Recent Funny Things

• I drink a lot of diet coke most days.  Sometimes I burp.  Usually I blame it on my kids.  When they aren't around I try to restrain it but the other day a big one surprised me.  So I blamed it on Girl Friday.  "GF!?  Did you burp?"  She looked at me with a look I've sometimes seen on my husband's face when I ask him something stupid like do these pants make me look fat, the look that acknowledges there is no right answer to this question.  Polite girl has obviously been taught not to contradict her teacher, but she knows she didn't do it.  Mental quandary.  Finally she tells me, "Yes.  I did.  BUT YOU DID TOO!!!"
• During our ABC work we talked about the letter that Hercules's last name starts with.  I mentioned it, and he was correcting me with the initial of his first name, so we talked through how he has several names and they start with different letters.  Then he tells me triumphantly, "Yes!  I am Hercules Middle Name Last Name, and I live in my car!!"
• I was standing at the counter making breakfast and I see this little hand sneaking up to grab something.  I thought it was Lady because she had been standing behind me just a second ago, so I said, "Lady, what are you doing?"  And then this little pat on my bum, and Alice says in a tiny sweet voice, "Hi.  Alice."  Love the correction.  So gentle.
• We had a lively discussion about wings, and how boys and girls do not have wings, but bats do, and birds.  Girl Friday told me, "I DO have wings!  I fly!"  And I said, "you do?  That's so silly!  Where do you keep your wings?"  And she tells me, "on the airplane!"
• We sometimes refer to Perdita as Smalls, because a) she is, and it's funny to see how nimble she is at such a tiny size, and b) her monkey-climbing tactics lead us to say "you're killing me, smalls!"  The other day she took something from Tigger and ran, and he yelled "you're killing me, smalls" at her. 
• Roo was talking about wanting to buy something and Kanga asked her if she had any money.  "Yes," says, "in your wallet!"
• I put the picture right before this one on facebook, where Remy was completely full of oatmeal and needed serious grooming.  In the comments we discussed his need to return to factory settings.  I got him pretty clean, all things considered, but I had to take this picture during the process because it made me laugh a lot.

Fresh Pink Baby

I am so excited!  Aurora's baby sister was born yesterday.  I know her mama will disagree, of course, but I am hoping the next six weeks fly by so I can get my hands on this girl!  Isn't she GREAT?

And it's so like mama to have the bows and fancy hats around her even in the hospital bed.  Fashionable girls, this family has!!  :)

So, in keeping with the Disney rules I've created for myself, she needs to be from Sleeping Beauty.  Obviously not Maleficent!!  I can't remember the queen's name- King Stefan, Prince Philip, and ... the queen.  Do they ever say her name?  Anyway, I'm thinking Flora, Fauna, or Merryweather.  I'm leaning toward Merryweather, partly because I like the name best, and partly because the personality is cutest.  And with a big sister like Aurora, I can see moments like this in her future:

Fashion designer mama would never say such things, but I bet big sister picks up plenty sewing tricks!

Can't wait to meet you sweet girl!!

Dumb, Yet Great

My favorite five minutes of today happened late this afternoon.  I had just finished reading The Big Red Barn and was lying on the playroom floor.  Alice came and sat on top of my back and so I was playing horsie with her around the room.  Tigger then went and sat on Kanga the same way and suddenly I turned around and we were right in front of each other.  She laughed and said it felt like playing chicken in the pool.  Alice and Tigger were both laughing hysterically and I started yelling lines from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.  "Two man enter, one man leave!  Who runs Barter Town?"

It was so silly.  And yet we all had such a good time.

Friday Focus: Girl Friday

I don't think I've ever done a post on our Girl Friday.  I have a tag for that name and it was actually talking about another little girl we took care of a few years back, in the exact same situation.  My home church does MDO and preschool four days a week, off on Fridays.  So every now and then we'll have somebody who wants to come only Friday because school is closed.  Our current Girl Friday started at the beginning of the year and then was off for the summer, so she's just started back with us a couple weeks ago.

She is quite fetching.  Even wet from Songkran.

I don't actually have very many pictures of her that are any kind of recent, so I borrowed this one off her momma's facebook page.  Isn't she a doll baby?

She's lots of fun.  If you ask her what her favorite thing is to do at my house, she'll tell you the broom.  "I love to sweep!"  And it's true, she does.  It's funny to me, but she does love it.  We have a little housekeeping bucket with whisk brooms and dustpans and irons and all that.  She'll make a beeline for the brooms and dustpans.  The yellow one is her particular favorite, but she'll make do with the red and blue if need be.  Intent on keeping us clean and safe.

She's also EXTREMELY articulate.  She just turned two in July and she's been speaking in complete sentences for months.  She knows her ABCs, all 50 states, and has a huge repertoire of songs.  The other day she was singing "someone's in the kitchen with Dinah"... I went in to get her up from her nap because I could hear a rousing chorus with many verses.  I think it surprised her that I know that song too.

She likes my cooking too.  I dig that.  I'm all about food = love and it makes me happy when the kids like what I make.  So many of them go through crazy picky stages that it's nice to have someone compliment the chef.  She's usually good for three helpings of most anything.  "Oh!  Brown rice!  I love this food!  More green beans please?"  Such a polite girlie.

Yes, Please!!

I know I've said before that I want to be Mary P when I grow up.  I just love her daycare blog.  She's so practical and does SO. MANY. good things with her kiddos.  I'm all for this- it's a huge pet peeve of mine as well!  I can't count how many times Kanga and I have cheerfully said, "Oh, you're thirsty?  I'm Kanga. Nice to meet you!"  Polite people ask for things they need, rather than simply stating their issues and standing there repeating them in a whiny voice until someone fixes the problem without even being asked.  It's a lesson that's so much easier to learn when you're two or three than in school or your first job.

So, go read this!  So good!

Baby Bunny

Two posts in one day, it's miraculous!

I am posting this baby bunny video for Alice's mom, who is likely to going to wonder this evening why Alice will NOT stop talking about bunny!  hops!  bunny!  hops!!

Piggies!

No matter who we've got, the kids always love to make headbands.  It's one of my favorite days of any curriculum when we get to break out the stapler and the long strips of paper and color some hats.  They're so much fun to watch.

Today we did piggy headbands.  "In the big red barn, by the great green field, there was a PINK PIG!  who was learning to squeal..."  they know oink for the pig, and now they know squeal too, which is really cute.  Most of them will always oink when you ask what the piggy says, but if you quote the book and leave a blank, they'll all squeeeeeeal.  Love it.

Remy did more of his own work today, which means it's not very colored and is ripped in four places.  His first grade sisters busted me on doing his woolly lamb for him the other day.  :)

This was the ten seconds he wore the hat.  I had to hold his hand while Kanga took the picture to get him to keep it on for even that long.

Then it was a necklace for awhile until he ripped it off the rest of the way.

Hercules and Tigger were very excited about coloring and stapling and wearing it properly.  There was re-stapling when it wasn't "just so".  When they were finished wearing it, they had a discussion about where it should be put.  "I done wearing piggy hat.  I take it off.  I keep it safe."

Yes, I still need to have another garage sale.  Ignore the background junk.  Hopefully it will be gone soon.  He's talking to Kanga here- "Mama!  I piggy!"

 I love the satisfied look here.  I have a feeling he'll still make this face as an adult, after successfully brokering some big money deal.  See me?  I rock.

And of course Mr. Hercules, always excited to have his picture taken.

Alice and Perdita were more excited about sitting at the table and coloring than they were about the actual finished product.  Alice was happy to wear her hat for awhile though.  Perdita was the Amazing Dancing Piggy, big surprise, and kept pushing it up on top of her head and messing with it so it was hard to get a shot.

This is the only good one we got, and it's because she thought we were still taking pictures of Remy.  When we were calling her name to get her to look, she laughed and ran and jumped and yanked the piggy off her head.

 I am taking my job as piggy hat wearer very seriously.  This is a job which must be done right and requires my thought and attention.

However, I will bet money that she'll wear it at the dinner table tonight.

Mater liked this activity much more, as we have established that he is not a fan of glue.  He was pretty laid back through the whole thing, wore his hat for awhile, and then pitched it away.  We had trouble getting a picture because he kept wanting to get behind the camera and see the picture before it was even taken.  verycloseupshots there.