Great Book!

I happened to inherit a copy of this book a few weeks ago. I can't believe I had never heard of it. I won't go into too much detail, but I highly encourage everyone to read it. It's sort of 1984ish but a bit more enjoyable. I was able to read through it fairly quickly and I usually only have about 5 minutes here, 2 minutes there, 6 minutes there (you get the idea) to read. Of course Adam was sick this week and required a fair amount of time on my lap so I was able to finish up the book. It is more of a young adult/teenager book, but I enjoy a lot of books that are geared towards that age group. (Does that mean I'm immature or just in touch with the child within??) Apparently it's actually the first of a trilogy, which I discovered tonight as I was looking for a picture to put in the blog.

A Word of Advice

Don't ever leave a package of cake mix anywhere that a toddler can reach it. Especially if you plan to take a shower.

Heed my warning...

If you don't, your toddler might grab said package of cake mix.

And throw it around the kitchen.

Until it bursts open.

And then play in it.

Then your kitchen may look like this.

Don't say you haven't been warned!!!

Insights from a 7-year-old

Last night Alex was causing some chaos in our household. I was in the middle of cooking dinner so Doug got to deal with most of it. It definitely wasn't his happiest parenting evening to say the least.

Mary was sitting at the table calmly doing her homework during all Doug's grouchiness.

Suddenly she says, "I think someone's sleeeepy!"

I love it when kids make you laugh and help diffuse the stress.

Yummy!

It was Alex's turn to pick our home evening treat this week. We'd just been looking at cake ideas for his birthday in a few weeks so he decided he wanted to have a cake.

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/lunar-landing-cake-112626.aspx This is what he chose. It's really easy. You bake it in an oven safe bowl. I'd seen the idea of using a bowl before but had never tried it. We certainly didn't need much of a treat since we'd just celebrated Valentine's Day and Doug's birthday in the last few days so I justified making more junk by putting in applesauce instead of the oil. (Don't tell Mary. She claims to hate applesauce.)

I used chocolate cake instead of yellow like the recipe called for because who wants yellow cake when you're decorating with Oreos??? Technically I didn't use Oreos either. I used a cheap $1 bag of Oreo imitations from Dollar Tree. I was cheap and only got the large ones instead of the small ones too. They weren't as good as real Oreos, but they weren't too bad.

And I didn't buy a whole package of Teddy Grahams because you just need one really and because the last time I bought imitation Teddy Grahams from Dollar Tree they were horrible. They claimed to be chocolate chip, but there were about 10 chocolate chips total in the whole bag. That's when I noticed that they were chocolate chip "flavor" not actually chocolate chip cookies. Even Adam wouldn't eat them.

Anyway, try making a cake in a bowl sometime. It turns out really well. It does have to bake for an hour, but it dumped out really well. Kraft has a few other bowl cake ideas (including a monkey head) and I'm sure anyway could come up with any ball type related topic or something.

Memories

So I opened up my CD drive yesterday to install my new tax prep software and found the CD Mary's first grade teachers made last year. Here are a couple pictures of Mary.

Right here she's playing with "ooblech." (I think that's how you spell it.) Apparently it's like a liquid and a solid or something like that. I don't remember the exact science of it all. It was a year ago afterall.

This is when they were learning about the human body and made one inside out on a garbage bag. Mary really enjoys that stuff.

We Tried Not to Laugh

This is the conversation that went on in our kitchen this afternoon.

Dad: Alex, what's on your face?

Alex: Whiskers.

Dad: (Suppressing a chuckle...) Don't do that. Boys aren't supposed to have whiskers.

Alex: But they like to draw them!

We certainly don't want to encourage him, but it was really, really, really hard not to laugh.

Random Pictures

These are just some random pictures of the kids since I was uploading a picture for the next post I'm going to make.

This is Mary doing her homework. She has me scatter her flashcards around and pretend to be the "Trash Monster." I also have to tell her not to pick them up and to leave it a mess. Then she's the "Clean Up Tarantula" and she cleans up all the cards as she goes through them. It's pretty funny. Of course Alex and Adam want to play too and try to throw her cards around for her.

Thanks for the shirt, Aunt Dani!!! Alex loves it.

This was just too funny. Alex and Mary had been using this CD player so Adam wanted to use it. This was the only way we could get these dumb headphones to stay on his head.

When do you feel like a lousy parent???

When your toddler tries to cut off his older brother's finger while you're in the shower. That's when.

To make matters worse Alex tried to tell me through the bathroom door, but I couldn't figure out what he was saying. I was positive he just wanted in to go potty or beg me to turn on the TV or something that didn't really need to be done while I was in the shower.

So I told him to just wait and I'd be out in a minute. (Of course I keep the door locked. Who wants their toddler and preschooler walking in on them every day??)

As soon as I stepped out he was back at the door asking to come in.

I asked him again why he needed to get in and he said, "I'm bleeding." That's when I started to feel bad about ignoring him so I let him in.

I then asked why he was bleeding and he said, "Adam cut me."

Enter Adam...

He came in holding TWO (YES TWO) knives he'd grabbed off the counter. I keep forgetting how tall he is.

Fortunately they were just serrated bread type knives that didn't do too much damage. Alex's cut really only looks like a bad paper cut.

Later when I was vacuuming upstairs Alex also showed me where Adam tried to saw through the piece of wood sitting by our fireplace. It has a few little scratch marks in it.

Looks like Adam doesn't want Alex to get all the infamy!

(Doug suggested I say Adam "shanked" Alex. I opted not to. I'm not in a rush to associate my boys with prison terminology.)