn, but as of this year, not so much. Still, a pretty big bargain. This week was "Despicable Me" and although we own the DVD, we thought the kids would get a charge out of seeing it on the big screen. And they did. And we had a great time and they were well behaved and the whole world was shining with light and love. And then of course it all came crashing down around us in the late afternoon hours. But I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm going to dwell on the fact that we had several continuous hours where all was right with the world and my family lived in total peace and harmony. It filled me up and gave me hope. And even in the midst of the ugly downward spiral into ridiculously overtired and unacceptable behavior, Kailin yelled out "The football show is on! GOOOOOOOOO Packers!!" and Colby followed with "DEFENSE!!!" and they waved their signs around and danced in the living room and the light shone again (for 35 seconds before they hit each other with the signs and the signs were confiscated). It's there - the light - lurking just below the surface. One of these days it's going to be too big to contain and it's going to break free and shine all the time. Forever. Or not. But if you're going to dream, dream big - right?

The other "sunt'n" I want to remember is "sunt'n" itself. It's a Kailinism and I know that one day soon it will be gone. She's said it since forever, but I don't think I've ever documented it. The t is almost silent. It's close to sun-n, but a breath of a t is in there. It's endearing and cute and it's one I don't correct. It'll be gone soon enough on its own. Oh, and she also does an inexplicable, mean southern accent. I don't get it, but it's darn cute.

Snow much fun!

We had a snow day yesterday. Rather, we had a blizzard day. In this cold and snowy place that we live, it's pretty rare to have everything come to a virtual standstill, but this was a gollywhopper of a blizzard! We had the "light" area of the storm and still had 4ft snow drifts and gusts so strong that it was snowing horizontally! Most of the blizzard came in the overnight hours, but the winds were still howling come morning and the clean-up efforts had barely begun. They issued a state of emergency for our part of the state and also a "civil danger warning". I'd never heard of that one before, but it basically means that if you choose to venture out, they will not guarantee that anyone will come to help you if you get stuck or even if you are injured. Most of the roads were just plain impassable - including major interstates. Steve worked from home and I had the day off as well since no one was going anywhere. I decided to make it as fun a day as possible - even though it was too cold (and with temps dropping rapidly and dangerous windchills setting in by early afternoon) and windy to go outside and enjoy any of the snow. We started out with a 2 hour Play-doh-athon. The kids really enjoyed playing with all the new accessories that Colby got for his birthday! Then it was off to a warm bath where they enjoyed....popsicles! It's kind of a self-cleaning sticky mess avoidance technique of mine and of course the kids ate it up -figuratively and literally in this case! We spent the afternoon watching movies together on the couch and ended their day of fun with pizza on the couch. I think it was a successful snow day and although I'm glad to be back to "real life" today, it was fun while it lasted!

s-s-s-s-s, It's a secret!

That's what I got the other night when I got Kailin up to go potty before I went to bed. First she said, "suh-suh-suh-suh" and then when I asked her what she was saying, she said, "It's a secret and no one can see!!" Okee, dokee then.

What's NOT a secret anymore is that Miss Kailin has had her hair cut! She's got two 13" ponytails to donate to Locks of Love and she's pretty excited to be helping other kids. I took her to a children's salon as a special treat for this monumental cut. She wanted it chin length and since we were cutting it anyway, that let her give more to Locks of Love. It's a good length for her and she's cute as a button (but looks much older to me!) with her new 'do.

It was harder for me than for her, I think! She grinned from ear to ear during the whole thing and LOVES her new hair. The first 24 hours were full of "this is my first time brushing my teeth with my new hair!" "this is my first time going to bed with my new hair!" Still now, several days later, she loves it. I just heard "this is the first time I'm playing Play-Doh with my new hair!" so I guess the excitement hasn't worn off yet!

I'm so glad we went ahead and let her do it. She's been asking for several months and we agreed that we'd do it just in advance of Chinese New Year. It's a Chinese tradition to get a hair cut before the New Year - sort of an out with the old and in with the new kind of thing (at least as I understand it).