California Barking Spiders

On the way home from Bible School today, I mentioned to the kids that Daddy would be back from California tomorrow.

Firstborn: Yay! Do you think he will bring any barking spiders home with him?

Mom: Something tells me he will

Lastborn: Barking Spiders!!! Will we get to look at them?

Mom: I think he'll keep them hidden but I'm sure you will be able to hear them bark quite often.

By now, both boys are laughing so hard that it's a good thing they have seat belts to hold them in.

Hooray for the fart joke. At least it keeps them from fighting for a few minutes.

PS. My spell check does not like the word Fart. Excuse me while I check my Merrium Webster. I was under the distinct impression that fart is indeed a word that one can use in Scrabble. So why does this spell check not accept it? Hmmmmm.

Learn to last 5 to 10 minutes longer in bed

This was the title of a junk mail I received this afternoon and it made me laugh a bit. First of all, I don't think they planned on sending it to a woman, because frankly, we don't often have that problem.

Secondly, it struck me how that presents a totally different picture to me now that I have kids than it would have pre-kids. Just how are they proposing I last 5 to 10 minutes longer in bed? Isn't that something I do every day when awakened by the childish voice saying "Can I get up now, Mommy?" Just 10 more minutes. Puleeeese.

Something tells me that if I were to click on that link I would not end up finding solutions to get my kids to sleep longer.

Tee Hee.

Yee Haw!!!

36 days till school starts!!!!!

Too much TV

Recently on Nick, there has been a commercial wherein a young teen with great bravado and a bright pink shirt announces, "Pink! It's the new black." Lastborn has always liked that commercial. I never thought he really understood the message of don't follow what everyone else tells you is cool. But yesterday, he surprised me.

Lastborn has earned his camouflage belt in Tae Kwon Do. This is the 4th level of belt in the system we are following and it brings him to the intermediate level. He never talks about how far he wants to go in Tae Kwon Do. He never talks about wanting to be a black belt, but he has been impressed with the fact that he is at the intermediate level now and he has always been impressed with the camo color.

So in class (there were only 4 kids there) he holds the ends of his belt and announces,
"Camo! It's the new black."

The instructors were all shocked as was I. But even more so when he started to boss the kids around in class as if he were the black belt teaching the class. He obviously completely gets the message of the commercial as well as the structure of the do jong.

As I say in so many of these posts, should I be scared?

Bugs!!!

Lastborn: Mommy, there's a bug in the house!
Mom: Ok, I'll get it.
Lastborn: Maybe it's an earpig.
Mom: An earpig? You mean an earwig?
Lastborn: yah. An earwig.
Firstborn: What's an earwig?
Mom: come look at it before I pick it up.
She turns over the partially squished bug that's still wiggling it's legs.
Mom: See? It has pinchers on one end. It moves really fast.
Lastborn: And it never dies!

Inventive spelling

Driving firstborn to school. There's only 2.5 days left!!!

He's quizzing me on mineral facts. A very rude habbit. I've tried to explain to him that not everybody knows the painful details of minerals, crystals and other forms of compacted dirt, but he persists in asking me questions and then laughing because I don't know the answer. So I decided to make my point by turning the tables.

Mom: So Firstborn. How do you spell Mississippi?

Firstborn: M-i-s-s-i ....
No! It's M-R-S-dot um.



I couldn't figure out where he thought the R came from until he stuck that dot in. Being from MA we often get misled as to whether there is an R in a word or not. But Mrs.-ippi! Perfect!

Air conditioners and cold spells

So this past week, we had a heat wave. Not just any heat wave. This one came complete with 99.9999999% humidity. I ran my mother's group annual yard sale fundraiser this weekend and we all almost died. No one has peed in the northeast in days because we are all sweating too much.

So when I got home after said yard sale on Saturday, I begged and pleaded with DH to install the air conditioner. Frankly, I don't think anyone wants to be around either me or my children in this type of weather. So that was probably incentive enough.

DH warned me that if he put in the air conditioners we would get a cool spell. After 7 days of heat and humidity in mid June, it's hard to imagine what cold would be.

But now I know. Because today, it got up to 75! I need to run upstairs and put on some long pants now....

Knock, Knock

Firstborn: Mommy! Knock, Knock (he's already giggling)
Mom: Who's there (clutching her coffee).
Firstborn: Lapis!
Mom: Lapis who? (not that I don't know)
Firstborn: Lapis Lazuli! It's a rock that I heard about last year when I was first learning about gems alksdjf lkj fl ;adjf al ljdf kj lj asjf lfj a;jf ; ;jf lkdfj a;hooij l;ajdf ;how lkdjf;j ...

The rest is just a blur. I was holding my first cup of coffee. I'm not sure an entire summer of trivial facts on rocks, gems, minerals, crystals, stalactites and stalagmites, coal, jet, amber and other formations of dirt is bearable.

An imitation of what they see

Lastborn: "If I was my Star Wars book, where would I be?"

This is the acceptable replacement for

"Mommy, Where is my Star Wars book?"

To which, he would hear,

"I don't know. I'm not responsible for your Stars Wars Book."

It's amazing how the things we say seem so trivial until we hear them out of the mouths of our kids, over and over again.

10 things to do this summer

Stolen from Charmaine with her permission of course.

1. Spend time at the sprinkler park.

2. Take a family vacation.

4. Read with the kids every day.

5. Find some rocks!

6. Teach Lastborn how to write his name.

7. Call friends I haven't been in touch with.

9. Do science experiments with Firstborn.

10. Get the kids to take more responsibility around the house.

Flattery will get you everywhere

Sitting in the car waiting for Firstborn to be released from school. I was eating an apple. Lastborn sat next to me watching the apple as it went into my mouth. I took a bite and moved the apple away and his eyes followed it.

Lastborn: "I'm still hungry,"
Mom: "You just had Burger King. How can you be hungry?"
Lastborn: "But I am. Give me some apple."

Mom: "Oh, but I can't. You see, this apple has poison in it. Anyone under 18 who eats this apple will go to sleep for a million years."
Lastborn: "No they won't! You're just joking."
Mom: "Yes. Yes they will."
Lastborn: "But I'm 4."
Mom: "Yes, and 4 is less than 18. So you will go to sleep for a million years and only a kiss from a beautiful princess will wake you up once you go to sleep."


Lastborn: "You mean like you?"

Here. Have a bite of my apple. Anything you want, kid. It's yours.

Kitty Fun

Love it. Stolen from Gemmak who stole it from someone else.

Cat catching.

Give them an audience

Firstborn and I stopped by an educational bookstore the other day. He had received a coupon to select two free items from their treasure chest and I figured what a great place to get a teacher gift.

As I wandered around the store familiarizing myself with what they carried (for future reference), he babbled away in my ear. I can't even remember what the topic was. Gems and minerals no doubt since that is his topic of the month.

I made eye contact with one of the store owners and she smiled supportively.

So now, it's time to retrieve said gifts from the treasure box. Firstborn must first supply some information because they are going to put his name in a drawing. He dutifully spells our last name (he'll be doing that for the rest of his life). Then she asks him if he knows his phone number.

"Well I don't have a phone yet, but my Mommy's is..."
The store owners were taken with this response and so struck up a conversation with him.

He touched on, how much he hates school but he is learning grammar though it isn't very hard, he didn't know any of it when he started school but he gets good grades because mommy says he has a good memory, but the math and spelling are really easy and he loves to read.

I don't think he had taken a breath at all at this point.

So then he has to show them his muscles. The whole time they are having a great laugh at his effervescence. His rate of speech is sometimes amazing.

So then he tells them about his exercise routine and how Daddy taught him these exercises and he does a hundred a day and his daddy does two hundred every day. With full demonstrations of the above exercises.

Then we move on to his Tae Kwon Do school how it is called ATA and they have an association in Europe called UTA and another school system somewhere else in the world called WTF. But Daddy takes Krav Maga which isn't Tae Kwon Do and isn't part of ATA but he goes to the ATA school to learn Krav Maga. The whole time these women are getting quite the kick out of his performance.

So I have to finally wrap him up, but he's still talking on the way out of the store. The ladies say goodbye to him and tell him to come back soon and he responds,

"My mother says she's going to make me a T-shirt that says don't ask me a question unless you have time to listen to my answer."

Maybe I should get going on that T-shirt.

Star Wars Returns

The parents at Tae Kwon Do are already amused with Lastborn's antics. Many is the time I have wanted to crawl under my chair and hide so they wouldn't all look at me laughing when he is putting on a performance. So this Wednesday, was not as bad as it could have been had I not been so conditioned to his behavior.

The object of the game:

• One child was the tagger.
• The game progresses like tag, but when a child is tagged, they are supposed to jump into a fighting stance and count to ten.
• Once they complete their count, they go back to the game.
• The teacher lets each tagger go for a few minutes and then picks another tagger.

Probably a bit much for the 3, 4 and 5 year olds in the class.

So she picks a tagger and they all start running. Eddie begins to sing the Darth Vader's theme at the top of his lungs while weilding an imaginary light sabre. At one point, he even stops running in front of a heavy bag and begins to slash it fiercly with said imaginary light sabre. The whole time doot-doot-doing the Darth Vader theme.

When purple belt boy completes his turn, teacher asks him to pick the next tagger and of course, he picks Lastborn. The kids start running. Eddie starts running still humming the Darth Vader theme. The imaginary light sabre is still in his hand. He finally figures out (due to much shouting and coaching) that he is the tagger and begins to chase his first victim. But he doesn't tag in a conventional way, because Lastborn is not a conventional child. No. Instead, he strikes the child with his imaginary light sabre. In the hustle, the child tips over and falls on he floor. Then Lastborn stands over him delivering repeated strokes with the imaginary light sabre while the parents in the parent's room are damaging their ribs laughing.

It was a sight. The whole thing had a rather maniacle tone.

Now, flash back to many months ago when this same teacher was lecturing the class on the life skill of the month, discipline. She figured that instead of defining the word for them, she would interact with the group of 3, 4, and 5 year olds and give them a chance to shine. So she asked the group of 15 preschoolers, "Do any of you know what the word discipline means?" There were many answers, none quite on the mark, like being nice to my sister, helping my mother. The teacher was able to redirect them into something useful like being nice to my sister even when she isn't very nice to me or helping my mother with chores even when I would rather watch TV. But Lastborn (remember unconventional) stumped her. His response?

"I won't kill anyone?"

Is there anywhere I can hide?

So all this is rushing back to me as my child stands over this poor 4 year old boy singing doot-doot-do, doot-do-do, doot-do-do.

Drama

I picked up Lastborn from school at lunchtime today and asked him my daily question.

Mom: So, did you have fun today?
Lastborn: No. It was a day of humiliation.
Mom: Really?
Lastborn: yah.
So we got into the car and I began to question just what he meant by that, considering that I was surprised that he could even say the word.

Mom: So what happened that was so humiliating?
Lastborn: My teacher pasted my picture on a flower and showed it to everybody. It was so humiliating.
Mom: Was it? So did you tell your teacher that this bothered you?
Lastborn: No. But I told her to turn the flower over so that no one could see it.

Next, I explained the difference between humiliation and embarrassment to him.

Mom: So. Do you think maybe you were embarrassed instead of humiliated?
Lastborn: No. I was humiliated.

Wow. So I wonder how much therapy for this will be.

Na na na na na

A conversation recently in our home.

Mother: Firstborn! I did 75 front kicks in one minute in Karate today!

Firstborn: Ya? But I bet they were amateur kicks.

Mother: Amature kicks? Of course they were not amateur kicks. They were beautiful, perfect kicks.

Father: Laughing

Firtborn: No they weren't. They were amateur kicks.

Father: Lastborn was there. What do you think, Lastborn? Were they amateur kicks?

Lastborn: Ya. They were really amateur kicks.

All the boys in the family laugh.

I bet I can kick their butts!

Up all night?

On Tuesday, we celebrated Lastborn's birthday by giving him two little star wars action figures. He was in heaven. In fact, the euphoria of receiving these coveted toys was enough to keep him up all night.

At 4 am, I awoke to hear him humming this tune: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/recs/radio/krex/-/track/B0002YCVJC002010/ref=pd_krex_dp_t/102-1719494-7492148#

Sibling Rivalry

This weekend we visited G'Pa in NY state. We were out at a diner for lunch. Firstborn had just finished a tall stack of pancakes and the waitress was giving him kudos for the great job. G'Pa responded that Firstborn was quite a fine young man.

Never letting big brother be the center of attention, Lastborn responded,

"He's not young and he's not a man either!"

Be careful what you ask them.

Shopping with Lastborn today. In our 3 hours of shopping, he kept rearranging himself for some reason. I kept asking him if he had to go potty and he kept saying no.

So finally, as we left Bed Bath & Beyond, I asked him, then why do you keep touching your penis?

You may guess his response:

1) Because I really do have to go potty.
2) Because secretly, I want to be a woman, and this thing is just bothering me.
3) Because I like to, in a sweet babyish voice.

As he finished this declaration, I looked up to see a young guy sitting on a park bench outside the store. He was grinning ear to ear and his shoulders were shaking convulsively.

Things I never expected to say to my kids

No. You can't take a gun to church!


and


Please take your head out of the mailbox!