How Can They Sleep Like That?

The kids frequently fall asleep in weird places, and whenever I can I like to document it.

Alex was playing just seconds before he passed out on the couch just like this.

Apparently Mary got too worn out playing dress up with cousin Julia at Grandma's house.

Yes, that is the brick fireplace he's asleep on. Comfy, huh?

Talk about pure exhaustion when my little chunko can't even finish his meal!

Coloring can be so exhausting. The marker stain never did come out of that dress.

If you look closely you'll see the Goldfish cracker crumbs all over the floor.

Toddler/English Dictionary

With Adam's help I've compiled a translation of many of his common toddler sayings. This should help him avoid the frustration of trying to make himself understood. You may think you know the meaning to some of these, but he'd like me to clarify it for you.


1. Nook - milk.
2. Srog - frog.
3. Horse - an actual horse or a dinosaur.
4. Mary (with a very quiet R) - My big sister Mary.
5. Zac - My big brother Alex who may have just hit me or pushed me down.
6. Mine - I've laid claim to the item behind my back, which probably isn't mine and belongs to Alex or is Mom's shoe.
7. Kiger - My best friend Tiger.
8. Poo - Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, or the funny noise my body makes that I'm exceedingly proud of.
9. Shoe - I learned this word early on when Mom traumatized me by putting them on my feet as soon as I learned to walk. I have learned to like them.
10. Kick - I'm making a really cute face so don't get mad that I'm hitting something I shouldn't with my foot.
11. Mommy - My wonderful Mom.
12. Daddy - My wonderful Dad or any grownup who has just walked into the room, store, etc.
13. Zetzel - Pretzel, one of nature's most wonderful foods.
14. Seral - Please put every kind of cereal we have available on my high chair tray. I may or may not choose to eat it.
15. Ball - Ball, apple, marble, etc. Basically anything round.
16. Noz - I'm pointing at Tiger's nose.
17. Eyes - In case you didn't notice, I've just poked you in the eye.
18. Teeth - I'd really like to eat some toothpaste off my toothbrush.
19. Mamoon - I've noticed a balloon in the store and I'm going to yell it at the top of my lungs until you repeat it back to me.
20. Down - I'd really like to be on your bed and jump on top of you repeatedly.
21. Nane - Train.
22. I tuck - I've just stuck my finger in a small hole and I'd like you to come pull it out even though I'm perfectly capable of doing it.
23. Nanny - Candy.
24. Peez - You've just said I can't have candy, but please change your mind because I said it so cute and smiled at you.
25. Baby - Any child under the age of 5 that I see in Walmart or at church.
26. Oh coo - That's a cute baby over there.

And last but not least because many are confused about what this actually means.

27. Go Potty Potty - Hey, it looks like you're really busy, tired, sick, or some combination of the above, but I've got the sudden urge to go in the bathroom and take off my clothes and dance around naked after sitting on my potty for 2 seconds. I might consider actually going potty, but I'll probably do it all over the floor.

Part Two

In case you were sitting around wondering again...

The pickle juice that spilled into the vegetable drawer a few days ago also spilled into the fruit drawer.

Fortunately, apples are easier to wash off than lettuce.

Clearly the smell of pickles doesn't bother Alex when he's getting an apple.

Clearly I need to eat more apples.

In Case You Were Wondering...

I just found the red sippy cup I've been looking for all week.

It was in my desk drawer.

The little secret half drawer inside the big drawer that apparently Adam has now discovered.

I knew I'd find it somewhere.

But now I'm afraid to look inside. Milk only lasts so long even in an insulated sippy cup.

*Sigh*

It Wasn't Meant To Be

Monday I made lemon bars for our home evening treat. It was my turn to pick the treat, and they sounded good so I made them even though I know they're not Mary's favorite. (She's picky about her treats and won't actually try them. No wonder she's skinny, huh?)

I hurried after lunch to throw them in the oven before I put Adam down for his nap since I really need to work while he naps instead of making treats.

The first disaster occurred while I was making the crust. I whipped up the butter and then mixed in some sugar just like the directions said. I thought to myself, "I'll just leave the sugar out. I'll need it for the filling in a minute." Then like an idiot instead of putting in flour I started dumping in more sugar. I tried dumping out the extra sugar, but after a minute I realized it would just be easier to start again.

The rest of it seemed to go just fine. I even took a small snitch before dinner that night. Doug professed to be shocked when he came home and saw it, but I explained that someone had to taste and see if they were poison before serving them. (Good plan to check for poison when I was home alone with the kids, right?)

Well home evening turned out to be just great. Alex pitched a big fit about dinner and got sent to bed early. After playing hopscotch for a while Mary started wheezing and we had to give her a nebulizer treatment. And to make things worse, I thought the lemon bars didn't taste quite right anyway when we did try to eat them.

Well the next morning came. Mary seemed healthy again so I got her up to go to school. She wanted to take soup in her lunch. So I started to heat up some water on the stove to put in her Thermos to get it nice and hot before I put in the soup that was cooking in the microwave. (Does hot water even help or have I cooked up some urban legend in my head about that?)

I unfortunately turned on the wrong burner... The burner that the pan of lemon bars happened to be sitting on. I was in and out of the kitchen trying to get her lunch packed and get Adam's because of course he woke up soaking wet. I went back in to get him some milk and noticed smoke coming from the lemon bars!

Yes, I was burning the lemon bars! They had a nice round burn mark on the bottom. I quickly pulled them off and figured I'd throw away at least the burned part when I got back from school.

About 5 minutes later I was standing in the dining room doing who knows what when I heard a huge cracking sound coming from the kitchen. Yes, my glass pan of lemon bars had just shattered into hundreds of pieces. Now there was no way to save even a few edge pieces.

Of course it was my large glass casserole dish that's perfect for a nice pan of lasagna or a huge pan of funeral potatoes for the ward Christmas dinner or to take dinner to someone when they've just had a baby or for making lemon bars in...

Maybe it was my subconscious letting me know I really didn't need any more junkfood going in???

Now for even more fun... I get to go clean my filthy bathrooms!

She's Right!

When I used to actually have time I frequently watched 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray. Whenever she made soup she'd always go on and on about how it was such a comfort food. I never quite believed her because to me soup is just soup. It's kinda nice on a cold day, but nothing spectacular. Well, this week I learned to believe her.

For the past couple weeks I've been fighting off a cold or something. I've also been bombarded with work while I covered for a coworker who's having some major health issues. I was happy to help her out, but I also didn't have as much time to rest and recuperate as I would have liked.

Cooking dinner wasn't exactly high on my priority list so we'd have things like grilled cheese sandwiches, stew from a can, etc. One day as I was pondering dinner I decided to make a crockpot of Mom's potato soup. It's a very easy recipe. Chop up some potatoes, throw in some baby carrots, throw in a few things from the spice rack, and you're basically done. I pulled out some frozen rolls leftover from the huge batch I made around Christmas and warmed them in the oven.

That soup has never tasted so good. It made me feel like someone was taking care of me. It was almost as nice as the time my friend Katie brought us dinner when I had a horrendous cold when I was pregnant with Adam and of course couldn't take any medication.

As a side note... I was worried the kids wouldn't be too thrilled. They're not always happy with things they're not familiar with. Mary, however, loved it. She even cried later in the week when she found out I'd eaten all the leftovers for lunch the rest of the week. So we just made it again on Saturday night when we fed the missionaries.

Tiger's Near Death Experience

As I've explained in a previous post, Adam's best friend in the world is his stuffed tiger.

So... we were driving down the road today on our way to pick Mary up from school and Alex opened the window beside him. It's a van window that only opens a few inches at the bottom. I didn't think too much of it until Alex started crying about Tiger. I looked in my rear view mirror, and there was Tiger sitting in the road. As luck would have it, we were in the right lane and it's a pretty wide lane at that point in the road. However, that stretch of road doesn't meet up with any parking lots or any convenient place to pull into so I could get out and retrieve Tiger. I had to turn around and then backtrack to the intersection BEFORE Tiger was dropped and park down a side street in front of a home belonging to people we don't know. I locked the boys in the van and then had to run around the corner and down the street at least 100 yards (if not more) and then wait for a window in traffic to dart out into the road and retrieve Tiger. Fortunately, Tiger is bright orange and people were avoiding him so no real damage was done.

Did I mention that I've have a horrible chest cold all week? Running and chest congestion don't mix very well.

I confess Alex got an earful about how we don't stick things outside the window while we're driving down the road!

There's no boredom in motherhood!

The Best Reason

I've discovered that the best reason to keep a blog is so that I can remember to share the funny things my kids say before I forget them. Tonight we were doing our Monday night game portion of FHE. (We do the spiritual part on Sunday.) Doug and I were getting a little too competitive. We weren't yelling or really fighting, just debating one another's strategy to make sure the other didn't win the game. (Just for the record, Alex won.) As we were debating this Alex said, "I'm done with this game. You guys are giving me a headache." Too funny, but probably the reminder we needed. We were much more relaxed the rest of the game.

Alex woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. He was not at all pleased that I had made eggs for Mary's breakfast instead of pancakes. I told him I'd made pancakes tomorrow, but that wasn't really good enough for him. He also hates taking Mary to school in the mornings so he wasn't thrilled with that either. After we said our family prayer I sent him and Mary to get their coats while I woke Adam up. I got Adam up and then realized Alex was missing. I found him in his room back in bed with no shoes on. I told him he needed to get up so we could take Mary and he said, "I just can't take it anymore."

I did my best not to laugh at him, although maybe I should have. It might have actually made him happier this morning. Fortunately, he's doing much better now.

Soccer

This is a video of Mary's first soccer game last spring. She begged to play soccer so we signed her up. Of course as you'll notice our money would probably have been better spent on dance lessons as she dances all over the field.

She does get a goal at the end of this video. However, we probably should put an * next to it because she was playing on the wrong team with younger kids. I'd always taken her to practice but had Doug take her to the first game without me so I could take dinner to a family in our ward. He found a team with yellow shirts and told her to go play with them. I didn't figure it out until after the game when he said something the coach said about practice and kept saying "he said" this or "he said" that. Mary's real coach was a woman! Of course the coach on the younger team never said a word. If we hadn't been such rookies ourselves at kids sports we would have realized the color of the cones around the edge of the field determine what field your supposed to be playing on. Ooops! We'll do better in the future.

Guilt

Guilt is what you feel when you mix grape Shasta with your toddler's antibiotics and shamelessly tell him it's juice because he's on a juice kick lately and you want to get him to take his medicine that reeks.

Adam's had a bit of a rough week. Well, I guess maybe it's been longer than that to some extent. He's had a diaper rash for a couple weeks that we haven't been able to get rid of despite trying a few different ointments. Tuesday we were shopping at Target and he threw up all over one of the toy aisles. Good thing they had little sets of sweats on a good sale so he didn't have to go home in just a diaper!

Wednesday morning he woke up with several red spots on his face. By Thursday a few of them had disappeared, but one on his chin looked much worse. So since a long holiday weekend was coming up I called the pediatrician's office. They had me bring him in to check things out.

Turns out he's got an anal staph infection. (I know. Who knew you could get that??) Anyway, he's got to be on Keflex twice a day for 10 days. The stuff smells horrible, and I'm not sure we'll get away with the "juice" trick too many times. Now I really understand why Mom always made us get shots when we got strep throat as kids.

Build A Bear

Today we used our Build A Bear gift cards from Stephanie. I forgot I had a camera in my pocket until we were almost ready to leave. Mary has a cute little bunny named Louise. Alex insisted we name Adam's panda Phineas, and he named his own dog Ferb.

Adam spent most of his time running around and playing with things he wasn't supposed to. He even tried to do some shopping of his own and went out into the main part of the mall while we were helping Alex and Mary stuff their animals. Fortunately, his short little legs didn't carry him too far.

Thanks, Aunt Stephanie!!!

Tiger

This is Adam's tiger (or kiger in Toddler). Tiger hasn't always belonged to Adam. Mary got Tiger for her 6th birthday from her friend Mallory. Adam has a hard time going to nursery on Sundays. One of the women working in there suggested he bring a stuffed animal or blanket to nursery to help him feel more comfortable. We let Adam take Tiger to nursery one Sunday and Mary's never gotten him back since. She tried to hide him once but then felt sorry for Adam when he was looking all over the house for it and gave Tiger back to him.

As you can see, Tiger is always close at hand. He's the first thing Adam looks for in his bed when he wakes up and he goes with us on most shopping trips.

Fortunately, Aunt Stephanie was on the ball and gave Build A Bear gift certificates to the kids for Christmas so Mary was able to get a new "buddy" to replace her missing tiger.

Adam of course started looking for Tiger as soon as we got home. He took his new Panda with him when he went down for his nap, but he cuddled up with Tiger.